The brain and the lies our minds tell us

[WednesdayAddams]

It's soon enough that I still remember being burned in effigy for daring to suggest that our emotions are electro-chemical responses to outside stimuli, but the subject fascinates me, you see. The neurological system is such an amazing piece of equipment. Not only do we have these wonderful responses, we have now managed to convince ourselves that instead of being a finely tuned warning system we see our emotions as an end in and of themselves. We then argue vehemently against anyone saying otherwise.

Take anger for example. Anger is an excellent and necessary emotion. It tells us when something is 'wrong' and requires our action to make it 'right.' * Anger, like fear, gives us an additional burst of adrenaline to deal with the situation at hand. It helps us ignore pain. It allows us to perform actions that we may not have the strength for under normal circumstances. Anger is a wonderful, useful emotion. Unfortunately, we seem to be growing beyond the point where anger is useful as a species. Oh certainly some situations are straightforward enough. Someone punches you in the nose, you get angry, you hit back. Simple. But after that.... the situation that prompted both the initial punch and the retaliation still remains. It's resolved not by fists but by talk after tempers cool. Wars are won and lost on the battlefields, but eventually they're decided at the conference table. Those who are able to see their anger for what it is (a tool) and control it effectively are those who somehow manage to do well in life. As an evolutionary tool, anger was necessary. Now it seems to get in the way more than it assists. To quote a wise man of my acquaintance: 'Big reactions seldom help.'

Yet still in our minds, we insist that there is something separate. That there is something 'other' than our brains and our neurons and synapses and chemicals that cause these emotions. Indeed, all of those things combine to force us to rail against the idea that we are our biological bodies, nothing more and nothing less. 'I am in control!' we shout. 'I am not just a bunch of chemicals!' What about this frightens us so? Is it the acknowledgment that the 'soul' so many believe in really may be nothing more than a figment devised by our superstitious ancestors? Is it the control aspect? Recognizing that our subconscious actually has more to do with our day to day actions than we want to think?

And what of love? That ever elusive, ever changing emotion? If it's 'real' (as real as anything may be) and not merely a chemical reaction, why does it evaporate, seemingly overnight? Why does it change over time?

I find that the more we learn about how our emotions work, the more amazed I become at the way we lie to ourselves about what they mean. And the beauty (or diabolical ugliness depending on your perspective) of it all is that we lie to ourselves the most when those emotions are at their peak and then justify those lies as the emotions start to wane.





*For a given, subjective value of 'wrong' and 'right.'

[The Futility of Nihilism]

Ouch! Reading that made my brain hurt! I'll try to digest and think about it and come back later and hopefully have something half-assed meaningful to contribute.

[Stubby Boardman]

Wednesday, great OP, and I hope it leads to interesting discussion. I, too, find this fascinating. Why do we, on the one hand, accept that if we're beaten on the head with an axe, we will lose our memories and our power to reason, even as we cling to life hooked up to tubes for years, but on the other hand remain convinced that somehow attached to us there is something that continues to remember and reason, and will keep going after the tubes are disconected and we're in the cremation urn? A mere artifact of evolutionary hardwiring? That may be all, but I can understand why it's so difficult to find that explanation satisfying.

[Mako]

Is it the acknowledgment that the 'soul' so many believe in really may be nothing more than a figment devised by our superstitious ancestors?

Sorry for cherry-picking, but I think that this might be subconsciously true, at least in part (though I perhaps wouldn't have worded it like that).

I'm by no means discounting the possibility that a soul exists, but if it does, I doubt it has much to do with many of the stimulus-response behaviours and emotions that we're still very much tied to. Pain is great example.

[Uthrecht]

If you don't mind the slightly negative response, I'm not immediately sure what we're discussing here. You discuss that emotions shouldn't be the end themselves, mention that they are in your opinion purely biological, then mention that we are purely biological. If we are purely biological, wouldn't emotions pretty much be the end themselves? I'm probably stretching a bit what you're getting at there.

I won't debate whether we are more than simply biological organisms; that's getting a bit into tough territory, and I'm not sure it's what you want anyway. I will note that even if you go by pure biology, on the one hand emotions are responses to behavior by and large (or at the least, mental constructs on top of situational behavior). While something like anger *can* be necessary and good, it can also get in the way of what you're talking about with regards to solving larger issues. Of course, "larger issues" are generally not biological ones. Were we raccoons, stimulus-response would suit us fairly well.

We are largely or totally biological, but we are more than the sum of our biology. Biological responses alone do not allow us to make reasoned responses - that's learned behavior. Yes, biology gives us a brain that can do this, but we still need to take it the next step.

