Where Damasio gets it wrong

PeterDF · Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2004 8:07 pm Post subject: Where Damasio gets it wrong

I sometimes despair of our education system; it gets things completely up side down.

Let's be clear about what we know to be true:
1) We evolved alongside other animals.
2) Other animals – especially those most closely related to us – behave in ways very much like we do.
3) In various social situations social animals display appropriate emotional states like fear, embarrassment, anger sympathy and something much like love.

If we are to understand the human condition then we need to understand as much as possible about the evolutionary forces that brought our species into being, because THAT'S WHERE WE CAME FROM. Other animals use similar emotionally based behavioural systems to us, which they use to facilitate the biological aim of getting their genes into the next generation. Isn't it obvious then, that we should study their behaviour in order to understand our own behaviour better?

This should all be clear and it obviously should be the starting point of any investigation of the human condition. Instead we teach people that we can only understand human beings by looking at people using what I call psycho/social navel gazing. This way of thinking has its roots the 19th C. "ladder of creation" view (God sits on the top step of the ladder with angels on the next rung down, man on the next and animals on the one below that.) Our educational systems are still steeped in that antiquated, divisive and anachronistic way of seeing things.

When I talked to Franz deWaal in October I told him that I had written a book, which is aimed at those who might find Popular Science daunting. He looked unsure, so I said, "some people think that apes don't have emotion", at which point his eyeballs rolled up in despair. So I said, "they have the same emotions as us, right?" and he nodded as if to say "well, of course!" Then I said it was that kind of person I was aiming the book at – he seemed to take my point. Now if I'd used the word "feeling" instead of "emotion" in that sentence would his reaction have been different? Absolutely not!

When I wrote my earlier post I wondered why Damasio tried to separate the word emotion from feeling when the words were effectively synonymous. Now - perhaps I'm being cynical - but I think I understand why he did it. He frequently mentions what deWaal calls moral emotions in apes. Damasio never states explicitly whether he thinks apes don't have feeling, although he does seem to want to maintain a distance between moral emotions and human justice (see page 320). On page 167 he says bonobos show compassion but he seems to deny that they feel it. I suspect that if he did state explicitly that apes don't have feelings, people who know better – like deWaal – would tear him into tiny little pieces. I hope we get the chance to ask him so we can clarify this. The way I see it if he thinks that apes don't have feelings, he should be courageous enough to make his view explicit, instead of trying to make his point by innuendo.

Someone else on the forum has said that we can't know that animals have feelings just as we can't be sure that someone else sees the same colour as we do. Strictly speaking they are right, we can't know absolutely. I would agree entirely that paramecia, probably most insects and Damassio's starfish do not have feelings - they don't have brains to speak of. But to extend that argument to more advanced animals, like squirrels (page 51) and other even higher animal flies in the face of common sense. We humans feel basic emotions like fear, the sensation of cold etc. It is abundantly clear that it is possible to see animals shiver when they are cold and even see fear in the eyes of, say, a frightened deer; is Damasio really saying that the animal doesn't know when it is cold or when it is afraid? I accept that humans are the only creatures to feel higher more complex emotions – like guilt for example - and that human reasoning and emotional behaviour is a huge step up in complexity, even from apes (a point deWaal makes in "The Ape and the Sushi Master"). But is it reasonable to conclude that humans have just realised that they had all these basic emotions all along but just didn't know they were there? Nico Tinbergen's observations of Herring Gulls, which I outlined in my other post, convinces me that animals do experience feeling.

I think that Damasio, sadly, is a product of our upside down education system. I suspect that he doesn't want animals to have feelings because if they did it would undermine man's higher spiritual status.

I am no more inclined to accept a scientific viewpoint that relies on Spinozan spiritualism than I am to accept one based on a Christian ladder of creation. Let's just look at the evidence and try develop the best theory in light of that evidence. There is no place for religion or any kind of spiritualism in the scientific method.

Edited by: PeterDF at: 3/27/04 8:16 pm

CSflim · Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2004 6:25 pm Post subject: Re: Where Damasio gets it wrong

In some way I agree with you, but I do think that Damasio was reluctant to speak of animal having feeling, for the precise reason that we could never know one way or another.

Perhaps we need to understand the words better.

Emotion: Involves the realease of various chemicals/hormones etc. and some other physical effects, crying, laughing etc.

Feeling: The ability to produce verbal reports, describing an experience.

So, in the test when horrific images were flickered on a projected movie, for very breif lenght of time, the subjects displayed "emotion", but not "feeling".
They displayed the various physical and chemical tell-tale signs of fear, but they could not make any verbal reports of this emotion, so we state that they did "feel" fear.

This is the only method we can really use for objectively distinguishing between what Damasio refers to as "Emotion" and "Feeling".

But due to the fact that animals cannot make verbal reports anyway, we cannot decide one way or another if they "feel".

I personally would claim that they are indeed conscious, and they do indeed feel these emotions that they display.

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