The Emotion Machine

some ways to store those records so that she can recollect when she needs them.

Student: You still haven’t explained where feelings come in, such as the pleasure that comes from Carol’s success.

In everyday life it’s convenient to use terms like suffering, pleasure, joy, and grief as though those words referred to mental states that all our acquaintances are familiar with. But when asked to describe those states of mind, we usually find ourselves lost for words because the mental conditions that we call feelings are such complex cascades of processes. For example, it would seem that we speak about pleasure when certain resources recognize some processes that help us identify which of our recent activities should get credit for some recent success. Near the end of the book we’ll return to these questions about how we make those ‘Credit Assignments’ and what are the effects of the feelings called pleasure.

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§2-6. Conscience, Values and Self-Ideals

“I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics.”

–Bertrand Russell

One way that we differ from animals (except, perhaps, for the elephants) is in the great length of our childhoods. One consequence of this is that no other species accumulates so much and so many kinds of knowledge—and none of them seem to grow anything close to our human traditions and values.

What kind of person would you like to be? Are you careful and cautious or brave and audacious? Do you follow the crowd, or prefer to lead? Would you rather be tranquil or driven by passion? Such personal traits depend, in part, upon each person’s inheritance. But also they are partly shaped by our networks of social attachments.

Once our human attachment bonds form, they begin to serve multiple functions. First they keep children close to their parents—and this provides such services as nutrition, defense, and companionship. But also (if we are right about this) they have special effects on how children learn—by providing each child with new ways to re-arrange its priorities. Also, the self-conscious emotions that come with this have other, very specific effects. Pride tends to make you more confident, more optimistic and adventurous, while Shame makes you want to change yourself so that you’ll never get into that state again.

The following section discusses what happens when children’s Imprimers go absent; the result of this can be severe. But older children and adults can envision how an absent imprimer might react to unusual acts or ideas, or evaluate a proposed new goal. We all know this kind of experience: of predicting (and then reacting to) what we think that an absent Imprimer might do—and then we give this various names like ‘moral sense’ or ‘conscience’ or ‘knowledge of right and wrong.’

To do this kind of ‘internal impriming,’ a child will have to construct some sort of ‘model’ that helps to predict its Imprimer’s reactions. How might that child think about this? First, it might not think about it at all, because the rest of its mind has no access to it. Or, that model might seem, to that child, as though there were someone else in its mind—perhaps in the form of a made-up companion. It might even be seen as embodied in some external object—such as a rag doll or a baby-blanket.[13] We’ll discuss such models in §9.

What if some other part of that child’s brain could find a way to take over control of the systems that raise or elevate the priorities of its various goals? Then such a child could praise itself, and through those connections could select which new goals to elevate—or else that child could censure itself, and thus impose new constraints on itself.

At this point that child will have, in effect, an internal system of values—or what is commonly called a ‘conscience’. Perhaps Freud had a process like this in mind when suggesting that a child can ‘introject’ some of its parents’ attitudes. If a child gains enough control of this, it could become ‘ethically autonomous’ in the sense that it could eventually replace those earlier value-sets. However, if most of those values remain in place, then later attempts to change them could lead to internal conflicts in which the child tries to oppose the values acquired from its imprimers.

What determines which ideals will grow inside each particular human mind? Each family, culture, club, or group evolves various social and moral codes—by inventing some ways to decide what is right and wrong. Those codes of behavior have awesome effects on all of our organizations; they shape the customs, traditions, and cultures of nations, professions, clubs, and religions. They can even make those institutions value themselves above everything else—and make their members happy to die for them, in endless successions of battles and wars.

How do we grow those powerful standards and codes? I’ll parody several philosophers.

Naturist: I deeply believe that ethical values are, by their nature, self-evident. Surely everyone would be naturally good, unless their minds were corrupted by having been raised in unnatural states.

Rationalist: I’m suspicious of statements like that because ‘deeply’ and ‘self-evident” seem only to mean, “I cannot explain why I believe this,” and, “I don’t want to know what makes me believe it.”

Social Contractor: There is no absolute basis at all for what we call moral and ethical values. They’re all based on social conventions and contracts that each of us makes with the rest of us.

Socio-biologist: That’s a neat concept—except for one thing: no one remembers agreeing to it! A better idea is that ‘morals’ are based on traits we evolved in ancient times, as when certain breeds of dogs were selected for becoming attached to only one master. In humans, we call this ‘loyalty’.

No doubt, such traits are partly based on genes that we have inherited, but they’re also based on contagious ‘memes’—that is, ideas that spread from one brain to the next as part of each cultural heritage.[14]

Fundamentalist: Our values stem directly from divinely inspired religious texts—and woe unto those who transgress them.

Theologian: Some ethical rules can be deduced on the basis of logical reasoning.

Logician: Logic only helps us deduce what’s implied by the assumptions we make. It says nothing about which assumptions to use.

Mystic: Reasoning only clouds the mind and disconnects it from reality. You will never achieve enlightenment until you learn not to think so much.

One can sometimes improve a skill by suppressing the urge to think about it. But if one turns most mental critics off, and relies on primitive instincts too much, that could retard one’s mental development.

Existentialist: Whatever goal you happen to have, you should ask what purpose that purpose serves—and then you’ll see our predicament: we’re all trapped in a world that’s completely absurd.

Sentimentalist: You’re too concerned with a person’s aims. Just watch some children and you will see curiosity and playfulness. They’re not seeking any particular goals, but are enjoying the finding of novelties, and the pleasures of making discoveries.