Intelligence & Freedom |
Francisco Capella |
|
EMOTIONS |
Intelligence and ScienceEmotionsEmotionsEmotions are basic mental motivational systems that coordinate the multiple actions, plans and goals (food, safety, competition, cooperation, reproduction, social relationships) of each individual under constraints of time and other resources. Emotions and preferences or valuations are part of the adaptive biological solution to the problem of how to plan and perform action aimed at satisfying multiple possibly incompatible goals in environments which are not perfectly knowable, predictable and controllable. Emotions are very complex experiences, with many factors and dimensions. Verbal language includes a great variety of terms that refer to emotions. Emotion is a fundamental mechanism of living beings to guide behavior in the fight for survival: by means of emotions an organism knows, consciously or unconsciously, if a situation is favorable (positive emotion) or unfavorable (negative emotion), and how to act accordingly. The organism can make mistakes in its emotional valuation: emotional mechanisms are limited and subject to multiple internal and external influences that disturb their functioning. Emotions are inner experiences of the mind, transient alterations of intimate and personal subjective states, but that does not mean that they cannot be scientifically understood. Emotions are not mental glitches or imperfections. Emotions are not random, they respond to stimuli (events, agents, objects, ideas), require processing information from the organism and its environment, and arise as perturbations associated with interruptions and discrepancies among desired or expected goals and knowledge of the situation: behavior must be modified when a conflict or inadequacy exists between goals, plans, beliefs, and current state of organism and environment; emotions disrupt or disturb other activities to which the agent was giving higher priority, change the perception of oneself and the surroundings, and concentrate resources on important and urgent tasks. Emotions may be triggered by ideas or thoughts about desirable or undesirable things which will happen, might happen, or might have happened to oneself or to others. Events, states and situations may affect the achievement of goals and are judged accordingly. Agents and their behavior are assessed as attractive or repulsive using different features and criteria (beauty, wealth, strength, intelligence, charm, conformance to social norms); actions are assessed as beneficial or damaging. Objects are liked or disliked. Emotions can be about the past (memories), the present, or the future (expectations). Emotions can be primary or mixed (combination of more basic emotions), and some are polar opposites. Happiness is the emotion of your own wellbeing; sadness is the emotion of not being well. A person can have a positive or negative emotion about an event that is valued as good or bad for another person: being happy for something positive for others, rejoice on the suffering of others, resenting or envying the wellbeing of others, being sorry for the suffering of others. A person can have a positive or negative emotion about the prospects of evolution and actual outcomes of desirable or undesirable events that might affect him (which are pending, confirmed or discarded): hope (desire, wish, yearning) is the positive emotion about an expected desirable event; satisfaction is the positive emotion about a confirmed desirable event; relief is the positive emotion about an undesirable possibility which has not happened; fear is the negative emotion about an expected undesirable possibility; disappointment is the negative emotion about a desirable possibility which has not happened; dismay is the negative emotion about an undesirable possibility which has happened. Surprise is the emotion, positive or negative, about unexpected events. A person can have emotions about his own actions or actions of others: pride is approval of your own action; admiration is approval of the action of another one; shame is disapproval of your own action; reproach is disapproval of the action of another one. Gratitude is approval of a beneficial action of another one; anger is disapproval of the action of another one that has negative effects for you; gratification is approval of your own beneficial action; remorse is disapproval of your own damaging action. Emotions employ non propositional (non verbal) communication signals (internal and external for other individuals) that set and maintain the organism in a special mode of functioning, activating some mental subsystems and deactivating or repressing others. Emotions involve characteristic states of arousal and physiological changes (pulse rate, blood tension, body temperature, activity of certain glands, rate of breathing, blushing, facial expressions) that prepare and motivate the individual toward some physical or mental activity (or inactivity). Emotions imply valuations that can be positive (something wanted, an opportunity for survival and reproduction) or negative (something not wanted, a threat or danger to survival and reproduction). Emotions can have varying intensity and duration. Emotions and cognition process information and direct action differently. The emotional system is fast and crude, processes few features of stimuli that are directly relevant to survival, elicits autonomic non voluntary responses, and generates a simple answer of approach (positive value, like) or avoidance (negative value, dislike). The cognitive system is slower, processes many more features, differentiates with high precision and detail, relates stimuli to other information, and is not limited to the survival of the