Up until now only the physiological basis for emotions and the emotions themselves have been examined in any depth. But chimpanzees do have a cerebral cortex and what goes on there may be of some marginal significance. Obviously what goes on in the human cerebral cortex is very significant, and it is to that subject that I now turn this discussion.
Carl Sagan recognized functional differences between the left and right hemispheres of the cerebral cortex. The left hemisphere is where the ability to perform logical operations originates, and the right hemisphere is where the ability to perform creative-intuitive operations originates. It would probably be more accurate to say that both the logical and creative-intuitive faculties are actually distributed functions, but the distribution is not equal.
Paradoxically, there is yet another distinct mental ability that is so ubiquitous that it is easy to overlook and forget. That function is memory. The ability to create concepts and work with concepts depends upon the ability to remember them and the perceptual bases from which they are derived. Without memory, logical and creative/intuitive abilities would be severely crippled if not rendered pointless. Memory has to be a distributed function, for even amnesiacs who cannot remember their own names still recall how to speak.
The physical arrangement of these different components plays an important role in human behavior. If we pick some muscle in the human body let's say one that is attached to a toe, and trace the neurological connection back to the brain, we first would have to travel up a neuron that is connected to the spinal cord. The spinal cord in turn connects to the R complex. The R complex has the limbic system sitting on top of it and finally, the cerebral cortex sits on top of the limbic system. What this means is that the connection between the limbic system and the body is more direct than that of the cerebral cortex and the body. In fact, our ancestors managed to survive for many millions of years with no mental functionality beyond that of the limbic system.
These facts lead to some significant conclusions about which mental processes are most convenient and which are less convenient but still possible for human beings:
I submit that all human mental activity can be accounted for by a model involving four primary faculties:
Graphically these four components (hereafter nodes) can be arranged in the form of a tetrahedron, and functionally they behave very much like a system of networked computers. Any node can initiate network traffic. Any node can act so as to amplify a piece of traffic, and the cumulative effect of multiple ongoing amplifications is what is commonly referred to as an obsessive mental state. Similarly, any node can act so as to attenuate some piece of network traffic, and this is commonly referred to as repression. Clearly, such an arrangement is wonderfully complex and allows for an infinite number of mental states. If nothing else, it makes an interesting metaphor. However, my goal is to advance this model as an accurate conception of what the human mental apparatus is like and as a usable metaphor for understanding how it behaves.
In speaking of these four components I do not mean to imply that they are literally separate physical objects. I recognize that the human mind is an integrated whole and that no part of it really functions totally independent of the other parts. My point is that a limited and generalized association of function with biologic geography is possible and, that for the purposes of discussion, certain kinds of functionality can be conceptualized.
Ayn Rand pointed out that the ability to create and reason with concepts was what distinguished human beings from other animals, and because the cerebral cortex is the primary physical difference between the human brain and that of other mammals, the cerebral cortex has to be the seat of the conceptual faculty, the rational faculty and self awareness. It seems probable to me that the left half of the cerebral cortex is more involved in conscious processes than the right half. Certainly the left half has more to do with logical operations, and as we are consciously aware of our own logical processes, there has to be a close connection between the Logical Faculty and whatever gives rise to consciousness. Admittedly this reasoning is based on circumstantial evidence, but the evidence is consistent.
I once worked with a fellow who provided me with a graphic demonstration of left brain functionality. For this explantion to make sense I have to add that there is a crossover between the side of the brain and the side of the body it attaches too. A person who has a stroke effecting the left side of the brain will experience paralysis on the right side of his body. And the right eye is connected most directly to the left side of the brain.
At any rate, this peson was a software engineer whose demeanor would visibly change whenever he discussed the system we were both working on. Whenever he spoke of the system he would switch into a mental mode of severe critical analysis. He would close his left eye, squint through his right eye, and turn his head so that his right eye was fixed in a stare directly centered on the person he was addressing. His language would become very measured in that he would speak slowly and enunciate very clearly so that no one would misunderstand him. Listening to him, one could tell that his focus on the subject was very tight and disciplined. The left side of his brain, the seat of his Logical Faculty, was in control and was revealing itself in a very graphical way.
The Logical Faculty is the policeman of the human mental network. Everyone has experienced his own imagination (i.e. Creative-Intuitive Faculty) at work and knows that sometimes imagined or created ideas can be wildly improbable, irrelevant or useless. It is up to the Logical Faculty to sort the wheat from the chaff. Likewise the Memory Faculty can yield information that is irrelevant or useless. It is up to the Logical Faculty to again winnow information and request additional information from memory as needed. Finally the Emotional Faculty obviously comes up with impulses that may be either appropriate or inappropriate to act upon depending on circumstances. So called "crimes of passion" derive from an Emotional Faculty that has not been adequately managed by the Logical Faculty.
On the other hand, the Logical Faculty can over-manage mental processes. This is the underlying cause of paradigm blindness. At times we find it difficult or impossible to break out of a mind set about how some aspect of the world is. Preconceptions cause us to blind ourselves to contrary evidence. New and better explanations for observed phenomenon can get summarily rejected. New and better ways of doing things can likewise never be invented or adopted because of paradigm blindness.
In the interest of brevity I would like to hereafter refer to the Logical Faculty with the acronym LogFac.
While the logical operations of the left hemisphere are relatively easy to observe and qualify, the business of Creative-Intuitive operations is more subtle and elusive. I recall one time when I was taking a calculus course: the problem was to come up with a derivative for a given function. I solved the problem correctly, but when someone inquired in class about the problem, I realized that I could not explain how I had arrived at the solution. It turned out that the teacher couldn't really explain it either because he fell back on the language that our textbook used to explain the solution to a similar problem. The textbook author claimed to have arrived at the solution by a process of "inspection," and there the explanation stopped. That's when I realized that between myself, the teacher and the textbook author, nobody knew how we had solved the problem. "Inspection" was a euphemism for a Creative-Intuitive mental operation that had to have operated at a sub-verbal level because we could not find adequate words to explain it. We knew that we had this ability because we had results from it in hand, yet it was very much a black box to us in that we had no insight into its internal workings.
Still, I think it possible to identify a few explicit functions of the Creative-Intuitive faculty. I submit that the process of integrating perceptions into conceptions goes on in this faculty. And although we normally think of a concept in terms of a formal assignment of a name to some observable phenomenon, there is more to the integration of perceptions than just this. Integration involves pattern recognition (i.e. a sudden leap in understanding).
Everyone has observed a musician taping his foot in time to music. I submit that this is the Creative-Intuitive faculty at work. The Creative-Intuitive faculty is responsible for pattern recognition and pattern creation. One of the patterns that humans are sensitive to is time. Syncopation is an integrated perception of a time-dependent pattern or the creation of one. Music is an obvious manifestation of syncopation.
Everyone can recognize that crying is usually a symptom of sorrow. The ability to recognize body language and other behavior and translate it into a recognition of an emotional state is another aspect of the Creative-Intuitive faculty. This ability is commonly referred to as empathy.
At times the Creative-Intuitive Faculty functions best when all restraints are removed from it. This is what is involved in the process of "brainstorming." This technique is very useful in breaking out of existing paradigms.
It is even possible for the Creative-Intuitive Faculty to masquerade as the memory faculty. Recently so-called "discovered memories" are being simultaneously used as a basis for prosecution and are being debunked as fantasies whose existence derives from overstimulation and suggestion by a psychotherapist. The evidence is that both things happen. The Memory Faculty can be persuaded by the Creative-Intuitive Faculty both that real events did not happen and that fantasies are real.
In the interest of brevity I would like to hereafter refer to the Creative-Intuitive Faculty with the acronym CiFac.
There is more to the Memory Faculty that just a simple mechanism for storing and retrieving information. In her work An Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology Ayn Rand made the point that human beings could remember concepts and the perceptions upon which those concepts were based, but not the sensations that gave rise to the perceptions. In concrete terms we can remember that burns are painful and we can remember the pain itself, but after healing has taken place, we cannot recreate the sensation of pain from memory.
In terms of the architectural model I am advocating, the Memory Faculty can store concepts as well as shadowy diminished forms of emotions. Remembering that I hate lima beans is not the same thing as experiencing the taste of chlorophyll, chalk and creosote (i.e. what lima beans taste like to me). However the memory of an emotion and the recollection of the circumstances that gave rise to it is often enough to prompt the Emotional Faculty into recreating the emotion.
