Instinct, mood, emotion and philosophy . . .

This thread is about instinct, mood and emotion and a philosophical discussion about the three.

I will first provide two definitions from google:

emotion
[size=85]noun[/size]

a strong feeling deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.
“she was attempting to control her emotions”

instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge.
“responses have to be based on historical insight, not simply on emotion”

mood
[size=85]noun[/size]

a temporary state of mind or feeling.
“he appeared to be in a very good mood about something”

an angry, irritable, or sullen state of mind.
“he was obviously in a mood”

I will now quote myself:

Bounded Rationality is always at work - the flow of mind is an ever changing dimension that is bound to reality, logic and emotion.

Google defines instinct as an innate, typically fixed pattern of behaviour in animals in response to certain stimuli and provides an example as follows: “the homing instinct”; Google also states that instinct is a natural or intuitive way of acting or thinking as well as a natural propensity or skill of a specified kind. Google also has this to say about instinct: the fact or quality of possessing innate behaviour patterns.

The above definition of emotion indicates emotion as being an instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge - so its seems that both instinct and emotion can be derived from intuitive processes.

I will use a quote I made in another thread to start stitching what I am saying together:

There are some obvious and subtle differences between instinct, mood, emotion and my form of bounded rationality. I have noticed that philosophy does not talk a great deal of emotion and mood - maybe a little more about emotion than mood. Reality is an obvious driver to instinct, mood and emotion and I am sure it is also a driver to Bounded Rationality too.

I want to focus a little on mood in this first post.

I found an interesting but brief article called Mood - Aesthetic, Psychological and Philosophical Perspectives referring to a two-day conference that is interdisciplinary in nature. I am going to quote the quote in that article:

I too have noticed the lack of sustained theoretical reflection on mood. I hope to take a philosophical approach in this post as it pertains to MOOD.

My Article

Positive and Negative moods affect many aspects in life for instance optimism which is considered positive can lead to risky behaviour and pessimism which is considered negative can lead to less-risky behaviour; yet optimism can also affect a persons motivation in a positive way and optimism would be dependent on a positive mood; pessimism as mentioned is mostly considered negative and in some individuals can lead to suicide.

I find it interesting that positive and negative moods can lead to counteracting behaviors in different people. Can you think of any more?

According to an article I read on Wikipedia - mood can be affected by ‘lack of sleep’, ‘nutrition’ and ‘facial expression’. Can you think of any more?

I have seen evidence of the ‘social mood’ in my local town and am wondering whether anyone else has been able to perceive this peculiar event taking place in their own localities.

So between the individual mood and the social mood I am thinking that mood is something that must be essential to the balancing of ones perspective when it comes to living in general. Would you be inclined to agree?

End of article

As short as the actual article part of this post is I am trying to use it to stimulate thought on the topic of mood. In other posts I will initiate the topics of instinct and emotion but I wanted to start with mood given how hard it is to get a grip on.

Well, Google got “instinct” right.

An “emotion” is an emoting, an urging, or instigation for motion. Socially, it is a subordinate request for a superior to enact a change, such as the House of Representatives passing a Bill to the Senate or a congregation petitioning a church administration to change a routine or situation. Personally, it is the subconscious urging conscious cooperation toward particular directions.

A “mood” is merely a general bias of emotion, a tendency to favor certain kinds of emoting over others - emotional favoritism.

Emoting arises from instinctive responses to perceived complex situations. For example, the emoting called “anger” arises from the instinctive attempt to overwhelmingly defend oneself against a perceived potentially frustrating adversary (a derivative of Perception of Threat). The emoting “joy” arises from the instinctive urge to recognize or celebrate perceived progress toward a subconsciously accepted goal (a derivative of Perception of Hope). Both have social analogies; social anger - prejudicial insensitive force such as riots and police brutality, social joy - elated drive to give recognition and denote positive progress toward a renewed hope.

Note that all emotion is not only formed by innate instinctive urgings, but also coincidental perception of the situation (PHT). That realization by governances gives rise to social propaganda, media control, and false flag agendas designed to guide social emoting (aka “thought control”).

Within the human mind, propaganda, media control, and false flag agendas take the form of mental efforts to justify one’s preferences, select and deselect information sources, imagine “paranoid” adversaries, and exercise prejudices all so as to reaffirm one’s determination to maintain foundational beliefs relating to personal security (aka “egocentric behavior stemming from deep insecurity” and/or “pride”).

Social moods are formed both medically as well as through social media control over the mass’s perceived world view or national situation (“Media bias”). For example, by over exposing traumatic events and/or spinning news events, Media instills a “mood” of subtle insecurity from which governmental egocentric behavior (propaganda, mind control, false flagging, prejudices) can be rationalized and accepted by the subjugated masses as good and necessary evils (“auto-terrorism”). The general masses become far more willing to favor explicitly chosen social or governance actions over others.

Moods, whether personal or social, sway from one state to another as medical states and subtle perceptions of the situation sway. Such gives rise to “mood drugs”, “mood music”, “preferred viewing or reading”, and other mood control tactics.

Soooo…

“Balancing” or imbalancing, yes, I would agree. :sunglasses:

@ James - thank you for your input. I mainly direct my response at you but others are welcome to pick it apart as they see fit.

So essentially you are agreeing with Wikipedia(first paragraph) that I quote as follows with one exception:

The exception as I see it is: a tendency to favor certain kinds of emoting over others - emotional favoritism. Or are you saying that the mood itself is favoring the emotion? This then would be driven by the individuals philosophy and living circumstance in a nutshell I guess.