organism. Human emotions are not unnecessary or detrimental vestiges of earlier evolutionary stages in which the intellect was of less importance. Without emotions decisions and actions are impossible. Survival requires action, and this is impelled by emotions, which avoid the analysis paralysis: thinking much but doing nothing. Emotions may have a strong influence on cognition, blocking or interfering reasoning, memory and attention, but this is not necessarily bad for the organism: cold abstract reasoning is not always the best strategy for survival. Activation of a given emotion directs attention to relevant information, sharpens the corresponding sensory modalities, searches adequate memory categories, proposes patterns of interpretation and looks for them, readies relevant motor patterns, and reassigns priorities among goals. Some sensations and emotions are shared by all animals with a developed nervous system. Some emotions are typical of animals that take care of offspring. Some emotions are typical of social mammals. Some emotions consider the wellbeing of others. Human emotions are derived from a psychological foundation shared by social mammals, but humans possess some emotions that are much less developed or wholly absent in other species. The peculiarities of human emotions are due to the traits that makes humans unique: high sociability, language and culture (socially transmitted information), and cognitive abilities to reason, infer, plan, expect, hypothesize. Basic human emotions are universal, they are shared by all humans in all cultures. Some emotions may be controlled by separate structures in the brain while others, specially the more typically human emotions, may be emergent properties of the complex control systems comprising the human cognitive apparatus. Human emotions have important social functions of coordination and cohesion by means of communication of valuations and intentions. The expression of emotions influences other people, it can induce other emotions in them and alter their behavior. The expression of emotions informs others about moods so that they can behave accordingly. The facial gestures or expressions of emotions and their interpretations are basically innate and universal. People infer emotional states in others using common sense psychological theories about the interactions between emotions, cognition and action. Emotions and their expressions are so tightly coupled that muscular feedback from a facial expression characteristic of a certain emotion usually results in the experience of that emotion. Some emotions do not involve expression because some problems are better solved without giving away information. Cultures may praise, condemn or ignore particular aspects of the emotional repertoire: the rules for expressing certain emotions can be socially determined. Behavioral responses to a given stimulus may vary with the social context. The particular relevance of some emotions for an individual can be due to personal experiences in childhood and adolescence. The expression of emotions is a combination of automatic processes and varying degrees of voluntary control. Some people can learn to hide or feign emotions and this can be used to deceive or manipulate others. The personal experience of emotions may be confusing. Often thoughts and feelings seem to fight each other for control of mind and body. The whole person has many different goals, and many specialized mental agents take care of them. These agents tend to interact in a harmonious way that benefits the individual, but occasionally they may compete without reaching agreements, possibly with destructive consequences. Emotions can appear mingled and dissonant, since events, things and persons have many aspects and nuances, and because the sensitive person is complex and different mental subsystems can reach incompatible conclusions. Emotions are the product of evolution, but that does not mean that they are guaranteed to function perfectly all the time for everybody in all situations. The modern world is very different from the environment of human ancestors, and some emotions might no longer be adaptive. Emotional intelligence, the ability to act adequately in situations of human relationships, is fundamental for the success of people, and it can be more important than the intellectual ability to solve abstract problems. Emotional intelligence includes abilities for self control, self esteem, motivation, knowledge and voluntary control of emotions, body language and verbal personal communication, expressivity, affectivity, empathy (placing yourself in the situation of the other one, feeling with him) and sympathy (being nice to others). The evolution of emotionsReverse engineering is a key tool to understand the human mind. The brain is a system of information processing organs that allowed human ancestors to understand and outsmart objects, plants, animals, and each other. These computational systems have different adaptive functions that increase the fitness of the organism and its chances of survival and reproduction in its environment. Emotions are products of different systems, each of which evolved to take care of a particular problem of survival, like detection and response to danger, defense against enemies, finding food and mates, social cooperation. These systems solve behavioral problems that have characteristic requirements: different kinds of sensory and cognitive processes, motor control and feedback. Each emotion is a program that governs and coordinates other more specialized psychological and physiological mechanisms. The more basic sensations (pleasure, pain, hunger, thirst, asphyxia, tiredness, sleepiness, hot, cold, libido, nausea) are common to many