Enjoyable post, I’ll be reading the rest of them. I especially appreciate the effort that went into warding off the numerous misinterpretations that one could easily have had (but I’m going to go ahead an ask something that may signal I have misinterpreted you anyhow).
Perhaps this question reflects poor reading comprehension, but I’m wondering whether you are thinking of valence as being implemented by something specific at a neurobiological level or not? To try and make the question clearer (in my own head as much as anything), let me lay out two alternatives to having valence implemented by something specific. First, one might imagine that valence is an abstraction over the kind of competitive dynamics that play out among thoughts. On this view, valence is a little like evolutionary fitness (the tautology talk in 1.5.3 brought this comparison to mind). Second, one might imagine that valence is widely distributed across numerous brain systems. On this view, valence is something like an emotion (if you’ll grant the hopefully-no-longer-controversial claim that the neural bases of emotions are widely distributed). I don’t think either of these alternatives are what you are going for, but I also didn’t see the outright claim that valence is something implemented by a specific neurobiological substrate. What do you believe?
I think in much much simpler animals, valence is a literal specific signal in the brain, basically the collective spiking activity of a population of dopamine neurons. In mammals, that’s still sorta-close-to-true, but I would need to add a whole bunch of caveats and footnotes to that, for reasons hinted at in §1.5.6–1.5.7.
(I have a bunch of idiosyncratic opinions about what exactly the basal ganglia is doing and how, but I don’t want to get into it here, sorry!)
I reject both the “first” and the “second” thing you mention. I’m much closer to “valence is pretty straightforwardly encoded by spikes going down specific known axons”.
Separately, I might or might not agree with “the neural bases of emotions are widely distributed”, depending on how we define the word “emotions” (and also how we define “neural bases”, I suppose!), see here.
I don’t know if I buy that valence is based on dopamine neurons but I do believe valance is delta between current state and possible future state. Very much like action potential or potential energy. If one possible outcome could grant you the world, then you will have a very high valance to do the actions needed. Likewise if you life is on the line, that is very high valance. That turns anger to rage. Unfortunately, my model also says that too many positive thoughts, lead to a race condition between dopamine generation and thought analysis can can lead to mania/psychosis. When you want things too much (desire) or too little (doubt/despair), the valences can get too high. And even evaluation of innocuous things can lead you to forming emotions or actions out of line with the current evaluation. That is, valance does not go to zero easily. And the valence of now, informs the valence of later. And I believe it is more like a 1/x function so when you get to extremes of valance, the desire to act or desire to not act, gets really high and is hard to over come.
Enjoyable post, I’ll be reading the rest of them. I especially appreciate the effort that went into warding off the numerous misinterpretations that one could easily have had (but I’m going to go ahead an ask something that may signal I have misinterpreted you anyhow).
Perhaps this question reflects poor reading comprehension, but I’m wondering whether you are thinking of valence as being implemented by something specific at a neurobiological level or not? To try and make the question clearer (in my own head as much as anything), let me lay out two alternatives to having valence implemented by something specific. First, one might imagine that valence is an abstraction over the kind of competitive dynamics that play out among thoughts. On this view, valence is a little like evolutionary fitness (the tautology talk in 1.5.3 brought this comparison to mind). Second, one might imagine that valence is widely distributed across numerous brain systems. On this view, valence is something like an emotion (if you’ll grant the hopefully-no-longer-controversial claim that the neural bases of emotions are widely distributed). I don’t think either of these alternatives are what you are going for, but I also didn’t see the outright claim that valence is something implemented by a specific neurobiological substrate. What do you believe?
Thanks!
I think in much much simpler animals, valence is a literal specific signal in the brain, basically the collective spiking activity of a population of dopamine neurons. In mammals, that’s still sorta-close-to-true, but I would need to add a whole bunch of caveats and footnotes to that, for reasons hinted at in §1.5.6–1.5.7.
(I have a bunch of idiosyncratic opinions about what exactly the basal ganglia is doing and how, but I don’t want to get into it here, sorry!)
I reject both the “first” and the “second” thing you mention. I’m much closer to “valence is pretty straightforwardly encoded by spikes going down specific known axons”.
Separately, I might or might not agree with “the neural bases of emotions are widely distributed”, depending on how we define the word “emotions” (and also how we define “neural bases”, I suppose!), see here.
I don’t know if I buy that valence is based on dopamine neurons but I do believe valance is delta between current state and possible future state. Very much like action potential or potential energy. If one possible outcome could grant you the world, then you will have a very high valance to do the actions needed. Likewise if you life is on the line, that is very high valance. That turns anger to rage. Unfortunately, my model also says that too many positive thoughts, lead to a race condition between dopamine generation and thought analysis can can lead to mania/psychosis. When you want things too much (desire) or too little (doubt/despair), the valences can get too high. And even evaluation of innocuous things can lead you to forming emotions or actions out of line with the current evaluation. That is, valance does not go to zero easily. And the valence of now, informs the valence of later. And I believe it is more like a 1/x function so when you get to extremes of valance, the desire to act or desire to not act, gets really high and is hard to over come.