I second that emotion

[From Rick Marken (961009.1250)]

Bill Benzon (961009) --

Is anger that leads to successfull and effective aggressive action without
conflict a good or a bad emotion?

According to PCT, it would then be a non-existent emotion. If you want to slug
someone and you are able to just go ahead and do it (because slugging another
person doesn't conflict with any of your other goals) then you presumably
feel no emotion at all as you successfully slug the person. The physiological
resources mustered to effect the intended slug are simply "used up" by the
control process as you carry out the slug. You feel no more emotion after you
slug the person than you would feel after lifting a glass of water; you just
do it.

My guess is that anxiety is the subjective experience of having control
systems in conflict and thereby out of action.

Anxiety is a different emotion than anger and it seems to come from a
different kind of conflict (a conflict involving different perceptual
variables). In my experience, anger is the perception that results from a
thwarted effort to do something like slug my brother (slugging is thwarted
by the system in me that is controlling for being my brother's keeper);
anxiety, on the other hand, seems to be the perception that results from a
thwarted effort to cover my tracks if I actually manage to slug him
(covering my tracks is being thwarted by the system controlling for honoring
my father and mother) :wink:

McCulloch figured that the RF monitored the entire state of the brain...It
would do some computation over that state and commit the animal to the mode
which best served the current highest priority need...In this view, emotion
could be about the actions of the modal control system.

How would this "modal control system" theory of emotion explain the fact that
I got more and more angry as I kept reading about it;-)

Best

Rick

Rick Marken (961009.1250) sez:

According to PCT, it would then be a non-existent emotion. If you want to slug
someone and you are able to just go ahead and do it (because slugging another
person doesn't conflict with any of your other goals) then you presumably
feel no emotion at all as you successfully slug the person.

Not plausible IMHO. Here you are using PCT as a central metaphor in one of
BP's entertainments.

McCulloch figured that the RF monitored the entire state of the brain...It
would do some computation over that state and commit the animal to the mode
which best served the current highest priority need...In this view, emotion
could be about the actions of the modal control system.

How would this "modal control system" theory of emotion explain the fact that
I got more and more angry as I kept reading about it;-)

Don't know. But if merely reading about it makes you angry, then I can see
that I'm likely to be the bringer of much anger to your happy home.

···

********************************************************
William L. Benzon 518.272.4733
161 2nd Street bbenzon@global2000.net
Troy, NY 12180 http://www.newsavanna.com/wlb/
USA
********************************************************
What color would you be if you didn't know what you was?
That's what color I am.
********************************************************

[From Bruce Gregory (9610091710 EDT)]

Rick Marken (961009.1250)

Bill Benzon (961009) --

>Is anger that leads to successfull and effective aggressive action without
>conflict a good or a bad emotion?

According to PCT, it would then be a non-existent emotion. If you want to slug
someone and you are able to just go ahead and do it (because slugging another
person doesn't conflict with any of your other goals) then you presumably
feel no emotion at all as you successfully slug the person. The physiological
resources mustered to effect the intended slug are simply "used up" by the
control process as you carry out the slug. You feel no more emotion after you
slug the person than you would feel after lifting a glass of water; you just
do it.

Not too persuasive. You were angry because something didn't fit
your pictures. (He failed to smile when he said you were a
PCT-loving sod buster.) Hitting him might remind you of other
slights. You could become even angrier and hit him again. Your
most likely feeling would be pleasure as he crumpled under your
brutal assault. If you have these emotions after lifting a
glass of water, we are very different systems :wink:

Bruce

[From Rick Marken (961009.1600)]

Me:

If you want to slug someone and you are able to just go ahead and do it
(because slugging another person doesn't conflict with any of your other
goals) then you presumably feel no emotion at all as you successfully slug
the person...You feel no more emotion after you slug the person than you
would feel after lifting a glass of water; you just do it.

Bruce Gregory (9610091710 EDT) --

Not too persuasive. You were angry because something didn't fit your
pictures.

In the example above, there is no anger because there is nothing (like
internal conflict or marked external resistance) preventing achievement of
the goal (a slugged face). I am continuously eliminating discrepencies
between what I experience and what I want to experience (my "picture"). There
is emotion (like anger) only when something that prevents the elimination of
the discrepency.

