Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!tikal!phred!daveh
From: daveh@phred.UUCP (Dave Hampton)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Emotion
Message-ID: <2103@phred.UUCP>
Date: 17 Mar 88 19:08:48 GMT
References: <44@gollum.Columbia.NCR.COM> <2100@phred.UUCP>
Reply-To: daveh@phred.UUCP (Dave Hampton)
Organization: <954@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>o
Lines: 45
Summary: Different from tropism?


>> ...emotion may distinguish us as sentient beings...
                              ^^^^^
  I agree that neither emotions nor sentience are restricted to
human beings (especially after following the "Clif & Prem" debate
across several newsgroups...).  But, I'm still intrigued by the
idea that, in living organisms in general, a display of emotion
may serve as one marker of consciousness.   

>   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.

  I agree.  According to the (poor) definitions that I have found, emotion
results when a cognitive drive towards some definite object is either
frustrated or satisfied.  Since this definition requires both self-
awareness of desire and perceptual awareness of an object, it seems
to me that the presence of emotions can serve as a marker for conscious
self-awareness.  This emotion can range from the "passionate
quest" of humans to the pleasure or worry (not pain: that's sensory)
that one observes in pets (dogs and cats, but not turtles or fish...)

>  As we move towards simpler neural organisms, the concept of "emotion"
> merges with that of "tropism."
>
|                   Cliff Joslyn, Professional Cybernetician 

  I prefer "taxis" to "tropism" in this context, but, in either case,
I think that there is a qualitiative difference between emotions
and tropism.  Tropic behavior is a blind response to environmental
conditions:  a reflex in which the character of the response is
completely determined by the character of the stimulus.  
Emotional expression is not driven simply by environnmental
conditions, but by how these circumstances relate to cognitive desires.
Both perceptual- and self-awareness are needed to produce an
emotional response: only the perceptual to obtain a tropic one.

     --- Dave Hampton

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