5 ms·

The best theory Ive read is the theory of constructed emotion by Lisa Feldman Barrett. It directly contradicts this theory. Emotions are basically very fast pre

The best theory Ive read is the theory of constructed emotion by Lisa Feldman Barrett. It directly contradicts this theory. Emotions are basically very fast predictions by the brain. The whole idea of emotions being completely independent from cognition just seems pretty dated today.

andirk 3y ago
Isn't trauma often permanent? Even if it's that a kid got his red fire truck stolen from him in kindergarten and now he has attachment issues. Or someone deals with horrible things in their past. It can be ridiculous or completely founded, but it's not fleeting or "very fast". It's not DNA but it _seems_ engrained, however incorrect the conclusion may be.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
  Trauma can be lifelong if it isn’t worked through, but some trauma can be worked through (and hallucinogens are showing promise of working through trauma quicker than medication&talk therapy alone). I think the actual emotional trauma response however is individually maybe 10-15 mins long at maximum, but feeling the emotion often causes you to think other triggering thoughts or behave in a manner exacerbating the trigger, thus making an individual 10-15 minute thing take hours to sort itself out.
amelius 3y ago
> The best theory Ive read You can't judge a theory just by reading about it.
- ryanklee 3y ago
  Yes, you can. If the theory is well-formulated, rests on vetted facts, and you understand the context sufficiently, you can say: "This is a good theory." If it's not well-formulated or does not rest vetted facts, and your understanding is sufficent, you can say: "Bad theory." There's an entire world of variation between those 2 extremes, but there's no reason implicitly why you can't understand a theory just by reading about it.
  - amelius 3y ago
    Only true if collecting "vetted facts" is considered to be just reading and not doing hard, real work.
    - flangola7 3y ago
      Give examples
    - ryanklee 3y ago
      Totally wrong. If the goal is to evaluate a theory's virtues, there's nothing stopping you if you have access to the correct documentation (provided it exists). Not sure what you think is missing.
      - amelius 3y ago
        We're talking about new theories here, not well-accepted theories.
        ryanklee 3y ago
        Not correct. "You can't judge a theory just by reading about it."
        ryanklee 3y ago
        Not correct. "You can't judge a theory just by reading about it." Also, can't see why it should matter one way or the other.
treeeman 3y ago
Not a dementi, rather an open question I have: How does the constructed emotion theory contradict the idea that emotion is generated as a response to observed "behavior" and other sensual input such as own and other's body language? (As opposed to the believe that a certain emotion induces specific behavior.) Cognition and emotion would only be separable if body language and other relevant stimuli (which are believed to be largely outside conscious control) could be turned off, to prevent the generation of a fitting emotion - so the separation seems to be mostly conceptual/hypothetical.
thfuran 3y ago
What makes it best?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- gushogg-blake 3y ago
  It's been a while since I read it, but one of the central ideas is that we construct instances of emotions based on sensory data (from the internal systems that detect and predict our energy needs) in a similar way to how we construct instances of concepts from other sensory modes, e.g. seeing a particular cluster of visual features and concluding "that's a bee". When we feel anger, that's our brain's best guess as to the appropriate interpretation of a bunch of internal measurements -- raised blood pressure, high arousal, etc -- based on context. The same internal state in a different context could be interpreted as a different emotion, so there is no consistent or unique biological fingerprint behind a given emotion. It's counter-intuitive, but it fits better with what we know about how the nervous system works than the commonly accepted fingerprint idea. Emotions are the brain's attempt at constructing the concepts that best explain and account for our body's energy budget.
  - choxi 3y ago
    What’s the “fingerprint idea”? That’s not mentioned in the article. I don’t see why this theory contradicts the one in the article, in your own examples you’re using bodily states as the input to emotional processes.
    - gushogg-blake 3y ago
      I have to admit I didn't actually read the article so wasn't trying to compare it with LFB's model, just wanted to expand on the mention of it. The bodily states are the inputs, but the interpretation and generation of emotions is context- and culture-dependent. The fingerprint idea is that emotions are caused by body states without that layer of interpretation/construction, so you could look at bare metrics like blood pressure, arousal, and facial expression and derive which emotion the person must be feeling directly from them.
barberpole 3y ago
> Emotions are basically very fast predictions by the brain This predicts that basically ChatGPT has emotions.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  and why not? Both are neural nets. Carbon versus Silicon. It's just scale at this point. At this point, maybe human neurons and connections are more complex than what can be done in a machine, but not for long. Humans only think they are special, that a machine can't feel. But that is only our subjective experience of ourselves, which itself is also just interpretation. It seems like everyone is in agreement that our perception of the outer world is fallible. But so is our perception of our internal processes. Our inner thoughts are just as opaque to us as the outer world. "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills." Schopenhauer.
  - adammarples 3y ago
    Neural nets and brains are fundamentally different. If you cut open a brain you won't find attention blocks. There's no evidence as far as I know that back propagation actually happens. It's a nice model but it is a model.
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      I think the latest neuroscience would disagree. Maybe if you cut open a brain, you wont find a printout with backpropagate code. But you do find neurons, in a network. Humans do learn right? They take in information and encode it in their brain. Why does it have to be back propagation to qualify. Bayesian? Minimum Entropy? There are a lot of forms a machine neural network can take. There are a lot of theories on exactly how the brain 'calculates'/'processes'. With all of the advancements in Neuroscience and AI in last 5 years, it is bit hubris to say we'll never be able to figure out the brain, and also be able to model it. There are a lot more like this. The field is moving too rapidly for me to go find every paper today. But it is dozens, and not even so cutting edge there isn't already books on it. https://www.quantamagazine.org/some-neural-networks-learn-language-like-humans-20230522/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/some-neural-networks-learn-la...
thenerdhead 3y ago
She builds upon these theories as her main argument is that Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, and James were mostly "fixed" perceptions of physical states. Hers includes more "dynamic" means like sensory input, past experiences, culture/locale, and contextual factors. But I don't see that. When I read James or Spinoza, I consider the same factors she includes from her book. They all generally believe in the bi-directional power of the mind-body connection and how that relates to someone's driving philosophical system.