If you have these emotions after lifting a glass of water, we are very
different systems :wink:

My point was that a person who is unconflicted about causing another person
pain (I think we call such people "psychopaths") will slug or kill someone,
if that's what they want to do, with no more emotion than if they wanted to
drink a glass of water -- assuming they can do it as skillfully and with as
little resistence as they get when drinking a glass of water. I, personally,
don't like causing people pain so having the goal of slugging another person
would result in far more emotion for me than would having the goal of lifting
a glass of water.

But I am the same _kind_ of system as the one who slugs or kills with no
emotion. We are both control systems; we just have differnent goals.

Me:

According to PCT, it would then be a non-existent emotion.

Bill Benzon (961009) --

Not plausible IMHO.

Why not?

Me:

How would this "modal control system" theory of emotion explain the fact that
I got more and more angry as I kept reading about it;-)

Bill:

Don't know.

It doesn't seem like much of a theory of emotion if it doesn't have anything
to say about why I experience an emotion;-)

But if merely reading about it makes you angry, then I can see that I'm
likely to be the bringer of much anger to your happy home.

Don't you ever get angry about some of the things you read? I think a bit of
anger gives some nice "color" to the reading experience. I feel that my happy
home has been made even "happier" by the anger I experience when I read King
Lear, Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations and, now, Bill Benzon;-)

Best

Rick

[From Bruce Gregory (9610009.1930 EDT)]

Rick Marken (961009.1600)

In the example above, there is no anger because there is nothing

(like

internal conflict or marked external resistance) preventing

achievement of

the goal (a slugged face). I am continuously eliminating

discrepencies

between what I experience and what I want to experience (my

"picture"). There

is emotion (like anger) only when something that prevents the

elimination of

the discrepency.

This still is not obvious to me. I'll brood about it for a while.
Would you
maintain that the excitement a hunter feels when he spots a deer is
the
result of internal conflict? Seems more like Freud than Powers. Tell
me
more, please.

Bruce

[From Rick Marken (961009.2230)]

Bruce Gregory (9610009.1930 EDT)--

Would you maintain that the excitement a hunter feels when he spots a deer is
the result of internal conflict? Seems more like Freud than Powers. Tell
me more, please.

I think the perceptual experience of an emotion -- what it _feels_ like --
is a perception of something about one's physiological state. This is not
an earth shattering proposal; I think most theories of emotion make this
assumption. So the big question is "why do the physiological states that we
experience as
emotions only happen sometimes and not others?" The PCT explanation is
simply that such states occur when the control hierarchy is reorganizing.
These physiological states are the sensed consequence of continuously and
unsuccessfully driving the outputs of lower level control systems --
muscles and glands. So the perceptions that we experience as an emotion
result when the control hierarchy is reorganizing. Reorganization begins
when control is failing in some way. One of the main causes of failed
control is conflict, intra- and inter- personal. Another cause of
reorganization is an "insuperable" disturbance to a controlled variable.

From my own experience it seems that the typical cause of the

reorganization process that results in the perception I call "anger" is
internal conflict; wanting to both hurt and not hurt someone (or something)
at the same time. I don't hunt but my guess is that the excitement felt by
the hunter when he spots a deer is also a result of internal conflict;
wanting to both move toward the deer (to get a good shot) and not move (so
as not to scare it away) at the same time.

Perhaps an example of an emotion resulting from an interpersonal conflict
is the sadness experienced by the lover pursuing a reluctant sweetheart. A
conflict exists if the two have different references for "closeness". The
lover wants to be close; the sweetheart wants some "space". The more the
lover tries to be close, the more the sweetheart pushes away. The lover has
persistent error in his control hierarchy, resulting in reorganization; the
physiological state that results is felt as "sadness".

Perhaps an example of an emotion resulting from insuperable disturbance is
the fear experienced by a person in an earthquake. Here you want to control
for stability and for not being crushed; there is not much you can do about
either. While the disturbance is in effect there is all kinds of
reorgabization going on, with the corresponding physiological state that we
now call "fear".

Anyway, I can see that this is all wrong because Bruce Abbott (961009.1930
EST) knows the correct explanation of emotions -- the one based on
evolution. So "never mind":wink:

Best

Rick

[From Bill Powers (961010.0915 MDT)]

Rick Marken (961009.1600) --

In the example above, there is no anger because there is nothing (like
internal conflict or marked external resistance) preventing achievement of
the goal (a slugged face).

What I've said about emotion is based on my observations of me, plus things
others have said about their emotions. If someone else observes something
different, then my neat theory has to be modified, doesn't it? Here's more
or less how I worked it out. If others experience emotions differently, of
course, then I am alone in this kind of experience.

