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traveler |
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posted on February 1, 2008 02:25:10 PM |
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I can\'t speak for anybody but myself, but I\'ve noticed a very strong prejudice in cognitive science toward studying only the intellectual/cerebral functions. My personal, copyright, phrase for this prejudice is \"Cortical Hubris.\"
There is a major failure in the literature to recognize that the limbic functions are what really guide most of our actions, and that the cortex can exert very little modifying influence on an aroused limbus. Just as much of economics has been centered on the highly falacious ideas of \"rational choice theory\" (now under hearty attack, at last) so also cognitive science has been narcissisticaly obsessed with its own glorious thinking powers. Some researchers even reject the limbic system as a separate part of the brain, for any serious research!
But study the psychology of mental illness, and you\'ll find abberant behaviour in the limbus is usually at the heart of the syndrom. From the opposite perspective, there needs to be much more research on how the limbus ENHANCES intellectual activity, and Wisdom.
You\'re right--there\'s a BIG gap in the study of the emotions and their integration into intellection and Wisdom.
Of course, that all actually has been studied quite a bit--in Literature. Scientists need to get off their high horses and recognize that we in the Humanities have been studying this area for centuries, and those findings, in the case studies called novels, plays, and poetry, have a lot to teach them. (Isn\'t Humility a commonly recognized characteristic of Wisdom?) \"Poetry does more than Psychology can, to illuminate emotion\'s place, to man.\" (and woman.) |
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Kathryn |
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posted on January 23, 2008 03:53:37 PM |
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I haven\'t finished \'Executive Brain\', and am enthralled with what I find, but I was prompted to skip to whatever section is here on emotion. I find no reference to it either in the index or the Contents.
Shall I conclude this very important aspect has been left out? If so, why? |
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