At stake in this is the status of emotion: is it an 'origin' - a brute biological given that is simply 'activated' in certain circumstances - or is it instead a 'result' - a bio-social 'production' that helps orient one's actions and is the outcome of an evaluative process? It's this latter view which I want to outline and discuss here.

The basic idea behind this second view of emotion is that emotion is two-pronged, as it were. At the 'base', biological level, what is 'immediately' felt is a kind of generic, non-specific 'affect', which simply indicates both intensity (heightened or dull feeling - 'urgency' of affect) and valence ('good' or 'bad' feeling, something threatening or rewarding). The second step in the 'production' of emotion however, is an evaluative one - a matter of categorising this initial affect (as sadness, as anger, as joy...), a categorisation which takes place on the basis of a range of bio-cultural considerations. — StreetlightX

Probably, to conceive an individual emotional sphere in relation to socially determined cognitive and affective processes, we could use Simondon’s approach. An individual and society are never
in a relationship as one term to another, as though two independent essences interact with each other. On the contrary, they are in the ongoing process of reciprocal individuation. “The individual only enters into a relationship with the social through the social.
The psychosocial personality is contemporaneous with the genesis of the group, which is individuation.” (Simondon, Individuation: psychic and collective). The process of social mediation has been rapidly changing over time. Benedict Andersen, in his book “Imagined Communities,” proposed that the nation was created due to a sense of “horizontal comradeship.” The mass mechanical production of printed works united people through the interiorization of literary culture. Before Anderson, a similar project was persuaded by Walter Benjamin. “Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art…The reaction is characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional engagement…The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.” (Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction). “Technical reproducibility,” the film, provided new possibilities for collective experiences: mass became the new and the only spectator of a film and the consumer of mass culture. In both examples, social mediation involves two dimensions: categorical affects, which takes place at the pre-programmed level of the enactment of virtual intensities, and vitality affects at the level of emotions experienced by an individual. The co-occurring aspects of mutual interplay create various transindividual links and effects. The organization of the techno-social medium covering the gap between registers plays a decisive role. Anderson’s national state and Benjamin’s fascist regime require distinct complexes of collective and individual affects. In our time, our virtual medium, connecting the social with the individual, contains and compresses a multitude of various registers. Due to the complex topology of interconnections, we often experience its effects without a clear understanding or explanation.

Can we infer then, that emotions are not understood through the prism of logic? — 3017amen

To the contrary, I think logic is the only way to understand emotions. We can't make empirical observations of their causes, so we can only use logic.

the contrary, I think logic is the only way to understand emotions. We can't make empirical observations of their causes, so we can only use logic. — Metaphysician Undercover

MU!

Thanks for your reply. Would you happen to have any examples of how logic can help us explain the nature of emotional will?

Thank you kindly.

For example, here's what I posted earlier in the thread.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/404078

Thanks for the replies. I see what you are elaborating on. Though I approach things from a somewhat different perspective, I don’t find much to disagree with. If anything, there’s this nagging issue of lesser animals, sometimes solitary and very primitive, also being emotive beings. But, again, I’m in overall agreement.

‘To be aware of’ is not the same as ‘to experience’. Often what we experience, we are aware of only as sensory events - even though we integrate the information at the level of experience - that is, as a relation of value or potential to act. — Possibility

I acknowledge that there are nuances to the two terms, but can you elaborate on why you find the interchangeability of these two terms inappropriate within the contexts here addressed? Both terms have relatively imprecise definitions, and I so far find that they can both be used to reference the same given attribute of conscious being. To approach this differently: to be consciously aware of X entails one’s conscious experience of X; conversely, to consciously experience X entails one’s conscious awareness of X; such that one cannot be had without the other. If you’re using the terms “awareness” and “experience” in specialized senses that makes the aforementioned usage invalid, can you point me to the literature where the two terms are thus differentiated?

