Chapter 29 - The affective neuroscience of consciousness: higher-order syntactic thoughts, dual routes to emotion and action, and consciousness

Summary

This chapter describes a theory of the nature of emotion and the functions of emotions. It addresses the issue of consciousness, especially of qualia, in relation to emotional feelings and actions. It highlights that what is written cannot be regarded as being establishable by the normal methods of scientific enquiry. It may be noted that the ability to recall previous steps in a plan and bring them into the conscious, higher-order thought system is an important prerequisite for long-term planning that involves checking each step in a multi-step process. According to the present formulation, there are two types of route to action performed in relation to reward or punishment in humans. This discussion of dual routes to action has been with respect to the behaviour produced. The chapter provides a short specification of what might have to be implemented in a neural network to implement conscious processing.