X-Message-Number: 12667
From: 
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 06:20:22 EDT
Subject: FEELINGS

<<sadness isn't just an 
   expression on our faces, it affects our hormones and thus our general
   behavior.>>       << A feeling that does not produce any goals at all 
can't exist. If I feel
   sad about something, for instance, I would want to escape similar
   events in the future  (...) I won't go through all possible feelings here,
   but I cannot imagine a feeling which by its nature does not affect our
   behavior.>>

  << A feeling that does not produce any goals at all can't exist. If I feel
   sad about something, for instance, I would want to escape similar
   events in the future  (...)

   Tell that to the makers of Lithium and Paxol.

I have to agree and disagree with some of these statements at the same time.

There's no doubt that experience trigers moods and moods trigger behaviour 
and learning, but when it comes to FEELings I think the "FEEL" is important.  
 A FEELing without the FEEL is what I think you might call a logical 
algorhythm.  There's a big difference between a person engaging in a 
behaviour to avoid pain or achieve pleasure, versus a leg flopping up in the 
air because the doctor on it to test his REFLEX or me remembering to put my 
pants on in the morning.    - - When FEELings are unaccompanied by logical 
ends, they often represent psychological pathology.    FEELings can exist 
without goals...  FEELings can be observed in the brain... If you don't 
believe say hello to the next person you meet suffering from bi-polar 
depression and stick a probe to their brain.   Or tell that to my wife who's 
endomytriosis lead her to go emotionally ballistic a certain time of the 
month (everything from hysteria to crying spells)... the feelings are raging, 
and the only learning that's being done by anyone is by me... stay clear.   

Anyway, you're right... feelings affect behaviour (as well as many other 
factors), but behaviours can exist without feelings (reflexes, conditioning), 
beliefs can exist without feelings (conditioning, deductive reasoning), and 
FEELINGS can exist without learning or behaviour (that wacky brain of ours.)

Anyway, here's how to detect feelings.   Via empirical study, deduce that 
sadness is expressed by crying and happiness by smiling.     Then watch all 
the fun and wacky things that are going on in the brains of normal people as 
well as manic depressives when they do this and the part of the brain its 
occuring and which comes first, the trigering of the muscles of the tear 
dects or the emotional response.    Examine other manifestations of sadness 
(lethargy, fatigue, exhaustion, negative thinking) and see if the same thing 
is going on emotionally as other manifestations of sadness.   
Now if you want to make a feeling robot, wait a few hundred years for the 
technology and try to whip up a  synthetic brain, and recreate this.

Ed

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