‘Envy’ in relation to core affect has an unpleasant valence and is distinguished from ‘jealousy’ by a relatively low arousal. — Possibility

Envy can sometimes in some people be of a very high arousal, from my knowledge of the world - at times being concurrent with visceral hatred for those envied, with theft, or worse. As to its unpleasant valence, yes, but are there sensory receptors for the interoception of that which is experienced to be unpleasant and for what is experienced to be pleasant? Or do these attributes manifest only cognitively? Please read my next reply to @Ciceronianus the White to better understand where I’m coming from (last I recall, interoception is defined as a perception resulting from physiological sensations within the body, which in turn initially obtain from physiologic receptors located within the body)

I'm not sure what this means. I find it hard to conceive of any decisions we make (or, for that matter, thought, reasoning, beliefs) that aren't related to what is taking place, or has taken place, during our lives, and our lives consist of our interactions with the rest of the world. Are these decisions, thoughts, beliefs you refer to then something that we become aware of in some manner sua sponte (of its/their/our own accord) as it were? What is "non-empirical awareness"? — Ciceronianus the White

I’ll do my best to better explain. (no need to visit all the links; just given for those who prefer references) First off, though the term perception can be used in a variety of ways - including the “conscious understanding of something” (e.g., perceived value) - in the sciences it is interpreted to be the “organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information” which, as sensory information, originates with physiological receptors – in animals, as these sensory receptors pertain to sensory neurons. This applies to both our exteroception and interoception, both being types of perception thus scientifically understood. Secondly, empiricism is in contemporary thought understood to be "a theory stating that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience", with sensory experience being in turn understood to result from the physiological senses, and, again, with the latter necessarily incorporating sensory receptors.

In short, to consciously perceive is to gain conscious awareness of givens via sensory receptors. And that which is empirically known is known due to such perception, hence due to sensory receptors’ initial obtainment of information. The details are vast, and sometimes debatable, but none of the details contradict the just mentioned, at least as far as I am aware.

As regards decisions:

You’re faced with a choice between A and B. You know of A and B empirically. Say you decide on A at the expense of B. You know what you decide at the moment of the decision and you will be able to recall this decision at least shortly thereafter. You consciously know of your decision because you are, or were, consciously aware of so deciding (if consciously unaware of what was decided, or if a decision was made, you’d hold no conscious knowledge of what was decided, or of whether a decision was made). The decision you make is however neither the empirically known A nor the empirically known B. It is instead your intention upon which of these to choose. If your awareness of the decision taken is obtained from sensory receptors transmitting physiological sensations that are then interpreted by you via perception, this awareness would then be empirical knowledge of your decision. In which case, it seems cogent to affirm that sensory receptors would somehow physiologically transduce you as a conscious-self in the act of making a decision into physiological sensations that you as conscious-self come to perceive - thereby resulting in your awareness of your decision. If this is not what happens, then your knowing what decision you make, or have made, is not empirical knowledge - for it is not acquired via perception as scientifically understood. Nevertheless, you know of the decision because you are aware of what decision you’ve made. Hence, in the later scenario, your awareness of your own decision taken would be non-empirical, but instead strictly cognitive.

I've given what to me is an extreme interpretation in attempts to better convey what I interpret as being empirical awareness of gives (e.g., things perceived) and non-empirical awareness of givens (e.g., givens that occur only within cognizance). The same roundabout perspective would then apply to your awareness of your propositional attitudes, of the concepts you analyze, or of the reasoning you engage in.

As one counterexample, otherwise one could validly claim that a visually imagined unicorn is empirically known to oneself on grounds that one has seen what it looks like (this with the mind's eye).

They're still "optimal predictions" (in some sense) given their constraints and priors, but that does not mean the priors reflect the relational dynamics of the body and its environment, and their potential developments given the interventions I propose. — fdrake

I think that's really one of the important take-aways from the active inference model of emotional construction. Sufficient values from our environment are put into the priors for the model (and indirectly into our perception - but Barrett doesn't talk much about that) that we have to dismiss the notion of emotions being beyond judgement as in getting rid of the idea that "I'm just a feisty person", "I can't help myself" etc. Obviously there's a focus on self-help, but I think no less a focus should be put on societal influences. sociol-politics aside though, the point is that we can be wrong about our emotions not just in the sense that they're not suited to our modern world (that idea has been around for years) but that they're not 'suited' to any world, they don't come pre-packaged and suited to some set of circumstances predicted by evolution. They are an adaptation formed by the process of living within a social environment, learning from its cues - we don't get angry when the shopkeeper short-changes us because our bodies have an inbuilt system to fight off lions, we get angry when the shopkeeper short-changes us because getting angry in such a situation is a response which explains the entire situation (heart-rate, shop-keeper, coins, justice, monetary value, pride...) in a package which has produced least errors in the past.

