Regular readers know of my interest in the nature and origin of emotions. Recently I came upon a certain story about the work of a neuroscientist named Joseph LeDoux. It seems that LeDoux tried to study fear in rodents. This meant (he thought) asking the question: what is happening in the brain of a rat when it perceives a threat? He learned a good deal about the two distinct "roads" by which news of the threat gets to the amygdala, the quicker but less informative "low road" and the slower higher-info "high road." BUT ... this was the part that struck me and that may be of philosophical significance ... LeDoux came in time to the conclusion that he hadn't been studying fear at all. He had been studying survival circuits and threat conditioning Such things should be named, or renamed, in a way that cleanses them of the subjective and human-centric notion that the rats are "afraid" of something merely because the sight or smell of i...