I can see how the “Perception of Hopes and Threats” induced by government, propaganda, media and false flags could cause the emotion you are talking about here leading to a general social mood. Does that sound right to you? I am thinking you are talking about the masses because you mention thought control. This is easily taken back to the individuals perception of hopes and threats.

So what about the moods that people put each other in on say channels like facebook, twitter, forums et cetera? Or should I say people are putting themselves in these moods by not exercising their own self controlled perception when they are on these networks? Individuals themselves obviously add to the equation. I can see where you are coming from with the government and social media control but I also think that individuals do this to each other too which helps people to segregate themselves into small groups that then go out and bully other individuals and groups whether the bullying is rather passive or right in your face aggressive. It seems to me to be all of the above.

Yes, I would have to agree with you.

Yes … Indeed - A more correct sentence on my part would have been: So between the individual mood and the social mood I am thinking that mood is something that must be fundamental to the balancing and imbalancing of ones perspective when it comes to living in general.

I did however go with that due to balance being seen as positive which to me is counter-intuitive as I think balance is neutral. It is my belief that to appreciate JOY you need to have an understanding of SADNESS or something to that effect. What do you think about this James?

I don’t favor calling mood “an emotional state”. Mood is a mental state that biases emotional response. There is a subtle difference. When the House has a majority of democrats, it has a “mood” favoring Democrat’s concerns. The House might not be issuing any Bill at the time, so a mood is not really an emotion, but rather a mental or social situation that is more likely to emote in one general direction more than another.

The mood is the mental propensity, so yes, it would favor certain emotions over others. Out of 10 emotions, 5 “positive” and 5 “negative”, a “negative mood” would allow easier triggering of the 5 negative emotions.

In a socialist and communist government, there is state propaganda ministry assigned the task of ensuring that the individuals making up the masses are instilled with “proper” perceptions of friend and foe (hope and threat). In capitalist democratic societies, state propaganda is disallowed, leaving it as a function of Media corporations. The accepted agenda of the Media corporations is to control the perception within the masses (aka “mass hypnosis”). In the USA, those corporations are then controlled by a specific religion competing for total mass control.

That situation leads to the effort to maintain a state of mild insecurity within the individuals. That insecure state then favors presumptuous emotional reactions, both defensive and aggressive (aka “sin”). The “social mood” in such a case would be that of anxiousness, irreverence, paranoia, pleasure seeking, hate mongering, and other extremes. Each of these effects are moods, not emotions. The specific emotions (love, hate, joy, anger,…) arise when triggered and favored by the prearranged mood. So the corporate Media, Religion, or Propaganda Ministry intends to set the mood within as many people as possible and then allow the individual emotions to trigger coincidentally.

I don’t really know if that answered your question. :-k

That is why I said “governance”, not “government”. The governance of a society is the combined effect of all education, communication, regulation, and Media of any type including “social media”, religious media, corporate advertising, and government laws and propaganda. The distinction between social media and corporate Media, is only in the method of control. Social media can be swayed, but seldom strongly regulated although many attempts are made to do so, such as “hate speech” and “proper speech” litigation (“Newspeak”).

I would say that “to appreciate” or even to distinguish joy, one must experience moments void of joy, not necessarily the opposite, merely the lack, perhaps a mundane period of time.

Historically utopian societies have had the problem of accomplishing their dream state only to find that shortly after, no one is experiencing the joy of having it. They can no longer perceive progress because they have reached their destination, shortly afterward they cannot sense much joy. This leads to finding joy in disruption of the utopian paradise, the spawning rebellion and new goals. Unfortunately all of that leads to the belief that utopia or “Heaven” is not a good goal to pursue because “It would be boring”. Such people are too simple minded.

To achieve MIJOT, Maximum Integral of Joy Over Time (the ultimate goal of life), diverse directions of accomplishments that eventually recycle must be pursued as well as longer range progressive goals. To instigate a pursuit is to perceive a hope that is higher than the current perception. This is often done simply by successive accomplishments in differing directions. As each goal is accomplished, any associated joy rises but then slowly fades. Time must be allowed to “smell the roses”. But after that short period, a new goal must be perceived as worthy of effort. Each moment the new effort is perceived as gaining ground as long as the goal and the goal path was truly perceived as worthy of hope, joy is felt.

The challenge in the modern age is to control mood with fear while also trying to control hope with diversity. Too many people get very tired of the “run around” and find all efforts to inspire to be unworthy of true hope (no one and nothing to trust).

@ James - You make some very interesting points. I am going to split my response into two posts. This one being the first part of my response.

James there are two things I am interested in here, one of which you are doing a great job of making a point on; actually I think there might be more than two things but I will work with the one I want to clear up for now.

I get what you are saying when it comes to the social topics - although I do think it is worth discussing the social side more in depth. I would like to bring mood back to the individual and expand on that temporarily. Lets talk about this mental state you are referring to.

You say: Mood is a mental state that biases emotional response.

I want to build a model here and see what you think about it:

  1. For there to be a mental state - there must be something you can put into that state.
  2. That something I imagine is the mind.
  3. Mind is capable of being put into a state.

Mind → Mental State - > Emotion → Mood

If Emotion is an instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge. Then it follows that:

Stream 1: Brain → Instinctive → Mind → Mental State - > Emotion → Mood
Stream 2: Brain → Instinctive → Mind → Mental State - > Logic → Reasoning

End Result = Mood [integrated with] Reasoning
Therefore: End Result = Moment Of Perception

With Mood affecting Reasoning and vice versa. I am saying that first you have the brain with many parallel processes running to arrive at the linear moments of thought that we experience in the conscious mind. These moments are affected by two streams of mental states governed by Emotion and Logic that arrive at our conscious experience; that is Mood and Reasoning running in parallel to provide the singular Moment Of Perception. I am also saying that Reasoning is a mental state that biases logical response.

