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Eray Ozkural exa · Guest

Hi there,

As a follow-up to "Non-Anthropomorphic Alien Pain" thread, I suggest
the following question in search of the fundamental emotions:

Which emotions have evolved earliest?

The standard answer to this question seems to be: "Fear, of course,
was the first emotion", but I request you to drop any such theory you
may have obtained from literature, philosophy, etc. There must be, it
seems, some emotions that are fundamental. What are they?

It seems that mammals entertain a wider range of emotions than their
reptilian cousins, but the question here is not limited to reptiles or
mammals. What is the oldest and simplest life form which had a mind
with emotions? What were those emotions? Are emotions simply an
improved version of survival mechanisms in single cell organisms? Are
some emotions more fundamental than others? Are some emotions
"derivative" or "combination"? Are emotions necessary for any
intelligent agent? What determines the subjective experience of an
emotion?

From this simple question, I can see many branches coming off and I am
hoping you will offer your amazing insight into this question.

To start the discussion, I think bodily sensations such as hunger must
indeed go way back to survival requirements of living organisms. We
may imagine a need for self-preservation, as well as a need for
nutrient consumption and reproduction. Those are not hard to see. I
guess a nice way to theorize about this question is to start
associating these "pre-emotions" with highly evolved emotion
mechanisms we embody. Then, we can try to see at which step of the
evolutionary ladder these mechanisms turned into a sufficient force of
qualia which we recognize as subjective experience of emotions.

Comments most welcome,

Regards,

__
Eray Ozkural
CS Dept., Bilkent Univ.

David Longley · Guest

Are we allowed to draw on the last 100 years of research in comparative
psychology and brain research?

How about Herrick, Sherrington or Nauta>s work on the neo and
pale-striatum? The former is basically the output system for what
comprises the most recent (phylogenetic) part of the mammalian brain -
with distance receptor systems such as vision and audition providing
detailed and localized information via the thalamus to neo-cortical
areas and back down to the basal ganglia (caudate/putamen) and out via
the globus palidus to the extrapyramidal (voluntary) motor system. The
paleo system on the other hand is the phlogenetically older part of the
brain which deals with the external world (the brainstem deals with the
internal organs). This older system receives relatively diffuse distance
and feeds via the olfactory bulbs to the amygdala and hippocampus and
out via the paleostriatum, the nucleus accumbens and olfactory tubercle
to the substantia innominata and out. These two systems are also
supplied by slightly different dopaminergic and serotoninergic pathways.
A vast amount of research in behavioural neuroscience has been devoted
to investigating the anatomy, interspecies homology, neurochemistry and
pharmacology of these systems because of the roles they play in movement
disorders and the functional psychoses. It would be fair to say that the
function of the mononamines has been central to neuroscience for at
least 50 years. They seem to be involved in the "emotions".

The above framework owes much to Herrick and more recently Nauta. It>s
integration with monoamine research was largely due to Crow. One way of
thinking about the above is in terms of the precision of the information
afforded by the two systems given the nature of the distance receptors.
One can think of the paleo system as a cruder version of movement ie as
e-motion (to make a pun). It>s behaviour which energizes (probably via
the ventral tegmental dopaminergic A10 system of fibres) behaviour but
gives it little "focus" relative to what is possible through the more
elaborated behaviours possible in relation to discriminative stimuli
afforded by vision and audition and the motor behaviour which operates
on that environment. The ability to initiate movement is seriously
disturbed in disorders of the neo-striatum, and its treatment tends to
be through the provision of drugs which increase the availability of
dopamine in the A8,A9 substantia nigra -neo-striatal dopamine pathway.
Drugs which block dopamine receptors tend to have the effect of
producing anhedonia. Drugs which work on the turnover or general
activity of the monoamines (5-HT indoleaminergic pathways tend to
complement catecholaminergic dopaminergic pathways) tend to have marked
effects on the 'emotions' and movements.

