From: gts (gts@optexinc.com)
Date: Tue Sep 03 2002 - 18:02:16 MDT
Lee,
I will respond to Rafal's message to you here, since Rafal decided to
take his marbles and go home. :/
> ### Better, I'll give you 23 (so few only because I didn't
> feel like quoting all). Basically, the cortex is intimately
> involved in emotional responses,
No one disputes that the cortex is "intimately involved" in every
conscious process, including the reward experience. The question
(actually Rafal's original question to me) concerns the biological
correlates of the reward *experience*. The *experience* is not the same
as the cerebral *recognition of experience*, and this fine distinction
is I believe the source of Rafal's misunderstanding. I do not doubt that
he knows whereof he speaks, but he speaks to the wrong subject.
> ###as evidenced by lesion studies, fMRI studies, as well as
> brain structural and (even) single cell recordings. To claim that the
> cortex is a "cold calculating organ" (as gts wrote, or something to
that
> effect) is plainly silly.
Again, I think Rafal is confusing the *conscious recognition of
emotional experience* with the *experience itself*. As you and I agree,
emotional experiences are known to have their origin in the emotional
centers of the brain (the mesolimbic system). The *conscious
recognition* of that experience arises in the areas of the brain
associated with consciousness and reflection (the cortex), but the
conscious recognition or acknowledgment of an experience is not the
experience!
As evidence, consider people with severe mental disabilities, those
unable to perform basic computational tasks due to deformity or damage
to the cortex. Are these people less able to experience happiness and
reward? On the contrary! As anyone who has ever worked with mentally
challenged individuals will tell you, (including myself), people with
mental handicaps tend to be happier and more loving and gleeful than
those with superior cortexes. If anything, the cortex seems to filter
and in many cases impede the experience of happiness and reward.
The same is evidenced by the nature of young healthy children, whose
cortexes and logical faculties are not yet fully developed. Can anyone
doubt that small children have a greater capacity for joy and happiness
than fully grown "intellectually mature" adults? I was amazed recently
by the happiness and excitement that my girlfriend's 16 month-old son
displayed when he saw a caterpillar for the first time. That little
toddler can barely speak a word, and he is certainly not capable of most
of the functions assigned to the adult cortex, but his capacity for
pleasure and reward far exceed my own.
> There is no methodology yet to clearly point to the
> location of a subjective experience, or even define subjectivity
> in physicalist terms...
Rafal, if you are reading, I think there is one thing about which you
and I would agree: the human brain is a very complicated entity. It's
doubtful that any one person can be cognizant of everything known to
science about this organ. I suspect that your line of work in this area
has not given you ample opportunity to explore the nature and physical
correlates of the reward experience. I say this because your arguments
until now have consisted of little more than "impressions" that you
garnered from work with neurologists who themselves never investigated
the matter in any great detail (e.g., Pat Levitt).
> Here are the refs.
>
> I sign off from this thread.
Lee, if you like I will respond to Rafal's refs. I would so anyway if I
thought Rafal was interested.
-gts
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:16:40 MST