  1. You say: Mood is a mental state that biases emotional response.
  2. I say: Reasoning is a mental state that biases logical response.

Leaving us with:

End Result = Mood [integrated with] Reasoning
Therefore: End Result = Moment Of Perception

There might be a discrepancy here - I think it is easily fixed with a feedback loop:

Stream 1: Brain → Instinctive → Mind → Mental State ↔ Emotion ↔ Mood
Stream 2: Brain → Instinctive → Mind → Mental State ↔ Logic ↔ Reasoning

Either way once you reach the mental state - Mood(Biasing Emotion) and Reasoning(Biasing Logic) you arrive at a Moment Of Perception. That single Moment Of Perception is continuous like animated frames governed by speed: 30 FPS; one Moment Of Perception being replaced by another Moment Of Perception and so on and so forth.

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

@ James - here is the second part of my response.

I see what you are saying here - I wonder if it is possible for the mood to be made up of a mixture of positive and negative emotions.

This form of governance is messy in my opinion on both sides(Socialist/Communist and Capitalist Democratic). When you say religion, what exactly are you referring to? Do you mean Catholic, Anglican, Judaism et cetera?

It answered the question fairly well. I see what you are saying. It would not be much of a jump in imagination for me to narrow it down to segregated groups among society and further when I say: This is easily taken back to the individuals perception of hopes and threats. I think we could, and probably will, expand on it further at a later date.

OK, my mistake. I understand.

I can agree with this by virtue of contrast rather than opposites. I am not using the common notion of appreciation here so you were correct by placing “to appreciate” in quotes.

I am not sure that contentment is reliant on joy as such but I do think that progress is important to joy. I recognize that you are not talking about contentment but I thought I would add it for good measure. I believe you are quite correct regarding the simple minded. How do you suppose we can fix the simple minded? I think we are always going to experience a disparity among humankind relating to complexity of mind and sometimes that can be good given that someone has to do the lesser tasks like cleaning, farming and other tasks construed as lesser - I would prefer to split these tasks in primary and secondary etc. So cleaning and farming and the like are primary and thought becomes secondary. Would you disagree? I say people should be content with the path they choose - take as much pride in being the hot dog stand owner as the CEO of Microsoft takes with her/his task.

I can not really argue with your MIJOT principle so I will paste you final paragraph below to finish this post:

The challenge in the modern age is to control mood with fear while also trying to control hope with diversity. Too many people get very tired of the “run around” and find all efforts to inspire to be unworthy of true hope (no one and nothing to trust).

:-k

I use the social analogy because it gives a more detailed and commonly understood view of how the mind is functioning inside. A mind functions very similar to the US Congress, including the varity of weaknesses present.

Well, okay. That isn’t an exclusive statement. Emotion isn’t the only outcome of mental states. And mood can easily arise without emotional input. A variety of drugs can bias the mind toward depression, elation, anger, or what have you. Those emotions that come forth reflect the mood of the mind. They are not the mood itself. You do not directly sense a mood, but rather you sense a trend of emotion and deduce that there is a general mood present. And then upon reflection, your mind attempts to come up with a rationalization for its state.

Except that should be closer to:
Stream 1: Brain → Instinctive Responses → Mind → State of Mind (aka “mood”) → Emotion.

Emotion is the final output, not mood.

First how are you distinguishing logic from reasoning other than being a particular type of reasoning (a consistency of language to concept association)? I would tend more toward:
Stream 2: Brain → Instinctive Responses → Mind → State or Mind → Logical-reasoning (consisting of typical logic arguments).

End result is the Emotional Response, not the mood that brought it about. And deviations in perception are another matter.

A) Why do you proclaim only “two” states?
B) I suspect that you define “reasoning” and “logical response” differently than I.

Reasoning is the logic itself that determines (not biases) a logical response. If the response is not the product of logic, then the reasoning type was not that of logical argument.

Some people (most) reason through a method of preferences of belief. And at times, they attempt to mix that type of reasoning with logical argumentation and call it “logic”, but it isn’t actual logic, but rather corrupted logic or “fallacious argumentation”. (e.g. “I like all of these things, most people like all of these things, therefore all of these things are good”)

And as I said, “perception” is another issue. Perception is the attempt to comprehend an environment or situation. Perception can go wrong by a variety of methods. That is what magic shows, politics, and Media control are all about (as well as entertainment drugs and hypnosis).

Perception (or actually Misperception) then influences the database from which emotion-triggers as well as logic-axioms are raised up into the reasoning process (of whichever kind). Perception is an input process with its own separate reasoning processes that can be corrupted by output responses which then feed that corruption back into the more conscious reasoning that triggers an output response (possibly highly corrupted by then). All of that is why the Scientific Method is preferred over prognostication.

Be careful of what you ask for. :wink:
:sunglasses:

Moods that are not chemically arranged are a mixture of preconceptions, prejudices, and attitudes that bias thoughts and urges. Emotions are the end results of moods, although one emotional response can incorporate further bias of mood which then affects future emotions.

“Et cetera”.

SAM Coops.

@ James - you are making good sense and I appreciate your detailed reasoning. I humbly admit to finding some of what you say very hard to follow but I am happy to keep trying until I understand what you are saying. I should add that it is only useful to me - if when what you say to me makes sense - and that my feedback to yourself in turn makes sense to you - otherwise I feel I have learnt nothing. I hope I am making myself clear here.

