As i argue in the theory of consciousness i wrote before this, what we call emotions and feelings is actually a primary interface with reality that all living beings have.
This is a copy of that section in my previous article:
We call these type of emotions "instincts" as if that means it's something not worthy of considering. Something "lesser" and easily dismissed. Another way to make ourselves feel (notice that) greater than the other living beings and so excuse many of our behaviors.
We know that living beings had such "instincts" since ever life began on this planet. Those early forms of life had no brains or minds to use as interface with reality, to comprehend it, to understand it. But they needed something to understand reality with in order to survive. What some call "sensory input" and usually reduce to just a few basic simplified ones, despite the actual reality of a very complex and incredibly diverse sensory input spectrum.
So – the primary interface with reality was created. Physical sensations.
At first very simple, the simplest possible physical sensations, just enough for the simplest survival basics. The feeling of hot and cold, of chemical changes in the outside environment, the feeling of touch, pain, the feeling of hunger, or satisfaction. As life evolved and become more complex, as it expanded into new environments and as those environments became more complex – living beings became more complex, spectrum of sensory inputs became more complex and diverse and so did our primary physical interface with reality. Those early physical sensation evolved into feelings, which evolved into emotions, as we think about them right now.
Much, much later we also developed a separate language to communicate these emotions. Better than our gesticulating, body language or other physical behavior can. Better even than our rational language and words can. Although we try to incorporate and use all of those ways of communication in expressing this primary understanding of reality.
We call it music.
It is the only language that can express the full depth, diversity and width of our primary interface with reality. There is as many different emotions as there is different kinds of music and songs in the world. And as many as there are different tones, cadences, rhythms, melodies and all other forms of sounds music is made of. Yes, we like to combine the pure emotional language of music and our language of mind and thoughts. To get a fuller, better, more precise expression of all that we are and all we can experience.
That is why we are at our best when we manage to balance the two main interfaces with reality that we have, our emotions and our rational mind. That is also why we are at our worst when that balance fails or is damaged.
Our emotions provide a deeper primary understanding of reality that our minds cannot efficiently process. Our minds provide a higher level interface with reality that our emotions cannot efficiently process. They both deeply affect one another - as they should. Both are physical and virtual at the same time.
Neither of these two interfaces should take precedence over another, neither should exclude the other. And that is hard to achieve and maintain. Which is why we fail at it so often.
Main:
All this got me thinking further and as i was reading other literature and articles about all these subjects it became clear to me that it was this primary interface with reality, the emotions, that created language and so our minds. Or at least pushed the evolution and shape of our minds to a great extent.
I think it is undeniable that the sound is the best tool all living beings have to communicate pure emotions, which are information. Almost every land based animal in the world, even many insects, use sounds to communicate different information on the "emotional" level as we generally think about it.
The more complex a living being is, the more complex are the sounds they are making. From the chirping and buzzing of insects to the warning or the rattlesnake to the songs of whales and various guttural sounds various monkeys and apes make. The hissing, mewls and other sounds of cats, the barking of dogs, the howl of the wolves, bird songs, or whistles... I could number different examples for days.
These sounds are the primary, most basic language.
Animals remember and understand them. Even across species.
A horse will shy away from the sound of the rattlesnake. A dog can remember and understand human words used for basic commands. A cat will at least understand that its "name" means you are calling it to a meal. And they can all figure out if you are happy or angry, just by the tone of your voice. Apes and monkeys have different sounds they make to make it clear they are angry, or happy or in heat. The birds are the same. (these are all very basic, simplest examples)
There is a bird in Africa that gives warnings to antelopes or zebras that lions or other predators are approaching by its distinctive calls. Antelopes understand what that sound means. Not on the level of a mind like human is, not translated into, or in the form of words. They understand it on the "emotional" level, in the virtual space of their minds and emotions - as a specific meaning. A specific information: "predators are approaching - run"
Now, if animals would use any random sound to communicate and express their feelings, their sensations their understanding of reality, It would be of no use. That is why even creatures much simpler then we are start using specific sounds to communicate specific information.
The most basic sound based meanings.
It is simply efficient and advantageous tool or a system. While the opposite, using random sounds, simply doesn't achieve anything valuable. It is also clearly very advantageous for survival of the species if your progeny can learn them and understand them. Once this process is repeated over and over through thousands of generations it gets embedded into the very physical structure of living beings through Epigenetic changes on the levels of individuals, which spread that capability in form of DNA/genes to the offspring and then such abilities get selected for by the basic survival of the fittest.
Individuals who are better, faster and smarter about understanding and using these sound based meanings - have better chances of survival than those who are not. And better chances to create offspring which will have similar capabilities transferred through them. The more of these basic sound-meanings you can create and learn, the more diverse information you can communicate - the bigger the advantage.
Thus this advantageous capability clearly forces and supports development of speed and depth of learning and understanding, or in other words, intelligence.
So it is not that we developed intelligence first and then started to develop language. They developed each other.
- First the primary interface with reality is developed. The "emotions", our physical sensations of reality. Whoever is better at it has better chances of survival, and spreads the genes that support attributes that create and support that capability.
- The sound is an inescapable part of our nature and environment. Movement itself creates sound so it is one of the basic effects of reality living creatures learn to understand as a sign of danger, or recognition of pray at the most basic primitive level.
- Then living beings start to use sound to communicate the most basic information, simply because the sound is already there and provides clear advantages. Thus a specific sound gains specific meaning.
- Evolution works again and the most adapted to this new advantage survive. Evolution then pushes and supports any physical attribute that supports this trait or capability. Like intelligence.
- One of the most valuable tools in understanding and reliably and quickly using this advantageous ability is intelligence.
- The increased intelligence makes the "vocabulary" expand and becomes more complex and diverse.
- This supports survival of the more intelligent individuals or species.
- In turn the intelligence and survival force and support creation of even more sound-meanings.
- Which pushes and supports development of intelligence.
Force feedback loops. One affects the other.
After thousands of generations, this process creates first clear, repeatable, learnable sound based meanings - original for a single species. Or for a smaller group of that species. These sound based meanings force a mind to develop out of primary virtual space our biology and brains create.
A mind that uses mental representations of these sound-meanings.
Words.
This is followed and fueled by accompanying increase in intelligence needed to understand them and use them quickly, reliably and correctly. All this forces our very biology to adapt to these advantages. That is how and why we think in words today. That is why our kids have the capability to learn and understand words and learn to think in words.
As i argued above, and as we all know, this does not substitute or removes the old primary interface with reality, our physical sensations, our feelings - our emotions. It provides us with another layer of understanding reality, another tool which has its own specific uses, limits and faults. Just like the primary interface has its own specific uses, limits and faults. The primary interface, our emotions, sensations and feelings and instincts provide us with a quick reaction time to a whole spectrum of sensory inputs that our minds would simply take too long to comprehend. But thats not all.
Its what enables us to feel and care. To feel physical reality and to translate reality in all its diversity into sensations, feelings and emotions. Objective and subjective. The outside physical world and our inner worlds. It enables us to understand all this in a immediate, condensed form of a feeling. An emotion. A feeling is not just a "feeling". It is understanding. Comprehension.
It is experience. The value and the meaning of value itself.
Yet by itself, it is not enough. That is why our minds are made to give us capabilities to disassemble reality, to simplify and constrain it into specific and useful meaningful terms and descriptions which then evolve into our language, culture and science. None of which could be achieved by our primary interface alone.
Yet without emotional anchors and deep physical connections to reality we would become careless, empty husks without meaning. Limited in our understanding of reality to the point of being delusional. Separated from it.
This is why we need both of these abilities and why we are at our best when we manage to balance them.
Or... at our worst when we fail at that, one way or another.
Further assumptions, thoughts and meanings:
It seems that after our minds slowly developed, as our cerebral cortex grew and evolved through millions of years and as we gained so much advantages through our abilities to disassemble and simplify reality into specific terms, sounds that carry specific meanings - words, we started to think that is the most important feature we have.
Understandably so, because it obviously gave us so much. And because that inner voice in our heads is very noticeable, right? But our mistake is in thinking that thinking is the only thing we should value, to the exclusion of our primary interface with reality.
This is why today so many of the intellectuals value thinking and "rationality" so much they almost despise emotions. (see what i did there?) The rejection is deep and diverse, although it is at the same time really obvious no human can divest himself from emotions entirely, and that many of these rejections are actually emotionally motivated.
Emotions are just chemical reactions, right? They are just instinct, evolutionary leftovers, etc, etc.
Our minds are strongly focused on this kind of dissembling of reality. Our thinking is deeply dependent on reduction of anything we are trying to figure out into some kind of simplest ingredients.
Everything we think of, we have to first slap some kind of label (a word) over. To simplify it. To constrain it into a specific meaning.
That is the very reason why we have problems thinking about our emotions.
Because when you try to disassemble them, or reduce them into specific words - we *feel* something is lost in that reduction, translation into supposedly basic components. That is not just a "feeling" but an actual understanding that is deeper then our thoughts. In fact, it seems the more we try to deny how important our emotions are, we end up effectively amputating ourselves and loosing our understanding of emotions even more - which results in emotions having bigger and bigger influence on us, divested, separated from our minds. Thus we are influenced much more by something we cannot understand and even avoid to understand. In a way, we are making ourselves schizophrenic, split into two separate parts seemingly opposite to each other although they are not and cannot be separated.
The emotions are integral fundamental feature which fueled and pushed evolution of our minds. They are foundations upon which the "rational" mind is built and they provide the fundamental sense of value and meaning to everything we think and do. Not just in a sense of "feelings" but as our primary, earliest interface and a tool to understand reality with.
The mind is supposed to provide balance and protection against some faults our emotions create, but if we separate them those negative influences of superficial, short term emotions grow all the more powerful. And our mind cannot deal with those because they are working on a different level that we refuse to even acknowledge.
***
Bellow i added several links to various articles and scientific studies that support my ideas.
From the way how a monkey figured out a specific sound gives him advantage over the others which lead directly to capability to understand lying, to how and why even Science itself suffers from falsification by various scientists who wish to become more famous or to falsely push their own preferences, agendas and desires as true to such an extent that scientists themselves cannot handle the amounts of false studies anymore.
To the newest neuro-science discoveries about much more complex role our primary cerebellum has.
Our deeper "little brain", the earlier evolutionary product around which our cortex and higher intellectual capabilities formed much later.
edited on 13.10.19 for clarity.
links:
Fish recorded singing chorus just like birds
Monkeys lie to one another
How insects like bumblebees do so much with tiny brains
Squirrels Are Professional Eavesdroppers
Neuroscientists just accidentally discovered a whole new role for the cerebellum
Why facts dont change our minds
High tech war on cheating in Science
A higher-order theory of emotional consciousness
A new proper scientific paper that basically argues for the same as i do
and the link to the pdf of it:
A Higher-order theory of emotional consciousness PDF
Jordan Peterson: 2017 Personality 15: Biology/Traits: The Limbic System
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