{"id":10913,"date":"2020-08-16T10:13:04","date_gmt":"2020-08-16T15:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=10913"},"modified":"2020-08-16T10:22:39","modified_gmt":"2020-08-16T15:22:39","slug":"emotional-practices-part-1-affective-neuroscience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/08\/16\/emotional-practices-part-1-affective-neuroscience\/","title":{"rendered":"Emotional practices, part 1: Affective neuroscience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The study of emotions, particularly within the field of affective neuroscience, is a complex field riven by paradigmatic division. In my book <\/em>Shadowing the Anthropocene, I proposed a way to engage with one\u2019s experience, including one\u2019s emotional or affective experience, within an \u201ceco-ethico-aesthetic” (or “logo-ethico-aesthetic”) practice that could help us deal with the \u201cAnthropocene predicament.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the following two-part article, I reflect on that attempt in light of recent debates in the field of affective neuroscience. In part one, I summarize my understanding of what’s at stake between two approaches to emotions, represented by two recent popularizations of some fairly complex neuropsychological theory: Lisa Feldman Barrett\u2019s <\/em>How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain<\/a> and Stephen Asma\u2019s and Rami Gabriel\u2019s <\/em>The Emotional Mind: The Affective Roots of Culture and Cognition<\/a>.<\/a> While emerging from rival and in some respects opposite schools of thought, both books proclaim \u201cnew paradigms\u201d in the understanding of the human mind. The projected second part will apply the debate between these perspectives to the process-relational \u201cpractices of the self\u201d I introduced in <\/em>Shadowing the Anthropocene, and will revise and extend those practices in the process.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Introduction: Mapping the mind<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the best way to learn anything is to internalize it through application, the best way to learn a system of psychology, or a “map of the self,” is by applying it to oneself. Charles Hampden-Turner\u2019s classic book Maps of the Mind<\/a> includes sixty ways of mapping the human being. His categories of maps range from the historical and religious to the psychoanalytical, existential, psychosocial, creative, linguistic\/symbolic, cybernetic, structural, and “paradigmatic.” The book covers everything from Daoism and St. Augustine to Blake, Darwin, Marx, Weber, Freud, Lacan, Bateson, Chomsky, and Varela. While Hampden-Turner’s book is very user-friendly and incredibly comprehensive for its time (it came out in 1982), it desperately needs updating.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Applying a map of the psyche — i.e., the mind, the self, whatever you call this thing that may not be a “thing” at all, depending on the map, but that concerns the core of how we experience the world — is one thing when you\u2019re trying to learn the map. It\u2019s another when you\u2019re trying to learn and change<\/em> the territory. That\u2019s where a theory of change becomes helpful. In religious talk, \u201ctheory of change\u201d often equates with what is called \u201csoteriology,\u201d the theory of salvation (which scholars of religion tend to generalize to include theories of enlightenment, liberation, and the like). Theories of change are premised on the idea that the way things are is not good enough; that we can and should do better. In social theory, that equates to a theory of emancipation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Part Two (of three) of my book Shadowing the Anthropocene<\/a><\/em>, I outlined a \u201cmap of the self\u201d alongside some practices that are intended to help us to live in accordance with an ideal. The ideal is presented by the process-relational model of reality, which (in the book and in other writing) I have connected with Buddhism, ecology, and a liberationist politics more generally, in addition to the more direct philosophical sources in which it\u2019s rooted (Whitehead, Peirce, Deleuze, and others). For key sources like Whitehead and Peirce, affect, emotion, and\/or feeling is considered primary; cognition and behavior arise dependently out of the feeling or “affective tone” that colors our encounter with things. The case for this primacy of affect (and\/or aesthetics) was made, in one influential variant, in Whitehead’s critique of the “bifurcation of nature” (found in his Concept of Nature<\/a><\/em>, among other places), but it finds many echoes in environmental, feminist, decolonial, and related strands of more recent thought. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is, therefore, a lot at stake in how we conceptualize our affective relationship to the world. With that in mind, I’ve been reading up on some debates in the neuroscience of affect and emotion, which has made me revisit my own thinking somewhat. The remainder of this article will serve as a preliminary remapping of this terrain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Affective neuroscience: basic emotions vs. constructionism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The field of affective neuroscience has recently featured a vigorous debate\nbetween two very different understanding of emotions<\/a>.