I expect you to be brutal James - I mean that in a philosophical sense. I say this because I would prefer to have a bruised ego and get closer to things that makes sense and so far my experience with you has made a lot of sense. I particularly appreciate your help with my first thread: Bounded Rationality. I still remember one of the first things you ever said to me, “welcome to the acid bath”.

:laughing:

I will openly admit that I take everyone’s input on the threads that I have started seriously. I do not always agree with the views presented but I do spend time thinking about what people provide in way of input.

I am actually quite glad that you use the social analogy. I am interested here in the individual person and people in society. I do think it is worth discussing the social side more in depth. I am happy to discuss both so long as you are happy to discuss both. I see your example of the US Congress as a social situation in itself and it is obvious that this particular social situation comes with its own variety of weaknesses. I also appreciate that you are not bias to the east or west - I find this to be objective in nature and I really like objective thinking. Your discussion talks about Socialism, Communism, Capitalism and Democracy in an objective fashion and I am sure that we will expand on this if and as needed.

Oh I was already aware that it was not an exclusive statement and I appreciate your elaboration on the facts at hand. I totally agree with you that emotion is not the only outcome of mental states and your comment about moods arising without the driving force of emotions. I also will say right now that: I do not believe that mood and emotion is the same thing intrinsically hence the name of the thread.

:smiley:

You wont get an argument from me on this point hence I pointed out the discrepancy in my own logic.

I quote myself as follows:

Note the changing direction of the arrows. I think what you have is much better.

And I quote:

And the feedback I mention is like your:

Well not exactly alike but I do sense a similar point of view.

Even though I was aware of the discrepancy when I looked at what I wrote after the fact I thought: well . . . I will leave it and see what you come up with and I prefer the extensions too for that matter.

i.e.

a) State of Mind (aka “mood”)
b) Logical-reasoning (consisting of typical logic arguments)
c) et cetera

Leaving the discrepancy in as it turns out made for a much more interesting interaction. I can hear you now: “Surely there is something better to do with youth?”

:laughing:

On a serious note though - one should not try too hard to confuse her/his opponent in a debate/conversation - but if the interlocutors are skilled enough then no harm should be done and in this case I think there was a lot to be gained.

Backing up a little:

This is the third time we have been here - I feel like I deserve to be punished - I will admit though that it makes me laugh every time. You are definitely being consistent I will give you that. Now to answer the question: I really do not know why I arrive at this all the time but I do think it may be time for me to fix that.

:character-jestercolor:

You know I am going to make another post with logic/reasoning that has been reconciled right?

A) That is a good question James, I think it could be difficult for me to answer - I have a gut feeling that things boil down to some sort of duality.
B) I suspect I am just trying to confuse myself, it wouldn’t be the first time.

The good old invalid syllogism(not to be confused with a correct syllogism) - maybe that is my problem. I will attempt to change it and get back to you. I am still thinking that there are drivers to a logical response and I am certain that emotion affects this, so back to the state of mind.

I see we have a lot to talk about here. Initially we start with no idea what to expect until eventually we learn enough to start perceiving what we initially had no idea about. There is quite a bit of reinforcement going on here, but I am sure I don’t need to tell you that. So by whatever means one comes to perceive something, it nonetheless becomes a part of their reality. Quoting the second meaning from google: the way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted. “Hollywood’s perception of the tastes of the American public” and the first meaning: the ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses. “the normal limits to human perception”. Again being affected by emotion or would you disagree? I am not necessarily disagreeing with you just that there is a slight ambiguity between us here. We could even be arguing the same point here and using slightly different terminology.

Again I expect you to be brutally honest - if what I say sounds like rubbish then I expect to be cut down for it or suffer from acid burns.

:laughing:

All of this aside: I sense I have slightly deviated from mood - but we have at least been covering topics that this thread is about. Now back to the social side of the whole deal . . . Social Mood and SAM Coops.

I again commend you: you are making good sense and I appreciate your detailed reasoning.

Just to reiterate: I expect you to be brutally honest.

:sunglasses:

@ James - I want to make this post about the social mood - first I will again quote Wikipedia:

I now quote myself:

Could you first give a brief description of SAM Coops?

Finally I quote you:

So last time I responded to this we talked about the simple minded - this time I would like to sway away from that - however I do want to mention that I have noticed a shift in a percentage of the population toward “simple living” - I get a little confused by this because I think people take this to the extreme much to humanity’s detriment. I also think a lot of people misinterpret the idea of simple living but that is a story for another day - unless you want to add your piece here.

I then finished my post with one of your sentences:

The challenge in the modern age is to control mood with fear while also trying to control hope with diversity. Too many people get very tired of the “run around” and find all efforts to inspire to be unworthy of true hope (no one and nothing to trust).

Could you provide an explanation on how SAM Coops can counter the previous sentence and quote of yours? As it pertains to social mood.

This would be greatly appreciated.

Based on the first two quotes I make in this post - could you tell me how the individual and her/his regions economic situation could benefit from SAM Coops? The individual must be able to balance her/his perspective among the crowd behavior of her/his region.

:sunglasses:

I am now going to present the topic of curiosity. According to Wikipedia the term curiosity can also be used to denote the behavior or emotion of being curious, in regard to the desire to gain knowledge or information.

I am again going to quote Wikipedia because it usually has topics written in an accessible way. I am only going to quote the first two paragraphs:

So according to Wikipedia being curious is a behavior or emotion. For a long time I never really thought of curiosity as being related to an emotional state.

I thought I would start the flow of thought on emotion by introducing curiosity because I have recently become more curious about the topic of emotion.

Often times reflection on the question of curiosity is superficial - curiosity is regularly attributed to being a foundation to scientific inquiry.

