🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <11271@nlm-mcs.arpa> pkarp@tech.NLM.NIH.GOV (Peter Karp) writes:
>
>I propose that emotions are actually vestigal behavior from an earlier
>evolutionary level of cognition.  I'm suggesting that our ancestors
>(and perhaps most living animals) were not endowed with what we think
>of as rational behavior, and thus relied on a more primitive,
>genetically-programmed form of cognition that predisposed them to
>exhibit certain behaviors in certain situations.

The way you describe the relation between situation and behavior makes
cognition almost unnecessary.  Primitive systems would use only sensation.

>These genetic
>behaviors were selected for according to their survival value.  An
>emotion like love might have led to increased production and of and
>survival of children, fear might have led to increased survival in
>threatening situations, etc.

So the primordial mental states would have been emotional rather than
rational.  It's hard to tell, looking at behavior from the outside, just
what the process is that causes the behavior.  As behavior increases in
complexity, it seems to me that emotion and cognition appear concurrently.

Looking at animals under the skin, as chemical systems, we can identify
physiological states that correspond well with so-called "drives".  Low
blood sugar and empty stomach --> hunger, for example.  The sex drive is
more complicated, but clearly has chemical components.  These drives are
surely the cause of active behavior (as opposed to resting).

Would you say that the subjective experience of having a drive (ie feeling
hungry) is what emotions are?  If not, how else wuold you distinguish
emotion from cognition?