98 replies to this topic

[Lazarus Long]

All right time for an anecdote. I sympathize with your plight Nate I really do )

You are perhaps suspicious that somehow this aspect of empathy denies you total control over your own cognition, usurps a little bit of your self deterministic mind. Well it may and it may even be generally a good thing but it can certainly be abused as we see in mob psychology, mass hysteria, and other types of cultural atavism.

Anyway let's look at this from the model you suggest. I think it derives from cognitive aspects of parenting and I will suggest a reason why; it promotes our willingness to defend the survival of our young.

When my daughter was born I was not only present she was born into my arms and I cut her cord. In addition as I was with her I felt a powerful bond form, literally physically within me as a physiological response and I suspected a type of neurochemical cascade underway (the objective observer in me never sleeps [lol]) but then I had to make her available to the nurse who arrived for various intrusive tests, all of which I not only approved of in principle but was expecting. So no surprise there.

However the male nurse was not that competent and had to repeatedly cut/pinch my daughter's foot to draw blood and a funny thing happened, I had to fight off a feeling of rage/confusion and literally physical wracking pain that accompanied it.

By the fourth failed try I had to literally take conscious control over my being as I was about to assault the guy. If I did not have my hands busy calming my daughter I would have decked him reflexively [wis]. I felt an overwhelming urge to make a response and not doing so made me almost want to feint, flee, fight, deck the guy, or just knock him out of the way so I could draw the blood myself.

However I was also fascinated internally examining my cognitive processes as I was feeling the survival instincts triggered on a deeply profound (instinctual) level and only the fact that I am actually a pretty self disciplined person allowed me the ability to seek a rational and pragmatic alternative, calm myself, my daughter and taking a moment to calm the nurse with a few words and a deflecting joke, I gave him time to overcome his embarrassment and get his technique right.

The point is the *empathy* I was feeling was physical, I literally felt sharp agonizing *sympathetic* pain rip through my body with each failed attempt at drawing blood and responding howling scream from my daughter. My response to that physical feeling was to reach for a rational and pragmatic alternative but I could understand how someone might respond otherwise. It wasn't an entirely objective reaction and the physical response was visceral not merely cognitive.

I will never forget the complex combination of thought, emotion and physical experience though and it was this event, which began to suggest to me that part of our hardwiring revolves around this kind of bonding event socio-psychologically. I think the neurobiology of mirror genes are involved in this kind of process and likely to be related to many social aspects of *associative* behavioral and cultural development as 1arcturus suggests.

Monkey see, Monkey feel/think, monkey do [tung]

[Kalepha]

infernity| You don't need a official invitation to post you know.

Thanks, Adi. Sometimes I just think I shouldn’t clutter up the forum, especially if I’m obsoleting large portions of my cognitive framework at an average rate of once every two or so weeks.

[Kalepha]

cosmos| Don't you mean "...if one sympathizes rather than empathizes."? Was this a simple mistake or have I misunderstood a portion of your post?

Cosmos, it was a rather convoluted sentence, and in perhaps one interpretation, it would have made more sense to switch the terms.

Nate Barna| By taking this into consideration, I think the article is mistaken by implying that it’s a deficiency to observe experience more than to live it, or that, if sympathy and empathy could for the moment be stipulated respectively, one is deficient if one empathizes rather than sympathizes.

In this sentence, I’m basically saying that the article is mistaken for reasons A and B. Reason A is “by implying that it’s a deficiency to observe experience more than to live it.” Reason B is “by implying that one is deficient if one empathizes rather than sympathizes.” Given the definitions I stipulated, the article would have used the term “sympathy,” since the restricted sense means “a simulation of physiological states,” while the restricted sense of “empathy” refers to how the autistic persons might relate to others via description rather than simulation.

You’re implicitly right, however. If I was going by the article’s terms, my order would definitely have been wrong.

[Kalepha]

Laz, thanks very much for a charming anecdote. I don’t doubt a traditional importance of the anthropological roles of sympathy and empathy. Perhaps these roles generally should be accommodated no less than being re-engineered; at least, once we know we’re safe.

[Infernity]

empathy- entering into the feelings of another, sympathy, vicarious emotion, understanding

sympathy- affinity, understanding; compassion, pity, concern, commiseration, empathy; approval

Yours
~Infernity

[Omnido]

Don Stated:

Again though Omnido, are you limiting your argument to within human parameters, or are you implying that there is no distinction between the necessity of emotion in human minds and that of all possible mind types? (up to and including machine intelligence)

Actually Don, I am. However, its not an arbitrary limit, its merely a consequence from logical boundaries, unless of course those involved in said debates/discussions wish to argue upon some irrational or illogical basis... [hmm]
This "system" is requisite function or attribute for any conceivable thought type, as it covers the only two possible Active / Reactive occurances that can exist.