This disease has led us to seek knowledge in many realms including science and I suggest that curiosity leads to good and bad behavior. I often think to myself “now what would happen if we were to stop being curious?”. Augustine it seems considers curiosity as a disease but wouldn’t the authors of all the scriptures been driven by their curiosity? - a desire to answer questions. I say yes and curiosity although too often reflected upon rather peripherally has led us to advancements in science, industry and answers to life in general.

I am glad we don’t take the same approach with emotion as we do with curiosity.

Discussion of my works . . . Part 1

Meta Rationale: The rationale for this post is to provide an overview of: The rationale of some of my works in progress. It does not go into detail on each topic and subtopic and in fact it does not mention all of the topics in my complete works.

Diversion: I also divert a little to reflect on things that I have not built a rationale of. These works I am talking about are not built in an exact order - the ordering takes place on the fly.

This post then is a rationale and reflection of sections and subsections of my works that contains a few definitions of terms used in the philosophy. I do not talk about everything in one post but rather split it up into multiple posts that I term a post. So this is Part 1 of a multiple part post.

Right now I am working on the topics: Instinct, Mood and Emotion. I am also furthering the concept of Rational Confinement(aka Bounded Rationality) which I believe is affected by Instinct, Mood and Emotion.

Reality and Mind are also to be built into this Philosophy.

I intend on bringing together my works into a cohesive whole as time goes on. Following is a list of items that are a part of my works:

The first version of these works is termed Reality Version 0.0 which is the foundation of:

The Primordial Template Of Consciousness

The Primordial Template Of Consciousness forms the basis for the following topics:

Rational Confinement
Paradox Of The Sensed

This list is not exhaustive by any means as you are about to find out.

By versioning reality I come up with the two concepts of: Reality In The Future and The Reality Of Mind In The Future. These two concepts in particular deal with the idea of making sure to update each Reality Version and The Reality Of Mind In The Future Version, for example: Reality Version 0.0 - Reality Version 0.1 - Reality Version 0.2 and so on and so forth. I do this because something that is constant in life is change. As uncomfortable as change can be to some of us it presents itself as inevitable.

I start out the post with three main themes as follows:

  1. Rational Confinement
  2. Emotional Confinement
  3. Social Confinement

I then move on to include five more considerations:

  1. Instinctual Processes
  2. Learning Processes
  3. Natural Morality
  4. Learned Morality
  5. Mood Resolution

The idea here is that these eight items on the above list interact to produce curious outcomes that are different in each person and how they could affect society as a whole. I also explore how paradoxes in the eight items could occur. I could have taken a couple of items off the list and I could have added countless others but these are the items I am mainly interested in at this point in time - these items stimulate thought that could be applied to many combinations of missing items.

Rational Confinement is what I once referred to as Bounded Rationality and is inspired and partially based on work performed by Herbert A. Simon.

Bounded rationality:

1. Rational Confinement

Rational confinement is defined as follows:

Limitations imposed on a person’s logic in any given period of time.

One of the subsections of Rational Confinement is as follows:

Logical deduction, when answering a question, is limited by:

[list]1. cognitive limitations
2. time available to answer the question
3. openness to influence from the social norm
4. availability of accurate information[/list:u]

There are other subsections that deal with rational confinement including but not limited to interactions that affect Rational Confinement. Rational Confinement can be used as a measure of any of the items contained in the lists of the subsections of Rational Confinement.

2. Emotional Confinement

Emotional confinement is defined as follows:

Limitations imposed on a person’s emotions in any period of given time.

Like Rational Confinement, Emotional Confinement inherits the concept: openness to influence from the social norm.

It is still yet to be determined what all of the limiting factors are on emotion.

3. Social Confinement

Social Confinement is defined as follows:

Limitations imposed on a society in any given period of time.

  1. Contains the social norm.
  2. Contains agreements arrived at by people of the society.

An example subsection could go something like this:

When living in a society you are limited by

[list]1. the social norm.
2. agreements arrived at by people of the society.
[/list:u]

These three confinements need not be negative or positive as far as their value to people or society is concerned. It is also early days regarding Emotional Confinement and Social Confinement so the concepts have not yet been fully built. Rational Confinement on the other hand is well developed - not complete - but well developed.

Confinements can be used as a measure in each of their respective topics. Being able to measure the level of confinement could be important when considering the type of philosophy the person or society follows along with its economics and politics but the economics and politics have not been fully considered as of the time of this writing. By measuring the levels of confinement you are able to determine how effective the elements that make up the individual and the society are.

Confinement Levels are also useful when developing a new society and possibly useful for its ongoing progress as a society. I still include the concept of decision making - I use the past - I add the future - past and future to form the present based on the best decisions possible within the confinements of the current reality.

That concludes Part 1 of the post.

Any thoughts, suggestions et cetera are always appreciated.

:smiley:

ASIDE: Where does curiosity fit in to all this? An individual and her/his society should always maintain a curiosity in how to improve her/his own situation and her/his society. I am curious as to how equal rights fits into everyone’s different idealized society given how men and women are biologically different. I am curious on the subjects of racism, prejudice et cetera and their emotional impact on different people and society in general.

Humankind really needs to start connecting the dots a little better. I see no reasonable excuse for a lack of this. I see plenty of excuses.

:-k

Yes, I suspect far too much for one thread. Perhaps break some of this up into other threads?

