survival neural circuits of emotion - alive why

survival

if you designed a robot
and the robot had to survive against various threats
so you built into it's programming...
...circuits which promoted survival
how much would you let other circuits in the robot interfere
with the survival programme?

you wouldn't allow any interference.
survival is paramount
that is why humans have so little understanding of emotions
a survival circuit is not to be tampered with
the rest of our mind is told "no go zone"
our culture, secular and religious, and our innate circuitry
tends to make us shy away from
considering emotions as a subject for thought

as robots we could have a logical sense of self
this would be simply the body and the computer like brain
but without a directive circuit
to motivate it,
to any thought word or action
it would be paralyzed, catatonic, without even a thought

only having a circuit which activates, motivates,
which sets goals, aims, desires,
whether gross
as the baby's scream for milk
or subtle as the shy person's desire for confidence,
creates a self which places value in the self...
...that circuit or network
is emotion
whether the emotion network is pharmacological or anatomical
or neurophysiological
or a mixture
in its nature
is irrelevant
it is the basement of existence
and the creator of self
self as described by sam harris, numerous others and much eastern philosophy...
the root of the human predicament in the sam harris view

it is not so much the self that is the problem
the problem is the emotion that powers the self
with all the problems of emotion

once our mind is given the flame of emotion
it becomes separate from all else...
...a citadel
armed, imperious about the outside world
but also, vulnerable, subject to attack and insurrection

there would be no possibility of a valued self without emotion

only in the last few decades has the western world
begun to wake up to the importance of emotions
possibly our survival will depend on this awakening

even so
if this happens it will be again a case of
dna ensuring its own survival
by allowing our cortex to understand emotion