Dr. Feldman-Barrett at the end says they don't have epistemological problems, but rather ontological problems... then she goes on to describe what sounded like the epistemological problem of inference.... but what can I know? Seriously though... this was such a gift. I first read How Emotions are Made a several years back and more recently The Hidden Spring, which caused me to go back and re-read How Emotions are Made. Yesterday I re-read the Feelings Chapter in The Hidden Spring and wondered... how great would a conversation between these two be. Not only did the universe provide, but they are speaking about the exact questions I had hoped.... what is affect? Dr. Feldman-Barrett, in her book, recommended this app called the mood meter.... You just tell the app your arousal and valence level and then it gives you an emotion word based on a simple 2D grid. It doesn't work... it's too simplistic. This is why I think Dr. Solms' take on flavors (I'm thinking of the simple, discrete, handful of taste sensors, not the vastly discriminatory olfactory sense) of affect is intriguing... can the different evolved neural modules or neurotransmitters (sorry to use loose language here... I am not a neuroscientist) give rise to several discrete flavors of affect even though the arousal / valence is the same. I think this solves the problem with the mood meter idea... it complexifies things. But even with a few flavors, we get a vast array of possibilities, so we have to group them... i.e. construct emotions. I think Dr. S (or Jack Panskepp) confuses things by mapping his work to Freud and calling these flavors RAGE, GRIEF, FEAR, etc... but he states clearly that these are not emotions, that they are purposefully capitalized to distinguish them from emotion. Can capitalization reduce incommensurability? Maybe on the page, but it is hard to represent fully capitalized words in a conversation without shouting. Perhaps these words make sense in the extreme case... like when we are so enraged nothing else matters, one "system" is in control and it feels like, well, pure rage... but I agree with Dr. FB that even that "pure" emotional state is still constructed out of raw affect, flavored or otherwise, as well as other factors like exteroceptive and interoceptive context. But normally these systems are often working together along with perception (vast possibilities) to guide possible actions (again vast), and grouping them as Dr FB describes with an emotion concept describes if very adaptive, despite being mentally taxing. No wonder it is so difficult to be human. Looking forward to part II, but I need a break :) Thanks again Professors!
Lisa of course things have to be observed in specific contexts to be understood. The unbroachable lacuna (for you) is that since a baby's cry or protest can be a separation anxiety or say hunger or other visceral pain then ipso facto invalidates the naive realism that separate center for attachment or nurturance or one for rage, lust, fear, play/laugher etc. that is simply not true. You are using a naive and vacuous stubborn argument that context matters and therefore it it invalidates or at the very least does not substantiate, prove separate or proximal regions with its ascending and descending neuronal tracks or networks, that is a complete non-sequitur. As far as facial expression mean entirely different set of interpretations per certain cultures. The problem with that is that physiology underneath does not lie! (i.e. RSA, heart rate variability, hormone associations cortisol or excessive stress vs, love/bonding, oxytocin, etc.). Yes, we might mistake prima facie what a particular facial expression sometimes means but THE BODY (the associated neurophysiology is universal and does not LIE) .
Shocking! You have zero understanding of neurophysiology or your interpretations are embarrassing. Let's take for example, animals sometime freeze or immobilize which has nothing to do with threat. Bullshit! (yes hibernation in order to preserve organ function by reducing metabolism) but freezing and immobilizing behaviors in ordinary circumstance with reduction of metabolism (lower heart rate, RSA) is a FEAR based response when the animal (but particularly survivable for reptiles - who have 500% less oxygen needs) cannot fight or flee. It is immobilization or also called death feigning.
It is utterly ridiculous what she is say@1.29 with respect to people have made correlations, for example, between fear and the various areas of the brain but correlations are not robust enough to evince cause. Well, my darling, we know that the volume and size the amygdala for example decreases (in autism or related challenges when increase capacity for executive functioning or interpersonal engagement/co-regulation increases) ; we know that the neuroendocrine system (HPA axis as a whole) attenuates (under decreased stress) and becomes heightened under increased stress (e.g., cortisol vs serotonin or oxytocin). This does not contradict the major mechanism of change which is not driven (agreement) by genes but by nature-nurture or epigenetic factors. The epigenetic factor then does not in turn constitute a conclusion or toward a strong hypothesis that social constructed function does not have systemic regional areas where 1) They occur as particular neural networks and 2) their associated neuropeptide and neurohormonal changes.