Anyways, I think I might not be arguing against what you're saying, this all just kind of seemed like something I wanted to clarify before moving on. In general yes, I think I'm agreeing with what you're saying. On the other hand, if we are going to Be In Control, part of that is knowing what our emotions are and being able to disconnect from them. Which is getting past using them as an end in and of themselves.

[Hobo with a spatula]

I believe experiences and lives linger, like smells.

[WednesdayAddams]

If you don't mind the slightly negative response, I'm not immediately sure what we're discussing here. You discuss that emotions shouldn't be the end themselves, mention that they are in your opinion purely biological, then mention that we are purely biological. If we are purely biological, wouldn't emotions pretty much be the end themselves? I'm probably stretching a bit what you're getting at there.

No, I don't mind. My point was more that while we and our emotions are biological, those emotions are a warning system, something that spurs us to action and an end result, rather than end results all on their own (as some people treat love, which is why I used it as an example). That most of the time, we don't recognize that fact and that we merely react by looking for ways to validate the emotion rather than considering why we're having it. Sometimes the reasons behind the emotions can be quite complex.

I won't debate whether we are more than simply biological organisms; that's getting a bit into tough territory, and I'm not sure it's what you want anyway. I will note that even if you go by pure biology, on the one hand emotions are responses to behavior by and large (or at the least, mental constructs on top of situational behavior). While something like anger *can* be necessary and good, it can also get in the way of what you're talking about with regards to solving larger issues. Of course, "larger issues" are generally not biological ones. Were we raccoons, stimulus-response would suit us fairly well.

We are largely or totally biological, but we are more than the sum of our biology. Biological responses alone do not allow us to make reasoned responses - that's learned behavior. Yes, biology gives us a brain that can do this, but we still need to take it the next step.

Anyways, I think I might not be arguing against what you're saying, this all just kind of seemed like something I wanted to clarify before moving on. In general yes, I think I'm agreeing with what you're saying. On the other hand, if we are going to Be In Control, part of that is knowing what our emotions are and being able to disconnect from them. Which is getting past using them as an end in and of themselves.

Actually, I think you paraphrased pretty well. One of the things I wonder is what that 'next step' will be, or even if we'll manage to take it before we manage to render ourselves extinct.

[WednesdayAddams]

Sorry for cherry-picking, but I think that this might be subconsciously true, at least in part (though I perhaps wouldn't have worded it like that).

I'm by no means discounting the possibility that a soul exists, but if it does, I doubt it has much to do with many of the stimulus-response behaviours and emotions that we're still very much tied to. Pain is great example.
I don't think such a thing as a 'soul' exists. My qualifier was put in for those who may object and request that I 'disprove' the human soul in an attempt to avoid the quibbling that inevitably follows such definite assertions.

[WednesdayAddams]

Wednesday, great OP, and I hope it leads to interesting discussion. I, too, find this fascinating. Why do we, on the one hand, accept that if we're beaten on the head with an axe, we will lose our memories and our power to reason, even as we cling to life hooked up to tubes for years, but on the other hand remain convinced that somehow attached to us there is something that continues to remember and reason, and will keep going after the tubes are disconected and we're in the cremation urn? A mere artifact of evolutionary hardwiring? That may be all, but I can understand why it's so difficult to find that explanation satisfying.
Thanks. I've been thinking about it since participating in 7's music & memory thread (http://www.giraffeboards.com/showthread.php?t=9018). I got a bit lost in nostalgia. Then I remembered that the strongest memories are tied to our sense of smell. More than the music, I remember the smells around me and thinking back, the sharpest memories I have are associated with certain smells. That a chemical response would trigger something so strong (will I still think of my grandmother's back yard when I smell lilacs at age 80?) got me going on a whole stream of consciousness thing.

[Uthrecht]

I will share some of my secret optimism with you, but only if you know the handshake. I don't want it to spread around. We've been specifically worrying that we'll render ourselves extinct for half a century now. But we've shown that we're pretty good at recognizing this and not really wanting to die. I think we'll muddle though by and large. Heck, somebody said it fourty years ago:

But the instinct can be fought. We're human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands! But we can stop it. We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going to kill today. That's all it takes! Knowing that we're not going to kill - today!

Anyways, my dispute at the end is that in my opinion we should be in control. We are not just a bunch of chemicals. At the same time, we ARE a bunch of chemicals, and while we have a marvelous ability to think and reason, we also have a lot of lower-level responses, impulses, emotions and puns which need to be monitored and kept under control.

