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Phil/Psych 256
Chris Eliasmith
EMOTIONS
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Role of Emotions
An essential part of what makes us human, but often makingus poor reasoners?
An essential part of what makes us human, and responsible formaking us as good reasoners as we are?
Just a pain in the butt (make us bad reasoners, areevolutionary leftovers that are one of the least human parts of
us, etc.)?
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What would life without emotions be like?
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Emotions and Decisions
Traditional models of decision making are based on economic theoryin which participants are assumed to be rational decision makers.
The emotion challenge to CRUM is largely a product of the work ofof Antonio Damasio and his collaborators.
Their patients (e.g. EVR) have ventromedial prefrontal cortex
damage
Patients have serious emotional impairments, that make them poordecision makers
Yet, they have fairly intact/normal verbal and mathematical abilities.
They seem to have lost (controlled?) emotions, but surprisingly thisaffects traditionally cognitive abilities.
In retrospect, the famous historical case of Phineas Gage, seems to beexplicable given these recent patients with similar damage.
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A B
Maximize the payoff you get from betting on the decks.
Low immediate return, long
term payoff
High immediate return,
long term loss
Preferred by
normals
Preferred by
VM patients
Iowa Gambling Task
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Iowa Gambling Task
Normals eventually bet only on A.
GSR indicates the better deckbefore they know that it is the
better deck.
Those with VMPFC damage continue to bet on deck B (as much asA, or more)
they have little GSR
Therefore, those with VM damage are poor decision makers.
Therefore, ignoring the role of emotions will be disastrous to goodexplanations of cognition.
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Two Possible Changes to CRUM
Expansion:
No change in basic ideas, extend them to apply to new phenomena
Introduce new contentto representations (e.g. about bodily states).
Also identify new processes that take advantage of the repns
Problems:
Thagard says this will not be a satisfactory solution becausetreating an emotion as just another concept conceals its links withjudgment, physiology, and feeling (p. 166).
That is, emotions are closely tied to what it is like to be in theworld in a way that representations can't reflect.
Unlike simulating problem solving, simulating emotions doesn'tresult in the relevant property (finding a solution vs feeling sweaty,
perhaps).
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Expanding CRUM (cont.)
Response:
Why is experiencing an emotional representation qualitativelydifferent than experiencing a perceptual representation? I.e.,what's so special about emotions that make themunrepresentable? (or lacking when repersented?)
Emotion repns may participate in different kinds of processes(that result in bodily changes).
Because robot bodies are so differentI doubt thatcomputerswill ever have emotions at all like humans (p.170). Seems to change the target of expln. What does at alllike mean?
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Two Possible Changes to CRUM
Supplementation:
Necessitates rethinking the fundamental commitments of CRUM
Thagard argues that emotional representations need to be felt, andto have bodily inputs. Maybe we need to identify different kinds of
processes in order to explain emotions?
Suggests that new kinds of representations might have to be
discovered (ones that are somehow 'more biological; sensitive toglobal, hormonal influences and complex biophysical feedback)
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Cognitivism
Paul Griffiths presents a theory of emotions, along with a critique of
the cognitivist position.
Cognitivism (Thagard attributes this kind of view to Oatley):
1. All emotions have corresponding propositional attitudes.
2. The kind of emotion elicited depends on the kinds of attitudes(e.g. desiring, believing, etc.) involved
The 'big problem' for this theory is that it can't explain howemotion and beliefs can contradict one another
Phobias (believe there is nothing to fear from a snake, butstill fear it)
Imagined stimuli (no reason that imagining a stimulus shouldcause an affect, but it often does)
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Psychoevolutionary Theory
There is a set of 'affect-programs' that are automatic, modular,
involuntary, and innate.
They are triggered by stimuli and result in physiological changes andmental states (reflex-like, but more complex and structured)
They operate in parallel with, but independently from 'normal belieffixation' (i.e., process of seeing a stimuli and coming to have someattitudes towards the propositions it gives rise to).
Doesnt cover all emotions, just the basic/common ones
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Cognitivism Modularity (Griffiths)
Two Theories of Emotion
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Modularity
Griffiths claim that emotions are modular carries two centralcommitments:
First, modules are informationally encapsulated
This means they don't have access to information outside
of their local processing (the information processing isstrictly feedforward)
Second, modules are often thought to be innate
They have developed over evolutionary time to do aspecific task (quickly and efficiently)
They are 'prespecified' by the genes under normaldevelopmental conditions.
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Evidence for Informational Encapsulation
Evidence for:
1. Involuntariness of emotional responses (e.g. Ekman andFreisen 1980 study in Japan).
2. Must explain how emotional responses can conflict with
other cognitive activity. They can easily conflict if they arethe result of an entirely separate processing stream.
3. Old parts of the brain seem to be responsible for muchemotional processing (e.g. limbic system, incl. amygdala,hypothalamus).
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Evidence Against Informational Encapsulation
Evidence against:
1. Schacter and Singer (1962) showed that inducingphysiological changes (by adrenalin injections) can beinterpreted in very different ways depending on otherstimuli (top-down affects on emotion)
NB: These results haven't been well reproduced andmay be subject to confabulation).
2. Involuntariness doesn't imply modularity. See e.g. the visualsystem (recall non-hierarchical processing).
3. Does conflict imply modularity? People often haveconflicting beliefs (e.g. that something looks 3D but is only2D in the case of various optical illusions).
4. Neuroanatomy: massive interconnections between mostareas (in particular between amygdala and cortex).
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Universality of Emotions
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Evidence for Innateness
1. Eckman and Friesen (1971) showed that even 'isolated' humans
could easily distinguish facial expressions typical of certain emotionalstates.
2. Levenson, et al. (1992) showed ANS responses were similar forAmericans and the culturally very different Sumatran Minangkabau
3. Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1973) found that blind and deaf childrenautomatically use the same facial muscles to display the same kindsof emotions as non-blind and deaf children
4. Display rules explain cultural differences (Ekman and Freisen1980). The initial characteristic responses were similar acrosscultures.
5. Preparedness for learning associations with evolutionarily relevantstimuli, and difficulty in extinguishing these associations (e.g. youngmonkeys viewing fear in an adult).
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Universality of Emotions
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Cross-cultural similarity of ANS Responses
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Discussion
Thagard and Griffiths agree that the RTM version of CRUM fails.
Both offer good reasons to expand CRUM in important ways (i.e., bytaking into account new kinds of representational content and lookingto see what novel processes might operate given that content)
They also argue for stronger positions:
Thagard thinks CRUM needs to be supplementedBut, he doesn't specify what new kinds of representations will beneeded, and why they would be different in kindfrom, say a distributedrepresentation, which already is part of CRUM.
Griffiths suggests certain kinds of processing (informationallyencapsulated processing) will be necessary to account for emotions
He also thinks this processing is very different from what goes on in'normal belief fixation'.
Given what we have learned about other modularity claims, it would bemore prudent to suggest we just don't know enough about the systemto know precisely how it is integrated into belief fixation (to think thatit is truly independentof more cortical processing, seems nave)
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