andirk 3y ago

Isn't trauma often permanent? Even if it's that a kid got his red fire truck stolen from him in kindergarten and now he has attachment issues. Or someone deals with horrible things in their past. It can be ridiculous or completely founded, but it's not fleeting or "very fast". It's not DNA but it _seems_ engrained, however incorrect the conclusion may be.

SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
Trauma can be lifelong if it isn’t worked through, but some trauma can be worked through (and hallucinogens are showing promise of working through trauma quicker than medication&talk therapy alone). I think the actual emotional trauma response however is individually maybe 10-15 mins long at maximum, but feeling the emotion often causes you to think other triggering thoughts or behave in a manner exacerbating the trigger, thus making an individual 10-15 minute thing take hours to sort itself out.

amelius 3y ago

> The best theory Ive read You can't judge a theory just by reading about it.

ryanklee 3y ago
Yes, you can. If the theory is well-formulated, rests on vetted facts, and you understand the context sufficiently, you can say: "This is a good theory." If it's not well-formulated or does not rest vetted facts, and your understanding is sufficent, you can say: "Bad theory." There's an entire world of variation between those 2 extremes, but there's no reason implicitly why you can't understand a theory just by reading about it.
- amelius 3y ago
  Only true if collecting "vetted facts" is considered to be just reading and not doing hard, real work.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    Give examples
  - ryanklee 3y ago
    Totally wrong. If the goal is to evaluate a theory's virtues, there's nothing stopping you if you have access to the correct documentation (provided it exists). Not sure what you think is missing.
    - amelius 3y ago
      We're talking about new theories here, not well-accepted theories.
      - ryanklee 3y ago
        Not correct. "You can't judge a theory just by reading about it."
      - ryanklee 3y ago
        Not correct. "You can't judge a theory just by reading about it." Also, can't see why it should matter one way or the other.