"Ideas that resist evidence." You mean ideas that resist your ideological beliefs. My God! "Freezing behavior or avoidance behavior" is my darling in fact an expression of fear or terror. Indeed are you joking me? Are you that left brain compartmentalized, reductionist? Fascinating! Tell me more?!
Forgive me, Lisa are you that much of a recalcitrant _____ ____ or are you just pretending because of your predilection (you feel) is not borne out by the experimental data but in fact experimentally elsewhere as Mark points out does clearly exist. Yes, depression is a specific emotion! My God! You go to such lengths to describe (or subscribe) to a social constructionist theory it makes you seem, to be kind, remarkably fanatic to the point of incomprehensible or risible on the one hand frighteningly divorced or disembodied from reality under the guise of your so-called pedagogical free experimental data. You are indeed a quintessential example of "self or belief separated from the scientific evidence" which as we know has always been the simplistic and illusory view of neutrality.
Lisa your last 5-7 minutes essentially sums up brilliantly a certain postmodern tabula rasa which essentially reduces the organism or organismic affective drives as simply fluid or background differential noise where everything in the "real world" becomes merely subjective interpretation. This is dangerously bankrupt and emotional-psychologically and affectively vacuous. Yes, there are real hard wired affective drives for curiosity/seeking lust, panic, fear, rage, sadness/grief, play/laughter that exist independently prior to though interconnected with the externalities of their expression (cultural, etc.).
Let's take one out of many examples, dear Lisa, "When people in Bali are afraid they falls asleep." That would be an expression of immobilizing or passing out, anxiety, fear, withdrawal in contrast to say the affective seeking system of curiosity or qualia affective drive of play/laughter. There are subtle perhaps tremendous variations of how different cultures label their experiences but the "body based energy budget" to use your term and the qualia of the subcortical affective drives and the autonomic nervous system does not lie. It is all the same!
Lisa you are an excellent cognitive conceptual engineer but completely lack any direct emotional understanding which is prior to cognition and does indeed exist as distinct affective reflexes or drives. Just let's say there is a fundamental difference between savoir and connaitre.
It was quite a challenge for me to watch through this video, as Solms' ignorance is just too anoying. Feldmann-Barrett is trying to make things clear, asking back questions to clarify certain statements Soms made, and he always falls into contradictions, simplifications and misunderstandings. I know from many other fields how difficult it is for people to deconstruct their concepts, but that's no excuse for such attitude and stubborness, as he is the believer, but asking proove for the absence of things he is just claiming out of believe, without the evidence speaking for it.
In the end, after all the philosophies, a psychologist, or an anthropologist, or many other professionals come to you and ask - what do you have from your field of research to contribute to them. And that's the question in the end. Philosophically, I also can't prove that I exist, but that interests me less.
Lisa's repetition of 'what cannot be said' and the fact that Mark didn't sit down to elaborate on his method while Lisa listens, renders this discussion rather devoid of content. Science, ultimately, seeks what can be said, and leaves philosophy to philosophers. A discussion about emotion, from the outset, assumes that subjective concepts can be discussed, and this should be taken into account. On the other hand, claiming there's nothing to discuss about subjective concepts contradicts any person on the street who understands a thing or two about such concepts
It ended up like a discussion that stands on the border between the subjective and the objective, and on a person's ability to escape their subjectivity. Quite philosophical.
At time 1:15:28 Dr. Barrett states point blank: "There are no natural kinds as far as I can see in ANY field, even in chemistry and physics. Even the prototypic natural kind, which would be the elements of the periodic table, don't meet all the criteria for natural kinds according to philosophers." Well, if even the chemical elements don't meet said criteria, then these criteria are too stringent in my opinion. If this is what is meant by "natural kind", then the statement that basic emotion systems are not natural kinds has no information content whatsoever. We might as well say they are not SUPERNATURAL kinds either. If I may presume to summarize Dr. Barrett's view in one phrase, it would be "thoroughgoing holism". Everything depends on everything else, all distinctions are conventional. Even the distinction between hydrogen (with atomic number 1) and helium (with atomic number 2) is blurry and without sufficient specificity.