\nThe first, the Basic Emotion theories, are sometimes referred to by the\nmechanisms they posit (\u201cemotional circuits,\u201d \u201csomatic markers,\u201d et al.) or by\ntheir nature as perceived by their critics (\u201cnativist,\u201d \u201cessentialist\u201d), and sometimes\nsimply called “the classical view.” The second nowadays tend to be\ncalled “constructivist\u201d theories; most prominent among them is Lisa\nFeldman Barrett\u2019s “theory of constructed emotion.” (There are other\ntheories, such as Ledoux\u2019s and Brown\u2019s \u201chigher order theory of\nemotional consciousness<\/a>, which fall somewhere between the two.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basic Emotion theories posit that there are several emotional complexes that are innate to human experience. These are rooted in evolutionary continuities with other species and are broadly \u201chomologous\u201d to what is found in those other species. How many of them there are varies from one theorist to another: Silvan Tomkins proposed eight (surprise\u2013startle; interest\u2013excitement; fear\u2013terror; distress\u2013anguish; enjoyment\u2013joy; contempt\u2013disgust; shame\u2013humiliation; anger\u2013rage), Paul Ekman proposed six (happiness, sadness, fear, surprise, anger, disgust), Jaak Panksepp proposed seven (fear, lust, care, play, rage, seeking, and panic\/grief), while others like Antonio Damasio break things down in other ways. However they are identified, emotions are irreducible and are part of our biological inheritance. Moreover, they are recognizable fairly universally in visible phenomena like (for primates) facial expressions, even if those phenomena can, for humans, become complicated by culture. In its popular guise, this \u201cclassical\u201d view sees emotions as both “primitive” or “primordial” and as potentially working at cross-purposes with our “reason.” But that emotion-reason dualism is not required by the basic emotion theory; it just tends to come with it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Constructivist theories, by contrast, posit a complex interplay between\nneurological, psychological, and social factors by which degrees of affective\narousal, characterized by positive and negative valences, are interpreted to\ntake specific forms, which we call \u201cemotions.\u201d These work as part of the\nbrain\u2019s efforts to \u201cpredictively\u201d process experience. The brain, in this view,\nis less like a reactive machine and more like a predictive machine, one that\nconstructs (or “simulates”) our experience, moment to moment, based\nin part on what it has learned from previous experiences, which it is\nconstantly comparing with the sensory information it is receiving. Emotions are\nin this sense \u201cconstructed\u201d in ways that are specific to humans. It\u2019s difficult\nto say what is biologically shared between humans and other species beyond the\nforms of \u201carousal\u201d and \u201cvalence\u201d that are at the core of these complex\ninterpretations. But culture plays a powerful role in shaping what we think<\/em>\nof as our emotional life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whereas basic emotions theories are often criticized as \u201cessentialist,\u201d constructivist views are often viewed as \u201crelativist\u201d and criticized for their novelty, since they appear to reject decades of work that has ostensibly proven the universality of certain expressions of human emotion. As Lisa Feldman Barrett explains in How Emotions are Made<\/em>, emotional constructivism combines social<\/em> constructionism, psychological<\/em> constructionism, and neuro<\/em>constructionism. It is avowedly anti-essentialist. Where basic emotion theories find their starting point in observed behavior and are strongly grounded in decades-long, cross-species research, constructivist theories find their starting point in neurophysiological data, which they argue have failed to confirm the assumptions of \u201cbasic emotions\u201d except in a circular way, with \u201cclassical\u201d preconceptions shaping the research, which then mirrors those same preconceptions in its outcomes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In How Emotions Are Made<\/em>, Barrett argues that the two views have been at war “throughout recorded history,” from the ancient Greeks (Plato versus Heraclitus) and Buddhists (dharmas <\/em>as essences versus dharmas <\/em>as conceptual constructs) to early modernity (Descartes and Spinoza versus Hume and Kant) and beyond. Even Darwin was confused on the matter: Barrett depicts On the Origin of Species<\/em> as the font of a genuinely novel, anti-essentialist biology, but his later The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals<\/em> as presenting an inexplicably essentialist about-face. William James, in his Principles of Psychology<\/em> (among other works), was a thoroughgoing anti-essentialist, but John Dewey mischaracterized him and by christening his own mistaken view the \u201cJames-Lange theory of emotions,\u201d contaminated the reception of James\u2019s true views for decades. And so on. Now, Barrett writes, \u201cModern neuroscience has given us the tools to settle the conflict, and based on overwhelming evidence, the classical view has lost\u201d (369), as \u201cthe final nails\u201d are being driven \u201cinto the classical view\u2019s coffin\u201d (413).