treeeman 3y ago

Not a dementi, rather an open question I have: How does the constructed emotion theory contradict the idea that emotion is generated as a response to observed "behavior" and other sensual input such as own and other's body language? (As opposed to the believe that a certain emotion induces specific behavior.) Cognition and emotion would only be separable if body language and other relevant stimuli (which are believed to be largely outside conscious control) could be turned off, to prevent the generation of a fitting emotion - so the separation seems to be mostly conceptual/hypothetical.

thfuran 3y ago

What makes it best?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gushogg-blake 3y ago
It's been a while since I read it, but one of the central ideas is that we construct instances of emotions based on sensory data (from the internal systems that detect and predict our energy needs) in a similar way to how we construct instances of concepts from other sensory modes, e.g. seeing a particular cluster of visual features and concluding "that's a bee". When we feel anger, that's our brain's best guess as to the appropriate interpretation of a bunch of internal measurements -- raised blood pressure, high arousal, etc -- based on context. The same internal state in a different context could be interpreted as a different emotion, so there is no consistent or unique biological fingerprint behind a given emotion. It's counter-intuitive, but it fits better with what we know about how the nervous system works than the commonly accepted fingerprint idea. Emotions are the brain's attempt at constructing the concepts that best explain and account for our body's energy budget.
- choxi 3y ago
  What’s the “fingerprint idea”? That’s not mentioned in the article. I don’t see why this theory contradicts the one in the article, in your own examples you’re using bodily states as the input to emotional processes.
  - gushogg-blake 3y ago
    I have to admit I didn't actually read the article so wasn't trying to compare it with LFB's model, just wanted to expand on the mention of it. The bodily states are the inputs, but the interpretation and generation of emotions is context- and culture-dependent. The fingerprint idea is that emotions are caused by body states without that layer of interpretation/construction, so you could look at bare metrics like blood pressure, arousal, and facial expression and derive which emotion the person must be feeling directly from them.

barberpole 3y ago

> Emotions are basically very fast predictions by the brain This predicts that basically ChatGPT has emotions.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
and why not? Both are neural nets. Carbon versus Silicon. It's just scale at this point. At this point, maybe human neurons and connections are more complex than what can be done in a machine, but not for long. Humans only think they are special, that a machine can't feel. But that is only our subjective experience of ourselves, which itself is also just interpretation. It seems like everyone is in agreement that our perception of the outer world is fallible. But so is our perception of our internal processes. Our inner thoughts are just as opaque to us as the outer world. "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills." Schopenhauer.
- adammarples 3y ago
  Neural nets and brains are fundamentally different. If you cut open a brain you won't find attention blocks. There's no evidence as far as I know that back propagation actually happens. It's a nice model but it is a model.
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    I think the latest neuroscience would disagree. Maybe if you cut open a brain, you wont find a printout with backpropagate code. But you do find neurons, in a network. Humans do learn right? They take in information and encode it in their brain. Why does it have to be back propagation to qualify. Bayesian? Minimum Entropy? There are a lot of forms a machine neural network can take. There are a lot of theories on exactly how the brain 'calculates'/'processes'. With all of the advancements in Neuroscience and AI in last 5 years, it is bit hubris to say we'll never be able to figure out the brain, and also be able to model it. There are a lot more like this. The field is moving too rapidly for me to go find every paper today. But it is dozens, and not even so cutting edge there isn't already books on it. https://www.quantamagazine.org/some-neural-networks-learn-language-like-humans-20230522/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/some-neural-networks-learn-la...

thenerdhead 3y ago

She builds upon these theories as her main argument is that Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, and James were mostly "fixed" perceptions of physical states. Hers includes more "dynamic" means like sensory input, past experiences, culture/locale, and contextual factors. But I don't see that. When I read James or Spinoza, I consider the same factors she includes from her book. They all generally believe in the bi-directional power of the mind-body connection and how that relates to someone's driving philosophical system.