Victor Johnston; Why We Feel
Book	Page		Topic
Johnston; Why We Feel	vii		Human brain is the most intricate and complex object in the known universe.
Johnston; Why We Feel	vii		Our brain creates what is, in effect, a virtual reality.
Johnston; Why We Feel	6		Sleep and dreaming -- nightly hallucinations fill our minds with vivid conscious experiences, even under conditions of total sensory deprivation.
Johnston; Why We Feel	6		Conscious properties of our mind, like our sensations and feelings, are firmly tied to the physical structure and chemistry of our brain, and they can arise without any input from the outside world.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	8		Redness as a qualia  -- a property that arises from the arrangement and interactions among nerve cells -- an emergent property.		2
Johnston; Why We Feel	8		Emergent property is an attribute that arises as a consequence of the arrangement and interaction between individual components.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	8		Complex arrangements of complex components produce complex emergent properties.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	8		Properties of mind can be viewed as emergent properties resulting from the arrangement and chemical communication among nerve cells.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	9		Functional role of emergent properties -- hard problem of consciousness.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	11		Not every emergent property is functional. In biological organisms, only functional attributes that ensures survival and reproduction will eventually be transmitted to future generations.		2
Johnston; Why We Feel	11		Attributes of mind are not just any emergent properties of the neural organization; they are those functional emergent properties that enhance biological survival.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	12		Human brain has evolved a neural organization that can generate pleasant or unpleasant sensations for those aspects of the world that are a benefit or detriment to gene survival.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	13		Sweetness is not a property of the sugar molecule; it is an evolved emergent property of our brain.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	13		Sensations such as sweetness provide us with an immediate evaluation of sensory events, even in the absence of any understanding of their biological importance or their evolutionary origins.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	13		Our discomfort at high or low temperatures and the unpleasant smell of our waste products are both evolved emergent properties.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	13		The illusion of the brain's reality emulator is so powerful and ubiquitous that we come to believe that objects really are red, or hot, or bitter, or sweet, or beautiful, and we usually do not ask how or why we impose this structure on our physical world, or how the structure relates to our biological survival.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	13		Our conscious world is a grand illusion!		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	16		Evolved emergent properties of the nervous system -- over many generations, by favoring qualia emergent properties that enhance gene survival, natural selection has forged the neural machinery capable of generating qualia experiences.		3
Johnston; Why We Feel	16		It is always function -- gene survival -- that dictates biological design.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	33		Phylogenetic learning - achieved through natural selection over generations;  Ontogenetic learning - arising from an individual's unique experiences.		17
Johnston; Why We Feel	33		Nature and Nurture		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	40		Humans have very poor facial recall ability.		7
Johnston; Why We Feel	40		Humans are experts at facial recognition.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	41		Babies will look at faces in preference to any other visual image.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	41		10% of the cells in the inferior temporal cortex of the primate brain respond to pictures of faces.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	41		Bilateral lesions in the inferior temporal cortex can result in a clinical syndrome known as prosopagnosia, literally "not knowing people"; cannot recognize close family members and may even fail to recognize their own face in the mirror!		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	41		Prosopagnosia patients can immediately recognize individuals as soon as they speak.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	41		Prosopagnosia patients have lost the visual recognition ability -- the ability to associate the face with the identity of the individual.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	41		When presented with the correct set of cues, we may experience instant recognition. Some subset of our neural network can be synaptically reactivated as a memory.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	57		Turing Test' - supposition that mental faculties are exclusively algorithmic.		16
Johnston; Why We Feel	58		Conscious experiences are evolved emergent properties of biological brains.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	59		Human conscious experiences are emergent properties that arise from the complex arrangements and interconnections between nerve cells.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	61		Two types of feelings; affects and emotions.		2
Johnston; Why We Feel	61		Affects -- directly evoked by specific inputs from the internal or external environment and include such experiences as (pain, hunger, thirst),		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	61		Emotions -- internally produced by a complex cognitive process (anger, love).		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	61		Feelings -- emotions as well as affects -- two different hedonic tones, positive and negative, pleasantness or unpleasantness.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	62		Hedonic tone -- evaluative aspect of a feeling, it's pleasantness or unpleasantness.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	64		Feelings -- emergent properties of the nervous system.		2
Johnston; Why We Feel	65		Affects possess hedonic tone and intensity.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	65		Affects and emotions will prove to be integral to our survival, not the irrelevant epiphenomena that many cognitive scientists believe them to be.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	67		Sensory feelings evolved in response to those environmental events that have consistently presented opportunities or threats to biological survival in ancestral environments.		2