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Barrett\u2019s body budgeting <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The debate between the two paradigms hinges in part on how we define what is shared or \u201cuniversal.\u201d For all of Barrett\u2019s constructivism, she does agree that there are universals. There are the affects, which rise and fall and have their valences (positive or negative). There is the brain\u2019s nature as a predictive mechanism, which leads to what Barrett calls \u201caffective realism,\u201d by which she means that you experience<\/em> what you believe<\/em>, and that therefore changing experience requires changing your beliefs. There are \u201cconcepts,\u201d which are essential to emotions — though not anyone\u2019s particular<\/em> concepts, since those vary (which leaves us needing to hash out the differences when one set of emotion concepts encounters another). And there is \u201csocial reality,\u201d which is the ultimate context within which emotional experience occurs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regarding the first of these, our affective life is said to be a matter of \u201cbody budgeting,\u201d that is, of maintaining a balanced energy level regulating one’s ability to meet one’s needs. Barrett writes: \u201cThe most basic thing you can do to master your emotions, in fact, is to keep your body budget in good shape\u201d (424). When she gets to the inevitable self-help part of the book (it is, after all, a trade paperback selling for a little over $10), she spells out what that might mean. Get enough sleep and exercise, eat good food, cultivate friendships and a healthy lifestyle, embrace touch and physical pleasures, and resist the temptations of advertisers and unhealthy peers and employers. Pay attention to the \u201cgranularity\u201d of your emotional experiences, trying on \u201cnew concepts\u201d to see which ones fit best. Learn new words. All of that adds to the flexibility by which we make sense of ourselves and of others. Avoid rumination, addiction, and junk food. Be creative and curious, treating others with a gentleness befitting of their own potential flexibility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her chapters 9 through 12 read like a guide to creative living, \u201cchicken\nsoup\u201d for the psychological constructivist soul, complete with citations to\nBuddhism and mindfulness meditation on the usefulness of deconstructing one\u2019s\nself-concepts. \u201c[Y]our self is constructed anew in every moment by the same\npredictive, core systems that construct emotions, including our familiar pair\nof networks (interoceptive and control), among others, as they categorize the\ncontinuous stream of sensation from your body and the world\u201d (461).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The virtue of the constructivist revolution, Barrett argues, is that it gives us power over our minds and, by extension, over the world. We are not puppets in the hands of our biologically wired emotions. Instead, we can change our concepts and reality will follow. \u201cIt is your responsibility to learn concepts that, through prediction, steer you away from harmful actions\u201d (376). As the New Age (and neoliberal) mantra goes, we can create our own reality. But if this is the extent of our social reality, I would argue it is rather thin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Asma\/Gabriel\u2019s triune brain<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This brings me to the Asma\/Gabriel book. Part of my goal in brushing up on affective neuroscience was to see how the \u201clayer-cake\u201d model of the brain described decades ago by brain scientists like Paul MacLean has held up. I knew that MacLean\u2019s triune brain model — which sees the human brain as having evolved in three main waves, the first creating a so-called \u201creptilian complex,\u201d the second a paleomammalian \u201climbic system,\u201d and the third, most recent, \u201cneomammalian brain\u201d being centered around the neocortex — is mostly no longer considered an accurate description of brain anatomy (see here<\/a>, for instance). But I wasn\u2019t sure how much of the overall conception — that the human brain consists of older, more \u201cprimitive\u201d layers and newer, more cognitively \u201cmodern\u201d layers, with interaction between the layers moving in both directions (\u201ctop-down\u201d and “bottom-up\u201d) — still holds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Barrett\u2019s work tries to present the \u201cfinal nail in the coffin\u201d for that view, The Emotional Mind<\/em>, a 2019 book by philosopher Stephen Asma and psychologist Rami Gabriel<\/a>, presents what may be the most holistic recent defense of the layer-cake model. It is \u201cholistic\u201d in the sense that their