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Why We Feel: The Science of Human Emotion
Why do we think some people are beautiful? Why do orgasms feel good? Why do we get angry? Anxious? In this intriguing book, biopsychologist Victor Johnston explores the origins of human emotions. Drawing on computer science, neurobiology, and evolutionary psychology, he shows us that emotions are not some strange accident of nature, but are instead the basis of learning and reasoning, and help us to adapt to a complex, rapidly changing environment. In the process, he offers a radical new view of reality: What we see, hear, smell, feel—even what we consider beautiful—is not an accurate representation of the world around us; rather, our feelings are illusions, shaped by millions of years of evolution. In clear and colorful prose, Johnston helps us navigate the intimate relationship between our private conscious feelings and our biological survival—and tells us what this means for human creativity, innovation, and free will.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published April 8, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 17, 2018
Johnston argues for viewing emotions as biological events that enhance our likelihood of reproductive success through "hedonic manipulation" or hedonic amplification. Basically, emotions make those things that are good for us passing on our genes FEEL good, those that are bad FEEL bad so that we are more likely to respond to those situations in reproductively-productive (ha) ways.
This is a hard one for me to rate. On one hand, it felt very basic to read because this idea has now been around for a long time and is generally accepted as a good theory or possible explanation. On the other, was it more revolutionary when it was published? That would affect my rating. I'm just not invested enough to ferret out the answer.
Even though most of the ideas weren't new to me, many of the scientific bits were. Johnston goes into good biologic detail about processes in the brain and body, which I found fascinating and helpful. I will forget 95% of it because my brain doesn't like to hold onto details (they are not reproductively impactful so I have no hedonic reaction to amplify in order to seal them in my semantic memory!), but I feel like I have a better understanding of how our feelings and aesthetic judgments fit within our biology and our social lives. It's a relatively easy, quick read and worth it if you are so inclined.
This is a hard one for me to rate. On one hand, it felt very basic to read because this idea has now been around for a long time and is generally accepted as a good theory or possible explanation. On the other, was it more revolutionary when it was published? That would affect my rating. I'm just not invested enough to ferret out the answer.
Even though most of the ideas weren't new to me, many of the scientific bits were. Johnston goes into good biologic detail about processes in the brain and body, which I found fascinating and helpful. I will forget 95% of it because my brain doesn't like to hold onto details (they are not reproductively impactful so I have no hedonic reaction to amplify in order to seal them in my semantic memory!), but I feel like I have a better understanding of how our feelings and aesthetic judgments fit within our biology and our social lives. It's a relatively easy, quick read and worth it if you are so inclined.
March 26, 2022
The main takeaway from this book is that many of the attributes of the world that we ascribe to it are really adaptive constructs of our brains and not features of reality. Redness is our biological interpretation of the electromagnetic spectrum at around 700 nanometers, not a property of the electromagnetic wave in itself. However, It is functional. Ditto beauty and that sugar is sweet. It is a good book on evolutionary functionalism and it’s application to our feelings and our decision making process. Parts of the book get a little tedious. The author goes into great lengths to describe some computer programs based on Darwinian algorithms and with learning algorithms using feelings. An interesting read nonetheless.
As a side note, some may take offense to the interpretations of male and female reproductive selection as being too stereotypical. We are biological creatures, though it is also important to remember the context that in a new and changing current environment, some behaviors may no longer be adaptive.
As a side note, some may take offense to the interpretations of male and female reproductive selection as being too stereotypical. We are biological creatures, though it is also important to remember the context that in a new and changing current environment, some behaviors may no longer be adaptive.
September 30, 2015
Reads a bit like a textbook, and I wish it had a bit more about the evolution of specific feelings. But overall it was well done. It gave me insight into why we feel at a macro level even though my expectation was different. Learned a good bit.
It is dense tho
It is dense tho
July 5, 2013
The book repeats what has been said before about emotions and evolutionary theory - kin selection, reciprocal altruism, tit for tat and prisoner's dilemma, the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness (traits evolved in response to particular situations in the evolutionary environment). There is some new information on beauty and a computer program (FacePrints) that I had not seen before.
The author confuses me on what he means by "feelings." He equates them with emotions ("our inner private feelings - emotions -") that leads a reader to wonder why there's a need for two terms to describe the same thing, particularly when others (e.g., Demasio) make an important distinction between the two. The author also says that, "In addition to emotions, a second category of inner feelings are elicited by sensory inputs..." that he calls "affects" so now the reader has emotions that may not be the same thing as "feelings," which in turn he refers to as "affects." Then he calls all feelings "emotions as well as affects," adding that all feelings come in "hedonic tones" (good and bad feelings about things). From "hedonic" the discussion of feelings gets more challenging. For example, Johnston writes that "...our feelings act like active filters, or what I call discriminant hedonic amplifiers, that define and exaggerate the reproductive consequences of environmental or social events associated with relatively minor fluctuations in reproductive potential."
Johnston repeats the more or less standard identification of primary social emotions that he then introduces as just simply "primary emotions" (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise), which triggers the question about whether these are or are not social. It's a fair question. Presumably, we can be happy for non-social reasons (we have food) and we get surprised when we meet an animal coming around the corner. The author says we got these primary emotions because of "commonly occuring events" in our evolutionary past but happiness, sadness, etc. are more or less general states of being and it's natural to wonder how these developed by "common occuring [specific?] events" as the author suggests.
