Steve Shmurak

Roger, I couldn't agree with you more that Rand missed a whole lot about human nature by not spending "quality time" ( ) with a newborn baby. Not only about perception did she miss the obvious but also about emotion. Infants show emotion immediately upon being born (and I'll bet inside the womb as well, after a certain state of development). And that is way before they are capable of abstract thinking involving language! The emotions have a definite nature of their own apart from cognition. That is not to say they are somehow of a lower order, fighting with reason. However, they are already on the scene in a very powerful way at least from birth. Reason develops gradually and later in childhood. But by then, emotion has integrated with lots of things -- actions, memories, habits, etc. There's a lot of one's personality, both good and bad traits, that forms before one can think conceptually, and some of it is very hard or impossible to change. I give a detailed treatment of infant affect in my JARS article (Fall 06, v8 #1). MSK also reviews my work here http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/in...p?showtopic=785 Steve Shmurak

I also agree with Phil and Brant. Steve

RTB -- The most basic tenet of Objectivism is: Existence has a certain nature independent of our knowledge of it or our wishes that it be a certain way. For all her achievements, Rand got only part of the story right about the nature of emotion. She did not realize that it is an inborn system with certain functions to perform for survival and well-being. Only one of these functions is her formulation that emotions tell us how we are doing in progressing toward our self-chosen values. However that is hardly their whole nature. When you say you are an "Objectivist through and through" does that mean you believe that Rand's formulation is the complete description of the nature of emotion or that you are open to accepting all facts about emotion? I have presented an empirically based theory of emotion (I describe it, I did not develop it -- SS Tomkins (American psychologist 1911-1991) did), that can account for all the phenomena of emotion, not just the well-behaved ones that Objectivists try to restrict themselves too (and thereby often miss a great deal of richness in the quality of their lives.) This is no touchy-feely, subjectivist "feelings are more important than reason" diatribe. I consider myself to be an Objectivist in the best sense of the term -- I accept the facts, even when that goes against cherished beliefs. Reality always wins, whether we like it or not. I hope you will open your mind to some new knowledge about the nature of emotion -- I think it's likely to increase your sharpness, ability to handle things, and joy in living. Of course it could also open you to feeling some things you might not want to feel -- but that is information that should be worked with. My own life has been immeasurably enriched by integrating this knowledge into the way I live. If this all sounds "preachy" -- my apologies -- I promote this work as a practical way to get more joy and exaltation out of life. I must admit however, that I am frustrated that there hasn't been more interest shown in it. Steve Shmurak

The first fact that convinces me that consciousness is wholly dependent on brain function is that no one has ever rigorously documented the existence of a disembodied consciousness. The second fact is the body of work of Antonio DaMasio ([Descartes' Error, The Feeling of What Happens]). DaMasio is a neurologist who has rigorously and intensively studied the deficits in consciousness that result from damage to various areas of the brain. His findings are very persuasive that different areas of the brain are required for emotion, long-term memory etc.

Robert, Let me add my ditto to all that's been said above. We have come a long way. I also found the book of reprints about conservatism you distributed at the convention last March (?) and sent to members of The Atlas Society extremely cogent. Congratulations from a long-time admirer. Steve Shmurak

Chris, Heal fast and well! All the best, Steve Shmurak

Ah, Michael, it gives me great joy to see how deeply this seed has been planted within you! <<I had an insight at Blockbuster the other day and I want to register it here as a placemark for further development. I believe that the work on affects presented here will ultimately result in a whole new approach to defining art. I noticed this on passing the horror film section. I thought, "Why do horror films appeal so much to people?" This discussion actually belongs to aesthetics, but I want to register it here. Some of the mood genres like horror and thrillers seem to be much more geared toward prompting the audience to experience affects on a very primitive level than in presenting a view of life.">> It was Tomkins's position that affect and cognition are equally important to a well-lived life. And affect serves many functions -- it is the force that brings material to consciousness, it is the basic experience of "good for me" or "bad for me" (and therefore the innate valuing system). If we define art as that aspect of human experience the purpose of which is to highlight aspects of existence and how they make us feel -- affect is a necessary component of art. Tomkins identified four innate goals all humans have in the realm of affect -- to maximize the positive affects to minimize the negative affects to maximize the experience of affect to gain knowledge that will allow for the attainment of the first three goals. It is the third one that is most salient in art -- art has the aim and ability to move us to feel certain ways about certain things. I believe, as I think you do, that affect provides a big piece of the answer to the question of how art works. Steve

Is anybody there? Folks, I would very much like to get some feedback on my JARS article. Have people read it? Studied it? Watched the CD-ROM? It does take a sustained effort to start getting what it's all about -- but I'm pretty sure if you make that effort you'll reap some very valuable rewards.

