Reddit Reddit reviews Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

We found 24 Reddit comments about Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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24 Reddit comments about Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain:

u/shinypup · 10 pointsr/artificial

My PhD thesis was on some of the core challenges with integrating a model of emotion (based on appraisal theory) with general AI like cognitive architectures.

Yes! The first two points reflect what others have stated that (and I think are spot on) and I'll introduce a 3rd point.

  1. There's no reason to believe any process of the human brain cannot be captured as AI. This would only be challenged by ideas such as dualism, which most of modern neuroscience has abandoned.

  2. Intelligence is useless without emotion - An important reason for this that has been mentioend is motivation. It doesn't stop there though. Based on Antonio Damasio's Somatic Marker Hypothesis, we believe emotions are fundamental to all rational thought, serving as a mechanic for dealing with limitless information to process. Think of it as generalized +/- information that serves as a heuristic to other rational processes.

    The exact nature of this is still under active investigation, but it's at least worth noting that evolution has developed emotion as a central aspect of our thinking for some reason. It also appears to be present in many other animals (though if that's true is up for debate), and its clear that those with impaired emotional processes cannot make complex decisions rationally.

  3. What doesn't seem mentioned yet is a work done by the Affective Computing group at MIT's Media Lab: http://affect.media.mit.edu/ . In contrast to my work which seeks to synthesize emotions in AI first, they're more focused on giving computers the ability to perceive and display emotions. One of the major roles of emotion happens to be social communication (i.e., we don't just have emotion, but we also express it as a way of communicating information to others).

    In the simplest of cases, perhaps AI should understand when it does something you don't like by being able to detect when you're pissed off. More broadly, having an ability to understand and express emotion will do things like allow for an emotionally visceral experience while speaking with a robot, allow an automated customer service robot to understand when you are angry and thus change strategy (like route you to a live manager), or help older lonely patients feel like they're still needed in the world.

    ---

    In summary how it affects us is 2 ways:

  4. Enable more general intelligent robots to be embedded in our world

  5. Impove AI and human interactions
u/KaliYugaz · 9 pointsr/anime

Anime is always weird when it talks about "emotions" or "emotionless" people; they usually still do obviously have "emotions", just not very strong or socially disruptive ones. Scientifically speaking, any actual failure of the brain systems that produce emotion would make rational decision making and value judgment impossible.

So I don't know if the word they use connotes something different in Japanese than it does in English.

u/edubkendo · 6 pointsr/RationalPsychonaut

>I strongly believe consciousness is like a WiFi signal, our personalities are like software and our bodies are the computer. I reject with all my being that consciousness is only a program the computer runs.

I'd suggest (and there's good science supporting this) that the body IS the mind, the computer IS the software. I can highly recommend the book Descartes' Error by Antonio Damasio.

>For anyone to say they know for certain is a lier.

Science doesn't deal in certainties. It forms theories (models of reality) that can make accurate predictions given the evidence we have at the time. When new evidence comes to light, old theories can always be disproven. While it cannot provide certainties, it does provide far more accurate predictions about the universe we live in than any system of knowledge we had before science.

u/Gelatinous_cube · 3 pointsr/explainlikeimfive

Here is another good source of what Descartes got right and what he got wrong.

https://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X

u/estrtshffl · 3 pointsr/PoliticalScience

> No, people of all political positions come to hold their beliefs because of emotions, rather than rationality.

It's "rational" to pay workers as little as you can so that more profit can be made for shareholders. But I would argue that it's morally abhorrent. That's a political belief informed by ideology - even if it's rational.

I also think you're discounting emotion entirely - and that's really not something you should do.

Try this: https://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X

And remember:

>You aren't allow to criticize something you haven't read.

u/Cocomorph · 3 pointsr/philosophy

> will never have them

I really wish I had time to write a lengthier comment, because this question is an interesting one that's the subject of a lot of active research.

Some books you might be interested in, all of which are accessible to the general reader (with a few scattered technical bits here and there):

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/affective-computing
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/vehicles
https://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X

u/hypnosifl · 3 pointsr/slatestarcodex

I don't think the rationalist community frowns on intuition as long as it's getting feedback from more systemic analysis of evidence--look at Julia Galef's Straw Vulcan presentation for example (text summary here). And any realistic understanding of how rational thought works in the human brain has to acknowledge that intuition and emotion play an important role, see Descartes' Error by Damasio for some good evidence. Also, if you look into the history of how scientists have come up with important new theories that later turned out to fit the evidence well, they often talk about the important role of intuition (Einstein has many quotes about intuition and imagination on his wikiquote page). The key is just to not let intuition/emotion have the last words, to subject them to questioning and try to convert intuitions into more systemic arguments that are better for scrutinizing and testing.

u/beeftaster333 · 2 pointsr/philosophy

Much of what you describe is just describing a basic take on human health and the life history of the person you see around you and interact with.

You would enjoy Sam harris I think:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri_hruUhJUw

http://www.samharris.org/


Not to be a downer but I'd read up on neuroscience/research papers on human behavior. You should look for roots of instincts/feelings across species because if we have some instinct there most likely will be other examples in the history of life.

Just one example:

http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/rev-0000020.pdf

Also:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014303622X/

On reason and emotion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

u/zapper877 · 2 pointsr/AskReddit

The biggest thing to realize is that you have to realize that your body is the problem and is distorting your outlook, so you need to learn to
ignore and not trust your own judgement so much on a good manythings... in other words: Be skeptical of your own thoughts and feelings and challenge them by ignoring them and experimenting (doing things).

If you want to make your life better know that work is not really fulfilling most of the time and is just a grind, what makes your life fulfilling is the kinds of people you have around you and lack of debt...

So you want to get enough money to not be so stressed out and you want to find good people to hang around with... those should be primariy goals now to get there...

Knowing yourself and growing your vision of how to see the world is half the battle...

People are driven largely by unconscious biases and processes
they don't understand so to build up your confidence and how to see the world I would recommend learning about how people aren't
really in control of themselves (so you don't take anything personally)

First see this video (you can find the rest by googling "orwell comes to america")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Most people operate under the assumption that when we talk logically and make rational arguments while we communicate via language other people will understand... this is NOT true and science says so, its good to know this just so you know that each persons mind is it's own universe and each persons interpretation of the world is limited to their own inner world defined by the structure of their biology.

These are good tests just to show you your own biases, and why trying to go against human biases (looks, etc) is a fools game because biases are unconscious

Bias tests:
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

If you really want to get a more informed view of the world and how much people have no clue about how they reason and function get and read this book (even if you don't understand all of it theres bound to be stuff you can learn about human beings just by reading it)

http://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X/

Just sharing a bit of my own wisdom since I've been through the process of what you are going through.

u/gustoreddit51 · 2 pointsr/psychology

In the additional list in the article I really enjoyed Stephen Pinker's The Language Instinct

One of my own favorites; Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by Antonio Damasio

u/illogician · 2 pointsr/PhilosophyofScience

I sometimes find it helpful to draw a mental line between the actual research on the one hand, and the researchers interpretations of their results on the other. One can often find many possible interpretations of a given experiment.

>What Im wondering about is if humans having little or no control over our actions is the standpoint scientists are generally taking now that a lot of new research exists to support it.

I can't comment as to whether the majority of neuroscientists would endorse this view, but I can see another interpretation that jibes well with the research I've read: we do have control over a number of factors and situations (e.g. ducking when somebody throws something at you shows control), but control amounts to a mishmash of both conscious and unconscious factors. Where others see research showing that we don't have control, I see research showing that conscious awareness has a more limited scope than was previously believed. I would not call conscious awareness an "illusion" as such, because clearly we have awareness, but I think we do have illusions about the scope of that awareness and we underestimate the importance and power of unconscious processes.

>I could add that the paper Im writing is on the emergence of Descartes dualistic theory and how it is proven or disproven in todays scientific and religious world.

You might check out Antonio Damasio's book Descartes' Error.

u/philoscience · 1 pointr/cogneuro

If you are looking for something written for a popular/lay audience, a few good starting points:

Making up the Mind by Chris Frith:
http://www.amazon.com/Making-Mind-Brain-Creates-Mental/dp/1405160225

Older but particularly relevant for emotion and consciousness- "Descartes error"
http://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X

If you want something from a less mainstream perspective dealing with embodiment and consciousness, you may enjoy Brainstorms by Shaun Gallagher:
http://www.amazon.com/Brainstorming-Views-Interviews-Shaun-Gallagher/dp/1845400232

Hope these help!

u/Sunfried · 1 pointr/AdviceAnimals

There really are a few people with neurological disorders or brain injuries who don't use any emotion or gut instinct to make decisions. They are totally rational people because they are disconnected from their emotions.

Rather than being Spock (or, I suppose, a full Vulcan), they are people who are paralyzed by decisions that the rest of us make quickly without thinking. Sure, it's one thing to try to make economic policy decisions without emotion, but try using pure rationality to choose between a blue tie and a red tie. They can't do it, and they get hamstrung by it.

u/Taome · 1 pointr/Neuropsychology

You might want to read more deeply into the notion that reason and emotion are "easily separated." See, e.g,

Robert Burton (neuroscientist), On Being Certain (see also this for a short intro to Burton's book)

Antonio Damasio (neuroscientist), Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain and The Feeling of What Happens

u/somewhathungry333 · 1 pointr/canada

>Science on reasoning, I mean no offence but this the best link you can provide to information on cognitive thought process?

Go pick it up and have a read when you have the time.

​

https://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X

​

> Studies relevance to the Canadian political system?

All capitalist states work the same, you have to understand that canada is a vassal state to the US empire, you don't seem to have any understanding of history, when trump was doing negotiations for the new agreement, do you really think justin and freeland were protecting Canadians? The reality is we are all in the US political sphere of influence because we buy and use products from companies headquartered in the US.

u/coldnever · 1 pointr/philosophy

Sorry but you don't understand that reasoning is unconscious it's been proven. That means that you don't literally understand what I'm saying you're attempting to reconstruct it using your own unconscious mind. This is why say religious people and secular people can't get along because they are using different dictionaries entirely.

That TED talk was made by a scientist, you do know that right? If you study the medical literature there are huge numbers of articles with regards to when our body breaks down that are statistically significant. i.e. repeated events regarding damage to that brain structure produce the same effects.

http://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X/

Just face it, you lost. You're just not anywhere near informed enough to understand what I'm talking about, I've got years of read medical papers under my belt, you got none kid.

u/chefranden · 1 pointr/Christianity

>I'd argue that the idea that consciousness is non-material is our basic intuition.

And that is all you have to go on. Intuition is not a terribly reliable source of information about the nature of real reality. By intuition the sun rises in the east, travels across the heavens, and sets in the west while the earth remains stationary.

I pointed to books in links above that show the material basis for consciousness. I'm not going to be able to reproduce it here. But if you want to credit intuition there seems to be enough information about the universe being material and none about it being non-material to intuit that consciousness is also material.

Some Books:

I Am a Strange Loop; Godel, Escher, Bach; Philosophy in the Flesh; The Feeling of What Happens; Descartes' Error; Self Comes to Mind

>Holy shit, how many times do I have to say that I think that the physical brain plays a vital role in consciousness before you stop trying to argue as if I was asserting something to the contrary?

How many times do I have to say that physical brain is the only thing in evidence? If it is the physical brain and something, produce the "and something". I can produce the physical brain. So it seems my task is done and yours has yet to begin.

Do you have to demonstrate the non-material scientifically? Well of course you do. You say you can't, yet at the same time want it to be the controlling stuff. How can it do that with no connection? And if it has a connection to the material, then you should be able to study it scientifically.

u/berf · 1 pointr/evolution

I should have added that everyone believes things at least partially for non-smart reasons. There are no real life Dr. Spocks or Cmdr. Datas. As Damasio points out, all reasoning is partly emotional and those unfortunate individuals who have brain damage to the emotional areas involved in reasoning are actually terminally indecisive not super-rational.

u/supa999 · 0 pointsr/socialism

> even if the neuroscience he refers to is correct, his analysis seems flawed.

Nope, where do you think religion comes from? Religion is overwhelming evidence that people don't reason correctly. People live in an abstraction and emotion by and large not in reality, what you're seeing right now is an abstraction imposed on you by your unconscious processing. The noise you're hearing right now where you are is all generated for you by unconscious processes.

You can go get this book and look at the medical cases from science.

http://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X/