THYMOLOGY, CONSCIENCE AND INTELLIGENCE

 

Romeo Lucioni

 

Neurosciences have changed the approach to the psycho-neuron-biological aspects, that is to the matter of the relationship, still mysterious, between mind and brain. 

Not many years ago, this interaction was referred to the intelligence more than to the other superior cerebral functions, usually included in the emotional generalization that was more tightly connected to the biological operation. Also Freud had predicted this bond, foreseeing an interaction between the “I” and the automatic, instinctive and libidinal functions of the “Es”. 

More recently a discussion about emotions, but also about feelings began, and Antonio Damasio presents his last book (2003) with the following words: feelings are the base of our mind. Besides, when he affirms that emotion has a fundamental role in the elaboration of the rational thought too, he approaches what a Renaissance thinker, Leon Ebreo, guessed: he believed that knowledge derives from love. 

This declaration would seem enough to set a firm point, to clarify the nature, the functional mechanisms, the meaning of these psycho-mental modulations that we call “feelings”. To tell the truth, we are well far from an univocal vision and certainly also Damasio does not help us, defining the feelings as positive sensations of comfort and optimism. 

It seems that the millennial controversy about the bonds between brain and mind is polarized on the matter of the feelings, theme on which biologists and spiritualists clashed, even because, on a scientific plan, it has not been possible yet to tie the feelings to detailed cerebral structures. 

Difficulties were caused by the small clarity about the dynamics with which the brain creates the mind and, above all, the borders with science, so that some researchers declare that feelings and conscience are placed beyond these borders. 

 

Many data have been gotten studying the cases of patients who have suffered permanent lesions of the cerebral lobes, since specific mental events can sometimes be referred to specific cerebral circuits. 

Nowadays, feelings are usually kept separated from the emotions, but, to understand the confusion that still exists on this theme, it is enough to remember how Antonio Damasio recognizes emotions that have a correspondent among the feelings; or a certain degree of “twinness” (being twin) among the two functions, so that he asks himself whether the emotions were born first or the feelings. 

 

This way of conceiving the feelings is not dissimilar from the one foreseen and discovered for the emotions: they should be two independent systems (partly) that, reacting to some stimuli (inner or outer), are used to re-establishing the equilibrium.

When Damasio says that feelings are “expression of a struggle for an equilibrium”, he shows us that his vision of the psycho-neuron-biological operation is still tied up to an archaic conception of equilibrium-disequilibrium, in which prevails a “tizioristic” dimension, that pre-judges and it pre-establishes what is good and what is evil, as well as what is beautiful and ugly, what is just and unjust. 

The pre-judgement that says that the equilibrium is both better and superior to the disequilibrium is typical of Illumines, which, on the base of rationalistic conceptualizations, pre-established what was better for a man or, even, for the human kind. 

Thymology (axiology) is a means to study and understand the human behaviour and the brain’s and the psyche’s functional models, and it is part both of the human and the neuron sciences that study the brain and its very complex neuron-chemical and neuron-physiologic functioning, without neglecting however the psychic and psychodynamic mechanisms, the perceptive and sensorial structures, the mental mechanisms, the relational dynamics, the social, cultural and ethnic complexities. 

 

Because of this neuron-scientific propensity, Thymology keeps in mind some particular, and very important considerations. 

 

A. Structure of the psycho-mental functions:  

It means to harmonize the emotional answers with the affective-valuable elaboration, in order to reach the organization that we call rationalism and intellectual, deductive, creative and interpretative ability. 

 

B. Although emotions have been defined as “the mind’s gasoline”, only a harmonization of these energies can lead to a good functioning in the social environment and this works through the structuring of a scaffolding made of values, of affections and of respect for the self and for the others. 

 

C. The frontal and the prefrontal bark (that compose the 60% of the whole cerebral mantle) represent the characteristic structure of the Man, responsible for the affective organization, which includes: 

- Sense of the self and awareness to exist;  

- Sense of being in the world; 

- Sense of persistence in space and time as a characteristic individuality; 

- Sense of existing as a person able to think; 

- To understand the thought of the others; 

- To communicate. 

 

The emotional-affective integration (not completed before 18-24 months) is fundamental to the integrated development of the basic psycho-mental functions, made of: 

- Apperception; 

- Attention; 

- Memory; 

- Will; 

- Self-conscience and conscience. 

 

To speak of humanization means to refer to a psychic and mental functioning, which is integrated and coordinated, in order to allow a harmonic growth in the respect of the personal needs, but also in the recognition of the value of the Other and of the equal opportunities. 

 

Thymology, which is the science of the feelings or the science of the values:  

the word “value” contains implicitly in itself the meaning of “what people want to speak of”, in this speaking a social and relational dimension is translated (in order to speak, you need to have someone whom to establish a dialogue with)

As far as other meanings are concerned, we find in the word “value” something that approaches us to a certainty and, therefore, to a truth, the reason why it is always something personal: whenever we speak of “values” we refer to our truths and certainties. 

Inevitably, with the “values” we find ourselves in a personal world, we describe us, just because we have to consider our history (yesterday and today) and our perspectives (what we will be tomorrow), keeping in mind what we lived in our childhood and in other stages of our life, within the cognitive-intellectual development, in sexuality, in the relationships, in the way we propose ourselves and we “live ourselves” in front of ourselves and of the world. 

With these considerations we have to settle a fundamental matter that concerns both our nature, and, in an ampler sphere, the human nature; in fact we have to distinguish between “descriptions” and “prescriptions”, to estimate therefore what we are or what we had to become. 

Darwin’s and Freud’s naturalism gives this duty a right meaning, promoting it as history, also as “becoming”, but, above all, removing it from the ethical-moral hesitations, that have the tendency to structure themselves as “ideal”; they, being as a cultural characteristic, have forced us to a truth which is no more personal and descriptive, but general and prescriptive, since the Greek classical era.   

To break these bonds meant also to put in discussion the hope that these ideals offered and fed, opening however the way toward an implicit presupposition, well described by Adam Philips: “...That the new description of nature could only make people better; that, releasing us from the concept of redemption or from the illusion to reach the perfect happiness or the absolute knowledge, but mostly devoting ourselves to our personal histories (by now epics), we could have been able to be happier in this world, rather than in another one.”