[list]Reality vs Perception
Reasoning Methods
Rational Limitations
Moods and Their Consequences
Emotions - Curiosity
Emotions - Anger
Emotions - Love

  • Frustration
  • Depression
  • Anxiety
    .
    .
    Structure of Mind
    Decision Making
    Social Benefits and Detriments of Curiosity
  • of Willing Devotion
  • of Intragroup Conflict (just thought I would donate that one :slight_smile: )
  • of Resolution Debating
    .
    .
    Roads to Social Resolutions (although, all roads to social resolution lead to SAM Coops :slight_smile: )
    .
    .[/list:u]

The SAM Cooperative

The very idea of a “social mood” is merely another modern day corruption of wisdom. It is highly unwise for society to be structured in such a way that there would be a social mood even possible. Basically societies should not be that large. Globalism is a very bad idea. Every SAM Coop would have its own little mood (merely 4-50 people), just as every cell in your body has its own physiological condition. Huge societies of hundreds of millions of people should not be all hypnotized and responding to the same manipulative misinformation that creates social mood swings. This has been a serious corruption of social and economic power (mostly due to usury).

@ James - I am going to make my response in three parts.

Response to James - Part 1

I suspect you are correct. I think that some of this should be broken up into other threads as you say.

Some emotions I suspect have not been reflected upon much in philosophy - and mood it seems has not had much reflection applied to it either, from what I can see at least. I am willing to be stand corrected on this. This particular thread has a title that is not complete hence the three dots after the title. The idea I have for this thread is to tie together instinct, mood and emotion into an interaction philosophy. By interaction philosophy I mean how instinct, mood and emotion fit together in an order and how they affect each other. The other two sides to this thread are 1. A post for each topic and 2. General discussion on each three of these. I divert temporarily on some things for clarity and interest. Lastly I leave flexibility in so as not to dismiss any thought.

This thread focuses on the individual and the society. So talks about such things as mentioned in the previous paragraph in such a format to give us the following three categories:

A. Individual and Social Instinct
B. Individual and Social Mood
C. Individual and Social Emotion

I am interested in developing metrics on these three categories - check measures - there is still a lot to talk about around these topics and in the next part of my last post I talk about:

  1. Instinctual Processes
  2. Learning Processes
  3. Natural Morality
  4. Learned Morality
  5. Mood Resolution

These are the “around these topics” items that I mention above the previous list. I have already talked about the first three in Part 1 of my last post.

In the next part of the response to you I discuss the first half of your response. And then in the third part of my response to you I discuss SAM Coops which is close to being the second half of your response. I exclude in my metric the quotes in your last post when I talk about halves - I will be using them to refer to, when it comes to social order, social mood and hopefully social emotion etc.; what I am saying here is that excluding your quotes I have split your post into two halves by measurement of your comments made; anyway it will become clear soon enough. I am sure you will approve.

:smiley:

Response to James - End of Part 1

@ James - This is the second part of my response.

Response to James - Part 2

Like I said in Part 1 of my response, I totally agree.

I will write a few paragraphs on the first half of your post.

Reality vs Perception - this/these topic/s get discussed often from what I notice. Reality is certainly a curiosity of the human mind as with Perception. I think a Reality vs Perception thread is a great idea and I think it would be wise to discuss objective reality and subjective reality and how they affect perception.

I think that Reasoning Methods and Rational Limitations warrant being put into the same thread as each other. Reasoning Methods I have studied in depth so I have a lot to offer there. I imagine that Rational Limitations could be used to build metrics and analytical tools and I suspect some of these already exist. I suggest in the thread on Reasoning Methods and Rational Limitations that a general discussion take place on the two topics and how Rational Limitations affect Reasoning Methods.

Emotions - Curiosity I have briefly covered in this thread and I intend on covering Emotions - Anger too. I think it helps to pick out a few emotions rather than all of them to cover in this thread for two reasons: 1. Some emotions I imagine get spoken about a lot already and 2. In this thread I want to focus on some of the emotions that do not get much coverage.

I think Emotions - Love deserves a thread of its own; I imagine this topic to be quite popular. Obviously I am not just talking about the love between two people but rather love at the level of the individual and society.

Frustration, Depression and Anxiety could probably fit into the same thread - Do you think constant frustration can lead to things such as Depression and Anxiety? I am not sure what else to add here. Obviously important topics to discuss at both the level of the individual and society - so maybe even two threads would be warranted.

I think Moods and Their Consequences have a significant impact on society when it comes to Joy, Productivity et cetera. When the social mood is harmonious I think that Joy and Productivity et cetera increase. When I look around these days I see a common mood and people are frustrated by this because they feel that they have lost their individuality; I think people need to be careful what they wish for here; I would prefer to be part of a group than focus on individuality after all we are a social creature - still we should proceed with caution otherwise the social mood again becomes negative or flat and we end up back at a problem that has the same magnitude of today’s here and now.

Hopefully this part of my response is clear enough for reading - if it is not then I suggest the reader make a comment.

:smiley:

Response to James - End of Part 2

@ James - This is the last part of my response.

Response to James - Part 3

Just to refresh our memories I will add a couple of quotes from another/other post/s contained within this thread as well as a copy of one of your sentences:

“The challenge in the modern age is to control mood with fear while also trying to control hope with diversity. Too many people get very tired of the “run around” and find all efforts to inspire to be unworthy of true hope (no one and nothing to trust).”

Thank you James for responding to this request.

:smiley:

Your response:

I think we could turn the corruption around and use the idea of a “social mood” as a means to help us analyze the social mood as opposed to control it - what do you think?

I would have to say that the social mood is always going to be there just that it should not be controlled like the way it is these days - this is a sad event taking place and I see it has been taking place for many hundreds of years.

The current form of globalism is a terrible idea as you state. I am very interested in your concept of SAM Coops and I think this is a way for the larger group to have a built in immune system if that makes sense.