examination stretches from neuroscience and ethology to archaeology, culture, religion, and the arts, in ways similar in scope to what one finds in \u201cevolutionary psychology\u201d and \u201cevolutionary\u201d literary and cultural studies, but more nuanced and complex than either of the latter. While they mercilessly (if briefly) critique evolutionary psychology with its Pleistocene-rooted, neo-Darwinian adaptationism, they reserve their deepest blows for the \u201crational choice\u201d model of human nature, according to which humans, by nature, are rational agents calculating costs and benefits, not just individually but all the more so collectively, with cost-benefit accounting explaining the evolution of human social systems and behavior. Instead, they draw on a complex understanding of embodied, embedded, extended, enactive, and affective cognition, or what is sometimes called \u201c4EA cognition,\u201d though they don\u2019t use that term. They more commonly refer to \u201cextended\u201d (as well as \u201cdistributed\u201d) mind, applying that notion to the emotions in a way that makes it possible to study culture, ritual, religion, the arts, and much else as parts of the affective-cognitive social<\/em> apparatus that makes humans human. Asma\/Gabriel write:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our social and cultural world is designed to trigger and manage affect, partly because this is the most expedient means of triggering prosocial behavior, but also because we [humans] are connoisseurs of emotion and pursue their intrinsic as well as instrumental values. (7)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

All of this, in my view, puts their work on a different level of interest\nfor me and others who study culture as it is lived<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asma and Gabriel build on the \u201caffective turn\u201d represented by the work of neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio, Richard Davidson, and especially their own mentor (as they refer to him), Jaak Panksepp. They see this work as having \u201ctrickled\u201d in recent years into disciplines as wide ranging as ethology, economics, therapeutics, and pharmaceutics. \u201cBut the time has finally come,\u201d they write, \u201cfor a full-scale exploration of the evolution of emotions and mind in the biologically rooted human being\u201d (2). They are hardly the first to broach this goal (I can think of numerous Freudians, Jungians, Lacanians, and many others who\u2019ve tried it before them), but they are, to my knowledge, among the first to bring contemporary neuroscience to such a broad and sweeping task, and perhaps the most ambitious to attempt it. The book, unfortunately, draws on such a wide scope of literature as to make it difficult to assess (I certainly cannot claim to do that) and because its writing is much more academic than Barrett\u2019s, it will not garner nearly the attention as her volume. But its publication by Harvard University Press is significant. (Here\u2019s a summary<\/a> of the book\u2019s arguments.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what is the model of the brain and mind found in Asma and Gabriel? They\nstate that their goal is to <\/p>\n\n\n\n

think about consciousness itself as an archaeologist thinks about layers of sedimentary strata. At the lower layers, we have basic drives that prod the animal out into the environment for the exploitation of resources. Thirst, lust, fear, and so on are triggers in evolutionarily earlier regions of the brain that stimulate vertebrates toward satisfaction and a return to homeostasis. Subsequently, the brain of a mammal creates a feedback loop between these ancient affective systems and the experiential learning and conditioning that the creature undergoes. And, finally, another feedback loop exists between the neo-cortical \u201crational\u201d cognitive processes and the aforementioned sub-cortical triggers and learning systems. As Jaak Panksepp argues, there are bottom-up causes of mind (i.e., those that push the organism to satisfy specific physiochemical requirements) but also top-down causes (i.e., those that regulate limbic experiences through neocortical cognitive and behavioral strategies). Conscious subjectivity does not suddenly arise at the top arc of this feedback circle; rather it exists throughout creatures of the mammalian clade as a foundational motivation process related to biological homeostatic triggers. (3)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In other words, there really are three layers to the human mind. While they acknowledge\nthat MacLean\u2019s \u201ctriune brain\u201d is not a literal<\/em> map of the brain, Asma\/Gabriel\nnevertheless consider it a useful \u201cmetaphor,\u201d \u201croadmap,\u201d and \u201cheuristic.\u201d The\nthree layers of the brain, put simply, are these:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. A \u201cbottom\u201d or \u201ccore\u201d of \u201cprimary process\u201d functions, which\nconsists of \u201cinstinctual drives\u201d like fight-or-flight and \u201cintentional\nseeking,\u201d which is responsible for sensory and homeostatic affects, is mostly\nlocalized in subcortical parts of the brain, and is loosely shared with all\nvertebrates; <\/li>
  2. \u201cSecondary processing,\u201d which is responsible for social\nemotions, is \u201csculpted\u201d by conditioning, habituation, and learning, and is common\nespecially to mammals;<\/li>
  3. And a \u201ctertiary\u201d layer, which is responsible for higher\ncognitive functions (linguistic, symbolic, and executive\/planning) and is localized\nmostly in the neocortex.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    It\u2019s not always clear to me if they are intending this model to be a model\nof the emotional brain, with primary, secondary, and tertiary emotions, or of\nthe brain as a whole, with emotions consisting of specific complexes that\nemerge at the intersections of the three layers. In either case, the three\nlayers interact in complex ways. Following Panksepp<\/a>,\nthe authors favor a conception of seven affective \u201csystems\u201d common to mammals\n(including humans) that include four \u201cprimary\u201d emotions (seeking\/expectancy,\nrage\/anger, fear\/anxiety, and lust) and three \u201csecondary\u201d and social emotions (care\/nurturing,\nplay\/social joy, and panic\/sadness). Other, more complex emotions like angst, regret,\nawe, and wonder, arise out of a combination of sources including the social and\nthe cognitive (i.e., all three layers). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The details here are less important than the fact that these emotional systems — \u201copen-ended, domain-general, feeling\/behavior matrices\u201d (211) — have \u201cenergized\u201d human cognition and contributed significantly to shaping human social evolution, which is seen to have developed as a \u201cmosaic of developmental systems\u201d (5) inclusive of the biological, the ecological, and the psychological. The \u201cbasic affective circuits energize, orient, and direct\u201d — elsewhere they say \u201cpermeate, infiltrate, and animate\u201d (10) — \u201cthe higher-order processes and behavior of the animal toward necessary and desirable elements in the world that will help achieve homeostasis and satisfy basic bodily needs and psychological drives\u201d (40). Where computationally oriented cognitivists focus on the tertiary level (linguistic or rule-based decision making) and behaviorists on the secondary (conditioning), Asma and Barrett propose an \u201cembodied, enactive, embedded, and sociocultural\u201d view (10) that that recognizes various \u201cemergent\u201d and \u201cdialectical\u201d (5) forms of interaction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Similarities and differences<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For all the clear differences between this \u201cbasic emotions\u201d model and\nBarrett\u2019s constructivism — recall that both are claiming to present \u201cnew\nparadigms,\u201d and both see each other as rivals — the similarities need to be\nacknowledged. Both Barrett and Asma\/Gabriel agree that there are \u201ccore\u201d\naffects, while disagreeing on how extensive they are and how much they have\nshaped human behavior. For Barrett, the core is constituted by positive and\nnegative forms of arousal aimed at maintaining an energetic \u201cbody budget.\u201d Everything\nelse emerges evolutionarily, not in two big waves that build \u201con top\u201d of each\nother, but through complex, species-specific, and path-dependent evolutionary\nroutes. There is therefore no \u201creptilian\u201d or \u201cmammalian\u201d brain hidden, like an\nold model-T Ford engine, inside or \u201cbeneath\u201d the stylishly revamped surface of\nthe 2020 Human. For Asma and Barrett, on the other hand, Barrett\u2019s minimalist view\n\u201cradically underdetermines the phenomenology, neuroscience, and ethology of\nemotions.\u201d Defining affect rather similarly (as \u201cconative motivation\u201d or\n\u201cconative motivational drive\u201d; note the Spinozan foundation there, which I\u2019ll\ncome back to), they attempt to trace the evolutionary steps and complexities\nthat have factored into producing human beings and that still shape our lives\ntoday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Both acknowledge two-way interaction between the affective \u201ccore\u201d (or base) and the linguistic and conceptual mind (or superstructure; I\u2019m using those Marxian terms to indicate something that I will come back to in a moment). But where Barrett seems to favor a \u201ctop-down\u201d model in part because<\/em> it allows us more freedom (thus her advocacy of it as a new paradigm that is supposed to be both more accurate and more conducive to modern life), Asma\/Barrett favor a \u201cbottom-up\u201d approach because it accounts better for the evolution of human behavior, and therefore presents a more accurate understanding of who we are and how we got to be this way. (Their critique of Barrett is found at the very outset of the book; see pp. 10-13.