I think one of the sources of confusion in many of the posts here (not yours) is in the false impression (Barrett is not particularly clear on this, I have to say) that when she talks about perception and interoception she's talking about pure data. Lot's of people seem intuitively turned-off by the model because they're seeing it as {heart-rate, image of a lion, nausea}='fear'. But this is, of course, not what she's saying. As we know, the forward-acting signals from the perception and interoception cortices are themselves predictive models, so the emotion constructing system is not getting raw data, it's getting interpreted, meaningful data

This information is available for later use by limbic cortices as they generatively initiate prediction signals, constructed as low-dimensional, multimodal summaries (i.e. ‘abstractions’); these summaries, consolidated from prior encoding of prediction errors, become more detailed and particular as they propagate out to more architecturally granular sensory and motor regions to complete embodied concept
generation

The way in which goal-oriented prediction errors might be fed back into the emotion system, as you're talking about with infelicity, is only hinted at by Barrett...

the salience network tunes the internal model by predicting which prediction errors to pay attention to [i.e. those errors that are likely to be allostatically relevant and therefore worth the cost of encoding and consolidation; called precision signals

...but Friston goes into it in more detail here (still not the right paper I promised you though!). The whole paper is really interesting, but the bit relevant to what you (and @StreetlightX) are talking about is section 5.2 (save you wading through the whole thing). It talks about how active inference models deal with (and better explain) the formation of habits which are in contravention of goals - ie ones which are no longer updating priors. It's quite complicated, but basically, the response from the habit (the forward-acting signal) become the expected input in an higher-order model. As such, so long as the habit is delivering the predicted output , there's no need to change the model-choosing model above it (in the hierarchy). it shows (or claims to) how an uncertainty reduction model better predicts habit vs investigative choices than a purely goal-directed model.

My interpretation of Will is that it is dumb, blind, emotive force that causes us to exist. In a humanistic existential context, it would be the Will to live and not commit suicide, for example. In other words as apposed to instinct, we have an intrinsic need to live and feel happy. In an ontological way, it is our need to be. We want to feel happy; it is our way of Being.

And in that sense, the OP question becomes, like Colin Cooper's post suggested, we don't learn emotions. Another example (from Colin's post) one could add to the mix of things, is the emotive feeling and phenomenon of listening to music. We don't learn the initial emotional experience when listening to same. Nor do we understand what biological advantages that has to our species. When we hear it, we like it; it feels good to us.

Emotions themselves are not concepts. Our will to listen to music (jazz, rock, country, classical, bebop) confers no biological advantages to our species. Same with Love. (Lower life forms utilize instinct and emergent properties genetically coded to procreate.) The will (and choice) to love someone, listen to music, or any (higher order) emotional phenomenon is an innate feature of higher consciousness.

What is the nature of this feeling to satisfy those existential needs, is my question to Streetlightx. — 3017amen

I understand the will to be informed directly by an organism’s overall relational structure (not necessarily an awareness of that structure), including intellect and affect, and in turn it determines and initiates the specific interactions of that relational structure. Like emotion concepts, the idea that ‘life’, ‘love’, ‘happiness’ or ‘survival’ are innate concepts or instincts that simply exist - hardwired into our genetics and identical for every human - I believe is a misunderstanding, not only of how concepts are formed from empirical experience, but also of what is ultimately valuable or meaningful.

I need to clarify a distinction here, first of all, between learning about emotions as concepts, and constructing the concepts from scratch by learning to differentiate sensory information.

When we listen to music, what we get from the sensory event depends on our capacity to differentiate and interrelate diverse information from sound values. The more refined this capacity, the more diverse our interoception of affect - including both pleasant and unpleasant, arousing and calming sensations - across the duration of the sensory event. The more our affect varies, the more differentiated potential information we would experience in the one sensory event. And the more differentiated potential information, the more meaningful our relation to that experience.

In this way, instances of ‘listening to music’ have a general pattern of being highly affective for those have the capacity to appreciate the diversity. But the concept of ‘listening to music’ is perceived by many as generally pleasurable not because of any supposed ‘biological advantage’ or ‘survival value’, but because it satisfies a much deeper impetus: to increase awareness, connection and collaboration. In my view, it is this deeper impetus that drives the will - not just in humanity, but across all forms of life and matter.

'The will' is a grammatical mistake. A modal verb mistaken for a substantive and pretending to be of any philosophical interest at all. The less it is taken seriously the better.