animal species. Pleasant and unpleasant sensations are an implacable decision making system that instructs individual behavior. Pleasure is the prize or reward for success. Pain is the punishment or corrective for failure or error. Pleasure and pain generally indicate if what has been done or what has happened is adequate or inadequate for survival, they tend to avoid the inadequate and force behavior towards the correct action. Hunger indicates that energy reserves are low and they must be replenished eating. Thirst indicates that water levels in the body are low and they must be replenished drinking. Asphyxia indicates that oxygen levels in the organism are low and they must be replenished breathing air. Tiredness indicates that energy reserves are low due to activity and that rest is necessary. Sleepiness indicates that sleep is necessary. Hot and cold indicate extremes of temperature inadequate for the organism. Libido (sexual arousal) induces the organism to sexual mating for reproduction. Nausea induces vomit because the incoherence between visual sensations and sense of balance is usually due to hallucinations caused by ingested toxins. Environmental aesthetics is an important factor in human emotions. Humans like the environments that are more favorable for them, the habitats that support human life providing food, water, shelter, information (about opportunities and threats) and safety. The savanna (grassland with some trees) is the favorite habitat for human ancestors. Savannas offer food (fruits and meat), water, expansive views, landmarks and trees for shelter and safety. They are semi open spaces (not so open that they leave humans exposed and vulnerable, and not so closed to impede vision and movement), easy to explore and remember. Deserts have little water and food. The biomass of forests is mostly wood. In jungles threats are hard to detect and food is hard to find and reach. Humans like animals and plants because they are sources of food and information. Some natural phenomena like sunset, clouds, thunder, fire, induce special emotions that indicate that an important change in the environment is imminent. Disgust is the fear of incorporating (ingesting, inhaling, touching) some noxious substance into the body. It induces the avoidance of dangerous stuff that may be contaminated with parasites or pathogens. Disgust is intuitive microbiology. Disgusting things are always from animals (feces, decaying corpses, parts of animals or whole animals), and most things from animals are disgusting. Humans are omnivores but eat only a small fraction of existing animal parts. Disgusting things have strong contaminating properties: the effect of poisons from plants (which are only distasteful) depends on the dose; but there is no safe dose of a microorganism because they tend to reproduce exponentially, and a few of them cannot be detected by taste. Disgust is partially learned, and this allows children to learn what foods are safe in their environment: babies take almost everything they find to their mouths; mothers control their food intake and babies accept whatever they are given (if parents eat it and they are still alive, it must be safe), but after an initial period children only accept what they have eaten before and reject everything else (for an eater what is not permitted is forbidden). Some religious or cultural food taboos are said to be due to divine commands or to health issues when in fact they are due to ecological or economic reasons. Small animals like insects are not eaten when large ones are available for reasons of hunting or foraging efficiency; insect meat is often safer than meat from big animals. Some animals are better workers than food sources. Food taboos are ethnic markers and they can be used by the leaders of a group to avoid defection and preserve social cohesion and purity: forbidden foods are the ones consumed by neighboring groups, and it is not possible to befriend them without sharing food. Food taboos make use of disgust to perpetuate themselves (and remain when they do not make sense): children taught to dislike some food will become parents who will teach their children the same lesson. Fear (horror, panic, terror, dread, fright) is a response to avoid an imminent specific danger to life, health or social status. There are different classes of threats: inanimate objects or situations (darkness, confinement, fire, deep water, storms, heights), animals (predators, poisonous animals like snakes and spiders), other humans (physical aggression, sexual rejection or betrayal, social exclusion, strangers, blood). Different threats induce different responses. If a predator is detected, not moving is an adequate initial reaction because movement makes it easier for a predator to detect prey; if the prey notices that it has been detected it is better to try to escape. Vertigo causes the individual to stop before falling. Social threats induce shyness and gestures of appeasement. Fainting when seeing blood lowers blood pressure and minimizes its loss. Babies fear strangers and separation because infanticide and predation are important threats. Anxiety (apprehension, alarm) is a general, vague and uncomfortable sensation of uneasiness, insecurity or distress without a known specific cause, an expectation of possible unpleasant events. Fear and anxiety focus attention on threatening stimuli, involve fast responses and simplified decision making with minimal involvement of rational cognition, and influence perception to interpret ambiguous stimuli as dangerous: when in doubt it is better to play safe, because the alternative may be death. Basic fears are innate; some fears can be learned and unlearned, but not all imaginable conditionings