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Where Damasio gets it wrong

Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2004 8:07 pm
by PeterDF
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

Re: Where Damasio gets it wrong

Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2004 6:25 pm
by CSflim
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. _____________________If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well.