Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!sunybcs!bingvaxu!vu0112
From: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Emotion (was: Re: language, thought, and culture)
Message-ID: <954@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Date: 17 Mar 88 01:38:23 GMT
References: <44@gollum.Columbia.NCR.COM> <2100@phred.UUCP>
Reply-To: vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn)
Organization: SUNY Binghamton, NY
Lines: 35

In article <2100@phred.UUCP> daveh@phred.UUCP (Dave Hampton) writes:
>  Recent postings have suggested that emotion may be important to
>distinguishing us as sentient beings apart from other organisms that
>appear to lack feelings.  

I strongly disagree that other organisms lack feelings, or even appear
to.  I think that anyone who's really an "animal person", who loves
pets and animals and spends a lot of time with them, would also
disagree.  This observation underlies my thought on emotion. 

However, when looking for definitions, I find:
>
>      "Emotion is a poorly conceptualized psychological concept.
>   Classification of emotions is inexact, involving subtilties better
>   suited to art and literature than to science.  The ageless,
>   traditional cateegories of emotion are still widely used and have
>   not been replaced by a more accurate classification."
>                      Miller, Living Systems
		       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  My hero!
[ Miller is a prominent Systems Scientist.  I'd love to hear that
he is well known outside of our small numbers].

And I agree with him.  I believe that it is fairly clear that emotion is
in fact a very ancient form of mentality, perhaps evident in even
primitive neural organisms.  I have heard suggestions that every (almost
every?) action is associated with a particular emotional feeling. 
Certainly such concepts as pleasure and pain can be applied to most
animals, especially the higher ones.  On this view, as we move towards
the examination of simpler neural organisms, the concept of "emotion"
merges with that of "tropism."

O---------------------------------------------------------------------->
| Cliff Joslyn, Professional Cybernetician 
| Systems Science Department, SUNY Binghamton, New York, but my opinions
| vu0112@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu
V All the world is biscuit shaped. . .