Why We Feel: The Science of Human Emotions (Helix Books)

Rating:
Summary: Hedonic Tone Rings True
Review: A fabulous book - Johnston gives voice to his concept of "hedonic tone" which has roots in Maslow's idea of "hierarchy of wants" and even Elizabeth Duffy's concept of emotions existing along a continuum. Johnston's assertion that mental representations of the "real" world are just digital fabrications is also fascinating. (In other words, an apple isn't inherently "red" or "sweet"; we have just evolved to experience such perceptions when we see one and bite into it.) Further, Johnston integrates nicely with MacLean's Triune brain theory which has strong evolutionary logic behind it. Johnston has built a very powerful and compelling theory.

Rating:
Summary: A Pleasure To Read
Review: A very well written and tightly argued look at "the science of human emotions" and a pleasure to read. I would also commend it as a good companion to the more widely publicized book by Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens. Johnston focusses on emotions and explains consciousness, including consciousness of emotions, as an "emergent phenomenon" of the composition and arrangement of the brain, and delves no further into anatomy. Damasio picks up from there and tries to say something about how the structure and organization of the brain actually accomplishes this property. Readers may want to ponder the conceptual device of "emergence" which plays such an important part in Johnston's exposition. To say that "speed" in a car is an emergent property of the car, and does not reside in the carburetor or the transmission, does not prevent us from showing how the carburetor and transmission accomplish speed, but does help us understand that selection is working on the whole system and the arrangement of its parts and not on the individual components. Likewise with consciousness. In addition, because Johnston is rhetorically opposing the idea of a correspondence theory of the truth, he stresses the arbitrariness, other than for survival, of the neural representations of our environment, which "really" consists primarily of a whirling chaos of photons, energy particles, and electromagnetic radiations. His argument is very effective, yet somehow our brain's ability to organize this environment has allowed us to come up with pi, build bridges that don't fall down, and develop a mathematics with an amazing capacity to describe the universe; our representations do seem to give us some powerful access to something out there. Both subjects display the force of Johnston's prose, which in part can be attributed, I think, to the clarity that derives from taking a strong rhetorical stance. Throughout the book, the sense one gets is of a powerful intellect in full command of his material.

Rating:
Summary: Sensible and insightful
Review: After reading a lot of impressively confusing material on consciousness and intentionality, it was a relief to read such a sound and sensible account. Johnston doesn't get caught in the presently unsolvable question of what is consciousness. Instead he asks, Why consciousness? And he shows how the way we feel about the world amounts to successful adaptations that make us better fit.

Rating:
Summary: A Head Big Enough to Make You Feel It's Lovable
Review: I have got a son recently, and he has got a toy airplane, as well as many stuffed cartoon figures. The smile and awkward body movement of my baby always make me feel he is cute and lovable, and that drive me to kiss and caress him all the time. Only when I noticed that the toy airplane has an inproportionately big-sized head and brought about the same feeling, did I realize that a thing with a big head, whatever inanimate object or cute cartoon figures, will trigger the same feeling of loveliness, which makes a baby attractive to nearby caretakers. I told my wife this emotion may be hardwired to our brain, according to the author Johnston's theory, and will not fade until the little baby grows up, when his head is not big in proportion and he does not need delicate care any longer. She agreed with that. How do you think of it? Isn't it as fascinating as in other part of the book?

Rating:
Summary: dense cog-sci
Review: I thought this book was going to talk more about specific emotions and why they are necessary for evolution and survival. It's actually a technical cog-sci evolution book, and somewhat disappointing. The last chapter summarizes what Johnston says in a complicated, redundant way for the rest of the book. The strong points are: his explanations of evolutionary opportunism, how evolution works, his "face prints" computer program, and the various computer models that simulate selection and genetics. His thesis is that the brain structures that allow emotions have evolved because they aided survival and thus gene reproduction. The feelings we have today were therefore necessary in ancestral environments, though not necessarily in modern environments. He also discusses the role of learning (which allows us to adapt to changing environments). Also interesting, his presentation of sensations and emotions, not as realities in the outside world (there is no "redness", only light waves), but as brain-created realities which don't necessarily mirror reality accurately, but in fact amplify some things to aid survival. I wonder if Jared Diamond does it better in The Third Chimpanzee?

