Posted by 838 on March 9, 2006, at 23:27:41
In reply to Re: disgust as emotion » James K, posted by JenStar on March 9, 2006, at 23:13:35
one of the lecturers at my old uni ate catfood (jellymeat) in an attempt to get people interested in Nagel's 'what's it like to be a bat' (though in this case 'cat') idea...
the point is that even if he eats cat food...
he doesn't know what it is like for a cat to eat catfood.he had to spit it out. i'm not surprised if the smell is anything to go by...
dried dog food can be okay if it is fairly odourless...
rats typically like sugarwater (as do people i suppose)
one group of rats are sedated and given an injection of saline then first exposure to sugar water... a while later... they like sugar water.
another group of rats are sedated and given an injection that will induce nausea then first exposure to sugar water... a while later... they won't drink sugar water but they will drink water.
they have developed an aversion to sugar water (won't drink it volountarily)
do they feel disgusted in response to sugar water?
this is an experiment that (I think) is supposed to show us something of how 'disgust' can be conditioned...
have been reading about little albert too (the 6 month old infant who was meant to be conditioned to respond to furry white things with fear)... apparantly... the case is typically misrepresented in order to make the theory come out right... to show spontaneous generalisation to new stimuli (furry white things) etc etc... apparantly... he never did develop much of a fear response... just a bit of an aversion... and he still did dispay approach behaviour... and he never did generalise to furry white things (he was conditioned to a brown rabbit or something)
what that means...
it is not clear that you CAN condition phobias...
and even if that was the case... it is not clear that that is the origin of ALL phobic responses...
oh well... such is science ;-)
poster:838
thread:617997
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20060303/msgs/618204.html