Agreed - the hypnotism you speak of would have to be one of the most disgusting examples of humanity I have ever contemplated.

Eventually we are going to have to remove usury from our social diet - some say lending has led to the improvement of peoples lives but what about the lives it has destroyed? - something akin to a greedy child who is happy to share her/his toy but it comes with conditions and if those conditions are not met then it becomes a case of “my toy - you are not allowed to play with it - give it back”. The high rates of interest are the most ridiculous part of it - this leads to unnecessarily acceleration of the small few being able to consume resources at an alarming rate at the detriment to our home - the earth - and what about the idea that “our home” is not just “our home” but that of the creatures that occupy the same space - should we not be respectful of the other creatures on the planet, I can think of a few religions that justify doing what ever we want with the planet and its creatures - again we have to be careful of simple mindedness - not that I want to start a holy war here - lol.

James please excuse the slight edit in the following quote:

It is still possible that this rigorous method you suggest is up for some refinement but I guess what you are saying here is that a solid base set is what is required to produce harmony and that is what I agree with one hundred percent. In saying this you are quite welcome as far as I am concerned to brutally debate this with me. I use brutally in this sense: in a direct way that does not attempt to disguise unpleasantness; For example: “she was unapologetic and brutally honest”; source Google.

OK - I love this - the first time I saw this piece of writing I thought to myself “this is really cool”. I see a lot of thought has been put into this from the smallest micro-particle up to the largest entity.

I am interest by what you mean by communication. Could you elaborate?

That is certainly the oldest contention. I am interested in discussing this at length - I will do this via PM but for everyone else we could elaborate on this topic as needed or requested.

A really good use of Internet resources I think.

I have already read some of this and I came up with a concept on how the network could be built - maybe one day you would be interested in taking a look. I really like the diagram that you provide and it was that diagram that inspired me to put aside the time to build the concept - unfortunately at this time my big computer has crashed and I have to recover the data to be able to show you.

:angry-banghead:

What do you think of the ideas that I have posted regarding Confinement Levels? They are a means of studying how effective a society is performing.

I am still in the early stages of developing this philosophy and have not even begun to develop any mathematical tools but I still think it is worth of a comment of some sort.

The idea of this philosophy is not for a few people to control but rather uncover flaws and to let everyone know about them - like in the News and other information sources.

Anyway - I am very grateful for your response and I hope we can discuss the topic of SAM Coops in depth - even if we have to shift the discussion to PM I do not mind.

:sunglasses:

Response to James - End of Part 3

Discussion of my works . . . Part 2

Last time I discussed:

  1. Rational Confinement
  2. Emotional Confinement
  3. Social Confinement

This time I discuss:

  1. Instinctual Processes
  2. Learning Processes
  3. Natural Morality
  4. Learned Morality
  5. Mood Resolution

Although this is only a brief discussion, the rationale behind topics 4 through 8 is more of an educational body of knowledge behind topics 1 through 3 - there is a slight disparity but as previously mentioned:

4. Instinctual Processes
When contemplating Instinctual Processes one has to ask a question: how reliable are decisions that are made via instinct?

I wont go into this too much as I am more interested in the thoughts of others here.

5. Learning Processes

I am sure Learning Processes are varied and many - again this is a topic that is open to debate as far as the optimal Learning Processes are concerned and: What should we be learning? Is probably an even bigger debate we could get into.

Regarding Learning Processes - I myself detail how the brain/mind deals with these. I then include other thoughts on what maybe optimal learning processes.

6. Natural Morality

Natural Morality as I am sure most people are already aware of is as follows:

Now while I do not necessarily accept it this way it is still an interesting topic with plenty of evidence to suggest that Natural Morality is very real.

7. Learned Morality

Learned Morality could also be called Moral Development and is partially defined as follows:

Learned Morality focuses on the morality that we learn from birth to death.

Morality is important when we consider how we should be treating one another and currently/probably is/should be used in economics, technological development et cetera. Politics could learn a few lessons here.

8. Mood Resolution

Resolution can be defined as follows:

The action of solving a problem or contentious matter. “the peaceful resolution of all disputes”. Source: Google

The idea here is not so much about mood regulation from drugs but rather how individual persons interact with each other and how those interactions leave the person in mood. I suggest that the way we treat each other is reflected in the individual mood and the social mood and these are indicators of whether or not a society is in good health.

The big question here is how to we go about solving problems associated with mood in a naturally effective way through our interactions and the interactions between other processes on my lists(whether they are currently listed or not).

Rational Confinement, Emotional Confinement and Social Confinement

These are metrics used to measure personal and societal satisfaction, health, efficiency and economic effectiveness et cetera. These three metrics have many uses and can be combined with technology to allow for speedy results via heuristics and other analytical methods.

Organization is key to making anything effectively implemented.

Happiness is key to keeping an implementation alive.


So as you can see - I am in early development of some of these principles - I appeal to anyone who would like to take part in discussion involved with any of these topics and I encourage people to develop their own philosophies based on any of these topics. I also hope that it stimulates thought toward other topics and I hope that it serves as a reminder that there is still a long way for humanity to go and much to do.

:smiley:

I see those somewhat akin to;
A. Hardware
B. Firmware
C. Software

How do you propose to measure them for either society or individuals?

@ James - As you say: Be careful of what you ask for.

:wink:

That is a good analogy - it caught me off guard initially but I can see it now.

Hardware - > Instinct
Firmware - > Mood
Software - > Emotion

That is a pretty good “one for one” analogy James.

Very good question - I should have known I would not have got that one past you.

:sunglasses:

A short answer to your question: pattern matching.