As for a "next step"... I'm not immediately sure what, if any, we would have, at least within any immediate timeframe (evolutionarily speaking). As you say, emotive responses are useful in a lot of ways, and certainly sociologically. The removal of those emotions would not necessarily be advantageous (go sociopaths!) so I think we'll be stuck with them for some time.

[Zeener Diode]

Funny that Uthrecht should cite Captain Kirk, as I was just watching "Enemy Within" on the toob last night: It was the episode where Kirk was split into to separate beings by way of transporter malfunction. There was Good Kirk and Evil Kirk, and the moral was that neither could survive without the other.

My point is that, while we value our ability to think and reason as enlightening, we are base creatures of instinct which need that "evil" side to survive.

[WednesdayAddams]

My point is that, while we value our ability to think and reason as enlightening, we are base creatures of instinct which need that "evil" side to survive.
Huh. Part of what fed the OP was a conversation I had this weekend.

I was lucky enough to talk with a foreign exchange student from China. A very intelligent young man studying finance at UT Dallas. He used the word 'evil' to describe the Dalai Lama. I had asked if he minded discussing Tibet and what was going on there. His position was that the Chinese government was actually trying to free the people of Tibet from a 'great evil.' An extremist religious movement. I won't go into great detail here (I'll start a new thread if anyone's interested); suffice to say we ended up digressing and discussing the concept of evil. It's interesting that such a concept can bridge gaps in language and culture. I'm still not sure I believe in such a thing; I'm fairly sure it's a human construct. But I don't see our instincts as inherently bad or good. They exist for a reason, and I think all we can really judge is the actions that are fed by those emotions, not the emotions themselves.

[Andrew Jackson's Hair]

Consciousness cannot function with full effectiveness if it constantly contemplates its own imminent annihilation. The advent of the “soul” fixed that little problem in an organism that achieved consciousness while still needing its fear response. It’s an evolutionary product of consciousness itself. The average man-monkey can spend years and years digging through an existential crisis with a ~50% chance of suicide, or he can say “Soul? Oh neat” and get back to praxis. Over time, people with this belief were happier and more productive, leading to a higher breeding rate. Anyone not pre-disposed to thinking he had a soul was probably bred out of the species a long time ago. And now it’s hard wired.

Somewhat less likely (and by no means mutually exclusive!) is that the disciplines of psychology will inevitably conclude that wisdom cannot be inculcated by pill or treatment; but that the majority of human dysfunction can only be remedied by the presence that very trait. It is only a matter of time before a human personality can be effectively recorded into a machine, and from there, the reverse. These recognitions may coincide with a decline in natural resources and space for new human beings being at an absolute premium. The unpredictable products of human breeding can be improved upon. An artificial personality might live an accelerated thousand lifetimes before finally being incorporated, fully self-actualized and free of troublesome characteristics, into an actual physical body.

A solipsistic state of affairs which I must admit would handily explain a number of things about this existence and my perceptions of it.

[WednesdayAddams]

If you insist upon being this consistently rational and interesting I will be forced to modify my opinion of you.

[Fromage A Trois]

Anyways, my dispute at the end is that in my opinion we should be in control. We are not just a bunch of chemicals. At the same time, we ARE a bunch of chemicals, and while we have a marvelous ability to think and reason, we also have a lot of lower-level responses, impulses, emotions and puns which need to be monitored and kept under control.

If I may steal this, I think it can be extrapolated to "we are just a bunch of chemicals, but we shouldn't act as though we are just a bunch of chemicals".

Knowing that our emotions are an emergent consequence of a bunch of chemicals (and with an evolutionary origin) can help us to understand how we feel and why we feel - and why our emotions sometimes misfire (c.f. depression). Those members of the human race who are more spiritual in nature worry that this realisation can lead to the excusing of sociopathic behaviour - because if I'm just a bag of chemicals and so are you then why should I care about what my actions do to your chemicals? It is in the recognition that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and that we have the opportunity (as Kirk said) to be more than just what we were made - we can lift ourselves up and act on a higher level.

[Uthrecht]

You're most welcome to Steal This Quote (now in paperback!).

The flipside would be that this realization could lead to greater use of the death penalty. If I'm just a bag of chemicals and so are you then why should I care about how you're treated once you've shown you're dangerous to society? Of course, that's at about the same level of likelihood in my opinion. Just as emotions can cause us consternation in trying to work together, they also help to bond us together at a deep level (for good and ill).

I think a healthy use of emotions in dealing with ourselves, each other and our environment, policed by a watchful mind, is what makes us human.

