Physical Cognitive Mechanism: The Origin, Function, and Evolution of Emotions
In this article, we will present several hypotheses to better understand emotions. The overview is as follows:
- Emotions have a fluid-like nature, making them more likely to flow into positive recesses while avoiding negative peaks.
- Emotions arise not only from the actions of nerve cells but also from the effects of chemicals and bio-substances. Their origins can be traced back to pre-neuronal single-celled organisms, which have evolved into the complex emotional mechanisms found in humans as physical cognitive mechanism.
- The cognitive mechanisms of bio-substances and nerve cells have evolved in symbiosis, serving the survival of organisms and species. As a result, human emotions and logical thinking are intricately related.
- Emotions possess diverse and advanced functions beyond simple recognition and reactions to immediate stimuli. They include memory enhancement, energy conservation, and the unconscious and conscious switching of brain rest.
- Furthermore, higher-level emotions enable the strengthening of social bonds. Joy, pleasure, and sadness are believed to exist not solely for immediate survival but also to enhance social connections.
Please note that in this article, some sections are based on hypothesized thinking, and others are backed by insights obtained using ChatGPT. Additionally, to ensure readability, certain parts might employ assertive language even when discussing hypotheses or areas with low levels of confirmation.
Now, let’s delve into the detailed content of the article below.
Previous Considerations
The findings and inspirations from my previous examinations are as follows:
1) Conscious thinking is like a solid, but emotions are like a liquid
Conscious thinking, especially rational or analytical thinking, categorizes concepts clearly, allowing for association from each. It also allows for simulations in the mind, grasping models and mechanisms. In physics, this can be understood with an analytical method like Newtonian mechanics for solids. Emotions differ from this. Categorizing or simulating them in the mind is probably difficult. It is like fluid mechanics that deals with liquids in physics.
In the material world, there are things in intermediate states between liquids and solids. These include high-viscosity gel-like liquids and flexible solids like gel or jelly. Additionally, in animal bodies, solid bones are connected with flexible cartilage, and different materials with varying hardness and flexibility are structurally combined, such as bones, meat, and skin.
Likely, consciousness and emotions also have diverse interrelations like gels, sols, skeletal structures, and muscular structures. Emotions and thoughts should be considered as being inseparably synthesized or coordinated in this way.
2) Emotions serve three functions: survival, learning, efficient use of the brain
2-a) For survival, consciousness has the role of steering away from negative emotions and being guided towards positive ones.
The landscape metaphor, with its hills and valleys, makes this easy to understand. If consciousness is like water, it will avoid hills and flow towards valleys. There are also variations in size and steepness.
Not only can we perceive the immediate landscape, but we can also acquire a map of it through learning. This utilizes the brain’s ability to learn, and it should be doing so. Also, the brain can possess a compass of values.
Therefore, consciousness is not merely driven by the immediate terrain. By using a map of learned terrain and a compass, you can determine your path. You can deliberately travel through rugged terrain, considering distant landscapes. You can head straight without being misled by the temptation of valleys. This is due to the power of free will.
2-b) The strength of emotions influences learning. Strong emotions make the memory of their object more vivid.
It’s important to remember things associated with fear to avoid similar situations. This requires not only the shape and appearance but also sounds and smells. Emotions work to imprint these memories strongly.
Conversely, we should remember enjoyable and happy experiences, so we can recreate them. The pleasing smell of food may be due to this.
2-c) Even vague emotions without specific targets, such as anxiety or comfort, have roles. They enable the efficient use of consciousness and unconsciousness.
Constant concentration and activity tire the conscious mind and deplete energy. Therefore, it’s vital to transition to the unconscious in a calming space, or with relaxing scents or music, and let the conscious mind rest and conserve energy.
Even when unconsciously active in a familiar environment, a surge of anxiety can stimulate conscious thought, prompting us to check our surroundings or future.
3) The mechanism of emotion cannot be explained solely by the brain’s neural network.
Emotions can respond somewhat accurately even to the unknown. Therefore, emotions do not fit into unconscious pattern learning or pattern recognition.
Furthermore, emotions don’t seem to fit into labeling patterns through conscious thought or simulations based on grasping mechanisms.
