How does cognition influence emotion?  (Page 8/13)

So no wonder Crick and Koch used the words sensation and perception interchangeably, when someone fist is able to see their environment, when they wake up or whatever, it is as if that is when they are first aware. (Vision being the 'baseline' cognition). This relates to emotional and intellectual complexity, some things are simply more advanced than others to think about. When a baby is born can it think? It can see, and it understands how to interact, but then again, a frog also knows how to interact and I notice they can respond emotionally.

Consciousness in the brain

Wallace, Dr. Rodrick (2011) sums up an argument by Atlan and Cohen (1998) about how information systems work in the mind:

• Atlan and Cohen (1998) argue, in the context of a cognitive paradigm for the immune system, that the essence of cognitive function involves comparison of aperceived signal with an internal, learned or inherited picture of the world, and then, upon that comparison, choice of one response from a much larger reper-toire of possible responses. That is, cognitive pattern recognition-and-response proceeds by an algorithmic combination of an incoming external sensory sig-nal with an internal ongoing activity { incorporating the internalized picture of the world { and triggering an appropriate action based on a decision that thepattern of sensory activity requires a response.

When someone sees something does it 'require a response'? Seeing another human being might require a response, but what about biological or neural responses? What objects trigger which responses? Are there sets of 'brain wirings' that sort out different activities? Here Wallace cites a model - (Baars, 2005):

• ...it is clear that different challenges facing a conscious entity must be met be diferent arrangements of basic cognitive faculties. It is now possible to make a very abstract pictureof the brain, not based on its anatomy, but rather on the linkages between the information sources dual to the basic physiological and learned unconsciouscognitive modules (UCM) that form Baars' global workspace/global broadcast. That is, the remapped brain network is reexpressed in terms of the information sources dual to the UCM. Given two distinct problems classes (e.g., playing tennis vs. interacting with a significant other), there must be two different `wirings'of the information sources dual to the physiological UCM,

It is fairly obvious that there are different ways of responding to the world - social, emotional, intellectual, etc. - but the important question is: what are the similar ways in which different aspects of the world cause similar or different feelings? That way you could say - this is that are grouped in the mind because they have the same feeling (physical) response. Or is there "no room in any model for feeling" (Harnad, Stevan (2011))? I could use a emotional / intellectual division of world responses. While intellectually thoughts may cause feeling, it makes more sense that the mind is divided into emotional groupings not intellectual ones. That is because thoughts trigger feelings - a feeling can cause someone to have a thought, but that is only because you realized you had that feeling or it motivated you in certain way (while thoughts cause feelings directly). So it isn't someone's knowledge that causes feelings, I think the mind works by a more simple division of the world and biological responses - simple emotional groupings. That makes sense since humans evolved from lesser animals where that is more obvious. When an ape interacts with his friends, the emotion he feels is a simple one that derived from simple aspects of the world and the interaction he in engaged in. So while simple feelings might be the logical result of their corresponding thoughts, deeper emotional aspects of the mind are probably simple responses to the persons environment i.e., you went to a movie so you feel happy, etc. So my theory is basically only a few emotions are the end result of all our activities, and from these basic emotions more complex intellectual responses can be formed. Harnad, Stevan (2011) seems to feel that humans have little room for feeling in their intellectual responses: