Instinct, mood, emotion and philosophy . . .

Your welcome, encode_decode.

I think that might depend on what the pebble is in each case. What it is which draws us into those depths.

For me, it might be Puccini’s O mio babbino caro. So beautiful. I imagine that we have many different pebbles.

youtube.com/watch?v=RUENWpkPcQo

It is so difficult to name it. It’s like an experience of the eternal and the sacred way down deep where I really live. I am just there. It’s like a flowing river.
:blush:

Puccini is a god.

Arcturus Descending

I was reading on ScienceDaily that "Poetry is like music to the mind . . . "
. . . here are a few select snippets from that article:

And just for the sake of it - let us look at an excerpt.

A small snippet from PoetrySoup:

The above snippet is not from one of my poems - I was inspired by your response . . .

. . . it was also kind of poetic in a way - and it made me think about how music and poetry arouse emotion . . .

To your response:

Agreed - definitely we have many different pebbles. I believe there are emotions that we have not named yet - that there are feelings that we have not named yet.

It seems the depth of the human being is endless . . . especially when it comes to the human beings emotional depth . . .

- - - Life is a Rich Tapestry - - -

From the section: 8 Back to Basics: On the Very Idea of “Basic Emotions” (1993, Rev. 2001)

I have two emotional sets - the first is directed at the self and the second is directed at others.

I like to group my emotional sets in to two basic groups:

► Negative Emotions

► Positive Emotions
From here other emotions are built over time via two more sets of emotions - evolutionary emotions and configuration emotions - by evolutionary I mean that I will attempt to at the very least account for hereditary characteristics, personal evolution is something I am taking into account separate from configuration - by configuration I mean such things as personal, family, social, love, cultural local, cultural national, cultural global and many others.
[b]
Evolutionary emotions are those that happen seemingly by themselves . . .

. . . and . . .

. . . configuration emotions happen with the influence of the conscious mind or external sources . . .[/b]

Section 8 starts out talking about basic emotions and the building blocks of emotions.

It is a familiar topic to me but I will explore it anyway even if only because I find it kind of interesting how others come to group things.

Robert starts out this section talking about a battle that happened years ago on campus, using a metaphor about the atoms of emotional chemistry to describe basic emotions in the department of psychology - he also talks about how typically the psychology department and the philosophy department tend to keep a distance from each other but nonetheless the battle was still philosophical in nature.

The section then moves into what could be considered basic emotions and the building blocks of emotions.

Somewhat akin to the periodic table an analogy to an atom is made for each basic emotion - that the emotions each in their basic form are a fundamental and non reducible unit of emotional life. If we were to then take any arbitrary number of these basic building blocks - if it were - we could combine them to form new emotions. Emotional molecules so to speak.

However . . .

As plausible as it is I think we are going to find that there is a difference between the mind and the body.

You see, I fall between these two categories in my theories - that we have instinct - on top of instinct is a blank slate more or less - emotions are quickly learned - then there are the higher functioning emotions - the more abstract - we could probably go on inventing emotions forever - hence I like the idea of a spectrum.

But as Robert points out, we need to proceed with caution; that we don’t look at emotions in too confined a manner. Still anyone’s guess . . .

. . . we should also be careful that we are not heading in the wrong direction altogether . . .

But then there is the topic of facial expressions . . . emotive expressions contained within the confines of the face . . . can these be learned too?

Robert writes: But to what extent are facial expressions of emotion biologically determined, and to what extent are they learned, perhaps even taught, within a culture? <<< To which I would reply: There is some evidence to believe that some emotions are biologically determined . . . but that also makes me wonder whether they can still be called emotions. If so then we have at least two sets of emotions.

With some evidence pointing at biologically determined emotions - basic ones at that - we are moving into the territory of instinct, my model also has connections with the neurologically hardwired with a small difference - for me we are in fact a template of sorts when we are born - a kind of blank slate if you will - there is enough biological configuration to get us started - to effect emotions and logic - but this is a process that takes time to build the functionality of more complex emotions. I am not against changing my mind on the matter just that this is in fact where I am at this stage - mapping the mind and mapping the body(brain).

So is the neurological process and the emotion one and the same? I don’t believe so - I believe there is a hidden language - a language hidden within the neural networks that is unique to each individual and is being translated into mind, emotion, logic, inner reality and eventually the spoken language as well as anything else I may have missed here.

Psychology is perhaps missing out on an important opportunity here by ignoring what is hidden away - by knowing that each individual has a unique neural language less reliance on text book psychology and more reliance on good old fashioned legwork - brain-work - might come back into psychology. How can one rely on descriptions of behaviors when the behavior is going to have different starting lines for each individual? I suggest we can not and this is why a lot of misdiagnosis is going on and people are placing themselves in harms way as guinea pigs as is the case with psychiatry.

Do we even have to be aware of an emotion to perceive it - I would say not because if we are directly perceiving it then we are feeling it - this feeling is another way to be aware. What is so significant about this comment? We will get to see that later.

Robert goes on to say that the face is our primary means of “display” toward other beings. A smile indicates safety and acceptance; a frown or a scowl, danger or disapproval. That we display these facial reactions possibly before birth but definitely onward in most cases indicates a degree of autonomy. Facial expressions then are obviously hardwired from our genetics. The language of the body especially the face was the language that preceded written and spoken language - but even growls and grunts could be considered utterances. These languages come with emotion for better or for worse - we can not remove them even when we think we have.

I am inspired at this point to ask the question: Does one actually have to look happy on the outside to actually be happy on the inside? I still find the very notion of a “basic emotion” to be deeply problematic - at least without emergence and configuration that is - pattern building in the mental systems.

From the section: 8 Back to Basics: On the Very Idea of “Basic Emotions” (1993, Rev. 2001)

That state left over when you believe that you are void of emotion I am certain is still an emotional state and you are in fact deluding yourself to believe that you could ever be void of emotion and still remain as you were meant to be - this could be argued - but what would you be arguing the case of? Perhaps your desire to be a robot - perhaps a much more complex form of life than a single celled organism devoid of emotion. Ask yourself then what is your life without emotion - without fear - without happiness - do you honestly think that emotion is not an advanced form of stimulus? You have to dig deep for the answers - not rely on what you have learnt but add to it.

Now can it be said that the origins of language were to be found in the need to express our emotions? This is what Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed to be: yes.

Mind itself is multidimensional and ever changing so each dimension listed is going to change as well.

I will now quote basic lists of emotions contained within the book:

If it is difficult to see the problem here then you are not digging deep enough - believe me - later I will prove this to be the case.

We must also be careful what we are classing as an emotion before we proceed to enumerate a list of any sort. You should be able to determine from the above enumerations the problems faced in the classification of emotions - that hardly anyone agrees what basic emotions are. From this then we can only conclude that emotions are not as they seem - but potentially something different than we have ever imagined. We can at least say that there is a degree of probability that where the lists overlap - this overlap is hinting at partial or full truths. The degree changes as the availability of evidence changes - the accuracy of the evidence - using this chain of reasoning it should be possible to follow the path from its source and analyze each evidential increment to determine correlations that point at truths.

Returning to anger . . .

I would class anger as one of the sense paradoxes too . . . Providing there is truth to Aristotle’s interest then I would be interested in moral paradox . . .

I am perhaps one of those theorists but despite this I still find some affinity with Robert’s work. The temptation to reductionism is valid and that is why the temptation is actually there - reductionism has its limits and it would be foolish to think that raw science can solve everything without the help of philosophy. We can break cognitions and judgements down into logically simple parts - doing this however will not lead to the simple parts giving rise to names and descriptions for the cognitions and judgements. Each judgement will communicate like neurons to form increasingly complex emotions - you could call this the judgement network if you wanted. In any case you are not going to be able to remove an obvious connection between the mind and body.

I have to totally agree with this statement - and probably on the basis for having different ideas. Cognition itself is cultured(configured) and evolves(after emergence) so obviously once you subtract cognition and culture from an emotion there is nothing left - at least not an identifiable emotion.

In another thread I talk about the primordial template of consciousness - the emergence of awareness from our biological core - after this emergence we personally evolve to the point where we are able to consciously configure our selves - it seems to be the nature of the universe anyhow.

From the section: 8 Back to Basics: On the Very Idea of “Basic Emotions” (1993, Rev. 2001)

Now with an uncertain amount of potential emotions and a potentially infinite amount of spectral emotional states we continue our inquiry. This matrix that Robert speaks of is something similar to what I have developed to test learning abilities - I am interested in what he is saying here because I have suspected for a little while that the same model I have could be applied to emotional choice.

I was saying this earlier on that we could go on inventing emotions forever. The emotional spectrum is infinite. What is important for us to understand emotions however is to have some sort of list containing description - we may never be able to capture every state - but what does that matter. We only need enough information to get the job done otherwise we are just placing the situation in an unnecessary state of convolution.

Now how could one argue with this?

We have to be very careful with this type of thinking . . . a compound or molecule could be considered a network . . . on a matrix there could and probably would be many networks - since the brain is not so neatly quantified.

I totally agree that folk psychology has taken an undeserved amount of abuse - if it was not for regular people like you and I where would academic psychology be from the first place until now. When people communicate to each other, they increase the resolution of emotional states because as Robert states, “folks” have been distinguishing emotions for thousands of years - and in much more fine-grained ways - perhaps talking and communication in general between the masses is the way forward to identifying potentially many thousands of emotions.

Psychologists seek to reduce things down only because if they did not then the field of the practicing psychologist would probably take several lifetimes to learn. There is little we can do for modern psychology except to keep updating it with more efficient methods in the hopes that a psychologist can cover more ground. As I said reductionism has limits and it would be foolish to think that raw science can explain everything without the help of philosophy - philosophy would not be able to explain everything without people. I am saying that philosophy, science, psychology and people are required to solve the emotional dilemma through effective communication.

And this I could not agree more with . . . I find total synergy with this quote . . . it is again illustrating how complex the situation actually is when it comes to the topic of emotions. Emotions too are very much a part of our individual defining core and as I stated before, unique to each individual.

:-k

From the section: 8 Back to Basics: On the Very Idea of “Basic Emotions” (1993, Rev. 2001)

I will let Robert start this part: “It is sometimes said—but, I suspect, much more often thought—that the distinction between basic and nonbasic emotions is in fact a crude distinction based on the structural complexity of emotion. Or else, why is fear a basic emotion while jealousy is not? Fear is a relatively simple emotion, almost no more than a negative desire.”

Let us now take a look at a micro-analysis Robert makes on fear and jealousy:

“Thus an affect program might well account for all of the immediate reactions of fear, leaving aside the complicated behavior that might follow fear or the complications of long-term fear.”

“Jealousy, by contrast, involves not just a single “object” but a complex dynamic involving one’s engagement with both another person and a rival (in romantic jealousy, for instance). There is no way that an affect program could possibly account for such interpersonal dynamics.”
“Fear has often been described as a “component” of jealousy, and indeed, fear and jealousy share something in common—the awareness that one is or might be in danger. But this constitutes all of the fear but only one small part of the jealousy. Thus fear is said to be basic and jealousy is not.”

My thoughts: Fear and anger seem like cousins to me - jealously I do believe is an ugly and complex beast. There seems to me to be a combination of fear and anger involved in jealousy - even an inverse ratio involved between the levels of fear and anger - I would go as far to say that fear and anger can be amplified or more precisely their inverse ratio can be amplified. This gives me thoughts of an emotional energy pool whereby energy is diverted into prominent emotions in the moment allowing for the amplification of a state to occur whilst other emotions are deferred in the energy distribution. When all the energy is used up then the emotional state becomes flat - not neutral as such but reaching a floor as opposed to a ceiling.

From the section entitled: Basic Emotions as Basic to a Society

My thoughts: Is jealousy universal? Probably not if I am correct about each individual having there own hidden language. The configuration of the individuals hidden language mixed with the energy pool previously described is going to make jealously complex to analyze. Note: Each person experiences jealously differently.

Regarding Anger, Robert goes on to say a little bit further into the book; it is, in the terms of the distinguished psychoanalyst-turned-anthropologist Robert Levi, “hypercognized.” Anger is often talked about, greatly feared, and rarely experienced. It is, one might therefore argue, a basic emotion, even if it is rarely displayed and negatively valued. It does not matter whether the emotion or its expression is hardwired or universal.

He further states even further on; Insofar as “basic” means “fundamental” (as significance) and not just “foundational” (in the building block sense), it might well be the case that those emotions as defined by (and limited to) affect programs are too limited, too stereotyped, too uncomprehending, too socially insensitive to count as basic emotion. Rejecting the affect program interpretation of basic emotions and my overly egalitarian matrix theory as well, what remains?

My thoughts: I would at the very least say that fear and anger are universal - I can see it in many creatures and I would guess that they are two basic emotions. Can I say the same thing about happiness? I believe I would have to analyze this more before I could - I will say however that it seems that calm is a basic state to many creatures and that happiness might stem from this into a more complex state. I will be however exercising caution and going with the subjective degree of belief changing with the availability of evidence - I can intuit that fear, anger and calm are basic and I can see evidence for these being affect programs - I will cautiously explore these possibilities and write the philosophy appropriately to fit these probabilities.

“Could envy, even if it is not associated with any affect program, be a basic emotion? I think that the answer is yes, if it plays a dominant role in a culture.”
[size=85]Robert C. Solomon[/size]

My final thoughts on this section is that there is most certainly a lot to take into consideration involving emotions. We seem to place such a high value on rationality that we forget how important and potentially how much more complex emotions are. From days of old until now it seems that emotions have been pushed to one side and we have tried to slowly strip our spirit away to end up in a robotic utopia forgetting that even the engineer has to use his imagination to solve a problem. In engineering it seems we spend a lot of time developing methods to dodge the use of imagination and I would say that it the reason why we have ended up in a rehash society of sorts - we have removed our substance from our selves - removed our ability to move forward through the use of imagination to creativity via the emotional logic. I for one am glad to see the concept of emotional intelligence getting around the countryside these days.

It is likely that we have unfairly devalued the concept of emotion to a dangerous degree . . .

It is stated in the book that envy is a basic emotion of capitalist society - I will also say that envy spreads like a disease if this is the case into other societies.

From the conclusion:

The phenomenological side of emotions is something that interests me greatly - it is not something that should be given up on as Roberts agrees, plus he also adds that it can not stand alone. There is for certain much exciting research being performed in the case of neurology and psychopharmacology - these two fields should work alongside phenomenology to produce synergy. There is also a type of new knowledge emerging among all of the disciplines that we have invented and it is this new knowledge that is probably the most exciting knowledge of all. Just when we thought we had discovered everything, figuratively speaking of course, it seems that we have only begun to discover ourselves and the true value of the emotional state, as it pertains to us and other creatures.

As Robert suggests there is also exciting information in the social sciences too. I think with the availability of the internet folk psychology and folk philosophy are becoming big players in the field of emotions as well. It is perhaps through social endeavors that we will discover the most about human beings and the human mind. So whether it be neurology or psychopharmacology, phenomenology or one of the social sciences, a folk discipline or part of the new derivative knowledge that is coming from pattern matching and statistics or a promised other new knowledge of sorts - we are truly discovering the power and role of the emotional intelligence as it relates to our lives.

I have been greatly enjoying this book so far - I am past the half way mark up to this point. The book has enabled me to assimilate knowledge, contrast and reflect on what is written in it through my reading record - which I guess is more like a journal of sorts. Some highlights that I will mention are as follows:

From the preface:

I can now say that I have been able to think about how we might be responsible for our emotional states - not in great depth as of yet - but enough to get me started on some serious thought about the idea . . . I have also found myself engrossed in the social aspects of emotion.

Further into the book:

This inspires in me a dimension(an imaginary culture) whereby every occupant of this dimension is responsible for their emotional state - it is an ongoing maintenance for the citizens(occupants) of the dimension as each state is built upon by the next - they have to maintain their own calm for the benefit of others.

From section three:

Hmm . . . I think there are a few cases in history when the person was legitimately insane - but if one were to maintain their own sanity would this ever happen?

From section four:

Nonetheless - using ones own imagination allows for a small leap into applying emotions into impressions. This would be a feedback loop.

I will add highlights from sections five to eight in my next set of notes . . .

The next section is called The Politics of Emotion - one must push on and leave no stone unturned - especially it seems in the case of emotions.

A brief note on responsibility . . .

If one were to maintain their own sanity by keeping their emotions in check then surely this would enable one to be more responsible. If one were to maintain a mood that is built upon a responsible set of emotions then it should make it easier to maintain ones level of responsibility.

A small note on instinct - it seems to me that we have justice built into us as instinct - controversial I know but surely you can feel it?

And we probably should be held responsible for them - this is a complex issue however and I have seen this between a man and a woman whereby the man purposely antagonizes a woman until she breaks and then he says that she is being irrational . . . but what really just happened?

Not only do I think we are responsible for our emotional state and maintaining it - I think it is rational to be responsible - I also think the need for emotional calm is built into each and everyone of us. With this in mind, we are able to think of the negative emotions that drive us to piss people off . . .

. . . and hopefully avoid doing that.

Emotions can be self serving and drive a self serving individual to rationally plan out their self serving interests . . .

Is it really so responsible to be so self serving?

From the section: 9 The Politics of Emotion (1998)

From the section entitled: The Purpose(s) of Emotions

Let us begin to work on the forerunner to The Politics of Emotion . . .

As is mentioned in the book Grief, for example, is an emotion with no such conditions, except per impossible, the resurrection of the lost loved one.

The question here is do such emotions as Grief have a purpose? It seems as though the answer to this would be yes. I would suggest as a temporary fill-in for loss. The purpose of such an emotion as grief could be to use up the energy distribution that is associated with such loss. An individual who is grieving or a group of individuals who are grieving for the same reason would need the experience the emotion of Grief to flat-line the emotional state back to normal . . . it would also seem to be apparent that such an emotion might have a dependence that needs to be filled. The sudden loss of something or someone that another person was dependent on for any arbitrary reason would be the condition that needs to be satisfied - that is to say that the dependency would need to be replaced - the dependency could easily be love or something else. Either way it is still debatable whether Grief is an open-ended emotion with no purpose.

Grief could easily have a political agenda . . .

I should be careful what I say here however because as Nietzsche famously noted, we always prefer bad explanations to no explanation at all.

As is also pointed out emotions were, for so many years, coupled as a poor cousin to “motivation” in psychology textbooks. No one knew where else to put them.

We are soon to find out however that there is more to the picture, and that emotion is also tied to the expression of meaning, and meaning itself can be tied to an expression of emotion. I further suggest that meaning comes out of logic in the most usual sense so if emotion is an expression of meaning then that emotion is likely an expression of logic. Does this work in reverse? Lets try it: emotion is expressed which means something and the receiver logically deduces what the emotion is about.

Mentioned in the book is the idea that emotions are also tied to action . . . So if emotions are tied to meaning, action and are a poor cousin to motivation, then what else can we say about them? Aside from what we have discovered so far, we could potentially say thousands of times as much. One thing that is clear is that emotions are not just biological - how could they be? Let us not worry about this for now and press on . . . I will leave you with meaning as a driver to emotion; I am saying that you are not born with meaning in the sense that you have it now - it is all around you and emotes you - not biological but learned and stored - see how the phenomenon is useful to help us reduce to some conclusion - still lets be careful. Apply similar thought to action and motivation.

And this is the forerunner to The Politics of Emotion . . .

- Purpose -

The emotion is “in the world,” not in the mind, the psyche, or the soul.
[size=85]Robert C. Solomon (1998)[/size]

Multi Dimensional Reduction - August - 9 - 2017

Seven Dimensional Cross Spectral Abstract

WARNING - THIS MODEL IS NOT CONFINED

Basic States(∆): flight - calm - fight

:diamonds: Startle might stem from calm and lead to fight or flight - with a tendency to calm bias - resolution

:diamonds: flight would be a self - this could cause anger

:diamonds: calm would be self and other - it is possible that calculated anger could be placed here

:diamonds: fight would be an other - anger of course could be here

► Self(∆) - For Each Emotion(Evo∫Conf - Cross Spectral Integration) - Negative or Positive(Spectral Weights)

► Other(∆) - For Each Emotion(Evo∫Conf - Cross Spectral Integration) - Negative or Positive(Spectral Weights)

Self and Other are containers to the Basics States(∆). Self and Other also lay on the same spectrum.

Weights and Integrations directed at self or other are just the coordination of processes in the mind - they are pattern processes that are “superimposed” on neural networks - each emotion is either an Evo(Evolution) or Conf(Configuration) or Cross Spectral Integration that is weighted in terms that can be thought of as Negative or Positive.

The Negative and Positive is purely figurative and is in fact a second spectrum. I am contemplating the Spectral Weights for their validity - this is a reduction so I am concerned that I have possibly reduced it too much and possibly removed needed complexity.

The complete emotional state is a complex set of subtleties built upon a logical framework. Each emotion shows itself more defined at different times and that is why we find commonality and are able to give them names - but the reality is that no emotion can be named truthfully because each persons pattern processes are different and each qualia is not the same as the next persons each qualia. Colors for instance remain the same in the electromagnetic spectrum but differ in the persons Cross Spectral Integration.

What can I say about this reduction: I can say that is elegant yet abstract - I can say that there are discrepancies in the fight, calm and flight versus self and other. It is yet to be considered the idea of internal/external fear, calm and conflict - that fight is not an other and fear is not a self. I can also say that what this reduction expands into is incredibly complex and that might be difficult to ascertain from the abstract. Finally I can say that it is not clear how negative and positive should be represented; my intuition tells me not as negative and positive but more as something like beneficial and non-beneficial; I was also hoping to leave the binary representation behind but it seems to be inescapable.

NOTES: All emotions that we could name may live within these seven dimensions. There are possibly eight dimensions here instead of seven - I would have to scrutinize it more carefully. One thing this model shows is the filtering out of dimensions to an imaginary singular dimension or quite possibly a binomial dimension when a single emotion becomes apparent. This model is also not bounded because I rushed the thoughts into writing - so it only serves as a basis for further ideas. Hopefully I am counting the dimensions correctly in the first place - egg on my face if not.

Controlling our emotional state . . .

I have my doubts that we do not think our way into emotional states. I say this because of my observations of other people. I understand how hormones can affect the emotional state. I am wondering whether there is a method that we can choose to think our way into an emotional state, given my observations of other people and even despite the interaction of hormones within our bodies. I do believe that culture and social interactions would play a big part here. I also wonder whether when we suffer a physiological affect that can change our emotional state, whether it can be identified internally to avoid negative after affects.

I have noticed that emotions are easy enough to over-ride but I need to consider the benefit of such a decision as well as any possible detriment. On the physical side it is not good to overstimulate any neural receptor for too long as damage can result. Given that emotions can affect receptors then there must be an acceptable threshold that one can enter that keeps one functioning optimally and causes no damage to the nervous system. On the mental side there is always the danger of bad internal programming and corrupting internal processes with extreme emotional thinking - there are emotional releases and I have also experienced something similar with logic that I would refer to as a rational release.

I think it is safe to say that our own responsibilities and intentions can guide us through a potentially treacherous path whereby we are able to be betrayed by our emotions. I think back to a time when I hit my thumb with a hammer while attempting to drive a nail into a piece of wood - quickly the pain was overtaken with anger and much profanity. So now I have to contrast my statement: I have my doubts that we do not think our way into emotions; Now I have to say at the very least there are some emotional events that can not be avoided - these emotional events are the events that need the previously mentioned emotional releases.

To what length can these emotional events be avoided? I can imagine the “nicest” person still experiencing anger internally even if they are not showing it externally. Does anger have a seed? I have had the experience where because of another person being around, I did not lose my cool and quickly adrenaline and possibly endorphins were able to extinguish any outburst that may have occurred. Thus the seed became infertile or thrown back into the seed “packet”.

How much control we have over our emotional state will lead to how much we are able to confine ourselves from what we perceive to be bad. Then there is also the problem of free will which I will also mention in rationality. Does free will exist? That would depend on your definition I suppose - I think of free will as you being able to choose whatever you want - I do not think this is possible at all. Do we have any will? I believe so - I think our will is confined to causal situations that apply pressure to our mind and body, and decision making(if performed correctly) can lighten this pressure and extend the amount of freedom we have.

So where does that leave us with emotions? I would say that we have enough mental power to lighten the pressure of our emotions too - that we are able to lessen the confinement of the causal situation we are in, and in turn relatively free ourselves of the bondage of confining emotions(ones that we do not want to be confined by in particular) - while I still believe it is impossible to escape emotional confinement(or an emotional state) entirely - life can still be made more pleasant mentally. This takes discipline however, and the giving over to, the power of rationality.

When I speak of confinements I am speaking of a perimeter of sorts or an end or even a beginning and of course a voluminous entity contain within its on space. And emotion has a beginning and an end so it must be driven and also must drive - id est it is driven by another emotion or thought or stimulus and the result drives another emotion or thought or stimulus - the pattern here should be clear enough to apply to sociological, neurological, political and et cetera relations.

Like perception I am going to have to consider whether emotions are expressions of events that happen in the past. What calculus is being used - stone in the pond - makes ripples. Emotions like logic are going to boil down to information programming information - updates - new strategies - new beliefs - new methods - passions, desires, new emotions, new thoughts . . .

. . . new views of reality . . .

I suspect that no one should speak of “emotion” until they bother to unambiguously define the word (much like “God”).

James

I could define emotion as follows:

Rational Mismatch Feedback - (Sense Functioning)
A state when “sense functioning” is not within the limits of one’s own rationality. The emotional state is not in a default state of calm(or rational parity).

Then rationality would have to be unambiguously defined too . . . logic has been variable over the course of history.

Rationality would be what ever makes the most sense . . .

CPC - Cyclic Parity Check

Mind requires a binomial base state - calm & true
Emotion and Logic are like sophisticated sensory networks acting on mind’s behalf.

Somewhere between the two is a CPC.

When the emotion is calm then the logic is true - when the logic is true then the emotion is calm.

Based on subjective tolerance - a threshold that the subject allows that is built by the subject’s living conditions.

Calm and True are based on conditions accumulated and assembled through experience and - I surmise - are therefore relative to meaning.

Can the word emotion actually be UNAMBIGUOUSLY defined? :-k
Look what we do with the God word.
Some words can become more defined and refined by taking away what they seem not to be.

But the inner experiences which are affected by both our inner and outer worlds ~~ how do we make that clear considering that we all think and experience things differently, express ourselves differently.

Perhaps I am wrong but do not go and say so James unless you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I am. :evilfun:

Yes.

Then perhaps we should not allow “we” to do it.

Certainly. A good definition will inherently exclude whatever is not meant by the word (aka “UNambiguous”).

Just because we each taste food a little differently doesn’t mean that we can’t define what “tasting food” means.

So. :smiley:

Personally, I define “emotion” as any consciously sensed urging or emoting from within. Urgings that are not consciously sensed, even if identical otherwise, are not called “emotion”, but rather words like; “reaction”, “response”, “instinct”, and so on. “Over-emotional” refers to the presents of so much urging or emoting that rational discipline is lost.“Too little emotion” refers to the lack of sufficiently reasonable emoting with words such as; “heartless”, “callous”, “dispassionate”, “cold hearted”, “apathetic”, “lazy”, “laissez faire”, “cavalier”, and so on.

I like the way you have categorized the following . . .

. . . I view what you have written here as a categorization of three domains, instinct, emotion and that which I currently refer to loosely as Rational Mismatch. I am interested in the different ways people combine things. I do however think that we can split response in two by saying that a response can be driven automatically in both of the following cases:

  1. Fight and Flight.
  2. Something more premeditated.

In the case of 2, like a previously imagined response becoming manifest in reality as if it were instinctively swift.

:-k

I too have a categorical master set that I seek to change . . .
. . . the changes will be based on the available evidence that I have at my disposal.

Arcturus Descending

OK, my turn - and I am going to play a little dirty so get ready. :laughing:

Hmm . . . the word emotion can actually be UNAMBIGUOUSLY defined - it also depends on how many emotions you wish to define as to how less ambiguous you want your definition to be - still it is possible to give a single definition that is unambiguous.

Emotions are poorly defined as it stands now but there are emotional events that are the same from one person to the next - what do you think of that?

Keep in mind the word event . . .

Emotion refers to the conscious and subjective experience that is characterized by mental states, biological reactions and psychological or physiologic expressions.They are genetically written.Emotion is distinguished from “mood” based on the period of time that they are present; a mood lasts longer than an emotion.Instinct is the inherent inclination of a living organism towards a particular complex behavior.Animals and humans learn a lot of things from other animals and humans. But if there isn’t any learning involved, then the behavior is an instinct.Philosophy (from the Greek phílosophía meaning ‘the love of wisdom’) is the study of knowledge, or “thinking about thinking”.

How can we be sure of this? What scientific evidence points so clearly as to illuminate an emotion proper? Emotions are very complex and where they actually exist may as well make them non-existent and yet we experience them. We experience emotion in the mind! As for mood, I do find some affinity to what you are saying.

How far down the rabbit hole would we truly have to go before we could grasp what an instinct actually is?

Some instincts have been labelled as such without enough evidence that they are such.

Thank you for the refresher on what philosophy is.

:smiley: