Abstract
This is a biological approach to the philosophy of mind that feeds an investigation of the phenomena of “social” and “emotional”, both of which are widespread in nature. I scrutinize the non-dualistic Darwinian concept of the continuity of mind. For practical reasons, I address mind at different levels of organization: The systemic mind are the properties of which a common, coherent evolution works upon. Separated from this is “language-mind”: the crystallization of thought in words, which is a strictly human phenomenon. As the phenomenology of the body is a theory of philosophy that lie beyond language it can—to a certain extent—be extrapolated across a species boundary. In the process the phenomenology of the body comes to resemble biosemiotics and with this tool, I investigate a field study of social play behavior in canids. This leads to a possibility to study the non-human experience of emotion as “locally meaningful phenomena”.
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Notes
In neuroanatomy emotions are already included as a field of investigation within biology (Kringelbach and Rolls 2004); the present coupling of emotional experience—in a physiological sense—and social behavior, however, is an attempt to expand the premises of ethology.
According to biosemiotics, most processes that take place in animate nature, at whatever level, from the single cell to the ecosystem, should be analysed and conceptualised in terms of their character as sign processes. Biosemiotics does not contradict well-established physical and chemical laws; it simply claims that life processes are part of—and are organized in obedience to—semiotic dynamics. (Hoffmeyer 1998).
“Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals” http://www.ethologicalethics.org/
According to The American Heritage Dictionary (second college edition)
The concept of emotion can usefully be subdivided into two components: i) the emotional state that can be measured through physiological changes such as autonomic responses, and ii) feelings, seen as the subjective experience of emotion (Kringelbach 2005, The Oxford Companion to the Mind).
These are termed ultimate factors: “Those factors of behavior that are concerned with why the behavior evolved and its functional significance in an ecological context” (Drickamer et al. 1996). And: “Ultimate factors establish the limits and proximate factors affect the behavior of an animal within these limits” (Bekoff 1995, p. 19).
To some ethologists the usage of the term empathy is still very controversial. To others it is gaining a footing as a necessary explanatory tool (e.g. de Waal 2001).
Actually James Baldwin anticipated this in 1896: “It is here that the principle of imitation gets tremendous significance; intelligence and volition, also later on; and in human affairs it becomes social co-operation. Now it is evident that when young creatures have these imitative, intelligent, or quasi-social tendencies to any extent, they are able to pick up for themselves, by imitation, instruction, experience generally, the function which their parents and other creatures perform in their presence. This then is a form of ontogenetic adaptation; it keeps these creatures alive, and so produces determinate variation in the way explained above. It is, therefore, a special, and from its wide range, an extremely important instance of the general principle of Organic Selection.” (Hoffmeyer and Kull 2003).
For instance reflected in C. latrans not interacting in social play until after dominance hierarchy is established among the interacting individuals. With both C. lupus and C. familiaris no tendency to establish a dominance hierarchy was seen.
Obvious exceptions are the most intimate of interactions, e.g. communication between lovers or infants and their parents.
What we term “feeling mind” equals the systemic mind whereas “thinking mind” equals the human “thinking in terms of language”-mind.
E.g. emotions as mentioned above. Also biochemical reactions are processed through signal transduction pathways. Sensory stimuli of smell, vision or change of temperature etc, as well as probably all interactions between living beings are also, by its very nature, sign-based.
Private, yet still under influence of the systemic mind, which is not private in a sense that is inaccessible like commonly suggested in this discussions on this matter (e.g. Nagel 1986).
In humans these are suggested, by Paul Ekman, to be: ”anger disgust, fear, sadness, joy, shame and guilt” (Kringelbach 2005, The Oxford Companion to the Mind)
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Böll, M.M.R. Social is Emotional. Biosemiotics 1, 329–345 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-008-9025-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-008-9025-1