‘To be aware of’ is not the same as ‘to experience’. Often what we experience, we are aware of only as sensory events - even though we integrate the information at the level of experience - that is, as a relation of value or potential to act.
— Possibility

I acknowledge that there are nuances to the two terms, but can you elaborate on why you find the interchangeability of these two terms inappropriate within the contexts here addressed? Both terms have relatively imprecise definitions, and I so far find that they can both be used to reference the same given attribute of conscious being. To approach this differently: to be consciously aware of X entails one’s conscious experience of X; conversely, to consciously experience X entails one’s conscious awareness of X; such that one cannot be had without the other. If you’re using the terms “awareness” and “experience” in specialized senses that makes the aforementioned usage invalid, can you point me to the literature where the two terms are thus differentiated? — javra

I agree that these terms are generally interchangeable, so it gets very confusing. In my view, ‘awareness’ refers to informative interaction as a general term, and often needs to be qualified in relation to the level of awareness, as well as whether this awareness is generally speaking, or an awareness ‘of X’. I try to reserve ‘experience’ to refer particularly to a conceptual level of awareness, mainly because we tend to use ‘experience’ as a noun in reference to this level of awareness.

In your examples here you’ve used the term ‘conscious’ to qualify both experience and awareness. In my view, to experience X one need not be conscious of X, but to be aware of X one need not be conscious at all. And I’ve now realised my error: that the distinction I was referring to was conscious awareness.

To be consciously aware of X entails one’s experience of X, but while to experience X entails consciousness, it does not entail one to be consciously aware of X.

I’m saying that we’re not always self-consciously aware of all the information we integrate from experience. This is where affective realism becomes an issue: when the cause of a particular affect is uncertain. A particularly dreary day can leave us feeling depressed without recognising that the weather had anything to with it. Or we may not realise that the reason we’ve been feeling on edge all day is because we’ve been anticipating an encounter with someone that didn’t eventuate.

'The will' is a grammatical mistake. A modal verb mistaken for a substantive and pretending to be of any philosophical interest at all. The less it is taken seriously the better.

Yet if I were to propse that "the affect" is a grammatical mistake, a verb mistaken for a substantive pretending to be of any philosophical interest at all, no doubt you would say I was just an idiot missing the point.

Probably.

'The will' is a grammatical mistake. A modal verb mistaken for a substantive and pretending to be of any philosophical interest at all. The less it is taken seriously the better. — StreetlightX

So that would explain the reason for this, then:

I don't think anyone really understands will, it's just one of those things. There's many different ways to approach it, but you get side tracked before you get there, as if there's a forcefield which surrounds it and deflects you off this way or that way, depending on your approach. — Metaphysician Undercover

There's really nothing there, no such thing as the will. It appears as a big deception, created by those Christian theologians who've constructed and maintained the concept. That sure makes things a lot simpler, applying Occam's razor.

Imagine training machines instead of trying to program them. — praxis

:ok:

The price of the neural network revolution was giving up (or at least severely compromising) the model of the brain (or computer) as a processor of stored symbols - internal words and pictures representing external objects. Ironically, it had to revert to Skinner's behaviourist model, a "black box". Training, without necessarily understanding the learning. — bongo fury

(Admittedly off-topic, except possibly as regards the question of internal (or external) words and pictures representing internal processes.)

Are you familiar with Damasio? I believe he differentiated between ‘feeling’ and ‘emotion’ in pretty much the same way you’ve briefly outlined.

Excuse my fumbling, I think it goes something like emotions are felt and feelings are experienced - I guess the ‘experienced’ would be akin to ‘conceptualised’.

Undoubtedly emotions are physiological, yet we may not be fully conscious of the emotion at the time - or confuse emotional states. Attending to and learning how and when emotions present is certainly a learned ‘skill’.

Well, it seems to me to be the case that we simply decide. We don't become aware that we do so. Someone else may become aware that we've made a decision, but we don't. Similarly, we think some way about something. But we don't become aware of the fact we do so. If we decide or think, there's nothing we need become aware of, the nature of which we must determine ,and to which we must assign the category or characteristic non-empirical.

I can't help but wonder if these efforts at definition are misleading when we refer to becoming aware of what we do or are doing, as it seems to me clear that awareness doesn't come into play except, perhaps, in remarkable circumstances (sleepwalking?). The fact that we might in very limited circumstances become aware we did something doesn't mean that it's accurate to say we are aware that we decide, or think, or feel.

Well, it seems to me to be the case that we simply decide. We don't become aware that we do so. [...] The fact that we might in very limited circumstances become aware we did something doesn't mean that it's accurate to say we are aware that we decide, or think, or feel. — Ciceronianus the White

Your point of view is very curious to me.