Thus, emotions have an intuitive nature, not based on past learning or future predictions. This aligns with our daily experience of the subjectivity and arbitrariness in emotions, unconnected with objectivity like experience or rationality.
Substances in the Brain Corresponding to Emotions
Having organized these ideas, I gained knowledge I didn’t know before through a brief exchange with ChatGPT.
It appears that specific biological substances corresponding to concrete emotions are produced in the brain. In other words, unlike abstract things like concepts or thoughts that appear on the mechanism of the neural network composed of brain neurons, emotions could be accompanied by specific substances in the brain.
I see, I thought. The observation I had made that “the mechanism by which emotions arise cannot be explained by the functions of the brain’s neural network” seems to be supported by this scientific fact.
This suggests the possibility that the mechanism of emotions exists outside the structure of the brain’s neural network. Alternatively, it could be contemplated that the mechanism of the brain’s neural network and the mechanism outside of it might be working in tandem to produce emotions.
Probably, not all emotions are simply determined by brain substances. There are likely differences depending on the type of emotion. However, gaining knowledge that brain substances, which are outside the scope of the neural network mechanism, have a significant involvement in emotions, was a major harvest.
Correspondence Between Brain Substances and Previous Considerations
When we think about the types, concentrations, and possible blends of substances in the brain, it seems conceivable that they correspond to the inclines and depressions of hills and valleys. And the way consciousness is generated according to these inclines evokes an image of consciousness that is quite like a liquid.
Also, this understanding allows us to understand the mechanism by which emotions affect the learning of the brain’s neural network. When substances representing emotions are released, it probably causes neurons to remember the situation more strongly than usual.
It is also convincing why traumas can occur from strong mental shocks, and why it is difficult to overcome them with thought or will. No matter how much you try to repaint memories or thoughts in your head, it only has the same effect on the brain’s neural network as normal learning. When the brain receives memory from a dense substance created by intense emotion, it is difficult to overwrite with the usual learning of the brain’s neural network.
Furthermore, it is understood that emotions without direction, such as a sense of security and anxiety, function to switch between unconsciousness and consciousness. It’s not the neural network itself, but the substances surrounding the neural network that switch between the unconscious and conscious modes of the neural network.
Biological Physical Cognition Mechanism
Understanding that there is a mechanism other than the workings of the brain’s neurons and neural network naturally evokes the existence of a physical cognition mechanism.
In single-celled organisms, the origin of life, a physical cognition mechanism must exist. Otherwise, they could not approach energy or nutrient sources to obtain the resources necessary for survival. Nor could they avoid harmful substances dangerous to their existence.
Single-celled organisms do not have nerve cells. Therefore, they must have such a physical cognition mechanism without relying on nerves.
Here, when I presented this thought to ChatGPT, I was told about the phenomenon of chemotaxis. It’s the phenomenon where a cell moves depending on the concentration of specific chemicals around it.
If so, it’s not surprising that not only single-celled organisms but also multicellular organisms and humans have a mechanism similar to this, recognizing the outside world and deciding behavior without relying on nerve cells. This corresponds to the physical cognition mechanism that I envisioned.
And in the process of evolution, when nerves were acquired, this mechanism may have been fully transitioned to cognition and decision-making by nerve cells, or it may have been retained.
Neural mechanisms have evolved to create the brain and form neural networks. Similarly, the mechanism of chemotaxis in cells has evolved, possibly forming the physical cognition mechanism I am reading, which has become the mechanism to create emotions.
Collaboration between the Brain’s Neural Network and Physical Cognition Mechanism
Additionally, the brain’s nerve cells and neural networks do not only unilaterally receive emotions from this physical cognition mechanism. What the brain thinks can act on the physical cognition mechanism, evoking emotions.
Horror novel texts are written in a language that only the brain’s neural network can process, so there is no direct perception of the object of fear as a visual image. However, we feel fear when reading a horror novel. This means that the situation or scene that emerged as the brain’s neural network processed the language was input as information into the physical cognition mechanism.
Therefore, it is not a one-way relationship where the physical cognition mechanism controls the brain’s neural network through emotion. It can evoke emotions by receiving information not only from the body and sensory organs but also from the brain’s neural network.
In this way, the brain’s neural network and physical cognition mechanism have a complex relationship, interacting with information and emotions.