It is with all this as background that much of the work in behavioural
neuroscience talks of brain mechanisms of reinforcement and incentive.

Work on conditioning in lower animals or in simpler model systems in
mammals is more likely to shed light on what sorts of mechanisms are
responsible for the most basic of the above behaviours. That>s why, in
other threads I have tended to leave the above aside. It is well
researched, but in my view far too complex to be helpful to folk
interested in basic mechanisms. For that, like it or not, you have to
work with basic classical and operant conditioning paradigms with
creatures such as Aplysia, the sea-hare, honey bees, or Drosophila. In
each case, escape, avoidance, habituation and even operant paradigms
have been established for testing.

In article <fa69ae35.0308292006.74881537@posting.google.com>, Eray
Ozkural exa <erayo@bilkent.edu.tr> writes
[quote]Hi there,

As a follow-up to "Non-Anthropomorphic Alien Pain" thread, I suggest
the following question in search of the fundamental emotions:

Which emotions have evolved earliest?

The standard answer to this question seems to be: "Fear, of course,
was the first emotion", but I request you to drop any such theory you
may have obtained from literature, philosophy, etc. There must be, it
seems, some emotions that are fundamental. What are they?

It seems that mammals entertain a wider range of emotions than their
reptilian cousins, but the question here is not limited to reptiles or
mammals. What is the oldest and simplest life form which had a mind
with emotions? What were those emotions? Are emotions simply an
improved version of survival mechanisms in single cell organisms? Are
some emotions more fundamental than others? Are some emotions
"derivative" or "combination"? Are emotions necessary for any
intelligent agent? What determines the subjective experience of an
emotion?

From this simple question, I can see many branches coming off and I am
hoping you will offer your amazing insight into this question.

To start the discussion, I think bodily sensations such as hunger must
indeed go way back to survival requirements of living organisms. We
may imagine a need for self-preservation, as well as a need for
nutrient consumption and reproduction. Those are not hard to see. I
guess a nice way to theorize about this question is to start
associating these "pre-emotions" with highly evolved emotion
mechanisms we embody. Then, we can try to see at which step of the
evolutionary ladder these mechanisms turned into a sufficient force of
qualia which we recognize as subjective experience of emotions.

Comments most welcome,

Regards,

__
Eray Ozkural
CS Dept., Bilkent Univ.
[/quote]
--
David Longley

Ray Gardener · Guest

Like and dislike. It has been shown that all emotions can be reduced to
these two. We give certain types of like and dislike special names because
they occur in special contexts and/or extreme strengths. For example, the
dislike one experiences when one>s friend is with another we call jealousy.
Fear and anger are also dislikes. What distinguishes them is how you decide
to deal with the dislike -- avoidance or confrontation. Fear becomes anger
when you begin to dislike how you deal with fear. The pattern of like and
dislike can be self-referential and complex.

For each event in your awareness, your reaction (your feelings toward it) is
ultimately to desire it or not.

Ray

Eray Ozkural exa · Guest

"Stéphane Coël" <stephane.coel@skynet.be> wrote in message news:<3f509536$0$4549$ba620e4c@reader0.news.skynet.be>...
[quote]"Eray Ozkural exa" <erayo@bilkent.edu.tr> a écrit dans le message de news:
fa69ae35.0308292006.74881537@posting.google.com..

What is the oldest and simplest life form which had a mind
with emotions?

What is your definition of emotion?
[/quote]
I think we can be quite "common sense" about it. How about fear,
anger, love, etc.? The common discriminating property of emotions is
that they result in a clearly distinguishable sense experience when we
can be aware of them!

Regards,

__
Eray

Joe Legris · Guest

Eray Ozkural exa wrote:
[quote]"Stéphane Coël" <stephane.coel@skynet.be> wrote in message news:<3f509536$0$4549$ba620e4c@reader0.news.skynet.be>...

"Eray Ozkural exa" <erayo@bilkent.edu.tr> a écrit dans le message de news:
fa69ae35.0308292006.74881537@posting.google.com..