Johnston; Why We Feel	67		Behaviors followed by positive feelings are facilitated, whereas behaviors followed by negative feelings are inhibited.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	79		Unexpectedness contributes to the intensity of emotion.		12
Johnston; Why We Feel	80		Emotions differ from affects in that they possess distinct qualities that are not a function of sensory inputs.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	80		Emotions are difficult to study since they cannot be measured directly, and we are forced to rely on verbal reports.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	81		Natural selection could evolve a value system that individuals can use to learn from their experiences.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	81		Advantage of learning -- adapt to rapidly changing aspects of environment; could not be achieved by natural selection alone.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	82		Learning could complement biological evolution by allowing individuals to discover how to survive and reproduce within their own unique and changing environment.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	82		Importance of feelings - emotions as well as affects - regulating how, what, and when we learn and in determining how we reason about the world around us.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	83		Feelings act as active filters that define and exaggerate the reproductive consequences of environmental or social events associated with relatively minor fluctuations in reproductive potential. Each qualitatively different feeling appears to monitor a different aspect of reproductive success.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	84		Fitness - relative reproductive success.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	85		Natural selection always favors attributes that enhance the survival of our genes, not simply our own personal survival. We die, but our genes may go on forever.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	85		Genes have a higher probability of being present in close relatives than in distant relatives or strangers.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	86		Like bodily affects, the positive or negative hedonic tone of an emotion provides the necessary value system for learning to adapt to rapidly changing aspects of the environment.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	87		Intensity of affects and emotions can be viewed as amplifications of the reproductive consequences of current physical or social circumstances.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	88		Primary emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, surprise).		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	90		Six primary social emotions are all apparent during the first two years of life.		2
Johnston; Why We Feel	90		Congenitally blind and deaf children exhibit the same range of facial expressions as normal children. These expressions and their associated feelings are part of our biological nature.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	93		Anxiety disorders that may have arisen from chance associations that were formed in early childhood and are now long forgotten.		3
Johnston; Why We Feel	96		Hedonic dimensions of feelings can be envisaged as ranging from extremely pleasant to extremely unpleasant.		3
Johnston; Why We Feel	100		Secondary or self-conscious social feelings - guilt, pride, envy - develop somewhat later than the primary emotions.		4
Johnston; Why We Feel	100		Primary emotions may be common to many species; secondary feelings appear to be a consequence of the unique history of humans.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	100		Reciprocal altruism requires the ability to recognize each other as individuals and the capability of remembering and quantifying many different kinds of goods and services.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	101		Generalized reciprocity and the secondary social emotions that monitor such transactions appear to be unique characteristics of human beings.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	101		Children's facial expressions are automatic and controlled by subcortical centers within the extrapyramidal motor system.   [Stereotyped motor programs]  [FAPs]		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	103		Novelty and unexpectedness merely arouse the nervous system, but this arousal is necessary and sufficient for learning to occur.		2
Johnston; Why We Feel	104		Habituation - loss of arousal as a result of repeated exposure.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	104		Events that elicit feeling continue to generate arousal and support creative learning throughout a lifetime.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	104		Feelings are like perceptions; they qualitatively distinguish between relevant and irrelevant.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	106		Every feeling has a specific subjective quality, a hedonic tone, and an intensity.		2
Johnston; Why We Feel	106		Specific subjective quality of a feeling provides the internal context that is stored with all learned behaviors, increases the probability that they will be recalled during similar internal states.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	106		Hedonic tone, positive or negative, facilitates or inhibits the behavioral act it follows: a reward facilitates and a deterrent inhibits motor patterns.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	106		Intensity of a feeling modulates the degree of arousal that is required for learning.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	106		Evolution has provided humans with a primary value system of pleasant and unpleasant feelings.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	106		Learning is a mechanism by which new events can evoke our inherent repertoire of positive or negative feelings, based on their association with the primary set.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	109		Neurophysiology of feelings, major neural pathways, medial forebrain bundle, underlie hedonic tone, the shared components of all feelings.		3
Johnston; Why We Feel	111		Emotional brain, MacLean's "Limbic System" -  medial forebrain bundle (MFB)  (illustration)		2
Johnston; Why We Feel	113		Hippocampus receives input from the thalamocortical pathways activated by our senses.		2