Paul, Have you received/studied my article yet? If not, I'm going to wait until you do, before I answer your questions. This is because the CD-ROM gives precise (ostensive) definitions of terms. Steve

<<One can tense up muscles, both skeletal and facial and thereby stop the experience of affect. >> "Does this stop the experience of affect or does it only stop the expression of it in the body? " Paul, You've packed an enormous amount of interesting thought into this post. I want to respond to the quote above. The experience of affect is dependent on the physical affect program being triggered. When that program is muted through tensing up muscles, so is the experience of affect muted. If the tensing up is strong enough it can take away the experience entirely. There is a price one pays for doing this in having to spend energy to avoid knowing and feeling certain things and in general in having a diminished sense of aliveness, and a less acute conceptual faculty, a self-imposed destruction of healthy awareness. Steve

Paul, <<Now I have to figure out how to go about getting a copy of JARS. You are deep in one of my favorite areas of thought.>> You can subscribe and/or get individual copies of JARS at http://www.aynrandstudies.com/jars/subscribForm.asp <<One quick question. You said: Affects are indeed automatic non-volitional, but not necessarily non-controllable aspects of mind. (e.g. one can, at times, with difficulty, force oneself to stop feeling something - which is not to say that's a good thing). Can one stop the feeling as such-- i.e.: stop the emotion-- or can one only deflect one's awareness away from the emotion? Does the emotion remain but out of conscious awareness? If an emotion continues to exist but remains beyond the focus of our awareness, it will be beyond the influence of our volition. Here, in the subconscious, is where it can have some very colourful effects on the psyche. >> Both are possible. One can tense up muscles, both skeletal and facial and thereby stop the experience of affect. The way I understand this phenomenon is that the experience of affect (as in the babies on the CD-ROM included with JARS) is the result of facial and skeletal muscles (as well as glandular secretions), that are controlled by the "pre-wired" affect program. When voluntary innervation of musculature is employed in opposition to the affect program, it dilutes or destroys the experience of the affect. The degree of psychic damage and turmoil this causes will depend on the strength and importance of what one is trying to get rid of, as well as how hard one is trying to get rid of it. It is also possible to volitionally deflect one’s awareness away from the emotion, and thereby become unaware of it. But the emotion will continue to occur, at least for awhile – perhaps "banging at the door of consciousness" if it is sufficiently strong. And sometimes it is so strong that it cannot be kept out of conscious awareness by simple volitional deflection. These are two very different processes. <<I have often thought about the consequences to the psyche (Rand's or anyone who accepts her premises on the nature and relation of emotions and volition) of Rand's apparent motivation to will certain emotions out of existence. I suspect it would place a great many of her reactions underground, out of her volitional control. It might even cause her to behave irrationally and attack those closest to her when they stir her unwanted emotions, precisely because they are of independent mind and have a different perspective to her. This might lead her, in the interests of maintaining consistency, to generate reality distorting rationalizations that marry her behaviour to her worldview-- to her visualization of the underlying nature and causation of events. This might make sense of why she behaved as she did toward Nathaniel, Barbara, and many others.>> I heartily concur. And it is consistent with her own position that reality is a unified whole – failing to see the nature of one part will have negative consequences on one's ability to grasp other parts. In this case, she was wrong about some essential attributes of the nature of emotion. Steve

<<To better explain what I was saying and using a very crude example, the fact that we are born with legs, but need to grow before they can be used for walking, is similar to what I was talking about with affects. Affects are there in a "seed-like" form in a newborn, just like legs, eyes, and so many other things are. But a newborn can't use them yet. I doubt a 1 day old newborn shows much differentiation between the 9 affects. Growth is needed first.>> Michael, you are surely correct that a day old newborn can neither differentiate nor use the 9 affects. He is merely the place in which they occur – i.e. he has very little ability to be an agent -- and there is much affectively going on in him. <<So it is not the affect's existence that develops, but the expression of it as it matures. Such growth and development are automatic in young infants, if I understood all this correctly. Orthodox Objectivists say the ensuing expression comes from learned experience. In my understanding, the expression of affects (like widening eyes, etc.) develop automatically as the infant grows. It is a maturing process, not a learning one I am only talking about the affect in itself here. Obviously, learning is also involved as the infant grows. The way I see growth is that at the beginning of life, most development is pre-wired and unfolds over time automatically. As learning starts and then kicks in, pre-wired automatic development starts losing space as volitional development starts gaining space. This continues until adulthood with automatic becoming less and volitional becoming more. .>> I agree. Both processes go on. One of the things I absolutely love about Tomkins is his inclusiveness. That is, it is not "either maturation or learning," but "both maturation and learning." <<Also, in your first quibble about control, you are talking about a time when affects are intermingled with volition and many learned experiences. At that stage, I agree that they become increasingly controllable, but they are also increasingly not pure affects anymore. They have merged with other things. The non-volitional aspect I was trying to get across is that a person has no choice about having them in the first place (and the ensuing manners of expression that develop). He can modify them, but he cannot erase them from his history as if they never existed. He was never tabula rasa in that sense.>> Agreed. <<Actually, on control, my position is that once you understand what an affect is and that it is part of your mind, even though it is non-volitional, you can start to control what to do with it using volition and thus modify how it impacts your thinking and valuing.>> Also agreed. <<One last point, I did not claim that affects are the ONLY non-volitional components of the mind. I don't hold that at all. There are many automatic operations in the brain. Paradoxically, even the nature of the volitional faculty itself is non-volitional. A person doesn't choose to have one or not. He simply has one. I guess your impression that I held such a view came from my style. I was a bit emphatic on the non-volitional component of emotions because I object to the "decree" method that sometimes arises in Objectivism, where Rand decrees that "all" of something is like what she says it is (like "all" emotions are the result of thinking or evading, etc.) and her orthodox followers genuflect I find that removing the "all" allows her genuinely penetrating insights to be appreciated without listening to the loud noise coming from her detractors who go about "disproving" her claims. Their method is that if you disprove the "all" by showing an exception or a part not covered, you also disprove the entire insight as pure fantasy. The orthodoxy's method of defense is actually the same, but comes at the issue from the other end and tries to uphold the "all." I think both ends are silly, but they can get pretty nasty in their silliness. That nastiness is what causes me to be so emphatic. .>> Yes, well said – I think we are in agreement, and any differences that seem to exist are mainly due to not talking about things with each other enough yet! <<PS - Happy birthday!>> Thank you so much! All the best Steve

Michael, Excellent explication. I have just a couple of quibbles. You state: "The reality, of course, is that the implication of Steve's work (based on that of Tomkins) provides an accurate description of the non-controllable elements within man's mind (directly by the will), thus it actually gives man more control over his mind than before (indirectly). As the saying goes, knowledge is power. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed." My Quibble: Affects are indeed automatic non-volitional, but not necessarily non-controllable aspects of mind. (e.g. one can, at times, with difficulty, force oneself to stop feeling something - which is not to say that's a good thing). Also they are not necessarily the only non-volitional components. I believe they are extremely influential parts of consciousness, as they are the basis of all valuing, but neither I nor Tomkins maintain they are the only non-volitonal parts. You state: "There is an enormous hole in this standard, though: that is the biological nature of the mind itself. As Steve documents, there are 9 affects pre-wired from birth that have nothing to do with learning. We are born with them, just like we are born with our genes, and we have no choice about that. They do not reflect the thinking of newborns.They are automatic reactions that are innate and develop over time. They are not "tabula rasa." The content of them is there from birth." My Quibble: In the next to last line, you write: "They are automatic reactions that are innate and develop over time." Strictly speaking, the affects do not develop over time, they are what they are. What does develop is the way they become part of our personalities, emotions (affects plus imagination, or memory or thought, or action, etc), i.e. how they are integrated into who we are as we live our lives. For example, one might have grown up in a home where enjoyment was punished and so might have learned to not display enjoyment, and perhaps not even to allow himself to feel it. Similarly for the other affects. Or one might have grown up in a home where enjoyment was encouraged, sometimes appropriately, sometimes to cover over other feelings. The number of possibilities is enormous. The main point is that the affects are biologically wired-in programs, present at birth. They are what they are. How we handle them and what life deals us are very influential in how we become who we are. But it is the person who develops, not the affects. Steve

Thank you very much, Michael. I hope the article generates some interest and am looking forward to peoples' reactions. I'll be more than pleased to answer any questions people raise here. Steve PS I would be especially interested in a discussion of how this better understanding of the nature of emotion will influence objectivist epistemology.

Paul, Yes, sorry, "intuitive perspective" is what I should have written. There are places online you can read about Tomkins (eg the Wikipedia article Michael referenced). However, I recommend you wait for my article because the accompanying CD shows the actual referents from which the ostensive definitions of the basic affects are formed. Without those referents, I don't think it's possible to grasp the essence of what Tomkins is writing about and therefore it's not possible to get what's so unique and powerful about his ideas. Steve

Michael, Thank you so much for this wonderful preview. I hope you are but the first of many in the objectivist community who will benefit from the profound insights into the nature of emotion that Tomkins's work provides. I do indeed stand on the shoulders of a giant here and to underline that please refer to the affects as "Tomkins's Affects" not Steve's! There is much more to say about his work than it's possible to include in a lecture or the introductory article that will appear in November, but I hope the article (and accompanying video CD) will spark some interest for further learning, which I would be more than happy to help with. My intellectual foundations have been shaken twice in my life -- once by Rand (when I was 19) and once by Tomkins (when I was 54 and believed them to be too old for shaking!) -- they have both changed my life fundamentally -- and they complement, not contradict each other! Paul -- Tomkins has a wonderful concept he labels "image" -- the most basic category of consciousness -- one can have varying degrees of awareness of them -- and they are always involved with affect. He has a wonderful explanation of why we become conscious of some things and not others -- involving the relative strengths of the affects attached to each one. The reason I'm bringing it up to you is because I think it sheds light on the nature of the "implicit" which you refer to. Steve