When You Deal With Something Like Compassion

It's Very Interesting To Think About The Distinction With Mind, Which I Just Made In Very General Terms, But It Can Be Made More Profound When We Think That There Are Many Species, Many Creatures On Earth That Are Very Likely To Have A Mind, But Are Very Unlikely To Have A Consciousness In The Sense That You And I Have.

We Remove Ourselves From The Experience Itself To A Surrogate Of The Experience, Which Is Whatever Measure You Take From The Brain, Be It The Electroencephalogram Or Magnet Encephalography Or Say Functional Magnetic Resonance. So It's Pretty Tough To Make Those Comparisons.

If You Have Just An Emotion, You Would Not Necessarily Feel It. To Feel An Emotion, You Need To Represent In The Brain In Structures That Are Actually Different From The Structures That Lead To The Emotion, What Is Going On In The Organs When You're Having The Emotion.

You're Not The Same After, Say, An Incredible Love Affair That Went Very Well Or A Love Affair That Went Bad. Or Something That Happens To Your Health, Or Something That Happened To Somebody Else's Health, That Is Close To You. Or Something That Happens Professionally.

I Believe That It Is Made Out Of The Same Cloth Of Mind, But It Is An Add-on, It Was Something That Was Specialized To Create What We Call The Self. And It Exists For Very Special Purposes And It Has Very Special, And I Think By And Large Good Consequences, Although Not Only Good Consequences.