Post by congl95 on Oct 30, 2017 19:23:42 GMT
What Damasio means when he says "the history of evolution is written all over that tree" is that each different physiological structure was developed by evolution to make sure we survived and procreated. Each feature, from metabolic regulation to feelings, had -- and may still have -- an essential function in our survival, even today. When we look at the chronological timeline of homo sapiens development, we would see that each "trunk" of the tree developed at a certain time as an adaptive mechanism to help the species survive some extreme hardship that was killing off other members of our group that did not have the traits. That is essentially what evolution is, and that is why each part of the tree in his diagram represents a period over our evolution where the exact mechanism came into play and made us more adaptive to the environment we were struggling in.
This is important to his view of emotions because he sees them as themselves mechanisms of evolution, and that just as we developed metabolic regulation to survive, the same happened with emotions. They have a function which is aimed at retaining homeostasis, for our survival.
This is important to his view of emotions because he sees them as themselves mechanisms of evolution, and that just as we developed metabolic regulation to survive, the same happened with emotions. They have a function which is aimed at retaining homeostasis, for our survival.
