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Alexandra: My current area of interest is emotion. Are emotions natural kinds? How are emotions different to / the same as / related to other cognitive states such as belief and desire?
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Here’s something I posted (in 2002) on the Cognitive Therapy Forum regarding LeDoux’s
Synaptic Self, (2001), the best book/science on the biology of emotion available (at least back in 2002, IMHO)—
CT (Cognitive therapy) assumes that the individual's perception and interpretation of situations shapes the emotional and behavioral responses to the situation, and the term “cognition†is used broadly and treated as being synonymous with information processing. The problem is that “information processing†is uselessly broad. What else is there? Physical pain can be viewed as information processing as can virtually any other bodily function of humans, or any other creature for that matter.
Anyway, current neuroscience has pretty much determined how cognition, emotion, and motivation – the mental trilogy – actually work and what they are. In the last pages of
Synaptic Self (2001), LeDoux writes the following:
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... there is an imperfect set of connections between cognitive and emotional systems in the current stage of evolution of the human brain. This state of affairs is part of the price we pay for having newly evolved cognitive capacities that are not yet fully integrated into our brains. Although this is also a problem for other primates, it is particularly acute for humans, since the brain of our species, especially our cortex, was extensively rewired in the process of acquiring natural language functions.
Language both required additional cognitive capacities and made new ones possible, and these changes took space and connections to achieve. The space problem was solved…, by moving some things around in existing cortical space, and also by adding more space. But the connection problem was only partially solved. The part that was solved, connectivity within the cortical processing networks, made enhanced cognitive capacities of the hominid brain possible. But the part that hasn’t been fully solved is connectivity between cognitive systems and other parts of the mental trilogy – emotional and motivational systems. This is why a brilliant mathematician or artists, or a successful entrepreneur, can like anyone else fall victim to sexual seduction, road rage, or jealousy, or… depression or anxiety. Our brain has not evolved to the point where the new systems that make complex thinking possible can easily control the old systems that give rise to our base needs and motives, and emotional reactions. This doesn’t mean that we’re simply victims of our brains and should just give in to our urges. It means that downward causation is sometimes hard work. ‘Doing’ the right thing doesn’t always flow naturally form ‘knowing’ what the right thing to do is. [From LeDoux’s Synaptic Self, (2001), pgs. 322-323]
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LeDoux’s model and in a nutshell explanation of the human brain/mind (the “mental trilogyâ€) and its shaping by evolution (and resulting weakness of cognitive influence over emotional systems) seems to be the way things actually work. I see it as the only reasonable way to begin to view and explain the brain/mind and the only reasonable way to begin to truly understand human emotion and suffering.