Handout Utrecht Graduate Conference 2022
How our emotions keep us rational
A neurophilosophical account of thinking and feeling
by Roos Geerse
Abstract
According to the reiteration model I introduce here reasoning always begins as an unconscious process. Conclusions can enter awareness when 1) the corresponding words, images etc. are activated or 2) the related emotion is evoked. Furthermore, as there are good reasons to assume that emotions are relevance detectors and that this is true for mental behavior as much as it is for overt behavior, many of the emotions we have may be assumed to be of the epistemic kind. These may not always enter awareness, but as we are talking about processes that are generated by the same structures, in the same way and serving the same function as the standard emotions, I argue they can be referred to as emotions as well. In conclusion, thinking and feeling are interdependent capacities. Notably, the fact that this conclusion can be drawn by including neuroscientific evidence and insights from semantics suggests that the study of the mind requires an interdisciplinary approach.
Assumptions of the reiteration model
1. The nervous system is a representational system, but only in the brain representations are combined into new structures.
2. People have generative models of the world that they continuously update (e.g. Barrett, 2017; Clarrk, 2013).
3. Both on the mental and on the neural plane we need to distinguish between semantic and non-semantic concepts.
4. Concepts are organized in networks so that activation can spread for instance from causes to effects.
Some of the most activated representations in the semantic system of a person seeing a toddler in the street, including their relations.
Referential concepts are represented as ovals, relational concepts as circles and the propositions (conclusions and rules) as rectangles. Note that proposition 2 must have been generated by proposition 1 together with other propositions that are not shown here. Unlike proposition 4 it will not have been available in memory already. Proposition 3 is activated as part of proposition 2.
5. Representations in one system can be activated in another system, meaning they are reiterated, thus leading to awareness, action or emotion.
The reiteration model
The solid lines show the possible reiteration loops within the mental system, the dotted line shows the reiteration loop between the mental and the somatic system. Not shown is the mnemo-executive system that is at the core of the mental system.
Sources
Barrett, L. F. (2017). The theory of constructed emotion: an active inference account of interoception and categorization. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 12(1), 1-23.
Bowers, J. (2017). Grandmother cells and localist representations: a review of current thinking. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 32(3), 257-273.
Dretske, F. (1988). Explaining behavior: Reasons in a world of causes. MIT press.
Clark, A. (2013). Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science. Behavioral and brain sciences, 36(3), 181-204.
Frijda, N. H. (1986). The emotions. Cambridge University Press.