Johnston; Why We Feel	114		Visual thalamocortical pathway, interaction with emotional pathways -  (illustration)		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	115		Medial forebrain bundle (MFB) interconnects the emotional and motor brains with about one million fibers running in each direction.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	115		Medial forebrain bundle (MFB) has become known as the "pleasure pathway" of the brain.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	115		Hedonic tone (pleasantness or unpleasantness)		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	116		All addictive drugs -- like cocaine, amphetamines, alcohol, and heroine -- either directly or indirectly activate the pleasure pathway and eventually release dopamine onto the nucleus accumbens.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	116		Release of dopamine onto the nucleus accumbens appears to underlie all reward feelings.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	116		Cocaine causes a massive release of dopamine onto the nucleus accumbens, and the user experiences a sudden 'rush' of extreme pleasure.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	117		Release of dopamine appears to be highly correlated with both positive and negative hedonic tone, although different neurons and receptor sites may be involved in each case, and the effects on the motor system may be either excitatory or inhibitory.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	117		Limbic system may originally have evolved to provide the mechanism whereby survival needs of an organism could regulate and guide the automatic behaviors of the old reptilian brain.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	119		Neural processing of emotions begins with the limbic system, a number of interconnected subcortical regions around the hypothalamus.		2
Johnston; Why We Feel	119		One major pathway from the limbic system via the hypothalamus is responsible for physiological adjustments to the body, such as changes in heart rate or blood pressure.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	119		A second output pathway, common to all feelings, is the pleasure pathway, which ultimately releases dopamine onto the nucleus accumbens.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	119		The dopamine pathway to the nucleus accumbens is closely associated with the control of motor behavior and is correlated with hedonic tone that is a fundamental aspect of all feeling states.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	119		Limbic system outputs influence two major arousal systems of the brain, and these pathways provide a mechanism by which feelings can modulate cortical arousal.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	119		Specific portions of the limbic system project to different areas of the cingulate gyrus, allowing different patterns of limbic activity to generate qualitatively different emotional feelings and bias cognitive processes.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	119		Conscious experiences are an emergent property of the nervous system.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	120		Cingulate gyrus of the limbic system.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	122		Consciousness is the result of a dynamic organization that can exist within many different areas of the brain.  [Edelman's dynamic core]		2
Johnston; Why We Feel	123		Arousal entails an increase in the sensitivity of a large number of widely distributed nerve cells.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	123		Brain architecture is characterized by abundant reciprocal connections between cortical regions, recurrent pathways that permit feedback and reactivation of active areas, and lateral inhibition that focuses neural activity within active centers by inhibiting less active adjacent regions.  [recursion]  [Fuster's  perception-action cycle]		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	123		Neural interactions between active cortical regions to be sustained by reciprocal pathways interconnecting the active regions.  [recursion]   [Fuster's  perception-action cycle]		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	123		Study of complex systems that involve nonlinear interactions between simple elements.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	124		Consciousness is an emergent property arising from the self-organization of concurrently active but spatially distributed regions of the brain; there is no central organizer and no unique location where it comes into existence.  [Edelman's dynamic core]		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	124		Gestalts form around epicenters arising from a sensory input, an unconscious process, or the output of an earlier gestalt.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	125		Output from the limbic system provides the major source of arousal responsible for the formation of large neural gestalts.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	125		Each conscious experience is the consequence of the widespread and almost instantly numerous potential residents circuits that can be generated by binding together in many spatially distributed otherwise isolated parallel processes of the nervous system.  [Edelman's dynamic core]  [Fuster's  perception-action cycle]		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	126		The number of conscious experiences that can be derived from combinations of multimodal sensory elements is virtually infinite, and conscious organisms benefit from the ability to distinguish between these different states.  The ability to make this discrimination is the essential (functional) role of consciousness.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	126		Each momentary experience is merely a virtual representation that amplifies and discriminates between those aspects of the physical or social world that are biologically relevant.  [Llinás, Brain operates as a reality emulator.]		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	127		Conscious experiences, like sensations and feelings, evolved because they dictated a dynamic organization of the nervous system that could prioritize experiences and distinguish between environmental events or circumstances that had a real influence on biological survival.		1
Johnston; Why We Feel	172		Common currency that underlies all of our decisions is hedonic tone.		45
Johnston; Why We Feel	172		Degree of positive or negative hedonic tone associated with the various outcomes supplies the utility function that underlies all human decisions.  [Bayesian inference]  [Fuster's  perception-action cycle]		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	179		Human feelings appear to provide the important value system that underlies all human decisions.   [Bayesian inference]  [Fuster's  perception-action cycle]		7
Johnston; Why We Feel	179		The shared element of feelings -- hedonic tone -- allows many different feelings to be combined and hence supply an overall assessment of the value associated with the various possible outcomes of a decision problem.		0
Johnston; Why We Feel	179		People like to believe they are logical human beings who can "weigh the facts".  In fact it is very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve this level of abstract logical reasoning.		0