Subconscious and emotions

[N468989]

I'm not sure how i to explain, because it's not easy for me this area of study. There is a part of us, the mental body, of which the subconscious is part of. I believe that they are transmited through the genetic code and when in the womb (mother->baby). It's like when animals react to predators/danger like they know it's dangerous. Like a fish, if you try to catch it swims away even though it wasnt "teached".

Is there an explanation for this?

thanks!

[apeiron]

This is not a philosophy question. But anyway.

The simple way of looking at it is there are three levels of response to the world - reflexes, habits, conscious attention.

Reflexes would be the most hardwired or genetic. Habits are learnt. Conscious decisions are evolved "in the moment".

So if you treat this as about learning or adaptation, then reflex is learning at the species level, habit is learning at the lifetime or developmental level, decisions are learning in the moment.

It is "all the same thing" in being about learning - adaptive change in the state of your neural wiring. But taking place across a hierarchy of spatiotemporal scale.

Note that in execution, reflexes are faster than habits, which are faster than decisions. So the faster reactions seem "emotional" because they happen faster than fully considered thought.

If you are interested in the subject, the orienting response is a good started into the literature.

[Math Is Hard]

Note: moved to biology from philosophy - MIH