http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7231/full/457803a.html

Its just a term.

I don't know if "apathy" counts as an emotion...isn't it just a word for indifference, or rather lack of emotion?

I agree.

If apathy is the lack of caring, and caring is an emotional investment then . . .

That's one way of defining it.

But I see apathy and indifference as being completely different. To me "indifference" is akin to "disinterest" and "carelessness", whereas apathy is more akin to "depression" and "fatalism".

What is interest but a feeling of excitement?

I don't see interest and excitement as being identical.

Evolution does not always (or even often) yield optimum results, so we should not be surprised if we evolved to have qualities or tendencies which are not always in our best interest, survival wise.

I see all of the 'negative' emotions, including apathy, fear, anger as having a potential utility for survival. You bring up apathy specifically - well, if you are sick or injured, it is good to rest, and the feeling of apathy that tends to come with illness is an encouragement to rest. The feeling of apathy that comes from having a bad attitude towards life - well, that may be just a side effect of sub-optimum evolution.

In modern humans, many of our emotional responses are not longer survival-advantageous in many circumstances - thuough they may have other benefits.



In certain contexts, yes! I think many people recognized that our evolutionary legacy is NOT working well for us in the modern world. The emotional tendencies that lead to vicious, brutal, and unexamined retaliation when 'one of ours' was threatened might have been helpful in other times, but its -not- helping us in this era of nations, armies, and WMDs.



I'm curious what you mean by 'aberrating factor' - though I don't see the need to look beyond evolution for an explanation of our emotional realities, there are many different kinds of 'aberrating factors' that could still be present.

This is a favored story amongst massage therapists - along with one about two tribes that are similar in most respects, but one carries their babies in cloth slings against their body, and the other carries their babies in wooden or bamboo 'backpacks' - the latter group is more aggressive amongst themselves and toward other tribes.

There are many ways to look at this, but from the view of the conversation about evolution: it may be that the vast majority of the primate ancestors took care of their kids, and evolutionary forces brought about a certain set of emotional responses and emotional development in that context... but when the situation changes, and the caring adult is removed, the genetically influenced emotional development tendencies go awry (with sad results). This might not be a survival advantage at all, but an accidental consequence of how the we (or the monkeys) came to be wired.

Excellent examples massagetrade!



I agree, but would also like to add another speculation regarding this facet. Let me set it up by further illustrating a point touched on by Massagetrade.

Evolution lite:
Variation and reproduction meets an environmentally created sets of survival thresholds.

The variation is independent of the environment, I do not mean to say unaffected by, but random mutation can occur and not be selected against. Mutations occur regardless of benefit, detriment, or neutrality. The vast majority of mutations are neutral, the smallest part is beneficial generally.

Now when we get into epigenetics its true that the environment plays larger roles but that would only confuse the issue in regards to these distinctions.

Many times mutations occur that cause several traits, where one trait will be neutral or detrimental to survival, but the other is so beneficial as to outweigh the others.

The genes that regulate sickle cell anemia are a good example. It makes you immune to the parasite Malaria, but has survival detrimental effects, however in countries ravaged by malaria which kills quickly a mutation that gives you more years to reproduce has net survival advantage.

However that is not my speculation part, the speculation part is with the earlier example.

At a funeral laughing may be interpreted as disrespect. Respect, and lack of respect have value assessment aspects which directly effect group dynamics which in my mind could have a great deal of survival benefit, or detriment.

Well when I said that I just imagined trying to care enough to do something(interest)in anything and if I was at a neutral state of excitement and thought about this thing that I may or may not have interest in, and if my state of excitement didn't go up from neutral at least somewhat, then I would probably move on to another idea very quickly.

I see apathy as neutral, interest as positive, and dislike as negative. Excitement can be positive or negative, but moves in an absolute value fashion toward a greater absolute value. Boredom moves toward smaller absolute values.

That is at least how I imagine it from a first person perspective which can be highly flawed.

from the amigdala of course! where the hell did you go to school man!

DKoW,

I'm always curious about what people really mean by 'instinctual'.

Now that you've met David, you believe that there is a 'learned' aspect to emotional experience, right? Are you saying that youur previous 'instinctual' view was wrong? Or that it was incomplete?