If we’re not usually aware of our decisions, thoughts, or feelings (I don’t recall using the phrase “become aware”, which alters the common use meaning of the term) how is it that it can be concluded that these usually occur in us in the first place?

You mention:

Someone else may become aware that we've made a decision, but we don't. — Ciceronianus the White

But if an individual that is contemplating others does not him/herself hold direct awareness of making decisions, of having thoughts, of sensing feelings, and the like, on what grounds would such individual discern others as factually having the capacity to engage in these activities?

"Aware" is defined as "having or showing realization, perception or knowledge" by Merriam Webster online, and "having knowledge or discernment of something" according to the American Heritage dictionary online.

For me, it seems very odd to say that we have realization, or perception, or knowledge of the fact we've made a decision, or have decided something, or that we have discernment of a decision we've made or discern that we've made one. Thus, we don't often hear someone say "I perceive (or realize, or know or discern--or am aware) I've made a decision." Nor do we hear someone say "I have no realization (or perception or knowledge--or am not aware) of making a decision." I think it's very odd to say the same regarding a thought or feeling we have.

I think this oddity indicates there's a problem with claiming we're aware we've made a decision, or have a thought or a feeling. None of them are things we are or are not aware of.

Not to sound too pretentious (nor to deny that I am), but expressing personal opinions in reply to logical questions that are left unaddressed is not philosophy. Its fine as far as it goes, but I'm here to engage in philosophy, myself.

Thus, we don't often hear someone say "I perceive (or realize, or know or discern--or am aware) I've made a decision." — Ciceronianus the White

So I take it that you would say you don't know (edit: or cannot appraise whether you know or not) what decisions you make or have made, nor what thoughts you contemplate, nor what feelings you have. I call bs.

I'm saying I think it's inappropriate to treat our own decisions, thoughts, feelings as if they were like objects or things we discern, realize, perceive , or know. There are objects and things we discern, realize, perceive and know, through observation, testing, investigation, interaction, etc., but our own thoughts and feelings are not such objects or things. There's no need for us to perceive or realize or even to know them in the sense we know or can come to know the rest of the world. If I say "I know I feel hot" I'm saying something bizarre.

Our decisions, thoughts and feelings shouldn't be conceived of as if they are things generated or lurking in our minds or brains or bodies of which we're aware. I think that's to reify them

I'm saying I think it's inappropriate to treat our own decisions, thoughts, feelings as if they were like objects or things [...] — Ciceronianus the White

In your worry about reifying decisions, thoughts, and feelings into objects or things – something which was never once done nor would be by anyone with any amount of reflection – you might in fact be reifying awareness. As if it’s customary for a person to say, “I’m aware of (alternatively: I know, I discern, or I realize that I am) seeing a tree,” instead of just saying, “I see a tree.” Or worse, concluding that because the former expression is not ordinary (this on grounds that it is implicitly understood and thereby redundant) the person is therefore “neither aware nor unaware” of seeing a tree.

I know when I’m thirsty; so were someone to tell me that I’m thirsty when I’m not, I will be disagreeing on matters of fact, not on matters of semantics or of opinion: matters of fact regarding what I hold direct awareness of and the other doesn’t. I might be dehydrated, but if I’m not thirsty, I’m not thirsty. The same applies to major decisions in my life – for which I might feel pride or regret precisely due to knowing what decisions I’ve taken. And so forth. The just mentioned is common practice wherever I’ve been ... with the exception of this forum.

And in your likely reification of “awareness” you seem unable to provide an account of how we arrive at the conclusion that decisions, thoughts, and feelings occur in the first place. Something I find extremely lacking philosophically.

If this is of any help, cognition has a lot to do with cognizance, the latter being defined as “notice or awareness” by Wiktionary for the context here addressed. Being cognizant of (e.g., one’s introspections) is thereby interchangeable with being aware of (e.g., one’s introspections).

Are you familiar with Damasio? I believe he differentiated between ‘feeling’ and ‘emotion’ in pretty much the same way you’ve briefly outlined. — I like sushi

Yeah, I briefly referenced Damasio's own distinction earlier in the thread somewhere, and though I've read Descartes' Error, it was a loong time ago. There's definite overlaps with his approach and that of Barrett, though I believe Barrett makes more explicit and makes alot more hay of the fact that emotions have a predictive, inferential role, and are productively thought of in terms of concepts and cateogorizations.

I’ll have to look into Barrett more.