All memories are not equal. The memory works according to a priority system. Information that is regarded as critically important or that is accessed on a frequent basis, is kept where it can be easily and readily retrieved. For example I know the value of pi to 20 decimal places because I use the number often in my work. On the other hand, I cannot remember the color of the shirt I wore on my 8th birthday although, at one time I undoubtedly knew that information. It is possible that information still exists deeply buried in my memory and that it could be retrieved under hypnosis.
Just as it is possible for the Creative-Intuitive Faculty to masquerade as the Memory Faculty, the inverse is also possible. Having read books all of my life, I find that when I sit down to write something I cannot always be sure whether my words are my own creation or whether they are a flickering memory of something I once read. As a practical matter, I have had to resign myself to living with the nagging worry I may be inadvertently plagiarizing someone else's work.
In the interest of brevity I would like to hereafter refer to the Memory Faculty with the acronym MemFac.
The Emotional Faculty is very important because it plays a central role in motivation. Even actions that are directly mandated by the Logical Faculty against the druthers of the Emotional Faculty can ultimately be accepted and supported in a fashion by the Emotional Faculty. It is hard to conceive of motivation outside the context of an associated emotional state. It can even be plausibly argued that motivation itself is an emotional state. I find it difficult to resist the argument that every instance of human action is and must be accompanied by a supporting and enabling emotional state.
None of this is accidental. For over 170 million years mammalian behavior has largely been dictated by emotions deriving from the mammalian limbic system and underlying R complex. Indeed, basic mammalian behavior must have originated from some kind of emotional faculty because there is little or no conceptual faculty for it to have come from. At the very least, it seems likely the net effect of this emotion driven behavior was at least neutral in it's effect. Natural selection would have forced species exhibiting net negative effects from it into extinction. It is plausible that some other positive attribute could be cancelling out hypothetical net negative effects of emotions in mammals, but no candidate for this role comes to mind. I see no way to escape the conclusion that the net effect of emotions has been beneficial to mammals.
Even without any knowledge based on our own experiences, it seems logical to infer that because of the nature of human beings as mammals, we have inherited the mammalian emotional faculty in an intact and fully functional form. Certainly we can observe emotional behavior in the chimps that are our nearest living relatives. While emotion itself is mammalian and not exclusively human in its origin, I submit that the intimate proximity of the LogFac, CiFac and MemFac gives rise to some uniquely human emotional events. However, this subject is effectively out of scope for this paper and, I will have only a little more to say about it in the conclusion.
Like the other three faculties of the human mental tetrahedron, the Emotional Faculty is able to initiate network traffic. In fact, in our simian ancestors, it was the mechanism for driving behavior. It has not lost this capacity simply because there are other components in the tetrahedron. For example, a person who experiences panic and then flees is operating under the direct control of his emotional faculty.
It is possible for some other faculty to originate a piece of network traffic and for the Emotional Faculty to associate an emotional component with that traffic. For example, value judgments that take place in the LogFac can have emotional components associated with them.
Like other faculties, the Emotional Faculty can be involved in extended interactions with other components. We have all experienced the phenomenon of the annoying tune we can't get out of our heads. I submit that this is a feedback loop between the Memory Faculty, Creative-Intuitive Faculty and Emotional Faculty. The Memory Faculty recalls the tune and loads it to the network. The Creative-Intuitive Faculty recognizes a pattern in the music and forwards the traffic to the Emotional Faculty. The Emotional Faculty reacts in a positive way and the Memory Faculty resends the traffic to sustain the state. This is a form of obsession that is annoying, but which ultimately yields to attenuation (i.e. repression). I would even go so far as to argue that the whole phenomenon of music is an obsessive mental state originating as a feedback loop between the Creative-Intuitive and Emotional Faculties with the Memory Faculty being replaced by the musicians originating the music.
It is also possible for the Emotional Faculty to gather together several emotions and amalgamate them into a unified whole. I will have a little more to say about this in the next section.
In the interest of brevity I would like to hereafter refer to the Emotional Faculty with the acronym EmoFac.