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Let\u2019s look a little more closely at their respective accounts of how affect interacts with cognition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For Barrett, linguistic, propositional thinking seems to provide a fairly hard boundary line demarcating humans, who can have<\/em> emotions because we have the conceptual apparatus to turn our affective impulses into emotions, from other animals who, by and large, do not. This separation between humans and other animals is one of the points Asma\/Gabriel and other Basic Emotions theorists critique in the new constructivism. The question really is about the relationship between what\u2019s \u201cabove\u201d (thought) and what\u2019s below (bodily affect), or what I am tempted to call \u201csuperstructure\u201d and \u201cbase.\u201d Does base shape superstructure, or is superstructure free to thoroughly reshape base? Or is the relationship fully two-way and, if so, is it a two-way relationship between two stable and pre-existing entities, or is it so fully dynamic and dialectical as to be impossible to disentangle? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It turns out that both agree that entanglement is profound, but that disentangling, or what Asma\/Gabriel call \u201cdecoupling,\u201d is possible. For Barrett, it is not so much that we are \u201ctorn\u201d between an old, emotional (\u201chot\u201d) brain and a newer, cognitive (\u201ccool\u201d) brain. Rather, you might say that at this point it is all<\/em> cool, or at least could be cooled off — which requires concepts, which Barrett tends to define propositionally. And while Asma\/Gabriel talk of \u201chot\u201d and \u201ccool,\u201d more primitive and \u201clater,\u201d \u201ctertiary-order\u201d cognition, they also acknowledge that the latter opens up opportunities for greater freedom. Through symbolic thought, they argue, the indicative dimension of communication (\u201cThat creature is a snake\u201d) and the imperative dimension (\u201cI should run away\u201d) can be decoupled. Language provides us with the ability to \u201cemotionally domesticate\u201d ourselves (p. 192), which means to gain some distance over our emotions and their expression. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In other words, where Barrett tends to assume that \u201cdecoupling\u201d is a good thing and that it mainly proceeds from the top down, Asma\/Gabriel see the relationship as more complex. In a recent blog post<\/a>, they define and clarify their notion of affect as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Affect as conative motivational drive is amenable to being decoupleable because it predates — and remains functional — through all evolutionarily later cognitive abilities; that is, its primacy ensures that it has a use within any mental context<\/em>. And, unlike other mental functions, affect can filter through any mental operation, infusing pertinent elements with salience; affect dyes our thoughts with value and meaning. Accordingly, we have described several roles played by affect including, as a mode of presentation, as an intentional arrow, and as motivation for locking onto appropriate affordances. [emphasis added]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    Affect and reason, in other words, are autonomous and relate to each other\nin complex ways. In contrast to Barrett\u2019s focus on the discontinuity between\nhumans and others made possible by the emergence of language, Asma and Gabriel\nstart from the \u201cembodied cognition\u201d that we humans share with other beings. Affect\nis primary<\/em>, for Asma\/Gabriel, and its roles are several. There\u2019s a\nresonance here also with Peircian ideas of semiosis in Asma\u2019s and Gabriel\u2019s\nverbiage of \u201cintentions-in-actions,\u201d or \u201cbiological aboutness,\u201d a\n\u201cnon-representational teleology\u201d that is \u201caffectively structured long before it\nbecomes cognitively structured in the Homo <\/em>lineage\u201d (44). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    One way in which I find Asma\/Gabriel\u2019s model richer than Barrett\u2019s is in the simple fact that there are three layers here, with recognition given to the importance of each and with room to maneuver between them. This is a point I\u2019ll come back to in Part 2 of this article. But as an example of why it\u2019s important, it\u2019s helpful to look at their respective view of \u201cconcepts\u201d (which is so central to Barrett).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In a sense, one could say that \u201cconcepts\u201d emerge fully formed for Barrett. For Asma\/Gabriel, on the other hand, the \u201ctertiary-level\u201d constructs that Barrett calls \u201cconcepts\u201d are rooted in more basic, primary or secondary level distinctions, such as \u201cimages,\u201d \u201cnonlinguistic prototypes,\u201d and \u201canalogical models.\u201d (The later chapters elaborate on this work, but see also their writing on \u201ctask grammars\u201d and \u201cimage grammars<\/a>\u201d for a flavor of it.) Language does not replace these, as constructivists tend to suggest; rather, it builds on them and interacts with them. Our self-concepts (which, if we follow Peirce, are \u201csigns\u201d or symbolic constructs) are not just things that are organized from the \u201ctop.