I don’t understand your request. Do you want me to list every possible somatic marker?
(Note, btw, that different animals have different somatic marker hierarchies, so that would be a pretty extensive list, if I were even able to compile it.)
In my work, I rarely need to distinguish the nature of an emotion in any finer degree than “toward” or “away”, “good” or “bad”. The difference between (say) somebody feeling “terrible” about their work or “awful” is not important to me, nor do I care what specific somatic markers are involved in marking those concepts either across human beings or even within any given single human being.
However, it is important for the person experiencing that marker to be able to identify the physical components of it, in order to be able to test whether or not an intervention I suggest has actually removed the link between a concept and the marker that gets automatically played back when the concept is thought of. (Since the marker is a preparation for action—including actions such as “hesitation”—changing the marker also changes the behavior associated with the concept… but the markers can be tested much more quickly than full-blown behaviors, allowing for faster feedback in cases where more than one technique might be relevant.)
Thus, “emotion” to me is a testable and predictable concept that governs human motivation in a meaningful way. If somebody wants to give me a better word to use to describe the thing upon which my interventions operate and manifest as physical (muscular, visceral, etc.) sensations in the body, then by all means, suggest away.
I am not a psychology researcher—I help people to fix motivation problems and make personality changes. My work is not to “prove” that a particular hypothesis or physical mechanism is in effect in human beings; it’s to identify practical techniques, and to devise useful models for understanding how those techniques operate and by which new techniques can be developed. Of course, as I find out more about evolution or about experimental results, I incorporate that information into my theoretical models to improve my practical results.
It seems to me that you are asking me to stop using a model that actually works for producing practical results, and to substitute something else—and what that something else is, I’m not sure.
So, I’d appreciate it if you’d explain more specifically what it is you’re asking for, in the form of an actionable request, rather than primarily in the form of what you’d like me not to do.
I don’t understand your request. Do you want me to list every possible somatic marker?
(Note, btw, that different animals have different somatic marker hierarchies, so that would be a pretty extensive list, if I were even able to compile it.)
In my work, I rarely need to distinguish the nature of an emotion in any finer degree than “toward” or “away”, “good” or “bad”. The difference between (say) somebody feeling “terrible” about their work or “awful” is not important to me, nor do I care what specific somatic markers are involved in marking those concepts either across human beings or even within any given single human being.
However, it is important for the person experiencing that marker to be able to identify the physical components of it, in order to be able to test whether or not an intervention I suggest has actually removed the link between a concept and the marker that gets automatically played back when the concept is thought of. (Since the marker is a preparation for action—including actions such as “hesitation”—changing the marker also changes the behavior associated with the concept… but the markers can be tested much more quickly than full-blown behaviors, allowing for faster feedback in cases where more than one technique might be relevant.)
Thus, “emotion” to me is a testable and predictable concept that governs human motivation in a meaningful way. If somebody wants to give me a better word to use to describe the thing upon which my interventions operate and manifest as physical (muscular, visceral, etc.) sensations in the body, then by all means, suggest away.
I am not a psychology researcher—I help people to fix motivation problems and make personality changes. My work is not to “prove” that a particular hypothesis or physical mechanism is in effect in human beings; it’s to identify practical techniques, and to devise useful models for understanding how those techniques operate and by which new techniques can be developed. Of course, as I find out more about evolution or about experimental results, I incorporate that information into my theoretical models to improve my practical results.
It seems to me that you are asking me to stop using a model that actually works for producing practical results, and to substitute something else—and what that something else is, I’m not sure.
So, I’d appreciate it if you’d explain more specifically what it is you’re asking for, in the form of an actionable request, rather than primarily in the form of what you’d like me not to do.