Re: Evolution Sees!

On Jun 30, 8:51 am, nightlight <nightli...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jun 30, 12:32 am, "*Hemidactylus*" <ecpho...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Fear can be debilitating.

So can marriage, your job, government at any level and from any
branch, your own immune system (or digestive, cardio-vascular,...),
your car, electric power, Healtist busy bodies (that's in fact their
primary function), physicians, science,...  down to internet chat and
newsgroup discussions. It's hard to think of anything that can't 'be
debilitating' and even 'nothing' can be debilitating, too.

Hence, that something 'can be debilitating' is not a distinguishing
trait of emotions, or of anything else including 'nothing', which
makes them inferior to intellect or to science. If you said, 'emotions
can't solve a differential equation' then you would have been onto
something.

In the context that you so casually snipped away I was replying to
someone who was highlighting the functional advantage of fear *per*
survival. I had given specific dysfunctional consequences of fear. You
then constructed a strawman to knock down after snipping that part
away.

Fear is but one emotion and has pluses and minuses. People often
develop phobias that can cause them long-term trouble. If somebody has
a traumatic experience when young at the dentist this may dissuade
them from going for dental checkups when they get older and result in
deteriorating dental health and its side effects. Fear (or phobias)
can override one's ability to reason through the chances of actual
dangerous events occuring or maybe reduce one's options. If someone
has a fear of germs or contamination they might not seek education or
employment in a medical related field. If someone has a strong fear of
heights this may cause them problems when they need to do something
that involves being far above the ground. If someone is afraid of dogs
due to early traumatic experiences, they might not go to a friend's
house who has a dog or may actually increase their chances of being
bitten again when they encounter a strange dog.

One needs to develop a highly differentiated conceptual connection to
their environment so that emotional responses tend to be well grounded
and don't cause them to go into overreaction mode or have inappropiate
responses. OTOH, emotional sophistication does allow someone to
interpret their environment in a more context appropriate manner.

Anxiety disorders and phobias do show that our emotional brain has a
potential to become severely dysfunctional.




.

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