Now, we're moving more towards the positive hypothesis that Damasio wants us to consider. When we are faced with experiential situations, something right in front of us, something that we remember, something that we consider about a possible course of action in the future especially when we're trying to apply our practical rationality, we often have emotional reactions to those things. You might look at a picture of a disturbing image. You might look at a picture of very happy image. You might watch videos on your computer of bear cubs playing on a hammock in somebody's backyard. When their backyard are abutting of forests for example, there are often amusing videos you can find online of things like bear cubs frolicking on a hammock and making merry, it's often a good way to improve your mood. At least I find to watch bear cubs playing in a hammock, or in somebody's swimming pool has that effect on me. Watching those images can produce emotions in you. Imagery often is rife with emotional content, likewise, you might be able to activate a memory. Some good experience of your childhood, or some traumatic experience of your childhood, the activation of which might bring a certain emotional response. Likewise, when you think about a possible future situation, perhaps you're daydreaming about how fun it will be to go on vacation with your friends, the one that you've planned and are very much looking forward to, that might result in an emotional reaction for you as well. So notice that, as Damasio points out, our images are mental images that we form but can also have emotional contours about them so to speak. Those images that you call up are often generally visual but not necessarily just visual. You can have, so to speak, auditory images, some people are able to call up tactile or olfactory images. Some people can remember how something tasted that they've eaten before, that would be sort of gustatory experiential image. Notice also, that when you're experiencing the world either by virtue of perception what's happening in real time, or because you're remembering things in the past, or because you're imagining possible situations in the future, or how things might have gone, contrary to the way things actually have gone, those experiences, those images, are often as Damasio would put it �marked� in a certain way for you. So, think about a case such as getting an email, or maybe even a hard copy or a letter from an old friend that you haven't seen for a very long time, you've lost track of, you been wishing for a while you can get back in touch with that friend. There's that line in your inbox, in your email, there's that letter in your mailbox. You might look at that and your heart flutters in the course of doing so. You're delighted to receive because you can see the return address, for example. You're delighted to receive that letter from a person that you've been looking forward to getting back in touch with. That is to say that envelope, or that line on your inbox whatever it may be, is going to be as if Damasio will describe it, somatically marked. That's a kind of technical term. It's marked in the sense that experientially, it jumps out at you. It's vivid, it almost yells out your name, it's somatically, Damasio will say, somatically marked, because it's ability to jump out at you depends upon your body's reaction. There'll be chemicals, neurological events, neurotransmitters activated of various kinds, that will make it possible for you to experience those events in the vivid powerful way that you do. So, the idea is this then, an object and experience can be somatically marked, Damasio will say, because it calls up an emotion, but it's not as if there's an emotion over here, and an experience over there. Rather for Damasio, items of perception including memory, including prospective thought about the future are going to themselves be somatically marked because, they so to speak, shimmer with an emotional contour. You contemplate longingly the prospect of going on that day trip with your friends. You contemplate with a shudder or cringingly that embarrassing thing that you did last week, for example. Those are all cases of experiences being somatically marked. So, Damasio is going to be forwarding what he calls the Somatic marker hypothesis. For him, the Somatic marker hypothesis essentially is the following; that our bodies react emotionally to situations that present themselves in experience, and that bodily reaction is itself manifested and how they present themselves as being attractive, cringe worthy, handover face, runaway, jump out at the thing whatever, your body will have a response, and that response that your body has is going to be manifested in how the thing appears to you perceptually. That's a very important from a central aspect of Damasio's positive proposal. I want you to think a little bit about your experience when you're contemplating your past, when you're thinking about what you might do in the future, when you're going through your emails, your letters, your checks, various other kinds of messages, communications with other people. Some of the things in your experience will be playing, will be relatively neutral. Some other things will be charged in a certain way, and Damasio will say those charges, whether they're positive or negative are various forms of somatic markedness, where that charge comes from as your body's response to the experience that you get from those memories, current events, or contemplation of future possibilities.