\u201d They interact all along with emotions and the movements between affects and their objects (since every feeling or emotion has an \u201caboutness\u201d to it). In the words of Asma and Gabriel, the \u201cpropositional aboutness of language (indicative referential content) is already embedded in the emotional aboutness of our social interaction with other humans, who we are trying to assuage, impress, attract, or destroy\u201d (203). Or to put this into dialogue with Lacan, the Symbolic (the tertiary level) does not merely overtake and restructure the Imaginary (secondary) and the Real (primary). The latter two also partake in restructuring the former. The feedback between the three is constant and ongoing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I’l leave it there for now. In Part Two of this article, I plan to relate Asma and Gabriel\u2019s rendition of the \u201ctriune\u201d self, as well as Barrett\u2019s constructionist model of emotion, to recent work on affect in the social sciences (notably Margaret Wetherell’s excellent Affect and Emotion: A Social Science Understanding<\/em>), in neo-Spinozan ethical and political theory, and in neo-Gurdjieffian theory (and practice) concerning the “three-centered” nature of humans. That will lead me back to reworking some of the process-relational practices I outlined in Shadowing the Anthropocene<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Some further reading on contemporary affective neuroscience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Joseph Ledoux, \u201cRethinking the emotional brain,\u201d Neuron <\/em> 73 (2012), https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC3625946\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Elliot Jurist, Review of Barrett’s How Emotions Are Made<\/em>: https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/332585981_Review_of_How_Emotions_Are_Made_The_Secret_Life_of_the_Brain<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Stephen Asma and Rami Gabriel, \u201cUnited by Feelings,\u201d Aeon,\n<\/em>August 22, 2019, https:\/\/aeon.co\/essays\/human-culture-and-cognition-evolved-through-the-emotions<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cOn the nature of fear: experts from the fields of human and animal affective neuroscience discuss their own definitions of fear and how we should study it,\u201d https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/on-the-nature-of-fear\/?print=true<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Julie Beck, \u201cHard feelings: Science\u2019s struggles to define\nemotions,\u201d https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2015\/02\/hard-feelings-sciences-struggle-to-define-emotions\/385711\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Caruana, \u201cWhat is missing in the \u2018Basic Emotion vs. Constructionist\u2019 debate\u201d:\u00a0 http:\/\/www.pragmatismtoday.eu\/summer2017\/What-is-missing-in-the-Basic-Emotion-vs-Constructionist-debate-Pragmatist-insights-into-the-radical-translation-from-the-emotional-brain-Fausto-Caruana.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The study of emotions, particularly within the field of affective neuroscience, is a complex field riven by paradigmatic division. In my book Shadowing the Anthropocene, I proposed a way to engage with one\u2019s experience, including one\u2019s emotional or affective experience, within an \u201ceco-ethico-aesthetic” (or “logo-ethico-aesthetic”) practice that could help us deal with the \u201cAnthropocene predicament.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688977,691847],"tags":[628560,628527,628529,17873,17871,628528,628531,628533,628526,4454,628525,455093,455150,628561,628532],"class_list":["post-10913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geo_philosophy","category-religion-spirituality","tag-affect-theory","tag-affective-neuroscience","tag-charles-hampden-turner","tag-constructionism","tag-constructivism","tag-emotions","tag-g-i-gurdjieff","tag-lisa-feldman-barrett","tag-neurophenomenology","tag-neuropolitics","tag-neuropsychology","tag-politics-of-affect","tag-practices-of-the-self","tag-rami-gabriel","tag-stephen-asma"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2Q1","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11002,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/08\/25\/emotional-practices-part-2-affective-construction-the-triune-self-the-art-of-joyful-deliberation\/","url_meta":{"origin":10913,"position":0},"title":"Emotional practices, part 2: Affective construction, the triune self, & the art of joyful deliberation","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 25, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"In part 1 of this article, I compared two recent books, each of which proclaims a \u201cnew paradigm\u201d in the scientific study of emotions and affect: Lisa Feldman Barrett\u2019s\u00a0\u201cconstructivist\u201d How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain\u00a0and Stephen Asma\u2019s and Rami Gabriel\u2019s\u00a0\u201cbasic emotions\u201d-rooted The Emotional Mind: The Affective\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Spirit matter"","block_context":{"text":"Spirit