Why is this so incredible? It is common sense. Humans are the same but different. Families and cultures see and experience the world differently. Humans communicate based on concepts through the use of words . The meaning depends on the context .
I'm sorry to disagree with the many well-meaning comments herein, but I suspect Solms time would have been better spent simply critiquing Barrett's book.
Interesting debate. Seems there's a clear undercurrent related to how their personalities and conversational styles interrelate. They could do it again with a moderator perhaps...
I appreciate that movies like inside out are trying to make kids and adults more aware of emotions. But, it’s king of crazy how popular and mainstream Ekman’s theory has become. It’s making it harder to critically review the classical model.
Narrative of constructonalism in natural science very much reminds me on decostructionalism in social science. Making some sort of probabilistic chaotic quantization of understanding, which is some sort of optimization of experimental data without making any understanding value from it but just acomulation of probabilistic relations, some sort of entropy of knowledge.
In my cancer treatment in the last few years, I read your books thousands of times. Now I’m cured. I’m building an information system for freeing my brain from thinking and memorizing. It’s helping me to do things better in my life. ❤ Thank you for your work.
Why do we consciously feel seems like a hard problem question.. I think of the analogy Bernardo Kastrup talks about "The apple blossom trying to control the output of the tree" or "How western to think that one can take the ripple out of the lake, when there is only the lake." These came up for me when Mark was trying to narrow down the specific categories or reasonings for why we have conscious experiences of emotion, its like trying to explain in specificity what is nature?
is Solms coneying that Panksepps work on animal models directly correlates to the human experience in this five affect categories? Although animals maybe have consciousness in a pan psychist view their consciousness may vary and doesn't seem to directly map to the human experience (interested if this is correct?) I like Feldmans idea's because that emergent property from signals between neurotypical consciousness and the physical world seem to make more sense and have more opportunity for nuance . Panksepps work seems groundbreaking but also reductionist and anthropomorphic.
Panksepp's work demonstrates these subcortical affective circuits are shared across mammals. We are, after all, animals! So it makes sense we have a shared inheritance regarding nervous system circuitry. Our cognitive architecture of course is generally much more advanced than other mammals, so Panksepp builds a framework explaining how on top of these subcortical bottom-floor systems, we get all the complexity and nuance of human emotion and behaviour
I’m getting the impression that Mark is trying to imply based on him constantly saying he needs to skip questions that she is talking too much without saying it directly.
She's in a difficult position. He had time to formule his thoughts prehand. She is having to formulate the response on the fly. So she is thinking out loud to find the right words (not all the time but that's how I read it). It would have been better to go back and forwards in written form
Ahhhh interesting, so Solms subscribes to a basic emotion view because he wants an affective feeling to already signal a causal inference about how to take care of the body.
She's really such an insult to the genuises of Panksepp, Damasio, and Solms. Please stop hyping here, it's becoming more and more an insult comparare to the as the science landscape in Don't' look up.....
❤ Hello, Dr. Feldman Burt Your brain and mind books are great Dear Dr. Sufiani Psychologist and psychometrician Member of the American Psychological Association researcher
Hello, Dr. Feldman Burt Your brain and mind books are great Dear Dr. Sufiani Psychologist and psychometrician Member of the American Psychological Association researcher
Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett, is it at all possible for emotions to be "trapped in the body" ? Some treatment modalities make a lot of releasing emotions and somatic work which doesn't sound like metaphor superficially at least. I'm wondering how this sits with the constructivist view ?
Thanks very much for having and posting these conversations on YT. It's been very interesting not only because of the material but also to highlight how enormous the scope for misunderstanding one another can be. No one gets to step outside of ideology as far as I see. Best we can do is to try to recognise the ideology we're swimming in. Thanks again !
Unfortunately Mark Solms is stuck in his systems-cognition based perspective, whilst Lisa Feldman Barrett's theory is based on a cross-paradigmatic foundation. Whilst he claims to accept with almost everything Lisa says, he clearly does not understand that his entire critique is based on his own unexamined inferences. Feldman Barrett's theory is built upon being aware of one's inferences. Perhaps he should examine his own inferences first, before criticising a theory he clearly does not yet grasp. Also, he babbles too much...
When is associative memory added to the stream of consciousness so that a thought is created or stimulus is perceived whether it's an accurate or unreliable one?