First, I noticed that emotions are felt -- that is, they are perceptions of
something happening inside of me.

Second, I noticed that emotions seem to be caused by things happening to me.
That seemed strange; I wondered why there should be this apparently useless
hookup so that my perceptions simply cause feelings to arise. Naturally I
thought of the cause-effect illusion, and wondered what might be disturbed
by the external events that are being opposed by some control process. I
didn't get an immediate answer to that, but that thought led to another --
could the sensations of emotion be part of an action that is opposing, or
trying to oppose, some disturbance?

For at least one emotion -- anger -- the answer was easy to see: yes. When
something "makes me angry" the _first_ thing that happens is that I want to
DO something about it. If I don't have any urge to push back, there's no
feeling of anger. The tipoff really came from an incident when I was a
little slow on the uptake and didn't realize that someone had just insulted
the hell out of me. My first reaction was simply puzzlement: did this
reviewer (of my 1971 Rat Paper) really not understand that the data in that
paper were real? Then I realized that he was accusing me of making it up,
and POW, I wanted to strangle the son of a bitch!

In this case it was obvious that the reviewer's words were not simply a
stimulus connected to my adrenal glands. Before those adrenals kicked in, I
had to _understand_ what was being said, and then realize that it was
something that violated my earnest desire to be and be thought an honest
person. What triggered the emotion was not the words, but the fact that I
experienced a GREAT BIG GALLOLLOPING ERROR. And the immediate result of that
big error was for my whole body to get revved up to provide the energy it
would take to rip that reviewer limb from limb. I was all ready to go into
action, just as if my very life had been threatened -- which it had.

Of course, since we don't directly experience reference signals or error
signals, the first thing I knew consciously about this reaction was the
sudden flood of feeling and the ensuing imaginary scenario of getting in
this reviewer's face and shouting my outrage at him. It wasn't at all
obvious which was the chicken and which the egg. It was only much later,
after I had sent my (successful) outraged objection to the editor, that I
could step back and reflect on the incident, and tease out the sequence of
events that had taken place. If I had not initially misunderstood what the
reviewer was getting at, I probably would not have seen the role played by
my goals and perceptions, and the fact that the feelings arose only AFTER I
had done a double take and re-read the passages in the review several more
times. Then I thought, "What? Why that -- but he's saying -- my God, does
the editor think I fudged the data?" By that time I was shaking with
tension, literal muscular tension, muscle pitted against muscle. If that
reviewer had been in front of me at that instant I might well have slugged him.

So for that incident at least I had an answer: the emotion of anger arises
as a consequence of an error big enough to call for drastic aggressive
action against something. First the error, then the emotion.

With that picture in mind, it wasn't hard to visualized the general
arrangement. A high-order system experiences a large error. The error signal
is routed in two general directions: toward lower-order behavioral systems
that will produce the motor behavior that corrects the error, and to
lower-order biochemical or organ systems that will prepare the body to
support energetic action. Of course all these preparations for action
generate sensations, sensations from the musculature and from the sensory
monitors that tell us of our own biological states. The whole constellation
of changed perceptions is what we call an emotion. For the emotion of anger,
this is perfectly clear to me. It's not so clear how it applies to other
emotions, but the general proposition seems worth pursuing.

After this initial insight (what I thought was an insight), I remembered
what others have said about common emotional experiences. In combat, for
instance, it has been said that a soldier suddenly confronted with a
powerful threat to life will act instantly and very energetically to escape,
and only after a successful avoidance of danger will begin to feel the
"fear." "I was too busy saving my ass to think about being afraid," is one
way it's been said. The woman who lifted the car off her child, as I
remember it, said that she wasn't worried about the child; all she could
think of was getting the car off her. The prizefighter who pulverizes his
opponent would not say he is angry at the opponent; he is too busy
pulverizing him to indulge in feelings.

Common anecdotes like these made me wonder why it is that sometimes we act
very energetically but without experiencing anything we would call an
emotion. It's not that there's no feeling; it's just that the experience we
have doesn't seem to belong among the emotions. That observation led to the
next: that we feel the emotions most strongly when the action needed to
correct the initiating error is ineffective, or even worse, impossible to
carry out. The most frustrating situation is the one in which we are all
ready, behaviorally and biochemically, to take a drastic action, but are
stopped from even trying to take it because of conflicting goals. In
general, we feel the emotion the most strongly when the error doesn't get
corrected.