1. There are alternative futures A and B, A is made the present, meaning A is chosen
2. Then there is the question "What was it that made the decision turn out A?"
3. Then the answer is a choice between subjective words X and Y
4. Where either answer X or Y is equally valid, but a forced answer X or Y is invalid.

It means that emotions can only be identified by spontaneous expression of emotion with free will, resulting in an opinion on what the emotions are. As well someone's own emotions, as someone else's, can only be identified with a chosen opinion.

So if someone chooses A, then you can express a chosen opinion that he chose A out of fear, jealousy, lust, hate, love, joy etc. And any answer would be equally logically valid.

Some answers may then in turn be judged (with a chosen opinion) as weird, mean, unfair, stupid, but it is not actually a logical error to be weird mean unfair and stupid.

The subjective spirit (emotions), chooses which way the objective material turns out.

So actually the original poster saying that anger is a varying set of behaviors is error, because then one is forced to conclude it is anger if the behavior corresponds with the definition of angry behavior. Forced opinions are a logic error, because basically they assert that a choice is free and forced, which is an error of contradiction.

But one can first judge a general behavior to be an expression of anger, like stomping feet, so then you have a preformed judgment. Then when someone stomps their feet, you only have to decide if or not to follow your preformed judgment.

That's basically how the laws in court work, they are preformed judgements about what's right and wrong.

the point is that we can be wrong about our emotions not just in the sense that they're not suited to our modern world (that idea has been around for years) but that they're not 'suited' to any world, they don't come pre-packaged and suited to some set of circumstances predicted by evolution — Isaac

Isaac DESTROYS evolutionary psychology. (Maybe).

How I'm thinking about emotions in the natural kind flavour are that they are attractors in the dynamical system of active inference given the statistical regularities of our current lifestyles. So, a dynamical system is a pair of collections, a collection of parameters; called states, like the state of a neuron; and a collection of update rules that maps states to other states; an application of an update rule moves a state "forward in time".

Like if you had the parameter x, and the update rule f(x)=x^2, if the initial value of x is 2, then the updates are f(2)=2^2=4, f(4)=4^2=16, f(16)=16^2=196 and so on. The "time" there is how many times the update rule f is applied.

An attractor in a dynamical system is a collection of states that map into themselves under the update rule. You can't escape it, like a ball rolling to the bottom of a hill. For the above map f(x)=x^2, 1 would be an attractor, as would 0, since f(1)=1^2=1 and f(0)=0^2=0.

A more complicated attractor might be whether an asteroid would enter into orbit around Earth. It'll come from some angle, and when it non-negligibly gets pulled by Earth's gravity, it might start to rotate around Earth. The attractor there would be the collection of all orbits around Earth that the asteroids take.

The collection of states in the active inference model is the collection of states it references, the update rules are the state transitions (what we predict them to be and what our interventions reveal about them intermingling into learning). I'm unclear whether "state" refers to something like the state of a neuron, or whether it refers to something like the state of an environmental parameter, or whether at one stage in the process it refers to an environmental parameter (well, in its encoded form) and at others it refers to neuron states. The active inference system's dynamics also don't seem to have exact state access, like the above square map "knows" that 1 comes in as input, what goes into the update rule in the active inference system looks to be an uncertain summary of each state (from a previous prediction). Anyway.

The system described regarding habit formation in the Friston paper you linked doesn't have this "gets stuck there forever" property regarding habits though, a prior becomes change resistant by having its updates diminished by previous success using the policies (actions/worldly interventions, in the paper foraging strategies in a maze) it proposes. So thinking of emotions (not core affect alone) as learned, they would need to be change resistant habits that activate based upon context similarity to the predictions (bodily-environmental model) their representations/encoded patterns generate. When evidence accumulates that the activating context for the habit is no longer present, the agent switches to an exploratory mode that yields the formation of new habits.

If we take that idea that new context recognition is impeded by having a strong prior for what context we're in and what to do in it, it seems to me to fit quite neatly with Barrett's "language-as-a-context" view (from here, the language paper you linked).

In addition, emotion words cause a perceptual shift in the way that faces are seen. Morphed faces depicting an equal blend of happiness and anger are encoded as angrier when those faces are paired with the word ‘angry’, and they are encoded as even angrier when participants are asked to explain why those faces are angry [19].