What is the oldest and simplest life form which had a mind
with emotions?

What is your definition of emotion?

I think we can be quite "common sense" about it. How about fear,
anger, love, etc.? The common discriminating property of emotions is
that they result in a clearly distinguishable sense experience when we
can be aware of them!

Regards,

__
Eray
[/quote]
Do you mean the opposite of a clearly distinguishable sense experience
when we cannot be aware of them?

--
Joe Legris

Eray Ozkural exa · Guest

Hi Ray,

"Ray Gardener" <rayg@daylongraphics.com> wrote in message news:<cu74b.61542$la.1364172@news1.calgary.shaw.ca>...
[quote]Like and dislike. It has been shown that all emotions can be reduced to
these two.
[/quote]
You mean pain and pleasure? [I know I dislike pain, but I sometimes
like it as well.]

Who proved it? I wonder if anything resembling a proof could be
achieved for this question. Maybe you are referring to neuroscience
research?

Certainly we can aspire to describe an emotion in terms of another
emotion, but I must ask you is that really the case? I>d be happy for
a few references at this point :)

So, maybe you take the following statement as an emotion reduction:
Fear is anticipation of pain.

Is that so?

[quote]We give certain types of like and dislike special names because
they occur in special contexts and/or extreme strengths. For example, the
dislike one experiences when one>s friend is with another we call jealousy.
Fear and anger are also dislikes. What distinguishes them is how you decide
to deal with the dislike -- avoidance or confrontation. Fear becomes anger
when you begin to dislike how you deal with fear. The pattern of like and
dislike can be self-referential and complex.
[/quote]
Let me try to make that into more theory-sounding terms :)

First, let us remember what a propositional attitude is:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/prop-attitude-reports/
example from the page: Alicia believes that people walked on the Moon.

This theory of emotions take like and dislike to be the fundamental
emotions. Every basic emotion is a propositional attitude of either
like or dislike with varying intensity. Therefore an emotion can be
formalized as an association between like or dislike, which are
irreducible, and a *thought* (such as "him"). The association has a
numerical strength, too. (perhaps as managed by hormones?)

Each emotion triplet is also a thought, giving rise to compositional
emotions. That sounds strange, indeed :)

[quote]For each event in your awareness, your reaction (your feelings toward it) is
ultimately to desire it or not.
[/quote]
Then you are saying "desire" is an irreducible attitude! I thought it
was reducible! Furthermore, you are saying *every* other emotion can
be given a semantic analysis as above, ultimately reducing it to
desire attitudes which is irreducible at that level.

I think we are going to have a very interesting discussion.

Regards,

__
Eray Ozkural

Ray Gardener · Guest

[quote]You mean pain and pleasure? [I know I dislike pain, but I sometimes
like it as well.]

Who proved it? I wonder if anything resembling a proof could be
achieved for this question. Maybe you are referring to neuroscience
research?
[/quote]
I believe it was in one of the essays in the book "On Human Consciousness"
published around 1976.

I should make a distinction between the qualia experiences associated with
emotions vs. the like/dislike reducibility of emotions. There are certainly
many qualia: anxiety, rage, love, orgasm, contentment, anticipation, etc.
These are all ultimately related to whether we like/dislike something. All
the objects of these qualia can be assigned a like/dislike component (e.g.,
I like my spouse, I hate my boss, I like sunsets, I hate waiting for the
dentist to come around to me, etc.).

I wouldn>t structure emotions along a linear scale between like/dislike.
There are complex webs of like/dislike and emotions more properly map to
these webs. Even the feeling of humor goes somewhere in there -- i.e., you
generally like things to make sense, but a joke does not, but you also like
novel experiences, which a good joke is, and you also appreciate a good joke
because you like talented speakers, and so on. There>s no intense dislike or
like because a joke is merely words. So a complex conflict between like and
dislike occurs and a humor qualia is experienced. Your brain doesn>t have
time to formally analyze how you feel about the joke, so you skip ahead to
the qualia.