Rating:
Summary: Sugar isn't really sweet, ripe strawberries aren't red.
Review: The 1st chapter in this book is entitled 'The Grand Illusion.' This is not some pessimistic assessment of the human condition, like we've all been fooling ourselves for naught all the long; this is merely the same caveat that the likes of the ancient Buhddists, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (himself often accused of pessimism), and modern science writer Torr Norretranders have also elucidated: namely, we're sort of idealistic in how we process what we perceive to be the external (and internal) world. It's not so very egregious that we're like a bunch of asylum escapees, hallucinating some vastly inaccurate version of a reality we can never hope to know, it's just that neither are we ice cold observers of an objectively understandable interaction between our organismal selves and reality. It's a subtle distinction but one well worth knowing. Dr. Johnston does such a good job of delineating this concept that I had to rate this book the maximum of 5 stars. It is even more germane that he does so in the context of evolutionary psychology by stating that we, evolved primates that we are, did not nor did we need to evolve an ability to perceive and understand reality directly; that would have been nice and all, but what we did, and by virtue of it having happened, what we needed to accomplish was some means by which to survive and leave offspring in the field (remember, the way things are is no endorsement of any normative value for or against). Not only do we perceive and process reality in very creative ways, but we also color the heck out of it to squeeze the maximum utility out of it, hence, sugar (high quality nutrient) is sweet and good, and sharp teeth and gutteral growling sounds (the theme of not a few scary, supernatural movies) are bad, nay, downright evil! Thus, by the very acts of perceiving and cognizing, do we add and embellish hedonic tone to our experience. In general, this book is a good cummulative grouping of modern cognitive science research findings sans the fluff. It's too bad Daniel Dennett has already claimed the title "Consciousness Explained" and Steven Pinker "How the Mind Works." Either title would have suited Dr. Johnston's work very well.

Rating:
Summary: okay
Review: The beginning of this book got me very excited as I was expecting to hear evolutionary discussions of why we have the emotions that we have. But the author goes into a jumble of semi-coherent discussions and I finished the book unsure of exactly what his point was.

Rating:
Summary: Theory is rich, convincing and clear.
Review: The core of this book is a few chapters on the evolutionary benefit of emotion. I found the theory rich and convincing, and the writing clear; the theory explains, for example, why one emotion (positive or negative) evolved into multiple emotions, each related to a different aspect of gene survival, such as satisfying hunger, finding a mate, etc. Johnston's theory of emotion is a special application of a more general theory of consciousness. The rest of the book is kind of a grab bag. Johnston devotes too much space to refuting an alternative theory of human consciousness which he never adequately explains, and I suspect he is creating a straw man to argue against. There are a few chapters devoted to Johnson's own simulations and special interests, and a quick review of evolutionary processes in general. The review may be too quick for the unfamiliar reader. The simulations involve genetic algorithms and neural networks. I found the discussion of the former clear, but I was already familiar with the topic. I am also somewhat familiar with neural networks, and the book is inadequate here: Johnson seems to despair of explaining neural networks in a simple way, so kind of assumes the reader already understands them. Outside of his special areas of expertise, Johnson may be prone to error. Certainly, he is unaware of all the research on the socialization skills of primates, and I suspect that some of his statements on early child development are overly simplified.. All in all, this was a five star book for me, but it may not be for others with different backgrounds, either because they know less than me, or know more than me.

Rating:
Summary: Theory is rich, convincing and clear.
Review: The core of this book is a few chapters on the evolutionary benefit of emotion. I found the theory rich and convincing, and the writing clear; the theory explains, for example, why one emotion (positive or negative) evolved into multiple emotions, each related to a different aspect of gene survival, such as satisfying hunger, finding a mate, etc. Johnston's theory of emotion is a special application of a more general theory of consciousness. The rest of the book is kind of a grab bag. Johnston devotes too much space to refuting an alternative theory of human consciousness which he never adequately explains, and I suspect he is creating a straw man to argue against. There are a few chapters devoted to Johnson's own simulations and special interests, and a quick review of evolutionary processes in general. The review may be too quick for the unfamiliar reader. The simulations involve genetic algorithms and neural networks. I found the discussion of the former clear, but I was already familiar with the topic. I am also somewhat familiar with neural networks, and the book is inadequate here: Johnson seems to despair of explaining neural networks in a simple way, so kind of assumes the reader already understands them. Outside of his special areas of expertise, Johnson may be prone to error. Certainly, he is unaware of all the research on the socialization skills of primates, and I suspect that some of his statements on early child development are overly simplified.. All in all, this was a five star book for me, but it may not be for others with different backgrounds, either because they know less than me, or know more than me.

Rating:
Summary: onward and inward
Review: This book does what would have seemed impossible in 200 pages: coordinates the findings of two decades on emotion & consciousness under an evolutionary framework. Johnston is at once succinct, cogent and accessible; his originality shows both in the choice of example and in the way he's developed his ideas and those of others into a consistent theory. The fundamental assertion,that biology has dictated the conditions and ultimate rationale for emotion, fuses the now-classic research of Antonio Damasio with an evolutionary paradigm introduced by Henry Plotkin. Then, building upon both 'dry' and 'wet' cognitive science, it goes on to illustrate the essentiality and relevance of emotion, answering quite a few 'intractable' issues of consciousness on the way. Johnston is never promotional, and never strains for effect. Though he pays proper attention to his sources, his originality is manifest in the ways in which he fleshes out what would otherwise be a dense set of ideas. This book, then, illustrates a happy coalescence of scholarship and style. One looks forward to its eventual expansion into a comprehensive tome; but, for the moment, it may be read with pleasure & benefit by neophyte and expert alike.