[Fis] Emotional information

[Katherine Peil]

Dear Thomas, Eric & All,
Indeed Thomas, quantum biology is very real, particularly as it concerns the nature of emotion. (I offered a Tao story that described “the engine of creativity” as a cyclic process between quantum and classical domains with a subjective participant at the interface between the two realms – a bit like Bohm or Whitehead, but specifically rooted in Stuart Kauffman’s “poised realm” interpretation of QM. In this Tao story, optimal going with the flow of The Tao is attained via decisions that attain long-term balance between myriad complementary opposites – the deepest of which are part of the causal machinery itself, rooted in quantum complementarity.)

First, let me say that emotion is an older and more primary process than “cognition” via neural nets. It is a fully embodied interoceptive sensory system, and serves the function of “self-regulation” – it delivers “self-relevant” information and moves living systems to action. This is evident in the sensory-motor control chemistry of the bacterium, but given Mike Levin’s discovery of an entire layer of bioelectric signaling, it goes deeper still.

In our earlier discussion, I suggested that electromagnetism was a deeper source of “sensory stimulus” leading to some of the binary features of emotional qualia. But that there are both analog and digital aspects of this stimulus in terms of membrane potential, polarization and the computations undergirding  and involving  emotional qualia – which I have suggested serves delivers into consciousness a course-graining of embodied cell signaling involved in genetic, epigenetic and immune regulation. This aspect of emotion is binary. It is some feeling akin to pain or pleasure, and delivers an approach or avoidant action impulse. But – and this is key -  it is not limited to the EITHER~OR logic of the classical domain, but also carries the more primary BOTH~AND logic of the quantum realm.

For like Eric suggests, human emotions are now very complex, and completely intertwined with cognition proper (cultural schemata, linguistic thoughts that lead to other thoughts, neither specifically about “the self” nor motivational). Indeed, there are now three layers of self-regulatory information encoded in our complex human emotions, but one cannot decode it without understanding the first level and its deeper biological function as self-regulatory feedback signals..

The first step in understanding one’s emotional system is to be aware that cognition and emotion are two separate but interacting streams of information. This is accomplished by understanding its BINARY nature of emotional qualia and the semantic information it carries. For example, any thought that has affective valence offers informative self-regulatory guidance via a clear yes~no message in pleasure or pain and both its EITHER~OR and BOTH~AND logic. (These are the “positive” and “negative” categories of emotion, which work together to subserve the criteria for natural selection: They say YES to both creative self-development and to stable self-preservation, respectively; as the dual self-regulatory imperatives that must be balanced over time. The “self-identity” that is mediated, also has a BINARY structure, both a part and a whole – with both autonomous~collective aspects equally important, mediated by negative and positive feelings respectively. (Our polarized American politics demonstrates this along with the power of emotional manipulation.)

Thank you both for keeping this discussion alive. I really like Federcio Faggin’s concept of “live information” as it can open liberating new doors. But when it comes to emotion, we have not begun to appreciate the wisdom the embodiment has to offer.
Oh, and Thomas, if that German work is anywhere in English, please let me know.
Hugs all around,
Kate Kauffman


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