Now for a much longer answer:

Take into account that what I am about to write is straight off the top of my head and I try to make a habit of not memorizing too much so if there are any discrepancies I would like to apologize in advance - you are welcome to request for me to clear those up if they appear.

Now regarding measurement - I can tell you that it is only early days, especially with instinct, mood and emotion - but I have an idea that the best place to start would be at the level of society, much like you do in some of your examples.

I do not want to alarm anyone here - I can say that some pattern analysis already takes place - it seems unavoidable in a world full of fear. Current techniques are a little shortsighted but that is my opinion.

There would be a typical baseline developed over time among any activities that develop patterns - this would be apparent among your SAM Coops or similar structures but it is even easier with the current structure of global society.

To name a few activities in global society that develop patterns:

schooling - logistics - crime-rate - days off from work - crop yields - network patterns associated with news reports - weather patterns - sickness rates - mental health data - war - traffic data and much more.

These activities could then be placed into an ontology of activities along with their baseline and their interactive elements. This ontology would be used to define and help manage the analysis of interactions between the above activities using a pattern recognition engine to check for deviations from their baseline. The ontology becomes the pattern buffer so to speak. The ontology lives inside a “living data base” whereby the database can change “on the fly” using subtle deviations over time to update within specified limits. The pattern recognition engine is able to build the ontology to begin with. When anomalies are detected an alarm can be set off.

If it is something that can develop a pattern then it is able to be studied without invading privacy or corrupting any other ethical concern. It is alarming what is already happening and I would prefer this sort of thing to be known - it would be better for society if society is aware of the things that go on in the data centers, behind closed doors or how ever else you want to apply a term for it. Eventually privacy will be the least of our concerns if we don’t awaken to the mess developing right now.

This is not to say that all of this data is needed - generally crime rates are a good red flag. Once a red flag is detected then a secondary process can be put into place. If logistical operations are affected it could be due to weather or sickness among employees - first you would rule out weather and if weather is not a factor you could move on to sickness - sickness could be false data in which case if a flag is raised then employees could be requested to have a meeting that a psychologist is present at. Falling grades at school is another red flag for many things: domestic problems, death in the family, bullying, dietary habits et cetera - incidentally school grades and crime rates work well together.

Sifting out information at the level of an individual is a little more difficult - psychology only has so many tricks up its sleeve - biological monitoring is useful - there will be new methods that will be spurred on by the neurosciences - the thing to watch here is: invasion of privacy and other ethical concerns - but where there are patterns there are metrics.

Instincts have patterns associated with them as do moods and emotions - it is just a matter of determining these patterns and the metrics follow. Over time human and animal behavior develops typical patterns. Orbits in star systems have patterns. If it is moving it is likely to develop a pattern. The evolution of a pattern tends toward convergence too which is why we see some overlap in the sciences with similar mathematics being applied to more than one science. Even chaos systems have some form of pattern that develop - it is hard to say whether chaos even exists at the human level because that would infer complete disorder and confusion which even in this world of crazy people doesn’t really show itself.

Warning: Tech Talk
The type of pattern matching techniques I have come across are scarily simple and extremely effective - forget Artificial Neural Networks(ANN) and Convolutional Neural Networks(CNN) - they are slow, complicated and ineffective compared to the tech I have come across. It turns out to be easier than we once thought and soon a revolution is about to begin. Add that to the worlds social demise and guess what? People need to take notice now because ignorance will no longer be bliss and obviously rioting, protesting, boycotting and not supporting these things will not achieve a damn thing; that is for the sixties and things have seriously changed since then.

I like to consider the story of the perceptron, to give people an idea of how long these things have been around; “The perceptron algorithm was invented in 1957 at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory by Frank Rosenblatt”. They are essentially still with us in a more complex form of the previously mentioned ANN’s and CNN’s. It turns out this year would be the sixtieth anniversary of the perceptrons inception.

Logic seems to be the easiest to measure mainly because logic has many defined patterns associated with it. But inevitably emotions have patterns like moods, they are just at a lower resolution. Anyhow we have mapped a significant portion of the neocortex which is probably the most powerful part of the brain, so many derivations of neocortex patterns can be traced back to emotion, mood and instinct; to the limbic system and reptilian complex respectively. The columns and layers in the neocortex are easily transposed onto computer memory and GPU’s and CPU’s can do the rest of the work. Once you add FPGA’s to the picture things speed up drastically. Human memory is arranged in such a way as to be a hierarchy that uses time based patterns. You can imagine how easy that is to map onto software and hardware.
End of Tech Talk

That is just one technique I can think of off the top of my head. I have learned to detect patterns myself - with my own mind on a conscious level - a computer is of course better at it but people can be taught to do it. In fact most people automatically do it to more or lesser a degree.

There is more to the answer than that but I think I have gone on for long enough. Also take into account that this is a singular proposal out of potentially many more. There is always more than one way of doing something - all I have to do now is put it in a more summarized format.

:open_mouth:

@ James - so now that I have answered one of your questions I have a request of you:

I would like to talk more about MIJOT and SAM Coops.

I was rather surprised how quickly you worked out where I was coming from in the other thread: The Silent Mind

We have discussed some interesting things so far and I have introduced the emotion of being curious and now I want to talk about the emotion that you have introduced “Joy”. I think joy is the ultimate goal on a daily basis and I really like your MIJOT principle - you also give great examples on how to maintain that joy.

Do you think that being curious is a good way for one to find ones next goal that you speak of? Allowing our level of Joy to rise again.

Does SAM Coops add to MIJOT? I imagine from what you are saying that the answer is yes.

How do you recognize or celebrate your perceived progress?