matter","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/religion-spirituality\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/08\/image-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1175,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/01\/11\/neuropolitics-environmental-communication\/","url_meta":{"origin":10913,"position":1},"title":"neuropolitics & environmental communication","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 11, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"My article \"From Frames to Resonance Machines: The Neuropolitics of Environmental Communication\" is coming out in the next issue of Environmental Communication. Here's the abstract: George Lakoff\u2019s work in cognitive linguistics has prompted a surge in social scientists\u2019 interest in the cognitive and neuropsychological dimensions of political discourse. Bringing cognitive\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5252,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/09\/02\/shaviro-responds\/","url_meta":{"origin":10913,"position":2},"title":"Shaviro responds","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"September 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Steven Shaviro has posted his response to my and three other \"curators' notes\" on his Post-Cinematic Affect. The twists and turns of the discussions that have followed each of the daily commentaries have been fascinating. Somehow we've gone from a discussion of recent cinema to theorizing about affect and the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cinema"","block_context":{"text":"Cinema","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cinema_zone\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9458,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2017\/10\/05\/on-cultural-civil-conflict\/","url_meta":{"origin":10913,"position":3},"title":"On cultural civil conflict","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 5, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"I think it's fair to say that the United States is in a state of\u00a0cultural civil war. It is cultural\u00a0war in the sense that it is a war fought with signs and symbols rather than with guns -- signs and symbols intended to elicit affiliation, allegiance, and identification with one\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cultural politics"","block_context":{"text":"Cultural politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cultural_politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2017\/10\/8A7BE982-A5DD-4A47-866E-0AB3FA6048E9-275x206.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10784,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/06\/04\/eco-ethico-aesthetics-and-george-floyd\/","url_meta":{"origin":10913,"position":4},"title":"Eco-ethico-aesthetics and George Floyd","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 4, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"As I explain in Shadowing the Anthropocene, process-relational philosophy in a Peircian-Whiteheadian vein takes aesthetics to be first, ethics to be second, and logic (which, in our time, we need to think of also as eco-logic) to be third. This is not a temporal sequence, but a logical one: aesthetics\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cultural politics"","block_context":{"text":"Cultural politics","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/cultural_politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/06\/43924569-tv-damage-bad-sync-tv-channel-rgb-lcd-television-screen-with-static-noise-from-poor-broadcast-signal.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/06\/43924569-tv-damage-bad-sync-tv-channel-rgb-lcd-television-screen-with-static-noise-from-poor-broadcast-signal.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/06\/43924569-tv-damage-bad-sync-tv-channel-rgb-lcd-television-screen-with-static-noise-from-poor-broadcast-signal.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/06\/43924569-tv-damage-bad-sync-tv-channel-rgb-lcd-television-screen-with-static-noise-from-poor-broadcast-signal.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/06\/43924569-tv-damage-bad-sync-tv-channel-rgb-lcd-television-screen-with-static-noise-from-poor-broadcast-signal.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9848,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/10\/13\/shadowing-the-anthropocene-a-readers-guide\/","url_meta":{"origin":10913,"position":5},"title":"Shadowing the Anthropocene: a reader’s guide","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 13, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's the \"reader's guide\" I promised for Shadowing the Anthropocene. It begins with a quick summary of the book's main contribution -- a kind of \"master key\" to what it tries to do. It then lays out a set of paths one can take through the book, which would be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Image result for klee angelus novus","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/images.fineartamerica.com\/images\/artworkimages\/mediumlarge\/1\/1-angelus-novus-paul-klee.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10913"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11007,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10913\/revisions\/11007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}