Suppose you're in Africa on a safari (an experience I'm sure we all have
frequently), and you're standing just outside your car watching a herd of
rhinoceroses (good Lord, how do you spell that?). You see one of them eyeing
you, and then it starts trotting toward you, faster and faster. Feeling a
little frisson of apprehension, you decide to get back into the car and
drive away. And the door is locked, with the keys inside.

THAT'S when you really feel fear.

If that reviewer had made his suggestion to my face, I probably would have
immediately hauled out Verhave's data and letters and shown him that the
data were perfectly real. I might have been annoyed, but the error would
have been corrected immediately. But there I was holding a review in my
hand, with no way to make an objection or a correction, and the editor had
the very same review and for all I knew believed the accusation. What I felt
was not just rage, but _helpless_ rage. There wasn't a damned thing I could
do but bash out a letter on the typewriter, rip the page out, stuff it into
an envelope, slaver onto a stamp, and jam the whole thing into a mailbox.
And wait.

THAT'S when you really feel anger.

What all this leads me to think is that "emotion" is just one of those
old-fashioned words that refers in a vague way to some particularly
noticeable kind of experience, but doesn't have any important meaning of its
own. Obviously, in order to do anything physical, we have to be in a
physiological state that is right for supporting the motor behavior. The
same states that we call emotions when they are blasting away at full
strength are present when we do anything. Athletes getting ready for a race
or a jump deliberately induce heightened states of physical preparedness,
but they don't refer to them as emotions: they call the process "psyching
up." Actors and other performers do the same thing. The body, the entire
complex of organ systems and other biochemical processes, responds quickly
and sensitively to the demands made on it; every organ system receives
reference signals from the brain and even the hormone systems are governed,
somewhat less rapidly, by neural and chemical signals from the hypothalamus.
And there are sensory endings everywhere, which continually present us with
a picture of our own internal states.

When the states become relatively extreme, we recognize patterns and give
names to them, like fear, anger, love, hate, anxiety, jealousy, or
excitement. It's been known for a long time that many of the physiological
states that go with different emotions are really quite similar -- the
fight-or-flight syndrome, for example. What really distinguishes one emotion
from another, one feeling from another, is the _goal_ that is involved,
which specifies that some experience is to be brought into being. To be
angry is to want to attack; to be afraid is to want to get away. If you do
attack immediately, or flee, the extra adrenaline and glucose are quickly
burned up and the sensations attached to them dissappear. The anger and fear
are fleeting, if they are noticed at all. It's only when the preparation
goes to completion and the resources thus called up are not used that we go
on experiencing the feelings, crashing around the house, belting walls, and
endangering our loved ones and typewriters.

At least all that makes sense to me.

Best,

Bill P.

[Martin Taylor 961010 12:00]

Rick Marken (961009.1600)

Marken (earlier)

...You feel no more emotion after you slug the person than you
would feel after lifting a glass of water; you just do it.

Bruce Gregory (9610091710 EDT) --

Not too persuasive. You were angry because something didn't fit your
pictures.

Marken (961009.1600)

In the example above, there is no anger because there is nothing (like
internal conflict or marked external resistance) preventing achievement of
the goal (a slugged face). ...

Gregory

If you have these emotions after lifting a glass of water, we are very
different systems :wink:

My point was that a person who is unconflicted about causing another person
pain (I think we call such people "psychopaths") will slug or kill someone,
if that's what they want to do, with no more emotion than if they wanted to
drink a glass of water -- assuming they can do it as skillfully and with as
little resistence as they get when drinking a glass of water.

I'd like to third Rick's emotion, by pointing out that angry (or other)
emotion can very well attend failed perceptual control related to lifting
and drinking a glass of water. Control failure doesn't necessarily relate
to conflict, though it might. Imagine these scenarios, and judge whether,
for you, they might involve a perception of emotion.

1. Having drunk a lot of water recently and being told to drink a glass of
water, and doing it successfully though you didn't "really want to" (conflict,
but no problem of acting so as to drink).

2. Being very thirsty, lifting the glass full of water, and seeing it brown
and with little things swimming in it.

3. Being thirsty, seeing the glass on the table, full of crystal clear
water, and finding it to be stuck to the table top when you attempt to lift
it.

4. Being thirsty, seeing the glass on the table full of crystal clear water,
and seeing someone else's hand lifting it before you can get to it.