Language seems to have the ability to prime which habits are simulated and enacted; and language as a cultural artifact/shared repository of symbols and meanings changes much more slowly than the fleeting associations that shape our emerging experience of emotions. It's a relatively time stable network of associations we partake in by analogous simulations. Moreover, language plays a mediating role in valuation of core affect. So: it changes slowly, it primes for which habits to activate by being a context, it mediates valuation in accordance with its own system of associations. It also seems to amplify predictions/interventions that are more typical of it when it's used as a prime (people primed with angry words report faces as more angry).

That seems to give language the power to canalise the developmental landscape of our emotions. It pulls core affect, through valuation, towards that which it typifies. That makes emotions like "anger", "sadness", despite having variable content, look a lot like attractors to me.

Emotions are tied up in identity, and identity can't really be explained. It just is what it is and is self-explanatory. You can talk about inputs and outputs all day, but that will explain nothing as far as emotions filtered through a particular identity.

There isn't one standard for anger or love. There are as many variants of emotion as there are people.

you seem unable to provide an account of how we arrive at the conclusion that decisions, thoughts, and feelings occur in the first place. — javra

We seem to be talking past each other. We approach these issues in very different ways. I'll try to explain my approach or view, though I expect you disagree with it.

When someone asks me for an account of how we arrive at the conclusion that decisions, thoughts and feelings occur in the first place, I have a tendency to wonder, first, whether there is any doubt that they occur. Only a faux doubt a la Descartes, I think, who famously and I think unfortunately wondered, in effect, how we arrive at the conclusion that we exist.

I think nobody really doubts that what we call decisions, thoughts and feelings occur in the sense that we make them, have them. So this becomes what? A search for their causes? That's a search I think we can engage in usefully even as to what we don't doubt takes place. But you refer to "an account of how we arrive at the conclusion that decisions, thoughts and feelings occur in the first place." I don't know how to interpret that as anything but an account of how we conclude that we make decisions, have thoughts and have feelings. Which is to say, an account of how we conclude that what we don't actually doubt takes place does, indeed, take place. I find it hard to conceive of a reason for seeking or making such an account, nor is it clear to me we can in any meaningful sense. If that means I lack the philosophical attitude, so be it.

I think what we call decisions, thought and feelings, and anything else we say we do or have, arise from living in the world. They're the results of our interaction with the environment of which we're a part. We don't discern or realize or perceive them, or conclude they occur, any more than we discern or realize or perceive or conclude that we're coughing.

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It has nothing to do with doubt. It has to do with how we obtain conscious knowledge of our decisions, thoughts, and feelings given our supposed unawareness of them, as well as our supposed unawareness of ourselves as actively deciding, thinking, or feeling.

And if you will recall the two initial posts you took issue with, my entire argument pivoted on decisions, thoughts, and some certain emotions not being perceptions – hence on our knowledge of these not being empirical. It would be a strawman to claim that I’ve been presenting these as perceptual.

We seem to be talking past each other. — Ciceronianus the White

It seems to be so to me as well.

Isaac DESTROYS evolutionary psychology. (Maybe). — fdrake

Ha! It was asking for it, it spilled my pint.

How I'm thinking about emotions in the natural kind flavour are that they are attractors in the dynamical system of active inference given the statistical regularities of our current lifestyles. — fdrake

Yes, that's it exactly. The essentialist rhetorically asks "Why are expressions of happiness (smiling, laughing, dancing...) similar across the world?" . But the answer is not because it is some natural kind as they might hope. It's because it's a statistical regularity of some basic aspects of human culture. The same can even be said even of biological regularities. Turing's reaction-diffusion equations for example are the basic explanation for most skin and shell pattering in nature - nearly. They explain them sufficiently to be regarded as the source of the regularity, but not quite sufficiently to be predictive with 100% success. If I were to bet on how a shell pattern might come out given the mechanics of it's growth, I'd bet on the patten generated by reaction-diffusion equations, but they're just a statistical aggregate, not complete description. So what I'm saying is that I don't think the re-imagining of classes as statistical summaries here is limited to cultural artefacts - as you mentioned to me earlier, this is all about population thinking.

It turns out, that one of the factors which disrupts the influence of reaction-diffusion equations on skin patterns is temperature. It changes the chemical reactions in the cells sufficiently to break them out of that particular pigmentation reaction. I think with emotion and emotional responses, we have a kind of Nash equilibria which we've learnt, so we're reluctant to change strategy, but similar to the skin pigmentation patterns, there exist environmental variables which shift us out of that algorithm.