are possible. Fears have to be adjusted to specific environments and to human abilities to neutralize threats: knowledge, technology, the strength of many. The best guides to the local dangers are the humans around who have survived them: panic and courage are contagious. Phobias are innate fears that have not been unlearned. The modern environment is very different from the savanna and changes have been very fast. Many human fears are useless now because the threats are no longer present, and people lack useful fears to current dangers because they have not had time to evolve. Being brave is not having no fear, but being able to control fear, which can be achieved with help from cooperators and sense of control, competence and predictability. Wanting to test and expand the limits of human abilities is a powerful adaptive motivation. Relief (exhilaration) is the pleasant emotion felt when a feared danger has been avoided; it probably helps remember the adequate response. Modern humans enjoy relatively safe activities (risk sports, amusement park rides) and stories (thrillers) that look like ancestral dangers. Happiness (joy, euphoria) is an emotion that assesses how well in general terms a person is doing in life, indicating whether he should be content with his achievements (food, comfort, safety, wealth, health, love, friendship, prestige) or if important changes are necessary (sadness, despair). But there is no absolute standard of well being: what can be achieved with reasonable effort depends on the environment and on the human accumulation of knowledge and capital; happiness must be a relative emotion that needs calibration. A calibration mechanism that is consistent with competitive evolution is the comparison with others and the comparison in time: if others have achieved something then it must be possible, and those who have not achieved it may be in a comparatively worse situation for survival and reproduction; if something has been achieved it probably can be maintained and other more ambitious goals can be pursued. Envy is the desire to possess what another has; greed is the refusal to share what one possesses. It is normal that losses are felt more strongly that equivalent gains. When something is lost it must be had first, so the person has an estimate of what is possible; when something is gained there is no reference to indicate the importance of the improvement. The law of diminishing marginal utility indicates that things are put to their most valuable use, so one thing gained is put to a less valuable use than that same thing lost. Increases in fitness have diminishing returns: more resources are better but less and less so. What a living organism must achieve first is vital, and further achievements are much less important. Decreases in fitness can be fatal, and there are many more ways to die than to live. Losses are more important and worthy of attention than gains. Happiness depends more on relative changes than on absolute constancies. Poor people can be happy when they can improve their situation, or when they are better than others, and rich people may be unhappy if they do not get even richer or others are richer. Each condition for happiness (love, health and wealth) is necessary but not sufficient, so a person can be miserable lacking any of them. Those who feel happy not caring or not worrying probably do not make the effort to be more able and competitive and therefore are less fit for life (worrying too much can also be a pathological problem). Perfect happiness and satisfaction lead to inaction, and since permanent action is necessary to sustain life, some level of systematic insatisfaction is perfectly natural in humans and easily acceptable. Gains in wellbeing are always temporary. The adaptive and correct way to eliminate insatisfaction is by means of intelligent action pursuing valuable goals. The direct elimination of negative emotions or sensations and the induction of positive ones (with drugs or mental exercises) can be very dangerous. Eternal bliss is an illusion: attractive but false. Most people are not realistic about themselves, almost everybody thinks that he is above average. Depressed emotional states tend to bias information processing to more negative, but more realistic interpretations. Depressed individuals feel they have less control over situations. Frustration may indicate that some failed goal is really out of reach and that resignation is right. Uncertainty alerts the organism that it is not able to predict the future. Expectation (anticipation) prepares for future events. Surprise remarks that the individual was not prepared for some event. Acceptance recognizes the limitations of the human ability to act and modify reality. Moral sentiments and cooperationHuman relationships involve conflicts. Evolution and natural selection imply competition for scarce resources and the survival and reproduction of the fittest. Every living person is a descendant of a long genealogical line of competitive winners, ancestors who all were able to reproduce before dying. Almost everyone must have some ability to compete. But life does not have to be an individual fight of all against all. Beneficial associations are possible. Voluntary exchanges are good for both parties. An intelligent way to compete is to make teams, groups that cooperate to be better competitors against others. Some sophisticated emotions are responsible for cooperation. Important emotions are evoked by other humans, motivating actions to help them (love, gratitude, sympathy) or hurt them (anger, hatred). Love is feeling pleasure for the wellbeing of another and pain for his suffering. Hatred is feeling pleasure for the suffering of another and pain for his