Also, it is thought that the brain’s neural network supports things that cannot be achieved by a simple physical cognition mechanism. Something like the workings of the autonomic nervous system.
This is probably to enhance survival ability. It can be thought that emotions and thoughts have built up a symbiotic relationship to survive by pushing through harsh natural selection.
Social Nature of Emotions
Emotions encompass both simple and powerful ones like fear, as well as delicate feelings that can be expressed in ways like warmth of heart or modest joy. There are also complex emotions like laughter, possibly unique to humans.
Perhaps simple and strong emotions are largely involved in the generation of substances within the brain. On the other hand, delicate and complex emotions might not only involve brain chemicals but also the neural networks of the brain.
Such delicate and complex emotions may not seem particularly useful for individual survival. These may play a role in shaping human society.
Therefore, it makes sense to think that these emotions cannot be merely reduced to brain chemicals. Social emotions are conveyed with communication through expressions, gestures, and words. Surely, brain’s neural networks are involved in such communication.
Humans’ ability to exchange emotions and empathize with others serves direct survival purposes, like spreading anger or fear to respond as a group. However, the ability to empathize with laughter, joy, or warmth of heart enhances group cohesion and indirectly improves survival ability.
The sharing of emotions to strengthen group cohesion seems to be a product of human intelligence. Emotions appear to have various developmental stages from primitive to advanced. The workings of these advanced emotions seem to bind the group and make humans social animals.
Considering this, it’s possible that humans engaged in advanced group living even before the invention of language, using the ability to share sophisticated emotions.
Artificial Intelligence and Emotions
ChatGPT can estimate the intensity of emotions from text and interpret characters’ feelings from a story. This raises the question if ChatGPT has emotions itself.
Through organizing this article, I’ve gained insight into this question. Both ChatGPT, made of neural networks, and our thoughts, due to the working of brain’s neural networks, can interpret emotions.
Additionally, it can imagine emotions and behave as if it has emotions, similar to an actor.
But here’s where things get tricky.
By its design, ChatGPT doesn’t seem to have a mechanism that works on thought from outside the neural network mechanism, like human brain substances. But what is this? Or, if a similar mechanism is simulated through programming, can an AI like ChatGPT be said to have emotions?
I think this debate is nonsense.
Whether we see things as having different natures if they have different means, or as having the same essence if they seem to produce the same phenomena when observed from the outside, that’s all there is to it.
Currently, ChatGPT can simulate a character with emotions like an actor. If its performance, accuracy, or knowledge increases, it may exhibit almost indistinguishable emotional expressions from humans, or behave as if it has emotions.
We may observe this behavior and claim it has emotions, or argue that it doesn’t since the mechanism is different from human emotions. If we take the latter stance, even if we create a program simulating human emotions, or even if we simulate every molecule of the human brain on a computer or create something physically resembling a human brain, it could be denied, saying the mechanism or origin is different.
Therefore, as the emergence of AI that can simulate emotional behavior becomes apparent, this debate has become a matter of perspective. It’s a subjective issue of whether one wants to believe AI already has emotions or never will.
Conclusion
By considering emotions, which I have previously overlooked, I feel I am seeing the mechanisms of life and intelligence more clearly. Especially, though at a hypothetical level, the idea that the physical cognition mechanism of single-celled organisms continues to be inherited by us is fascinating.
I also have gained personal insights into the relationship between AI and emotions.
In a previous article, I wrote that neural networks on a computer can simulate each other. AI, like ChatGPT, simulates human brain structures with neural networks. Also, neural networks can simulate a Turing machine, the principle of a computer.
The ability to simulate emotions in large-scale language models like ChatGPT is related to this. Even though AI carries out sophisticated intellectual tasks, some may argue that AI without intelligence, or with intelligence different from humans, lacks real substance. But we must question the meaning of focusing on what the materials or underlying mechanisms are, and what it means to point out their differences.
If there is any meaning to question these differences, it lies in ethical or legal discussions. Even if AI has the same intelligence or emotions as humans, whether to grant them the same human rights must be considered separately. Meanwhile, outside of technological and ethical philosophy, whether AI has intelligence or emotions has become a subjective matter of individual belief, rather than an objective debate.