A more complicated attractor might be whether an asteroid would enter into orbit around Earth. It'll come from some angle, and when it non-negligibly gets pulled by Earth's gravity, it might start to rotate around Earth. The attractor there would be the collection of all orbits around Earth that the asteroids take. — fdrake

Have you read any Jack Cohen? He applies the sort of maths you're referring to here to biology (from a mechanistic point of view - how mechanisms in biology like cell mitosis yield semi-chaotic results, but with strange attractors toward the familiar end results).

I'm unclear whether "state" refers to something like the state of a neuron, or whether it refers to something like the state of an environmental parameter, or whether at one stage in the process it refers to an environmental parameter (well, in its encoded form) and at others it refers to neuron states. — fdrake

I think the 'state' of an environmental parameter is outside of the Markov blanket, so we're only dealing with states of neural cortices. The initiation is from the signal (from the eye, skin, nociceptors, etc) which originates in the exterior world, but does not necessarily represent it (it will be an extract, biased by the the response from the previous inference). I'm aware of the fact that we have an unfinished discussion about the extent to which it does represent it - I don't think we quite agreed on it. Incidentally, @javra I think this is where you're misinterpreting what Barrett means.

my entire argument pivoted on decisions, thoughts, and some certain emotions not being perceptions – hence on our knowledge of these not being empirical. — javra

Barret is presenting a theory of cognitive processing, not epistemology. As such, none of the inputs are empirical in the sense you're using here. The inputs into the active inference models are all hidden variables outside of the Markov blanket for the system. Perception inference systems deal with raw signals (not raw data - that would require interpretation, which hasn't happened yet). The emotion related cortices are only dealing with signals fro other parts of the brain, so when Barrett refers to perception and interoception, she's referring to signals from parts of the brain responsible for predicting the cause of such raw inputs, not the raw inputs themselves. So introducing signals from other parts of the brain has little to no effect on her model.

Anyway,

The system described regarding habit formation in the Friston paper you linked doesn't have this "gets stuck there forever" property regarding habits though, a prior becomes change resistant by having its updates diminished by previous success using the policies (actions/worldly interventions, in the paper foraging strategies in a maze) it proposes. — fdrake

Indeed, but does what I've talked about above bring other biological systems a little closer the Friston's habits? I think there's not such a dividing line as all biological systems seem to be behave like this. Priors for predicting the patterns of a seashell seem stuck in reaction-diffusion equations - until temperature increases beyond the threshold for the model. But that's an aside - I see what you're getting at here.

So thinking of emotions (not core affect alone) as learned, they would need to be change resistant habits that activate based upon context similarity to the predictions (bodily-environmental model) their representations/encoded patterns generate. When evidence accumulates that the activating context for the habit is no longer present, the agent switches to an exploratory mode that yields the formation of new habits. — fdrake

Exactly. And how many other mental habits fit into this pattern. We have emotion and learning thus far. Logic? Embodied training (like riding a bike)?

Language seems to have the ability to prime which habits are simulated and enacted; and language as a cultural artifact/shared repository of symbols and meanings changes much more slowly than the fleeting associations that shape our emerging experience of emotions. It's a relatively time stable network of associations we partake in by analogous simulations. Moreover, language plays a mediating role in valuation of core affect. So: it changes slowly, it primes for which habits to activate by being a context, it mediates valuation in accordance with its own system of associations. It also seems to amplify predictions/interventions that are more typical of it when it's used as a prime (people primed with angry words report faces as more angry). — fdrake

Yeah, how can you express an emotion that's somewhere between anger and fear when your entire language, you're whole means of talking (and possibly even thinking) about the world doesn't contain a word for such a feeling? Like with Wittgenstein's talk about 'pain'. We're not only using the word to describe the socially shared experience, the mere existence of the word is acting as a resistor to updating or modifying that experience too quickly, which is necessary for communication to work.

What interests me here, is the extent to which this resistance to change from a predicable pattern actually serves a social function of it's own. Like the influence the word 'pain' has on our ability to express nuances of feeling actually serves a function (if we each had our own unique word to define 'our' pain, we'd never be able to talk about it). emotions are, at least in a large part, a means of social communication. It's possible that some of the restrictions society places of the classification are acting in a similar way - constraining private variety to make public expression meaningful?

It's possible that some of the restrictions society places of the classification are acting in a similar way - constraining private variety to make public expression meaningful? — Isaac

Like all social constructs, agreement or uniformity is important to function, and the price of being out of sync with the socially constructed emotional world is an imbalanced body budget (stress).