Emotions

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What are your philosophical views on emotions?
I believe there are perhaps other emotions than the human brain fails to encompass because we've already named "some" and feel the need to abide by them, almost like a law...
Happiness
Sadness
Anger

I think that these three words were perhaps made as umbrellas, to shove all your emotions under... to sort of categorize them.
Then the human race was far too complex for these emotions! "We must try and define more! So that we can put them into our language and tell people about them!"
So we came up with sub-genres of emotion:
Jelousy
Anguish
Remorse
(ect)

Emotion shouldn't be put into words in my opinion, it only allows people to take advantage of the fact that others believe that they can feel them.
I think that humans would be better off emotionless sometimes, as life without pain would be grand.


I don't know if this really makes sense now that I look at it...
But feel free to criticize and make your own suggestions and theories behind emotion and where it comes from.

The human reaction system is driven by neuro-chemical effects and the concept of not recognizing that emotions are the engines to actions seems to me to be totally unaware of realities.

Emotions?

Emotions are a thing that emerges from the human cognitive structure.

They are necessary for our proper functioning as they speed our cognitive processing in situations where there is insufficient data to come to an algorithmic conclusion. They also provide motivation to do things. I would imagine that emotions came into existence for both of those reasons.

Emotions are also one of the things that make up our qualitative experience of reality.

I am not sure we could get around putting emotions into words. Emotions are a part of nearly everyone's cognitive processing, some people are more inhibited than others, but decision making would be impossible without emotional aid.


I suppose you mean without the qualitative experience so much as the pragmatic usage. I would think most people would disagree, as I would guess that a lot of them enjoy their experiences, or some of them at least, enough where they would want to retain the ability to feel happy and other things of such a nature.

At four years old, one of my grandsons once asked me why fire is hot.

I had no concrete answer to offer him, but what would fire be if it were *not* hot?

Without emotion, we would be like fire that could not warm or ice that could never chill – like moisture-free water or food that just could not fill. Without emotion, we would be like air that could never dry – we would be quite boring and bland all around, you and I!

I agree. Strongly empathetic, I watch my grandchildren closely to try to see what is going on with them both mentally and “on the inside” emotionally, and I occasionally want to scream when I see someone telling them how they either do or should feel! For example, I once observed one of my daughters holding the oldest one in her arms after he had awakened and come out of the bedroom one morning. Feeling “moved” herself, she said, “He’s feeling a little tender this morning!” Before long, and after a few more times like that, I was observing *three* grandchildren coming out of the bedroom “feeling tender” in the morning and crying so they could be picked up, held and “consoled”! As gently as necessary for their sake, I quickly and firmly brought that kind of “emotional training” to an end.



Exactly!



The issue there is not really emotions. It is the satisfactions of our natural instincts through our interactions between people. Your desire to feel *something* – you decide what that was – inspired you to begin this thread, and each of us who have since responded have done so for emotional reasons of our own, and that is true even if we have only responded academically.

I thank you for being part of my day, and I hope my own part in yours has been ... well, I hope it has been whatever you might have wanted it to be!