All these situations involve the control of perceptions related to lifting
and drinking from a glass of water. Are they all free of emotion, to you?
They wouldn't be, to me.

It is the failure to succeed in perceptual control, momentary or sustained,
that is likely to be accompanied by emotional perceptions, regardless of
whether the failure is associated with conflict, or whether the conflict
is between control systems internal to oneself or between one's own and
someone else's control systems.

As Rick said.

Martin

Bill Powers (961010.0915 MDT) sez:

What all this leads me to think is that "emotion" is just one of those
old-fashioned words that refers in a vague way to some particularly
noticeable kind of experience, but doesn't have any important meaning of its
own.

I think this is true. It's been 15 years since I looked seriously into the
emotion literature, but I certainly had the impression that, to some
extent, the various supposedly competing theories about emotion were
theories about different things, hence they were different theories.

I am certainly sympathetic to the linking emotion and reorganization. I
tend to think that us humans are almost constantly reorganizing something
or other and the perceptions commonly called emotions may well have a deep
an interesting relationship with emotion.

I note that, technically, what the McCulloch scheme is about is choosing
whether to, for example, drink some water, punch out a reviewer, take a
nap, etc. And surely the mechanism which makes such choices is going to be
close to the mechanism which in involved in reorganization. For, if one is
so hungry that intrinsic error sets in, and the vigorous use of the "find
food" operation has come up empty (that is, the eat mode is unsatisfied),
then one must reorganize.

···

********************************************************
William L. Benzon 518.272.4733
161 2nd Street bbenzon@global2000.net
Troy, NY 12180 http://www.newsavanna.com/wlb/
USA
********************************************************
What color would you be if you didn't know what you was?
That's what color I am.
********************************************************

[Martin Taylor 961010 14:20]

Bill Powers (961010.0915 MDT)

I hope you won't feel offended if I use a Markenism and say that this
was a wonderful, eye-opening, message.

So for that incident at least I had an answer: the emotion of anger arises
as a consequence of an error big enough to call for drastic aggressive
action against something. First the error, then the emotion.

First the error, THEN the emotion!!!

On two occasions, I have narrowly escaped death on the highway, in incidents
that happened too fast for me to do anything about. On both occasions, I
was minding my own business on my side of a two-lane highway, and was
confronted by a car passing the opposing traffic, once over the brow of
a hill, and once around a blind curve. On both occasions the other car
took to the shoulder and I passed between the two cars going the other way.
On one of the occasions, I had time to pinch toward the middle of the road
to give the other car room on the shoulder. On the other, I had no time to
do anything.

On both occasion I felt no fear as the event was happening, but a few minutes
later, I did. One time it was almost panic, and I had to pull over and stop,
several miles down the road from where the incident happened.

Huge error, long gone. No control action, though if events had happened
slower there would have been. Much emotion, but much later.

With that picture in mind, it wasn't hard to visualized the general
arrangement. A high-order system experiences a large error. The error signal
is routed in two general directions: toward lower-order behavioral systems
that will produce the motor behavior that corrects the error, and to
lower-order biochemical or organ systems that will prepare the body to
support energetic action. Of course all these preparations for action
generate sensations, sensations from the musculature and from the sensory
monitors that tell us of our own biological states. The whole constellation
of changed perceptions is what we call an emotion.

Yes, and the biochemical systems generally work rather more slowly than the
behavioral systems.

Yes!!

Martin

[From Bruce Gregory 961010.1000 EDT)]

Rick Marken (961009.2230)]

I think the perceptual experience of an emotion -- what it _feels_ like --
is a perception of something about one's physiological state. This is not
an earth shattering proposal; I think most theories of emotion make this
assumption. So the big question is "why do the physiological states that we
experience as
emotions only happen sometimes and not others?" The PCT explanation is
simply that such states occur when the control hierarchy is reorganizing.
These physiological states are the sensed consequence of continuously and
unsuccessfully driving the outputs of lower level control systems --
muscles and glands. So the perceptions that we experience as an emotion
result when the control hierarchy is reorganizing. Reorganization begins
when control is failing in some way. One of the main causes of failed
control is conflict, intra- and inter- personal. Another cause of
reorganization is an "insuperable" disturbance to a controlled variable.

Anyway, I can see that this is all wrong because Bruce Abbott (961009.1930
EST) knows the correct explanation of emotions -- the one based on
evolution. So "never mind":wink:

Damn. You were just starting to convince me... :wink:

Bruce