Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!ai.toronto.edu!tjhorton
From: tjhorton@ai.toronto.edu ("Timothy J. Horton")
Subject: Re: Emotion
Message-ID: <8803222016.AA27059@ai.toronto.edu>
Keywords: emotion drives physiology consciousness
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
References: <44@gollum.Columbia.NCR.COM> <2100@phred.UUCP> <2103@phred.UUCP> <962@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <355@thirdi.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 88 15:16:53 EST

In article <355@thirdi.UUCP> sarge@thirdi.UUCP (Sarge Gerbode) writes:
>... to believe in "unconscious emotion", one would have to look upon
>emotion as a physiological state, of which one could be conscious or
>unconscious.  But supposing that emotion is thought of as an *experience*
>of some kind...  What would qualify as an "unconscious experience"?
>On the face of it, that would seem to be a contradiction in terms, since
>an experience is something of which one is conscious.
>If emotion isn't just a physiological state, and if it isn't part of one's
>experience, then I find it hard to understand what it might be.

Process, and/or processing constraint, perhaps.

These would probably be experienced INdirectly.
Much like the way a computer might come to know
that it's swapping processes in and out so much
that it's not getting anything done (thrashing).
There's no "thrashing" sensor in a 68000, but 
there are ways of calculating such things from
the observable quantities.

I think the "unconscious experience" idea referred
to such indirectly observable "stuff".  A second
after an adrenalin surge, a zillion things happen
in one's body, not all at the level of abstract
analyzable thought.  And the "flight-response" is
a process, not a single physiological state -- more
like a computer being in the middle of an interrupt
routine than being in some "state".

>"Absolute knowledge means never having to change your mind."

Got some?  Please e-mail.  I'll summarize and post. :-)