wellbeing. The more complex emotions of some animals refer to affective bonds. Feelings are stable emotions of animals that show clear preferences for some specific members of their species (rarely of other species). Feelings are often associated with sexual reproduction and close kinship relationships. Altruism is the behavior of an animal that assumes a cost to itself to benefit another one. It makes sense if both animals are related (kin) so that the gene that causes the altruist behavior is in both of them. Genetic altruism is a way to produce a brain with love (compassion, empathy) as a behavior control system, so that different copies of the same gene help each other. The sacrifices made for love are modulated by the degree of relatedness (measures the probability that their genes are the same) and the expected reproductive life of the beneficiary (measures the probability that it will spread its genes). Many animal species provide no parental care. More evolutionarily recent animals like birds and mammals do provide parental care. The love of parents (especially mothers in mammals) for their offspring permits the raising of dependent young that require care and protection until reaching adulthood. Love of young for their parents makes them remain protected near them and learn by imitation. Parental care and degree of development of offspring at birth evolve together: the more that parents care, the more fragile and undeveloped offspring can be born. Human infants are born very altricial (defenseless and dependent on others) and maternal feelings are very intense. Parental care has some cognitive requirements: caring parents must be able to recognize their children if they can move away from their side (if they only look after the eggs they must at least remember where their eggs are). In monogamous relationships both parents invest in raising offspring. Selective sexual attraction searches for the more adequate traits in the mate: physical beauty corresponds with external indicators of health and ability to reproduce and survive. Love between male and female commits both individuals to a long term cooperative mating and indicates that commitment to the partner, helping solve the problem of trust. The initial period of intense obsessive romantic feelings dissuades defection during the crucial period of mutual assessment and gives strong and clear signals of unbreakable commitment. Once a cooperative enterprise has been established, investment in the relationship is so high that the necessary intensity of attachment to maintain the bond can be reduced. Some social animals and humans also help non relatives. Game theory shows that particular emotions can be useful for human strategies in recurrent challenges of potential cooperation, when individuals facing the possibility of a relationship or exchange with others have to decide whether to cooperate or not. Repetitive exchanges create selective pressure for psychological mechanisms that lead each individual to prefer the long term benefits of cooperation instead of the smaller short term gains of defection. These mechanisms are necessary because all animals have time preference, the tendency to discount the future and value a present good more than the same good in the future. A good now is preferred to the same good later: it can be used for some current or immediate need; the present good is guaranteed, unlike the future good; now the animal is alive, in the future it might be dead. Moral emotions are immediate rewards and punishments that make present important social opportunities and threats that might really happen in the future. Social cooperation is reciprocal altruism: an animal helps another one and expects some future help in return (so roles have to be reversible). The higher the difference between the benefit of the help for the receiver and the cost of the help to the giver, the better reciprocal altruism works (it cannot work if costs are higher that benefits). Since there is no guarantee that favors will be returned, cooperation requires discrimination. Reciprocal altruism works only if the animal brain is sophisticated enough to detect and discriminate cheaters (who receive but do not give help), because otherwise the situation is not an evolutionary stable strategy (cheaters would tend to dominate until no one helped others). In order to discriminate cheaters animals must be able to recognize different individuals, remember their past behavior regarding cooperation, and apply an exclusion strategy. If an animal cannot distinguish and remember others the only stable strategy is not to cooperate, because cheaters abuse non cheaters and tend to predominate. If cheaters can be recognized they can be isolated and excluded from the benefits of cooperation, and a good strategy is to help strangers and everyone who has helped you before, and not to help those who did not return help. Social insects do not perform reciprocal altruism, they do genetic altruism, since they are genetic relatives (sometimes even genetically identical clones) and ready to sacrifice their own life for the colony. The do not need to recognize each other individually, it is enough to know that they are members of the same colony. There are many possible intermediate actions between giving all help and giving no help at all, animals can change their attitudes, reversal of situations is almost never the same, and memory is fallible. Cheaters may develop astute strategies, giving less than they could but just enough to be worth the exchange. Each agent tries to cooperate with those who look like the best potential associates. All agents, cheaters and honest ones, try to look like good cooperators. Cheating and cheating detection mechanisms