Any cognitive process requires some start/stop mechanism.
A car's engine requires the ignition system in order to initiate itself. Even the starter-motor is powered electrically by the cars battery, and thus draws upon the electricial energy/potential stored within it in order to initiate the process.

My point is, all events function upon the principle of causality. Action / Reaction. Cause and effect.
Emotions are no different, nor are the mind states of humans.
Logical and rational thought has its requisite based upon causality. Emotion originates from the same source.
One (Emotion) is ingrained and biased by nature, as a set of pre-programmed rules. The other (Logical thought) is a consequence of a specific degree of sophistication involving neurology.

To eliminate emotion entirely is to remove any starter-motor. With nothing to start the engine, it will not run, and the vehicle can go nowhere. Of course, there are some who would read into this analogy too literal, and claim that the vehicle could be push-started, or what not, but that argument is merely for the sake of arguing, not for the underlying purpose of the analogy. A vehicle with no functional engine can only drift from location to location, or be forced into a location by other means. For all intents and purposes, the vehicle is usless without its engine. Emotion is that engine.

I prefer to think of The Logic and Rationalle as the Driver. Before the driver, the engine just sits there, fully capable of doing what it is designed to do, and it will almost always do what its intended to do if the circumstances are right. Those circumstances are part of its enviornment. The engine will ignite and continue to run as long as it is supplied with what it requires to operate.
The driver however is the one that operates the vehicle and decides where it could, should, and will eventually go, barring unforseen circumstances. The driver cannot directly effect the engine; i.e the driver cannot stop the piston from firing, or change the speed of the fan belt from within the drivers seat. All the driver can do is steer the car in the desired direction, at the desired rate and capability of the car.
The driver analogy in this case has one unique advantage:
The driver can choose to turn on or off the engine at will, and can still function in a limited capacity for transportation without it.
The human cannot turn off their emotions at will. We have no key to turn the engine off (yet), it runs whether we want it to or not.

Thus, without emotion, we are vehicles with no engine. Emotions provide drive to do things, even if the emotion is a simple gratification from success for an accomplishment. It is that desired gratification that compels humans to persue the endeavor, no matter how small or slight that compulsion may be.

Nate Barna Stated:

Omnido, it’s anthropocentric to believe all intelligent agents must have neurochemical reactions that resemble emotional states of humans. An operably accurate picture of reality is required even before an agent can decide which courses of action to pursue...

Well, of course it is anthropocentric. What other model(s) do we have? None at present.
However, the "operably accurate picture" is open to interpretation by those attempting to capture it. Human experience is subjective, just like all experience. But I agree in that we do need a better picture. Even so, causality cannot be denied no matter how you slice the pizza. You have origin and destination, action and reaction.

It doesn’t take any emotion to notice that emotion doesn’t need to take part in either acquiring an operably accurate picture of reality or denying that one’s necessary, the only two most fundamental alternatives for any agent with a sufficient reality-interactive system.

On a purely functional analysis, you are correct. However, it does require emotion to produce an interest in the acqusition of the aforementioned picture, otherwise a conscious entity would not care about the pictures accuracy, lack thereof, or existence to begin with.
Emotion provides the drive, the curiousity, the compulsion to discover an answer. Logic only serves as an effective basis for the effecient and successful implimentation of efforts which result from said compulsion. Again, without the engine, the vehicle is useless.

It’s redundant to introduce emotion when it would have no bearing on the availability of fundamental alternatives

What "alternatives" do you suggest? I am at a loss for any alternatives that could exist outside the understood laws of physics, which not only support causality, but are the primary basis for all our understanding of the "picture" as it currently appears... [hmm]

Edited by Omnido, 04 May 2005 - 07:09 PM.

[1arcturus]

Omnido - I would agree with the "engine" analogy for emotion/Motivation.
I would even say that it does take motivation to acquire a "picture of reality" (why acquire something?) as well as believing that "one's necessary" (why?).

The whole consideration of intelligence is hamstrung by the terminology. In ordinary usage, intelligence is human intelligence, or humanlike intelligence. There is no other accepted standard. Actually we are surrounded by nonhuman minds (animals, insects, etc.), but they are called non-intelligent because their minds are not very humanlike (naturally), and the densest observations have been that they shouldn't even be said to have minds.

I suppose some people would be thinking of AI. But the key thing to remember about the "intelligent" programs is that they are connected to a power source (in the computer/robot). It is the combination of the program and the power source together which can provide a basic analog to motivation/emotion. The program, by itself, is just static.

1Arcturus