From Aristotle’s
earliest attempts to list emotions and passions up to the modern taxonomies, the grouping
criteria have been confused and disparate, even though, rational psychology had already postulated the distinction between
primary and secondary emotions, or between basic and compound, for it had been
observed that many of the emotional states maintained certain similarities amongst
themselves. It was a blind proceeding,
without physiological bases, something that led in some cases, like
that of Spinoza, to
confound pleasure and pain with basic emotions. In the
works of Paul Broca (1878), James Papez (1937) and Paul Mclean (1952), it had been proposed that human
emotions were linked to specific brain parts, the topo-biological set that we have called limbic system, or
visceral brain.[1]
From this line of research, it was developed the so called categorical approach
to emotions, which proposed the existence of a small group of emotions from which the
others were derived. Such a proposal was at the same time based on the
traditional philosophical approach and on Broca, Papez and Mclean’s theses
of brain partition, as well as on the analysis of the emotional expressions of behavior. The
categorical theses assume that certain affective processes, such as fear, rage, joy or sadness, emerge
from stable intrinsic brain systems that can be clarified at a biological
level.[2]
The approach that I will be following hereby is categorical, for the existence
of different intrinsic neural systems is a corollary of the process of
categorization which leads to the primary consciousness in the model of Neural Darwinism. By
this, I do not mean to say that other conditionings apart from the evolutionary and epigenetic may not intervene in human emotions, although
it is necessary to clarify first the psycho-biological dimension, mainly when
social behavior itself, which introduces new conditionings in the basic emotions,
seems to have its origin in the emotional protocols.
However, I do consider that socio-constructivist approaches, which pretend to
understand emotions by means of processes of mere linguistic analysis, cannot but return to the explicitation
of the old mythologies in which local ethics are established.
Obviously,
from onto-theological standpoints, the hypothesis of a continuity between our
emotions and those of all other mammals is merely rejected on metaphysical grounds, and the profound similarities and
clear continuities observed at a neurochemical level –when not identical phenomena- are
discarded based on ontological discontinuities produced by the action of
supernatural phenomena.[3]
An objection could be made, from this point of view, saying that the approach
to emotions that I follow here confounds instinct with emotion, that human emotions are more
complex phenomena than a mere sensation of fear.
Mythological systems, and the arts based on them, are sufficient proof of the
difference in complexity between animal and human emotions, however, to
proclaim the autonomy of our emotions with respect to the natural world is
nothing but a variation of the traditional theological theses about the origin
of man. Here I accept the proposal of William James about the imperceptible overlapping that
occurs between instinctive reactions and emotional expressions.[4]
The distinction between instinct and emotion is usually established based on
two criteria: the difference between animal and human, and the difference
between mechanical or unconscious processes, and volitional or conscious
processes. The first distinction, maintained nowadays by authors of social
constructivism,[5]
or from different religious positions, is based on the idea that humans do
not have instincts, and that affections are acquired in learning processes. Such
proposals are a variant of the Cartesian theories which presented animals as mere automata, while
making man a divine being in his origin and his functioning.
Genetic science, the theory of evolution and ethology
refute a radical distinction and confirm the Jamesian one. However, this attitude
of rejection cannot come as a surprise. After all, what we identify as
constituent of our personality are some specific emotional tendencies and a given emotional and sentimental history, so the fact that our
psychological intimacy and our most profound values could have their origin in
a group of physiological conditionings, and not in a plan that was outlined
from eternity for my individuation, can be taken as metaphysically and morally offensive. The second distinction
that separates instinct from emotion based on the consciousness of the process, is invalidated by the
difficulties that the very same concept of consciousness
has. Primary consciousness is a property of the neurological processes of
categorization in mammals, and is not clear that a difference could be established
at this level between experimenting an
instinct and knowing that one is
experimenting that instinct (which it would be, according to this proposal,
the emotion). Human consciousness is not only primary, but it incorporates
symbolic linguistic processes, and in this respect, emotions themselves
are only neural processes concurrent with others that we would not consider as
such. The definition of emotion based on the theses of Neural Darwinism is not separable from the definition of primary
consciousness, but such a concept of emotion would be in many cases
indistinguishable from that of instinct in accordance with the ambiguous categorizations inherited from philosophy and psychology.
The
link of a small group of emotions to specific neuroanatomical parts is
sustained, in fact, on rather crude experimental bases. Thus, a temporal
lobotomy performed in cats, apes or people, produces sexual hyperactivity, hyper-orality and a decrease of
fear, whereas
a lesion in the frontal lobe makes animals more placid, or a septal lesion makes them
aggressive, and these emotional states are repeated one experiment after the
other.[6]
Obviously, when we study the brain looking for a topo-biology of emotions, we
already start with a preliminary idea of emotion, and during experimentation we
find more or less diffuse concepts which we had already carried into the
experiment. It is also true that the specific emotions that we have
encountered, expressed in lesions or lobotomies, have always coincided with
emotional processes which since Aristotle were considered basic passions, such as
rage or fear.
