By Samuel Gugliotta
For Variety

THE study of emotions, of such great importance for our self-understanding, is nevertheless, a difficult and confusing subject for any investigator. Joseph LeDoux, in his excellent book, “The Emotional Brain,”states some the perplexities confronting any investigator in the subject:
“Scientists have had lots to say about what emotions are. For some, emotions are bodily responses that evolved as part of the struggle to survive. For others, emotions are mental states that result when bodily responses are “sensed” in the brain. Another view is that bodily responses are peripheral to an emotion, with the important stuff happening completely within the brain. Emotions have also been viewed as ways of acting and talking. Unconscious impulses are at the core of an emotion in some theories, while others emphasize the importance of conscious decisions. A popular view today is that emotions are thoughts about situations in which people find themselves. Another notion is that emotions are social constructions, things that happen between rather than within individuals....If we can’t say what emotion is, how can we hope to find out how the brain does it.”
LeDoux believes that part of the reason for our lack of adequate knowledge regarding emotions may be traced back to the ancient Greek origins of our Western heritage: “Since the time of the ancient Greeks, humans have found it compelling to separate reason from passion, thinking from feeling, cognition from emotion.” Indeed, in recent times cognitive science and neurobiology have made significant advances in understanding the mechanisms involved in perception, problem solving, and language competency. As LeDoux notes, such science “is really a science of only part of the mind...It leaves emotions out. And minds without emotions are not really minds at all. They are souls on ice — cold, lifeless creatures devoid of any desires, fears, sorrows, pains, or pleasures.”
From the philosophical view underlying scientific research programs into the emotions it makes a great difference whether emotions are considered as “cognitive” or “non-cognitive.” If emotions are “non-cognitive” then they would be limited to what Martha Nussbum states in her book, “Upheavals of Thought,” “animal energies or impulses that have no connection with our thoughts, imaginings, and appraisals.” Emotions would be more or less physical cataclysms which happen to us, and over which we have no control or may learn any information. Books like Daniel Goleman’s “Emotional Intelligence,” would contain no truths.
However, the tide seems definitely to consider emotions as cognitive events or dispositions. As Nussbaum notes, “A lot is at stake in the decision to view emotions in this way, as intelligent responses to the perception of value.... We cannot plausibly omit them, once we acknowledge that emotions include in their content judgments that can be true or false, and good or bad guides to ethical choice. We will have to grapple with the messy material of grief and love, anger and fear, and the role these tumultuous experiences play in thought about the good the just.”
The philosopher, Richard Wollheim, in his book, “On the Emotions” presupposes the cognitive nature of emotions. In comparing emotion to belief and desire, he makes the following pithy statement: “If belief maps the world, and desire targets it, emotion tints or colors it: it enlivens it or darkens it, as the case may be.”
To see how these issues are with us today, lets consider the emotion of compassion. “Compassion,” says Nussbum, “is a painful emotion occasioned by the awareness of another person’s undeserved misfortune...bad things...may happen to people through no fault of their own, or beyond their fault.”
Now in law or punishment, there are those who belong to the “compassionate” camp, and those who are “anti-compassionate.” For example, in a 1987 court decision, Justice O’Connor argued that “the sentence imposed at the penalty state should reflect a reasoned ‘moral’ response to the defendant’s background, character, and crime rather than mere sympathy or emotion.” The assessment is “a moral inquiry” and not “an emotional response.” As Nussbaum notes the assumption here is that emotion and morality are “two utterly distinct categories.”
Another example Nussbaum gives is on involving justice Thomas. He “has assailed appeals to compassion that focus on the disadvantaged background of a criminal defendant, suggesting that such appeals are irrational because of their failure to give people sufficient credit for agency and responsibility.”
The issue of the nature of the human mind and the structure of the emotions is of course a tremendously difficult one. Yet without a deep understanding of compassion, our souls, perhaps, will be stuck on that woeful ice.
Puzzle
Using the nine digits, once only ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) you may arrange them to form the largest perfect square possible: 923, 187, 456 = 30,384^2. What is the smallest perfect square you may form out of the nine digits?
Answer to last week’s puzzle
1. $2.00