Consciousness And Emotion In Cognitive Science

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

From one of the world’s leading neuroscientists: a succinct, illuminating, wholly engaging investigation of how biology, neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence have given us the tools to unlock the mysteries of human consciousness “One thrilling insight after another ... Damasio has succeeded brilliantly in narrowing the gap between body and mind.” —The New York Times Book Review In recent decades, many philosophers and cognitive scientists have declared the problem of consciousness unsolvable, but Antonio Damasio is convinced that recent findings across multiple scientific disciplines have given us a way to understand consciousness and its significance for human life. In the forty-eight brief chapters of Feeling & Knowing, and in writing that remains faithful to our intuitive sense of what feeling and experiencing are about, Damasio helps us understand why being conscious is not the same as sensing, why nervous systems are essential for the development of feelings, and why feeling opens the way to consciousness writ large. He combines the latest discoveries in various sciences with philosophy and discusses his original research, which has transformed our understanding of the brain and human behavior. Here is an indispensable guide to understand­ing how we experience the world within and around us and find our place in the universe.

This book, a member of the Series in Affective Science, is a unique interdisciplinary sequence of articles on the cognitive neuroscience of emotion by some of the most well-known researchers in the area. It explores what is known about cognitive processes in emotion at the same time it reviews the processes and anatomical structures involved in emotion, determining whether there is something about emotion and its neural substrates that requires they be studied as a separate domain. Divided into four major focal points and presenting research that has been performed in the last decade, this book covers the process of emotion generation, the functions of amygdala, the conscious experience of emotion, and emotion regulation and dysregulation. Collectively, the chapters constitute a broad but selective survey of current knowledge about emotion and the brain, and they all address the close association between cognitive and emotional processes. By bringing together diverse strands of investigation with the aim of documenting current understanding of how emotion is instantiated in the brain, this book will be of use to scientists, researchers, and advanced students of psychology and neuroscience.

Traditional cognitive science is Cartesian in the sense that it takes as fundamental the distinction between the mental and the physical, the mind and the world. This leads to the claim that cognition is representational and best explained using models derived from AI and computational theory. The authors depart radically from this model.

The experience of emotion is a ubiquitous component of the stream of consciousness; emotional qualia interact with other contents and processes of consciousness in complex ways. Recent research has supported the hypothesis that important functional aspects of emotion can operate outside the conscious awareness. Primary types of emotions are found in animals, while secondary, more complex types are involved in interpersonal relationships. Emotions both influence genetic repair mechanisms of individuals and are responsible for group behavior. Many scholars and scientists believe that no scientific or philosophic account of consciousness can be complete without an understanding of the role of emotion. Contents: Emotion and Consciousness: Current Research and Controversies (A W Kaszniak); The Nature of Typical Emotions (A Ben-Ze''ev); Emotions Associated to Cognitive Revision as a Basis for Values (P Livet); Neuro-Affective Processes and the Brain Substrates of Emotion: Emerging Perspective and Dilemmas (J Pankseep); Imagery and Emotion: Information Networks in the Brain (P J Lang); Hemispheric Asymmetries in Representation and Control of Emotions: Evidence from Unilateral Brain Damage (G Gainotti); Hierarchical Organization of Emotional Experience and Its Neural Substrates (R Lane); Metal Representations, the Reticular Activating System and Emotions (B Cabott); Antecedents and Functions of Emotion Episodes (N H Frijda); The Communication of Emotion (U Hess); The Mental Representation of Romantic Jealousy: A Blended Emotion (and More) (D J Sharpsteen); and other papers. Readership: Postdoctoral students and researchers in biocybernetics, neurosciences, cognitive sciences and psychology.

Emotion and Cognition, Volume 246, consists of 16 chapters on recent scientific advances in emotion and cognition research. The chapters include theoretical, review, and empirical chapters presenting original data on interactions between emotion and cognition. Chapters touch on a variety of topics, including Common and different mechanisms underlying the processing of extrinsic and intrinsic emotion, Looming fear stimuli broadens attention in a local-global letter task, Reading thoughts and feelings in other people – how age shapes empathic accuracy, How does aging influence emotion-cognition links?, and The Motivational Dimensional Model of affect: A review of the past 10 years, and more. Presents the latest research on the interaction between emotion and cognition Uniquely focuses on how these supposedly different aspects interact Contains contributions from world-renowned experts on emotion and cognition research

Beginning with the view that human consciousness is essentially embodied and that the way we consciously experience the world is structured by our bodily dynamics and surroundings, the book argues that emotions are a fundamental manifestation of our embodiment, and play a crucial role in self-consciousness, moral evaluation, and social cognition.

This book presents the contributions of the members of an Advanced Research Workshop on Cogni ti ve Science Perspectives on Emotion, Motivation and Cognition. The Workshop, funded mainly by the NATO Scientific Affairs Division, together with a contribution from the (British) Economic and Social Research Council, was conducted at II Ciocco, Tuscany, Italy, 21-27 June 1987. The venue for our discussions was ideal: a quiet holiday hotel, 500m high in the Apennine mountain range, approached by a mile of perilously steep, winding narrow road. The isolation was conducive to concentrated discussions on the topics of the Workshop. The reason for the Workshop was a felt need for researchers from disparate but related approaches to cognition, emotion, and motivation to communicate their perspectives and arguments to one another. To take just one example, the framework of information processing and the metaphor of mind as a computer has wrought a major revolution in psychological theories of cogni tion. That framework has radically altered the way psychologists conceptualize perception, memory, language, thought, and action. Those advances have formed the intellectual substrate for the "cognitive science" perspective on mental life.