The author says that children are happy when they get what they want but that begs the deeper question about what it is that they want and why do they want such things. For example, in his discussion of "secondary social emotions" (which Johnston defines as guilt, pride, and envy, but later he adds embarassment, shame and pride), why does a child care about what others think? Darwin suggests this is the evolutionary need to be part of the (tribal) group. If so, is that need an emotion?
The author echos what other evolutionary theorists believe, that every feature of our body exists because of its survival value. On the question of why our faces are as they are, Johnston says that we have large bushy eyebrows set close to the eye on a protruding brow ridge" because it provides "an effective method for excluding sweat from the eye sockets as well as providing protection from an overhead sun." Is it really true that many of our fellow primates died because they did not have large busy eyebrows?
The best line in this book was his footnote in the back when he writes that "Without feelings - affects and emotions - the world around us is a meaningless conglomerate of energy/matter...." I also liked his comment in the preface that "The human brain did not evolve to accurately represent the world around us; it evolved only to enhance the survival of our genes." I like the author's opening discussion that is critical of dry cognitive science (human brain as a "general-purpose computer") and wet cognitive science ("that the conscious attributes of mind, like sensations and feelings, are a product of the physical and chemical organization of the brain"). The problem with the former, Johnston argues, is that it does not take into account emotions/feelings/affects. The problem with the latter is that it does not develop and explain how such feelings came about. The author comes at his subject from the perspective of "evolutionary functionalism" - the survival function that our emotions played in the past. That is a valuable perspective as long as one is open to the possibility that even this approach has shortcomings.
The author confuses me on what he means by "feelings." He equates them with emotions ("our inner private feelings - emotions -") that leads a reader to wonder why there's a need for two terms to describe the same thing, particularly when others (e.g., Demasio) make an important distinction between the two. The author also says that, "In addition to emotions, a second category of inner feelings are elicited by sensory inputs..." that he calls "affects" so now the reader has emotions that may not be the same thing as "feelings," which in turn he refers to as "affects." Then he calls all feelings "emotions as well as affects," adding that all feelings come in "hedonic tones" (good and bad feelings about things). From "hedonic" the discussion of feelings gets more challenging. For example, Johnston writes that "...our feelings act like active filters, or what I call discriminant hedonic amplifiers, that define and exaggerate the reproductive consequences of environmental or social events associated with relatively minor fluctuations in reproductive potential."
Johnston repeats the more or less standard identification of primary social emotions that he then introduces as just simply "primary emotions" (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise), which triggers the question about whether these are or are not social. It's a fair question. Presumably, we can be happy for non-social reasons (we have food) and we get surprised when we meet an animal coming around the corner. The author says we got these primary emotions because of "commonly occuring events" in our evolutionary past but happiness, sadness, etc. are more or less general states of being and it's natural to wonder how these developed by "common occuring [specific?] events" as the author suggests.
The author says that children are happy when they get what they want but that begs the deeper question about what it is that they want and why do they want such things. For example, in his discussion of "secondary social emotions" (which Johnston defines as guilt, pride, and envy, but later he adds embarassment, shame and pride), why does a child care about what others think? Darwin suggests this is the evolutionary need to be part of the (tribal) group. If so, is that need an emotion?
The author echos what other evolutionary theorists believe, that every feature of our body exists because of its survival value. On the question of why our faces are as they are, Johnston says that we have large bushy eyebrows set close to the eye on a protruding brow ridge" because it provides "an effective method for excluding sweat from the eye sockets as well as providing protection from an overhead sun." Is it really true that many of our fellow primates died because they did not have large busy eyebrows?
The best line in this book was his footnote in the back when he writes that "Without feelings - affects and emotions - the world around us is a meaningless conglomerate of energy/matter...." I also liked his comment in the preface that "The human brain did not evolve to accurately represent the world around us; it evolved only to enhance the survival of our genes." I like the author's opening discussion that is critical of dry cognitive science (human brain as a "general-purpose computer") and wet cognitive science ("that the conscious attributes of mind, like sensations and feelings, are a product of the physical and chemical organization of the brain"). The problem with the former, Johnston argues, is that it does not take into account emotions/feelings/affects. The problem with the latter is that it does not develop and explain how such feelings came about. The author comes at his subject from the perspective of "evolutionary functionalism" - the survival function that our emotions played in the past. That is a valuable perspective as long as one is open to the possibility that even this approach has shortcomings.
April 14, 2012
Aplicação da teoria da evolução, alia descobertas da anatomia, psicologia e funcionalidade do cérebro humano para explicar como os sentimentos ativam determinadas áreas mentais - especialmente de recompensa e repulsa - e traz a representação de símbolos para dentro da mente, inversamente ao mundo externo povoado de radiações eletromagnéticas e reações químicas sem sentido intrínseco e invalidando outras hipóteses como a da equalidade do funcionamento do cérebro e computador. Sustenta que os símbolos só adquirem significado quando filtrado pelos sentidos e decodificado por sentimentos e uma racionalidade moldados por muitas eras que fizeram perdurar somente os genes que maximizavam a sobrevivência e perpetuação da espécie, mas dentro de uma sociedade. Aparentemente um modelo completo e que não deixa falhas, e explica como e porque temos sentimentos e como raciocinamos, não baseados em lógica, mas nestes mesmos sentimentos. Longe de ser um estudo simplesmente frio e calculista, apresenta conclusões que podem ser comparadas às filosofias da existência e embeleza ainda mais a condição humana por ir um passo à frente de entender como funcionamos e mostrar como um universo sem simbolismos, que não é bom ou mau, mas simplesmente é, só adquire sentido na presença de um ser vivo.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews