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Hi, welcome again.
In this session the, this very short session,
we'll try to think on how the transdisciplinarity of emotional
studies creates an epistemological gap and a lack of,
of agreement among researchers that are studying emotions.
So, what the [BLEEP] are you studying?
When you are studying emotions because we see that,
that there is a strong interrelationship
between hardwired process processes and
cultural processes that happen during the the our own zone and
existence of several kinds of emotions.
At the same time when, when we look at at the human brains,
we see that there are not clear boundaries between
some areas of our brains and, and some final actions.
There is nothing like one hit for one specific area.
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Our brains work, are using really specialized areas at the same time.
These areas are dynamic and, and, and are, and
are changing information with other areas of the brain constantly.
There is nothing like well, now first step, second step, third step,
fourth step and then final a solution.
There is always a syntax of neural processes inside the brain.
But there is nothing like first one, second, the other one.
Continuously there are interaction among similar areas of the brain.
And emotions are, are a basic and are a very important agent in,
inside all these kind of interactions inside the brain.
So, it's very difficult to see brains working
on natural situations, because, for example, yeah,
if you think on, on brain scanners like, fM,
fMRI, and thinking how they are performing and how they obtain information.
You see then, that they are not just telling people make no more you
are inside the machine, closed inside the building, and then you are asked
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to make something and they study your, your brain activity.
But it's not a normal activity like you want when you are walking across a street.
But at the same time, these are necessary statistical analyses
of these functioning of, of the brain that can lead
you to several problems because there is not also agreement about the,
the best statistical method for that analysis.
Or can even produce some in very weird situations like,
the, that someone fMRI scanning that happened several
years ago that was really funny because several data
about brain activity were obtained from dead someone.
And, and from data was not possible to understand
correctly what was happening although the evidence was really funny.
At the same time, other kind of, of, epistemic strategies like
simple logical method that can imply similar kind of ethno,
ethnographic studies and, and techniques or and,
and, different qualitative assessment of the, of the obtained data.
Or even, for example, for, for example, philosophers like me try to make
comparative analyses or, or make some explain we are crazy.
Do we, we, it's, it's very funny and, and it's cheap.
You are at your home and you're started to think on something and
you decide that these are, that just has hop,
hop into your brain is a very conceptual problem.
At the same time, we are talking about qualia, and ha, some qualia happened all,
also inside of our brains.
For example, historians tried to understand emotion for
trying to make a revision of, of bibliographical font and sources.
And then, it's very difficult to find an agreement about
topic under study at the same time about the best methods to understand that,
that natural process or cultural process.
Psychologists for example, follow several methods, for example, direct observation,
case-control studies, statistical processing.
Or even AI experts trying to make smarter machines make computer simulations to,
to, design biomimetric systems work confirm our processing.
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Try to use power lines of research, very different from
natural ones that happen into normal human environment.
That's because they are very, very difficult.
All these process.
All these diversions.
It's negative.
Well, it's negative in order to, to achieve an agreement, universal agreement.
But at the same time, so many differences create more details and
more ways to understand, this process, and this is good.
So, it's not that there is no agreement among emotion researchers,
according to this, epistemological divergences and
methods, but these discrepancies make possible, different approaches.
And at the same time, the analysis of,
of the role of emotions into human existence or animal existence
frees us really to, to revision of several scientific dogmas about
what is the human nature and what is the human culture and
what's the relationship between human nature and culture.
So, thanks so much.
Hope to see you in the next session.
Bye.
Jordi VallverdúProfessor Dr.
