Theory of Fernanda

Lisa Feldman Barret's theory of how we perceive emotion comes through as highly-thought provoking, and to an extent, is implying a potential paradigm shift in how we understand what emotions are in their very essence. One of the first points presented is the idea that physiological stimuli can be used interchangeably to tell our body different emotions. However, the way those same stimuli are used to distinguish emotions rely on the context itself. What this puts into question is the true reliability of our emotions. If it comes to a point where the body is trying to express a feeling but the context does not lend itself to the interpretation what the body wants to achieve, this can lead to flawed decision-making. This puts into perspective how it is crucial to comprehend the possible unreliability of emotions– if the wrong context happens to coincide with the wrong physiological stimuli, the decision-making that is born from that union can have dangerous ramifications. This exa...

The Somatic Marker Theory is a physiological hypothesis proposed by Antonion Damasio. He suggests that every experience we face stores what is called a somatic marker, which is kept in our memories. As a result, our body remembers how it reacted to specific scenarios and based upon both the emotions and physiological reactions to the aforesaid, it impacts our decision-making. This hypothesis is particularly true in situations in which our cognition and logic can not make a decision, and therefore, we rely on our emotions to reach make a choice. Damasio believes that emotions are physiological stimuli that occur when we are exposed to different situations. Those physiological stimuli are processed by the brain, which the brain then turns into an emotion that tells the individual how they should feel in response to those stimuli.  An example (as shown in the picture) can be food. When you eat really good chocolate cake, your physiological response comes from a mix of you...

She grew up a marginalized, ungracious teenager in a small town in Houston, alienated by her peers for looking and being different. Yet, after discovering at age 17 next to a drunken campfire that she could sing, this bad reputation gave her an infamous voice that would be destined to echo in the male-dominated blues and rock music industry. This echo reverberated this past June at the Monterey Music Festival and has since, produced a golden record alongside the Big Brother and Holding Company. Janis Joplin sat down to discuss her experience as a countercultural figure in the music industry and discuss the themes surrounding her soulful, raw songs. Janis, I would like to congratulate you on your achievements thus far with Big Brother and the breakthrough you've created in blues and rock. As a young girl, did you ever think you'd reach this point? Thank you, it has been such a dream to reach this point in music. To be honest with you, whenever I'd daydream and you know,...

In Tupac's "On My Block" the rapper narrates the mounting racist violence, drug trade and corrupt system that dominates  the everyday of his neighborhood, and how that environment led him to engage in criminal activities and consequently, impact his personality. By reminiscing on his mistakes and highlighting the corruption of the law against the African American community, Tupac is indirectly warning the next generation of not repeating the same mistakes as him and is calling for conscience on the unfairness of the system is as it is trivially inescapable. The theme is justified in the first stanza as Tupac claims "the only time they notice a nigga is when he's clutching on a four-five". This is commenting on police violence against African-Americans and how they are insignificant under the eyes of the law unless they pose a threat to society. In context to the theme, this is causing the reader to question his own prejudice against the affected community ...

First-Order Knowledge Claims -"Ghost balloon may have no intrinsic meaning" -"But as a whole, emoji are unmistakably Japanese" -"Purchases that reportedly rake in well over $3m each month" Second-Order Knowledge Claims -The fact that 'ghost balloon' may have no intrinsic meaning is based on a generalized assumption that that specific combination of emojis don't have a translation into verbal language, and therefore, have no deep-rooted meaning. (this leaves out the fact that those symbols could have inherent meaning in the form of an inside-joke to a specific group of people) -The knowledge that the emojis are Japanese is based on the shared knowledge of Japanese culture and the cultural traits (food, clothes, etc) that are associated with it. Knowledge Questions -To what extent can the simplification of language in a visual form continue to be valuable for communication?/ Can visual communication ever be as rich and communicative as...

How would you try to explain to a blind person what the word RED means? What does this suggest to you about the limitations of definitions?  Because the person is blind, I would try to describe the color red through emotional and thermoceptive stimuli. I would describe it as a warm, vibrant color that in its most intense qualities, is hard to ignore. However, after saying this I would reach my descriptive limit because being able to fully covey the meaning of 'red' relies heavily on visuals. Even further, describing a color is hard because it's something that for people who aren't visually impaired is taken for granted– why would you describe and analyze something that is easy to see and understand? An apple is red because it's red, you don't need to argue with someone over it.  What this reveals about the usefulness of descriptive definitions is that, to an extent, they really aren't useful. There are things that words themselves can not express bec...

If my brother had not chosen to become a pilot, I am confident he would have done a major in Nagging Your Sister 101. For the 14 years of his life that he lived next to me, he found ways to perfect his technique, discover new buttons to push and craft new combinations of insults to create the perfect recipe for my emotional explosion. That being said, I was never eloquent enough to counter the constant bombarding of teasing, so rather, I went along with the flow. But that flow, that current, started to go on hurricane alert when my brother flew down from Iceland after three years of declaring a ceasefire on my emotional sanity. "How come you get straight 7's all the time? A mule is smarter than you are,” he said after I showed him one of my math assignments I got back that week. "You always have to be served two glasses of water when you eat– one for drinking and the other for spilling,” he blurted out after I accidentally tipped over my glass.  "Yo...