There
is no widespread agreement about basic emotions in categorical theories. Here, I
will adopt the model proposed by Panksepp,
organized around strictly naturalist postulates and fundamentally derived from neuroscientific studies in animals.
Panksepp began with four categories of animal behavior, fear, rage,
appetitive desire and sociability, with the goal of finding
their topo-biology, but he found during the experimental process a total of
seven topologies or emotional neural systems, with
their corresponding neurochemical circuits, which expanded the starting
categories. These seven topologies are brain structures whose actions are linked to
behaviors that we identify with vital motivation,
affective aggression, fear,
sexual motivation, socio-organic behavior, maternal care, and
ludic behavior.[7]
These systems allow isolated stimuli, they function
physiologically in an independent manner at a neurochemical level in
experimental conditions, even though, by coexisting within the neurological
system of an organism that interacts with its environment, they
overlap and influence one another in different ways, originating the complexity of the emotional world. The study of these systems in mammals allows us to understand them in their
primitive and derived (or mixed) forms, with the integrative mutual causations
of limitation and potentiation. I will
call primary to the primitive
emotions of the group of the seven aforementioned systems, and n-ary to
the mixed emotions.
On a
preliminary basis we can define emotions -following Panksepp’s
criteria- as psycho-neural processes that have special influence on the control
of vigor and the formation of patterns in actions that are performed amongst
animals, or
between animals and objects, during circumstances which are especially
important for survival.[8]
If we define intelligence in evolutionary terms as the ability of a living being to respond
with flexibility and successfully to new vital scenarios, the
emotional functioning of the brain is already a form of intelligence.[9]
Neuroscience speaks about two types of neural activity which are considered as
intelligence in this evolutionary sense: the cognitive and the socio-emotional. The executive
functions of cognition imply the maintenance and manipulation of
information which is indispensable in order to deal with situations in which the
appropriate response is not dictated by the actual information of
the stimulus. It is
customary to include as actions of the cognitive neural systems the working memory, the
attention, the representation and planning of objectives, the monitoring of responses
and error detection.[10]
Whereas cognitive intelligence is associated with reasoning, the
emotional and the social are linked to perception and immediate processing. Cognitive
intelligence is strategic and cortical, whereas
the emotional is tactical and limbic, useful for immediate
behavior, and
better prepared for survival and adaptation, even though, when we speak of a
human being these argumentations no longer make much sense, for the adaptations
that have allowed his domination over the entire animal realm have originated
from a development without parallel of his cognitive capabilities. A different
matter is that at moments of vital stress the emotional influences of the subcortical system can be stronger than the control
exerted from the most evolved parts of the brain, as we see and experience in wars and liminal situations, in which the basic emotions impose the rationality of survival. The link of emotions to the
homeostasis of the organism turns them into protocols of
quick response to liminal environmental stimuli, a speed
which is irrelevant in strategic and cognitive decision making, which involve
slower processes in which a higher quantity of information is contrasted. Nonetheless,
emotions are not limited to be momentary responses, for the neural activity of
the emotive systems lasts more than the precipitous circumstances, and the
distinction between strategic and tactical decision loses its meaning.
[1] Consisting on the limbic lobe, the dental gyrus, the amygdala, the septal nuclei, the mammilar bodies, the anterior thalamic nucleus, the olfactive bulbs, and myelinated axon bundles. New
experimental data from 2004 (See Dalgeish, T. The Emotional Brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Web.) include as
part of the emotional system also the
prefrontal cortex, the ventral striatum, the insula, the anterior cingulate and the cerebellum.
[3] Like the declaration that Pope John Paul II made at
the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on the 22nd of October of 1996,
proclaiming a discontinuity between human and ape from a certain historical
moment in which the divine intervention
breathed human soul into an animal
linage.
[4] To James, all which stimulates an instinct also stimulates
an emotion. Cf. William James. The Principles
of Psychology. Vol.II. Ed. Cit. p.442.
[5] See the theses of G. Mandler. Mind and Body: The Psychology of Emotion and Stress. Norton. New
York. 1984.
[7] Panksepp. Ibid. p.p.52-54. The emotion which I have called socio-organic or social is the one that Panksepp calls panic, a poorly fortunate name due to
its etymology (a type of fear related to Pan,
the Greek god of nature), even though it denotes the same concept in
affective neuroscience.
[9] The definitions of traditional psychology, which since Wundt made emphasis on intelligence as a processes
of logical thinking
(Wundt. Elements de Psychologie
Physiologique. Félix Alcan. Paris. 1886. Tome Second. p.365.)
[10] See Gazzaniga, Michael S., Ivry, Richard B., Mangun,
George R. Cognitive Neuroscience. The
Biology of the Mind. Norton. New York. 2009.
Comments
Post a Comment
Please write here your comments