516. The evolution of emotions

 Evolution has thrown up mechanims that contribute to survival, such as the hunger impulse, sexual drive, sweating, vomiting, fever, resistance to viruses, adrelanin, oxytocin and other hormones There are also innate mental reflexes that enhance survival, such as fear, anger, fight or flight, jealousy, vengeance, love and benevolence. Evolution is the origen of such emotions. Note that mostly inheritance from evolution, in the genes, does not directly yield properties, but the potential to develop them in interaction with the environment (except colour of the eyes, for example, which results directly from the genes). One inherits the instinct of fear, but whether this is fear for snakes, spiders or crocodiles depends on the environment. Babies have an impulse to smile as well as to frown at unfamiliar faces. Which comes to dominate depends on education and experience.

 In the first half of the 19th century, Hutcheson and Hume recognised benevolence as natural impulse. Hutcheson denied that it is innate, but Hume accepted that. in contrast with other virtues such as justice and fidelity, called ‘artificial’, which are internalised in education and schooling, and are developed in society and experience.

 What about feelings? Damasio (2003) proposed that feelings arise as mental representations, somehow, of emotions, yielding conscious thought and reason. Thus, reason builds on emotions and goes beyond them. Perception of the environment yields ideas, which do not necessarily give faithful representation. What, then does ‘representation’ mean, and how does it arise? How do feelings arise from representations of internal processes such as emotions, and ideas from interaction with the world?

 For the development of ideas and feeelings, Gerald Edelman (1987) proposed a ‘neural Darwinism’, as follows. In the brain, ideas take the form of neuronal networks, where the neurons trigger each others’ ‘firing’, more frequently and strongly as the corresponding ideas are ‘successful’, ‘work’, i.e. appeal to pleasure centres in the brain. They adapt by adapting the ‘synapses’ that connect neurons. The ‘association’ between ideas arises from connecting firing patterns of such networks. The patterns may occur in competition with each other (‘Darwinism’). Parallel patterns that occur regularly at the same time get connected, in association. With competition between ideas, as parallel neuronal patterns, we may be said to be ‘in two minds’ about something. Connectivity in the brain may be hampered genetically or by conditions of upbringing, yielding psychopaths.

 Another instinctive and apparently universal moral judgment is that of ‘parochial altruism’ (De Dreu et al., 2014), discussed before in this blog. It is beneficial for the survival of the group when people are altruistic and solidary, but this makes the group vulnerable to opportunistic invaders who prey on altruistic members, and ultimately win out in evolutionary rivalry, whereby the group ethic unravels. One may think that this does not work since group survival is not necessarily anchored in the genes, but is primarily transmitted culturally, but what does seem instinctive is the willingness of people to treat foreigners critically, and mistrust and punish them, even at a cost to themselves. The downside of this parochial altruism is instinctive mistrust and discrimination of immigrants who are patently different in appearance or culture.

  

Damasio, Antonio R. 2003, Looking for Spinoza, Orlando, FL: Harcourt.

de Dreu, C., D.Balliet and N. Halevy, ‘Parochial cooperation in humans: Forms and functions of self-sacrifice in intergroup conflict’, Advances in Motivation Science, 1 (2014): 1-47.

Edelman, Gerald M. 1987, Neural Darwinism: The theory of neuronal group selection, New York: Basic Books