evolve and improve together. Moral emotions are intelligent strategies in the reciprocal game of cooperation. Social attraction (liking, generosity, friendship) initiates and maintains cooperation; it is a willingness to offer the liked one a favor and is directed to those who appear willing to give something back. It is natural that people want to be liked. Loneliness is the negative feeling of not being liked and loved. Anger protects trusting agents from cheaters. A person who discovers that he has been exploited feels indignation for the offensive act and anger against the cheater; he wants to retaliate and punish the cheater, breaking the relationship of even hurting him. Anger (ire) is about morality, it is a feeling of injustice and redress. People feel outrage when their perception of justice or fairness is violated, especially when the behavior of others is intentional, voluntary and avoidable. Fury or wrath prepares for fight, calls for attention and tries to evoke fear in the rival. Moral indignation is not only against the transgressors of moral rules but also against those who permit those transgressions without punishing them (punishment implies costs and risks not only for the punished but also for the punisher, therefore it is necessary to promote not only that rules are respected, but that all individuals participate actively in the detection and correction of transgressions). Gratitude modulates the desire to give a favor back according to the cost and benefit of the favor received. More gratitude is felt if the favor was very beneficial and costly. Sympathy (compassion, generosity) is the desire to help those in need and is useful to earn gratitude. Sadness (suffering) can be expressed to inform others of need of help. Guilt (remorse) warns a cheater that he might be discovered. Conscience is the inner voice that warns that someone might be looking. Cheating is a dangerous activity because honest cooperators have great incentives to discover, publicize, repudiate and punish cheaters. The cheater can lose a lot if his transgression becomes public and he is excluded from social cooperation; guilt motivates a sincere confession before discovery of the fact as a display of contrition that may help gain forgiveness (especially if the damage can be repaired). Guilt is partially learned and it is often used for social control. When children do something bad or forbidden and try to hide it they usually discover that adults are smarter and stronger. Spiritual leaders often teach impressionable children about horrible punishments and how they should feel guilty for their sins. Shame shows the same contrition as guilt but after being discovered or after having performed badly in an important task. Pride is the satisfaction for a well done action. Ambition (wanting more), pride and the fear of shame motivate high effort and dedication in competition, especially if others are watching and prestige is at stake. Shame and pride motivate the consideration of the expectations of observers. In a competition the loser can feel humiliated by the winner, and this may induce resentment, the negative emotion that refuses to accept the result. When one agent is stronger than the other the weak can feel submission and accept its inferiority to avoid more damages. Once cooperative emotions have evolved, agents have strong incentives to mimic them (consciously or unconsciously) to take advantage of the reactions of others to the real emotions. Public relations specialists know how to project a good image independent of reality. Professional beggars exaggerate their need to induce compassion. Systematic cheaters pretend contrition. If the expression of the emotion and the physiological reaction it implies are costly they will be harder to fake. By making individuals act in ways that are costly emotions generate honest advertisements of likely future behavior, because people usually keep the same attitude, and this can be communicated to other potential cooperators or aggressors. Agents can also develop mechanisms to differentiate between real and fake emotions. Agents try to read the minds of others to decide whether to trust them or not. Logic can help reveal the incoherencies of the hypocrites. Gossip is popular because knowledge about cheaters is very valuable and it can be easily shared. Reputation is very important and people try to protect it (even fighting to death with an offender) and improve it (public displays of generosity, sympathy and honorability). Protection against sham emotions can be used against real emotions: cheaters distract attention by accusing others of insincerity. Truth and honesty are good cooperative strategies, especially if an agent is a bad liar. Good liars can prosper at the expense of others. Lying consciously is hard, induces anxiety and requires much self control in order not to be caught in a contradiction. Knowing the truth is useful, so some parts of the mind know the truth but may hide it from the parts responsible for interactions and communication in order to hide it better from other people. Self delusion, unconsciously accepting something false as true, can be a good tactic if it is important to convince others of something: self deception always presents the good and bright side of the person to others. People tend to believe many things without checking the facts if the communicator seems sincere and caring. The content of the belief and its truth can become less important than its intensity and emotional impact. Some emotions motivate the acquisition, dissemination and use of social and cultural and information. Curiosity motivates learning. Interest concentrates attention. Gossip is social curiosity about very important information of people: health, wealth, character, availability as mate. Admiration of successful persons or individuals with high status involves a desire for proximity, close observation and imitation that leads humans to adopt successful ideas and useful practices. Conformity to cultural values, beliefs, practices and rules makes behavior predictable and allows complex coordination and cooperation; contempt and moral outrage motivate publicizing the actions of nonconformists, who usually feel guilt and shame. A very important part of the human mind is dedicated to maintain social cooperation. Humans systematically inspect each other looking for opportunities and threats. Social interactions include frequent attempts of people to influence each other persuasively. Rational agents constantly give, receive and criticize explanations about the motives, reasons or intentions of actions. Rationality does not only refer to logical consistency but also to the ability to provide reasons for actions. Collectivists do not like the idea that emotions work for the good of the individual, with his particular interests and preferences; they want social cooperation to be for the good of the group. When political leaders manipulate human emotions so that people submit to the will of the group, the results are great atrocities, genocide and war against other groups. PassionsIn conflicts of strategy the behavior of each party depends on what the other party intends, wants, and knows. Knowledge of what the other party wants, knows and intends to do is especially valuable because it makes predictions and adjustments of strategy possible. When two parties bargain there is for each a range of acceptable conditions; if a party wants to get the best deal, he can show some restriction that implies that no concessions are possible (risking the possibility that no agreement is reached because the situation is not acceptable to the other party); this restriction may be self inflicted by a previous voluntary but irreversible sacrifice of the ability to choose. The problem of producing a credible deterrent for social animals that interact with one another can lead to irrational (not attending to reasons or persuasion) behavior as a rational solution. Seemingly irrational emotions, like strong uncontrollable passions, are restrictions on oneself that work as guarantors of threats and promises in social relations. If in some circumstances the human mind is compelled to carry out a threat or fulfill a promise regardless of the costs, and the other party knows it, the threat or promise is made credible. The emotion must be strong and impede communications so that rational persuasion to act otherwise is not possible: passions are unmistakable and they drive the person crazy and out of control. Possible defenses against the passions of others are not becoming aware of them or confronting them with another passion. The expression of passions (as of other emotions) is useful only if it is hard and expensive to fake (they would be abused and become useless otherwise), and this why it is involuntary and strongly tied to fundamental and also involuntary biological functions like heartbeat, breathing, sweat, tears and saliva: the voluntary control of these basic functions is extremely dangerous (they would stop working when unattended, and conscious parts of the brain do not know how to control them efficiently). Hatred and lust for revenge are terrifying deterrents against attacks. When a person is slain the closest relatives feel the desire to punish the killer. Aggression in response to having been cheated or having received some damage decreases the likelihood of becoming a victim, especially if it is disproportionate relative to the transgression. But a disproportionate response is costly, so a special mechanism of outrage is necessary to motivate to counterattack. Since deterrents work only if they are advertised and recognize, desire for vengeance goes together with honor, the public demand for social recognition and respect. Romantic love is a guarantee of the very important promise to share a life and raise children together. Everyone desires the best partner but most people at some moment accept the best they can find in order not to stay single. Since it is possible that in the future a more desirable candidate is found, and the current partner knows about this danger, falling in love is an emotion that commits to stay in the relationship. Falling in love is not an intended action, it is a pleasant restriction (but with physiological costs) that happens to a person, it cannot be voluntarily controlled (activated or deactivated), so it can be advertised and the other party knows it is a guarantee. Rejection can be the result if the expression of love is too extreme (too strong too early): the other party perceives desperation or thinks that you fall in love too easily and it might happen again with another candidate. Love is closely tied to jealousy, the passion that deters the mate from infidelity. A big risk for men is parental investment in children that are not his, while a great danger for women is that the man leaves her and does not provide any more. A man is more disturbed by the prospect of a sexual infidelity of his woman, while a woman is more disturbed by the prospect of emotional attachment of her man to another woman. Grief is a deterrent against being careless for the loved ones. Knowing that there is a certain and terrible pain if something bad happens to someone you love makes you worry for them and act accordingly. Grief also forces an interlude in life, a pause to reassess the situation after an important negative change like the loss of a loved one.
|
Intelligence & Freedom |
Francisco Capella |