[Fromage A Trois]

Yes, and again the reason why I don't think this leads inevitably to widespread use of the death penalty is that part of acting as though we're not just a bunch of chemicals is continuing to act that way even when others aren't. By deciding to kill you dispassionately because you harmed me (or others) I lower myself to the same level of not being aware of the emergent byproducts of our chemical processes. I realise this is what you were saying, I just like agreeing with people. :meek:

btw I love the tag, whoever added that.

[WednesdayAddams]

If I may steal this, I think it can be extrapolated to "we are just a bunch of chemicals, but we shouldn't act as though we are just a bunch of chemicals".

Knowing that our emotions are an emergent consequence of a bunch of chemicals (and with an evolutionary origin) can help us to understand how we feel and why we feel - and why our emotions sometimes misfire (c.f. depression). Those members of the human race who are more spiritual in nature worry that this realisation can lead to the excusing of sociopathic behaviour - because if I'm just a bag of chemicals and so are you then why should I care about what my actions do to your chemicals? It is in the recognition that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and that we have the opportunity (as Kirk said) to be more than just what we were made - we can lift ourselves up and act on a higher level.
Yes, and you see the reason I have always had a problem with that stance is that those people insist on inserting the word 'just' in there. Our emotions are not 'just a bunch of chemicals.' Our emotions are chemical reactions that are SO refined and SO incredibly evolved that they elicit responses that are far more nuanced and deep than mere anger, fear, contentment. We are miracles of nature! We are incredibly attuned to our feelings and those of others. Yet at the same time, the pheromones and the physical communication which goes on between two people isn't even recognized as such at the time it's happening. These are the same people who think we were made as we are now a few thousand years ago and haven't changed at all in that time, all the while thumbing their noses at people who actually understand the chemistry behind the statement 'our emotions are chemical in nature.'

So yeah...I have a problem with the attitude that mentally inserts the word 'just' between the words 'are' and 'chemical' when I say 'our emotions are chemical reactions.'

[Flying Squid with Goggles]

The flipside would be that this realization could lead to greater use of the death penalty. If I'm just a bag of chemicals and so are you then why should I care about how you're treated once you've shown you're dangerous to society?


I don't know about that - I don't have any particular belief in a soul, but really don't think the death penalty is a good idea either.

My reasoning's pretty succinctly put by David Peoples in his screenplay for Unforgiven:

You kill a man, you take away everything he's got, and everything he's ever going to have.

If we're just very fancy bags of chemicals, the death penalty is rather more final than if we're not, and I'm not comfortable giving the state/judicial system that kind of power.

Strangely, I find myself in agreement there with lots of people who would disagree with me on the existence of souls.


I think a healthy use of emotions in dealing with ourselves, each other and our environment, policed by a watchful mind, is what makes us human.

Definitely. Ya gotta watch those emotions like a hawk, but if you can prioritize them and use them for health and well-being rather than destructiveness, they're really valuable. I was just showing one of my nephews that if he flashes photophores for anger at the instant of every slight perceived, he'll be "grumpy little tentacles" for the rest of his life, but if he saves that reaction for when it's clear there's a situation that warrants anger, he'll be taken much more seriously.

[BJMoose]

Looks like our thinking on this matter is quite similar. Two comments for now:

While it might be utile for humans to be less anger-prone now, I can't see phlematic personalities ever offering enough of an advantage for Natural Selection to weed out anger. (To put it another, and rather blunt, way: so long as assholes can get laid, they shall always be with us.)


I have concluded that ideas like "meaning" and "the soul" are hard-wired into our brains. Thus, we can't help thinking along those lines, even if other thinking convinces us that such ideas are nonsense.

[Roo]

I find that the more we learn about how our emotions work, the more amazed I become at the way we lie to ourselves about what they mean. And the beauty (or diabolical ugliness depending on your perspective) of it all is that we lie to ourselves the most when those emotions are at their peak and then justify those lies as the emotions start to wane.
I don't know what your OP is getting at, but this part sounds like the amygdala hijack response that Daniel Goleman describes in his book Emotional Intelligence. (http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Intelligence-10th-Anniversary-Matter/dp/055380491X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263271498&sr=8-1)