If 'instinctual' means "somehow related to our genetics, our physiology, and unconscious (or subconscious) processes" - then I would say emotions are both instinctual and learned. I think all emotions have both components.

By “aberrating factor” I mean something that would cause one to manifest ‘inapropriate’ emotions. (Such as the “laughing at a funeral” example given by Bushi.)

And I guess the real issue for me is that evolution doesn’t explain how those aberrant behaviors come about. Especially in cases like aggressive behavior such as you pointed out. Would not evolution dictate that when a behavior pattern is no longer pro-survival but becomes contra-survival, that it would be eliminated from the gene pool? With your ‘aggressive behavior” example, it would seem the only way to eliminate it is through some extinction-level event (such as global nuclear war) that we consider to be extremely contra-survival.

In short, if all emotion is a result of evolution, then it would appear that evolution is pushing life toward extinction as opposed to survival.

Personal variation, maybe?

By the way, I mis-spoke earlier, regarding 'looking beyond evolution'. I see no need to look beyond evolution for the -origin- of the basic kinds of emotions. As for how they play out on a personal level, I do think we need to look beyond evolution and look at culture (and indvidual experience), as has been show by many comments in this thread. But that should not be surprising - we evolved to have muscles, but to become professional body builders we can't rely on our genes alone: diet, training, and in many case drugs play a huge role.



I don't know if it makes sense to look to evolution for a detailed understanding of how and why each individual expresses the kinds of emotions they express - we must consider evolution along with that individuals experience.



If it were universally and definitively counter-survival (before breeding age), then EVENTUALLY one would expect it to be bred out.



I'm confident that many species in the past have evolved to have particular qualities, which were survival advantages in the previous circumstances - and that those very same qualities led to that species extinction, when circumstances changed.

So, if humanity does exterminate itself due the influence of emotional tendencies which were once survival advantages, it would not be the first time this sort of thing happened.

So evolution is basically just a reaction to the changing environment. (Or maybe more accurately, an integral part of the changing environment.) And that changing environment includes the results of past evolutionary reactions.

Ok, I get that.

It’s kinda like Abra’s description of Feynman’s view on QM – we don’t really understand why, that’s just the way it is.

And to relate that to the OP, we know what emotions are, but not why they manifest the way they do in specific situations – other than more-or-less ‘reasonable’ theories extrapolated from woefully inadequate data.

Now, I could definitely be wrong about this, and welcome any criticism, but I do not believe that the particular emotional responses that people have in some particular situation has much to do with evolution; or if we did evolve to have strong tendencies, these are easily trumped by culture, as well as personality and the habits of one's thoughts. Even the fight/flight response to danger can depend on our perception/conception of the danger.

So I'm rather confused by the discussion of emotional expressions at a funeral. This is a cultural matter. I'm confident that the basic experience of greiving for a lost loved one has some kind of evolutionary basis - but the whole rest of it is cultural, isn't it?

All mine are free and I get them from various websites

That’s a good example of where I’m hanging up on the whole issue of emotions being product of evolution. I can’t imagine any evolutionary, pro-survival reason for that particular response. In fact, it seems to me to be be contra-survival. It blurs the vision, uses up energy, slows reaction time and limits physical and mental acuity in general, at a time when death is close at hand. But there it is. A virtually universal reaction that is contra-survival. I don’t see how evolution could produce such a mechanism.

Of the cuff, I don't see one either, but this is not an area I've given a ton of thought. A survival benefit to apathy wasn't obvious at first either. And I don't insist that there -is- a survival benefit specifically to greiving for a lost loved one, but that it has an evolutionary basis - which means there is either a survival benefit for greiving in general, or that grieving is a side effect of something that has a survival benefit. Will think on this.



I accept your summary of the physiological effects of grief - but who actually grieves when they are in imminent danger? In fact, someone recently reminded me that grief is one of the later stages of dealing with a loss; i think denial and anger both came before - and both of those are more likely to be better suited to facing a dangerous situation. (Denial of the loss, of course, not denial of the danger).

For most normal people: If, in the midst of grieving for a lost loved one, the kitchen caught fire, would not their grief be forgotten as they battled the blaze?