Art is even more complex. e.g., looking at a painting inspires a large
number of like/dislike reactions as the eye scans the canvas, from looking
at the detail of brush strokes to higher-level forms such as fruit and
people. The various emotions are evoked, which is more or less the artist>s
intent.

[quote]Certainly we can aspire to describe an emotion in terms of another
emotion, but I must ask you is that really the case? I>d be happy for
a few references at this point :)

So, maybe you take the following statement as an emotion reduction:
Fear is anticipation of pain.

Is that so?
[/quote]
Why not? Ask a fearful person about his fear. Fear has its reasons, hence it
is reducible. The qualia associated with fear, however, may be irreducible
(as qualia is wont to be). The problem may be analogous to large software
projects: a person could, given sufficient introspection, break down his
feelings to all the sub-desires that compose it, but there are so many and
they are related in such a complex manner that the effort, while possible in
theory, is not possible in practice. People just shrug and say "I don>t know
exactly why I do what I do!" (and I>m beginning to appreciate why they say
that)

[quote]Then you are saying "desire" is an irreducible attitude! I thought it
was reducible! Furthermore, you are saying *every* other emotion can
be given a semantic analysis as above, ultimately reducing it to
desire attitudes which is irreducible at that level.
[/quote]
Well, to a complex web of varying desires. I think it is the structure of
the web that matters. Without it, people couldn>t have mixed emotions, so
much of what makes people interesting would be lost. If the "I contain
multitudes" theory is right, we could even imagine a person as a population
of simple people who have basic desires toward things, but the competing
interactions and politicking amongst these "people" forms what we call a
normal person. For example, the "boss" within you likes to dominate social
situations. That>s all he cares about. The "romantic" within you likes to
seduce. The "hedonist" craves raw pleasure. The "worrier" desires security.
Each represents a primal like/dislike towards a single object or concept.
Then all these things play against each other since time doesn>t allow us
please everyone at once. Or you can be locked in eternal conflict even with
infinite time, because your "conscience" person never fully agrees with your
"boss". Society as a whole oscillates between Republican and Democratic
ideals, for example, as we like the welfare of the group more than the
welfare of the individual, and vice versa depending on how it worked out for
us.

It>s kind of interesting. The objects that desire can be attached to evolve
over time since they require training -- a baby, e.g., certainly has no
attitude towards cars or money until he grows old enough to understand what
those things are. As we model reality, more and more of these inner "people"
emerge to "take a stand" on the objects and concepts we identify. We learn
one day about trees, and we implicitly think: do we like or dislike trees?
And we learn about different kinds of trees and tree parts, and someday we
find ourselves disliking oak leaves for their musty color but liking the
strength of oak wood. And then later still we introspect and start forming
likes/dislikes about our simpler desires, treating our own feelings as the
object of higher-level feelings. And desires change too -- you first find
your girlfriend>s hyena laugh cute, then annoying, then cute again as you
become more mature, and so on. Sigh... anyone trying to model a commonsense
AI must set aside an enormous amount of memory to store all these
preferences (among other things).

[quote]I think we are going to have a very interesting discussion.
[/quote]
I believe so; it has already been most interesting. Perhaps desire is
reducible, but if not, it is still a good starting point as it does simplify
the problem of modeling emotions.

Ray

Ray Gardener · Guest

[quote]You mean pain and pleasure? [I know I dislike pain, but I sometimes
like it as well.]
[/quote]
You may be liking your ability to withstand pain, or liking something that
occurs next to it or shortly after it, like the feeling of the pain quickly
fading away. If we are sure about the precise set of things we like/dislike,
the model can prove fruitful.

Ray

Gorne · Guest

When one of my single prokaryote ancestor first responded to its
ability to accept or reject an incoming chemical through its membrane,
that cell must have tasted the value of this intruder. Was it hunger?
Was it an emotion? It was certainly a beginning.

Eray Ozkural exa · Guest

boa4@optonline.net (Gorne) wrote in message news:<91f9f335.0308311115.5b085b38@posting.google.com>...
[quote]When one of my single prokaryote ancestor first responded to its
ability to accept or reject an incoming chemical through its membrane,
that cell must have tasted the value of this intruder. Was it hunger?
Was it an emotion? It was certainly a beginning.
[/quote]
It>s a filter, but it isn>t just a filter. It is the motion of
selectively intaking nutrients itself. The biological basis for
Hunger, most definitely.

Should I hereby declare that computational view of mind must take that
to be a computation as proper and that it has a subjective experience
which has not yet reached reflective thinking level?

There is no theoretical difference between those reflexes and reflexes
implemented by a few neurons. That I dub "reflexive emotion" for
clarity in our terminology.

The ones you are talking about are also built-in, they are activated
at startup of intelligent agent and do not change until deactivation.
This has a lot to do with what we call "instinct", we can use
"instinctive emotions" or "built-in emotions" to denote such emotions.

The prokaryote is also a primordial being so it>s allowable to refer
to such emotions as "primordial emotions".

Now the question we should ask: is subjective experience of emotions
realized by reflexive emotions or is it reflective emotions?

Allow some time before you answer it. It>s a tricky question that
doesn>t have a definite answer for us.

For the record, I think the subjective experience is the totality of
reflexive and reflective functions, and in a manner of speaking
reflexive functions may be seen as part-of reflective functions

In Marvin Minsky>s work, I>ve come to realize that he equates the
subjective experience of emotions with "cascades" which would be the
same as reflective emotions. I>ve thought very long about this issue,
and I couldn>t come to a clear conclusion. The real problem I realized
is with the reflexive emotions. Is there a point where there is "no
experience" so to speak? Can we say that an "unconscious emotion" does
not yield a subjective experience? More on this later... Now, it>s
your turn ;)

Thanks,

__
Eray Ozkural

neepy · Guest

"Ray Gardener" <rayg@daylongraphics.com> wrote in message news:<cu74b.61542$la.1364172@news1.calgary.shaw.ca>...
[quote]Like and dislike. It has been shown that all emotions can be reduced to
these two. We give certain types of like and dislike special names because
they occur in special contexts and/or extreme strengths. For example, the
dislike one experiences when one>s friend is with another we call jealousy.
Fear and anger are also dislikes. What distinguishes them is how you decide
to deal with the dislike -- avoidance or confrontation. Fear becomes anger
when you begin to dislike how you deal with fear. The pattern of like and
dislike can be self-referential and complex.

For each event in your awareness, your reaction (your feelings toward it) is
ultimately to desire it or not.

Ray
[/quote]
That is certainly a common position held by many psychologists and
neuroscientists (e.g. Peter Lang, Richard Davidson, et al). If by
"fundamental" you mean emotions that are present in even very simple
organisms, then the ability to distinguish between "good" and "bad"
stimuli would seem to be as "fundamental" as you can get.

People often assume that the conscious experience of an emotion state
is of primary importance in defining what an emotion is, but that is
not really justified. In terms of the "lower" animals we can observe
behaviors that seem "emotional" without having to assume they have
emotional "feeling states". The most "fundamental" emotional behavior
would seem to be the tendency to approach some stimuli (good,
pleasant, appetitive stimuli) and avoid or withdraw from others (bad,
unpleasant, aversive stimuli). Even single-celled animals (like the
amoeba) show this basic emotional behavior.

Michael Feldhake · Guest

dsutherland7@hotmail.com (neepy) wrote in message news:<d4bd1f7c.0309020339.63d42370@posting.google.com>...

[quote]That is certainly a common position held by many psychologists and
neuroscientists (e.g. Peter Lang, Richard Davidson, et al). If by
"fundamental" you mean emotions that are present in even very simple
organisms, then the ability to distinguish between "good" and "bad"
stimuli would seem to be as "fundamental" as you can get.

People often assume that the conscious experience of an emotion state
is of primary importance in defining what an emotion is, but that is
not really justified. In terms of the "lower" animals we can observe
behaviors that seem "emotional" without having to assume they have
emotional "feeling states". The most "fundamental" emotional behavior
would seem to be the tendency to approach some stimuli (good,
pleasant, appetitive stimuli) and avoid or withdraw from others (bad,
unpleasant, aversive stimuli). Even single-celled animals (like the
amoeba) show this basic emotional behavior.
[/quote]
Ray is right! If you think about this, it becomes clear. My
background is in process control systems that have loops that control
flows, pressures, temperatures etc. These loops can be simple, single
error feedback, or complex as in an adaptive tuning systems
controlling rates of temperature increases. It must all come down to
a single point, a value that represents the sum of the feedbacks.

Psychologists believe that we posses eight primary emotional axes (for
lack of a better term); Fight/Flight, Pain/Pleasure, Fear/Rage etc.
These axes will need to sum somewhere so that a signal can be sent to
the proper connections for modifications. Now, if each axis sends its
own message, that would work but be less efficient, therefore I
believe in a single feedback measure - I call it deviation.

Mike

Eray Ozkural exa · Guest

Joe Legris <jalegris@xympatico.ca> wrote in message news:<3F51228F.5070305@xympatico.ca>...
[quote]
Do you mean the opposite of a clearly distinguishable sense experience
when we cannot be aware of them?
[/quote]

No, I mean we cannot have a clearly distinguishable sense experience
when we cannot be aware of them! What do you think?

Regards,

__
Eray

Joe Legris · Guest

Eray Ozkural exa wrote:
[quote]Joe Legris <jalegris@xympatico.ca> wrote in message news:<3F51228F.5070305@xympatico.ca>...

Do you mean the opposite of a clearly distinguishable sense experience
when we cannot be aware of them?

No, I mean we cannot have a clearly distinguishable sense experience
when we cannot be aware of them! What do you think?

Regards,

__
Eray
[/quote]
I think your definition of emotion is too vague:

"The common discriminating property of emotions is that they result in a
clearly distinguishable sense experience when we can be aware of them!"

By this definition, can you give an example of a clearly distinguishable
sense experience that is not an emotion?

--
Joe Legris

Eray Ozkural exa · Guest

Joe Legris <jalegris@xympatico.ca> wrote in message news:<3F55DFDF.9050106@xympatico.ca>...
[quote]I think your definition of emotion is too vague:

"The common discriminating property of emotions is that they result in a
clearly distinguishable sense experience when we can be aware of them!"

[/quote]
The above is not a definition really. I>m trying to talk about what>s
common.

Besides, I>m not trying to define away any problem, that>s why these
talks have to be vague.

[quote]By this definition, can you give an example of a clearly distinguishable
sense experience that is not an emotion?
[/quote]
Does this question make sense?

First, it>s not a "definition of emotion"... But if there is an
emotion, I think it is accompanied by a certain sense experience,
that>s a _very_ remarkable feature of an emotion. Anger wouldn>t be
anger if you couldn>t feel it. Denying that trivial observation would
be very Quinean and outright silly in my opinion.

However, there are such sense experiences that aren>t emotion. Think
of analyzing a visual scene without emotions involved. There is only
logic. Is that also an emotion? In our common sense psychology, we
don>t call that an emotion, rather maybe, it is characterized by the
lack of emotions in those high-level intellectual tasks. Still, there
is sensation, as the process is basically an analysis of sensory
input. There is no question about it!

At any rate, this touches one of the core problems: is there such a
thing as an unconscious emotion? The basic answer from psychology
seems to be saying "Yes! Definitely!". Now, how do we know that
philosophically? Is the "sense experience" unique to conscious
emotions then? And so forth....

Maybe you would care to expound on your own view rather than
criticizing my approach?

Best Regards,

__
Eray Ozkural


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