His theory paraphrased (http://www.truenorthleadership.com/documents/hijack.pdf): (caution: pdf file)
The “amygdala hijack” is a term coined in Daniel Goleman’s
Emotional Intelligence, his first book on the subject. The amygdala is
the emotional part of the brain, which regulates the fight or flight
response. When threatened, it can respond irrationally. A rush of
stress hormones floods the body before the prefrontal lobes
(regulating executive function) can mediate this reaction.
Then the response is explained further here:
We now know there are two minds one that thinks and one that feels.
The research by Joseph Le Doux reported by Goleman (1995), states
“…the architecture of the brain gives the amygdala a privileged
position as the emotional sentinel, able to hijack the brain.”
The stimuli comes in from the eyes or ears and goes immediately to
thalamus and it then goes right to amygdala before a signal reaches
the neocortex. This survival mechanism lets us react to things before
the rational brain has time to mull things over. The hair trigger
amygdala though can be sloppy and distort things in this quick
reaction.
It has been found the amygdala in animals can respond to a
perception in as little as twelve thousands of a second. So the
antenae are up in the amygdala to constantly scan the environment
for anything that may hurt us or things to fear.
That basically says that when we're in a fight or flight response, information goes directly to the amygdala which is the more primitive side of the brain instead of getting filtered through the neocortex which does the higher level reasoning. So rational reasoning is very limited during a time when someone feels threatened to the point of an amygdala hijack.

It's all explained neuroscientifically. There's no reason to look at something separate or "other" than our brains for that particular reaction.

On the other hand, who is the "I" that can integrate those two basic functions when you're able to choose between the primitive response and the higher level reasoning response. Maybe there will be more research on that, and they'll find how it works, but there seems to be lots of questions still unanswered.

[Fromage A Trois]

So yeah...I have a problem with the attitude that mentally inserts the word 'just' between the words 'are' and 'chemical' when I say 'our emotions are chemical reactions.'

Perhaps we can better phrase it by saying "our emotions are the result of chemical reactions". This hopefully makes it clear that the emotions are caused solely by chemical reactions but that they (and by extension, our consciousness) are not just those chemical reactions but the emergent behaviour and responses caused by them.

[AHunter3]

Our emotions are the results of interactions between outside stimuli and that complex of processes we dub our 'selves'; some of that interaction continues long long after the immediacy of any specific external stimulus.

People do tend to treat emotions as feelgood bonbons to be savored as meaningless pleasure or bad mindclouds to be drugged away, instead of appreciating them as cognitions and sensory input.

Anger is an excellent and necessary emotion. It tells us when something is 'wrong' and requires our action to make it 'right.'

Yes, this. Exactly.

Now, to me, the dismissal of it as conveying content, and treating it instead as entertainment (or illness), seems more tied up in dismissing it as "just chemical" rather than running away from that, but I agree that emotions are trivialized by disregarding that they occur in response to something.

[WednesdayAddams]

I don't know what your OP is getting at, but this part sounds like the amygdala hijack response that Daniel Goleman describes in his book Emotional Intelligence. (http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Intelligence-10th-Anniversary-Matter/dp/055380491X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263271498&sr=8-1)
No, not solely fight or flight but all emotions and more toward not only what triggers those responses, but how the response occurs from a neuro-chemical standopint. I think that currently one of the best explanations can be found in nearly any book by Antonio Damasio, but a good start would be The Feeling of What Happens: Body & Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-What-Happens-Emotion-Consciousness/dp/0156010755/ref=pd_sim_b_1).

[Muskrat Love]

Thanks. I've been thinking about it since participating in 7's music & memory thread (http://www.giraffeboards.com/showthread.php?t=9018). I got a bit lost in nostalgia. Then I remembered that the strongest memories are tied to our sense of smell. More than the music, I remember the smells around me and thinking back, the sharpest memories I have are associated with certain smells. That a chemical response would trigger something so strong (will I still think of my grandmother's back yard when I smell lilacs at age 80?) got me going on a whole stream of consciousness thing.


I've heard the smell thing before and I never really thought about it much because I don't really have any strong associations between memories and smells. My earliest memories are all very visual in nature - I can get a strong sense of nostalgia by remembering the lighting on my aunt's porch, or how dark our living room was with it's '70s wood panel coverings and dark red carpet. I just realized that smells might not be as important to me because my sense of smell was strongly muted because I have animal allergies and grew up around animals - my nose was almost always stopped up, and even today now that it isn't, I breathe through my mouth more than most people out of habit. I can remember realizing in my early teens (after we moved to a place that didn't allow animals) that a bathroom stunk for a while after someone took a dump there, and it seemed odd I hadn't realized it before.

I also wonder if this may have something to do with why I have very little memories from my childhood - I can't really remember many things from before I was 11 or so, just memories of remembering (with a few exceptions). Old photos of places from back then don't seem familiar to me at all. My wife talks about things she remembers from when she was 5 or 8 or whatever, and it seems weird to me.