Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Emotion since Darwin
- 2 Releasers and state-dependent reflexes
- 3 Purpose and emotion
- 4 Expression: a window on the emotions?
- 5 Are physiological changes epiphenomena of emotion?
- 6 Somatic influences on the emotions
- 7 Optimal foraging and the partial reinforcement effect: a model for the teleonomy of feelings?
- 8 Do emotions mature or differentiate?
- 9 Cognition, learning and emotion
- 10 Interaction of the components of emotion
- 11 Of mice and men
- 12 Biology and emotion: some conclusions
- Glossary
- Notes
- References
- Index
3 - Purpose and emotion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Emotion since Darwin
- 2 Releasers and state-dependent reflexes
- 3 Purpose and emotion
- 4 Expression: a window on the emotions?
- 5 Are physiological changes epiphenomena of emotion?
- 6 Somatic influences on the emotions
- 7 Optimal foraging and the partial reinforcement effect: a model for the teleonomy of feelings?
- 8 Do emotions mature or differentiate?
- 9 Cognition, learning and emotion
- 10 Interaction of the components of emotion
- 11 Of mice and men
- 12 Biology and emotion: some conclusions
- Glossary
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
There lived a happy coelocanth
In dim primordial seas,
He ate and mated, hunted, slept
Completely at his ease.
Dame Nature urged: ‘Evolve!’
He said: ‘Excuse me Ma'am,
You get on making Darwin,
I'm staying as I am’.
Horace Shipp: The coelacanthTeleonomy, a redefinition of purpose
In the previous chapter we discussed the release of behaviour patterns in terms of general control mechanisms without considering how and why such mechanisms might have evolved. In his preface to the 1965 edition of Darwin's book Lorenz cites as a key to modern behavioural biology ‘the fact … that behaviour patterns are just as conservatively and reliably characters of species as are the forms … of bodily structures; … (they) unite the members … of taxonomic units … (and) can become “vestigial” or “rudimentary” just as the latter can. Or on losing one function they may develop another.’
The idea of purpose has for many years been problematic in biology. However, it is possible to discuss some classes of purpose in biology from a scientific point of view – by referring to ‘purposes’ which specifically exclude the existence of any purposive entity as their source. One such alternative is ‘function’ as used by Lorenz.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Biology and Emotion , pp. 33 - 39Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989