sirhinojo wrote:

Alex, have you taken into account Damasio's studies on emotion and feeling?  It seems at first glance that sentiment and emotion line up well with his feelings/emotions. 

Hi dude,
No they are not the same; this is a semantics problem. He's using the word 'feelings' in the sensorimotor, physiological  visceral sense; he means 'feelins' as the proximal stimulus, emotions as the cause and behavior as a result -the sense of 'sentience' in its original meaning, before star trek got hold of it  :  )

There are two camps of researchers on this subject -one lot believes that the  physical sensations ('feelings') are caused by the emotion. The other lot believes that the emotion is caused by those physical sensations. It's a 'chicken or egg' question, and has been popularly explored in pain research (Camp 1 believes that we cry because we feel pain, Camp 2 believes that we feel pain because we cry).
I believe the question is pointless because both are true. It's a reciprocal response (Pain causes anxiety, anxiety exacerbates pain which causes more anxiety which exacerbates more pain...and so on).

I believe this is exactly how we get 'stuck' in a loop of harmful feedback that is inclusive of both nature and nurture (ourselves & our environment). Both are a result of neurotransmission and a particular chemical balance that takes feedback from behavior and context and interprets it according to ability. If a person only has the ability to feel sentiment, that's what they get. If they've developed able to experience emotion, that's what they get.

Context also shapes responses strongly -a racing heart when crossing a wobbly bridge does not result in the same response as a racing heart when confronted by somebody hot naked or a racing heart when you think you have just made a fabulous scientific discovery.

Our behavioral experiences normally emerge in feedback loop interactions between ourselves and our context, and do not have their origins in either. The same is true of interactions between body/brain and mind.

I don't particularly like using the word 'feelings' for sentiments, but couldn't think of a better one to describe experiencing them. Rearloaders often say “It hurt my feelings” which is a classic sentiment response. We don't hear people saying 'It hurt my emotions' because its immediately apparent this doesn't make sense -what is meant is 'it hurt me'.

Suggestions for a better descriptive word welcome!  :  )
Best,
AR

Hi dude,
Lots of questions ...I'm not sure whether your first sentence is a question? But I've tried to cover the rest of them... Questions Are Our Friends  :  )
Sentiment is always harmful if we experience it personally, because of the neurochemical changes it causes. It isn't harmful if we were to emulate it to avoid hassle, for example, but it's much better to avoid anything that might induce it at all. Genuine emotion is acceptable in most situations!

[sirhinojo wrote]:And emotion is almost a purely measurable physical reaction that a situation demands from us (such as mating, cleaning, fighting, cooperating, etc)? 

Not according to the model I'm using, although this depends on how the individual researcher defines 'emotion' (as we've noticed with Damasio). In the model used for tutorials here, emotions are responses; not reactions. The emotion is the abstract mental mode (or mood) that matches up with the physical responses. Responses are interactions, designed to assist our adaptation to our context and circumstances by synchronizing our mood with the required behavior. It would be of little use if creatures desired sex for example but could not get their bodies to respond to match their mood (a problem some humans get on too much alcohol).

[s]So sentiment is not a reaction to reality but rather a reaction to a simulation (meaning cultural). 

Yes to the first bit, no to the second. Emotions are cultural, sentiments are societal.
If you're having problems understanding why sentiments always slow us down, look more closely at the emotions they are replacing. Look at things like the difference between pride and hubris, or arrogance and confidence. Once you get familiar with what should be going on, and how that enables the creature to function expediently, it's easier to see how the substitutions of sentiment can be made when anxiety is present and we slip into 'protection mode'.

I plan to cover emotional stability in greater depth in tutorial 9, when I get there  :  ) However, I realize this isn't addressing  your original query which was, how do the emotion/sentiment concepts fit into Damasios model. Answer: they don't; it's a different model. I doubt whether Damasio recognizes the difference between emotions and sentiments because he probably hasn't even heard of the idea, and so sentiments will be described as being emotions. I'm not sure anybody has sussed the difference out except for us lot.

There are a few models using the concepts of 'positive' and 'negative' emotions, which aren't consistent and include both emotions and sentiments, and I don't know of any other research in this area with a clear model for what is and what is not dysfunction that can both explain experimental results and predict behavior, so we'll obviously stick with ours unless a better one comes along.
Best,
AR