Instinct, mood, emotion and philosophy . . .

Instead of words like happiness, intrigue and fascination…

I’d use the word “profundity”

James S Saint

It is going to take me a few days to get my head back in the game.

A) Here I only compare two states on purpose. It it easier to contrast two states than more. I am interested in other states that you might define - would you provide for me one or two more states? Please exclude substrate states; ie. the states within the brain.
B) I just want to remind you that I have often mixed these up. I accept the blame for the ambiguity I introduced - it is clear to me what you are saying.

So reasoning is deterministic and mood is bias?

:sunglasses:

- - - Extra - - -

There is more than one level of programming:

  1. The substrate code.
  2. The natural language.
  3. Logic Conclusion/Possible Corruption
    Each sitting atop of each other. Confined to states internal and external to the substrate.

- - - logic working in all three layers - - -

Points → i (affectance)

i ≡ inception ∨ recognition ∨ perception

helps us understand why we forget and remember things; helps us understand why ambiguity takes place.

i can be thought of as always there because as you say: “Nothingness”, is absolutely impossible.

i ≡ secondarily the potential for the unknown to become known. In other words the unknown is always there.

- - - Correction - - -

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

Better?

:smiley:

I know the feeling.

I would say that reasoning is more logic bound (consistency of thought). Mood is inattentive to logic.

If by “natural language”, you mean the natural language of thought, I would agree. There are also social languages and social education, each divergent from natural physiological construct.

I would call that state, “sanity” (cohesiveness of thought). Reasoning is a process, much like programming.

James

Extremely valuable input - thank you very, very much . . . It is becoming very clear to me how RM:AO affects my work - I endeavor to make it very clear to you if it isn’t already. One step at a time as they say . . . I am very grateful to you . . .

That is exactly what I mean. There are two of them - one is English in our case and the other is hidden/silent(you don’t need English to think). The same rules apply for social language.

I am going to go out on a limb here. To get my point across I must play with words a little.

► Everything known was once unknown.

► Everything there is still to know already exists, it is just undiscovered, un-evolved an un-configured.

► Everything can be expressed as information.

► Discovery is just the unknown configured into formation.

► Inception is formation.

► Unknown in-formation is known.

i(inception) ≡ unknown/known(both quantifiable - even if random; randomness is then just un-evolved and un-configured)

i can be thought of as always there because as you say: “Nothingness”, is absolutely impossible.

i ≡ secondarily the potential for the unknown to become known.

With a twist of lemon: The known is always there - even if undiscovered.

Now for some cerebral flatulence:
If this holds for logic then I suspect it works for emotion - therefore I do not think all emotions are instinctual but rather some emotions are manufactured once we become self-aware - self-awareness is potentially a product of logic. Instinct is a product of logic that is formed in the substrate. The substrate is formed prior to birth. All things are recursively repeating - substrate is formed from matter - matter is formed from affectance. The skipped steps in this paragraph are arbitrary to the gist. Energy and matter are the same thing. Logic and emotion stem from the same place. The universe is alive and intelligent(I don’t know how) and can be thought of as a huge brain - like the brain some parts are undiscovered, un-evolved and un-configured.

- - - back to regular viewing - - -

Oh I agree - I am still keeping the two separate - just that they stem from the same place and inevitably affect each other.

There is a hint however that reasoning is deterministic - even if only partially - delta.

I feel sanity is a convergence of the mood and logic. Correct me if I am wrong - we might debate it a little though - just fyi.

I stand corrected.

They are inclusive so:

i ≡ inception ∨ perception ∨ recognition ∨ consciousness

??? Emotion and mood seem to be more autonomous ???

:sunglasses:

FINAL NOTES: i ≡ inception ∨ perception ∨ recognition ∨ consciousness is confined as follows:

Confinement[space ∨ scope ∨ time](i ≡ inception ∨ perception ∨ recognition ∨ consciousness)

or more elegantly:

Confinement(i)

or even better:

C(i)

I call this Rational Confinement(RC) . . . Motion bounds space and time to each person but that is a story for another day . . .

So to refine the terminology:

RC(i)

or more simply:

R(i)

:smiley:

The is a hint of the emotional process and Emotional Confinement in this post.

To re-iterate a subsection of Rational Confinement(R):

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]

Plugging this subsection of R gives us a/one potential confinement to our consciousness.

or:

R(i)

So hopefully the dots are easier enough to join here . . .

:-k

To where is all of this leading? :-s

Hopefully, on topic,

encode wrote

Is randomness an actuality or does it only (seem to) exist due to our limited perspectives…unscaled? If it is undiscovered (un-evolved/un-configured) to us, then only order exists?

James

To answer your question it might pay for me to ask you a question - forgive me if I am wrong. I often introduce ambiguity - so your question is confusing me and it is probably because of something I have done(affectance); clarify - verify etc.

My question is:

Something bother you about it?

Paranoia . . . that’s me . . .

:-"

Only that without a goal in mind, it seems like a lot of vague or loose ends. It’s hard to make decisions concerning what is important or not until a purpose or priority is establied.

James

OK I understand the question now.

My goal was stated at the top of the original post as follows:

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

In saying that however - I have never minded getting a little off topic especially when it illustrates analogous thinking - no matter how distant it might seem.

So to restate my original goal a different way - it was simply to have a philosophical discussion about instinct, mood and emotion. The most general question would be: what are they? But it need not answer that.

At the end of the original post I stated:

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.

So you could say the goal of the thread is to get a grip on instinct, mood and emotion in a philosophical setting. Not necessarily everyone’s cup of tea but I thought I would throw it out there.

Now to your original question:

Just to an enhanced understanding of instinct, mood and emotion.

:-k

Hopefully that clears things up.

fuse

I finally got around to starting the book you suggested: Not Passion’s Slave: Emotions and Choice by Robert C. Solomon.

I like how the preface opens:

I particularly like the following from the preface:

I admit to not having put much thought into the first and have spent most of my time on the second - I can certainly see how choice can affect emotions and how emotions can drive choice. I can see that this book is going to be very interesting for me to read.

.

encode_decode,

:laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:
You are not TOO SURE about that?
I suppose you DO value your mind over all things but isn’t that getting just a bit too carried away here? :stuck_out_tongue:

Emotions are like the parents.
Moods are their children.

Getting much further into the book recommended by fuse: Not Passion’s Slave: Emotions and Choice by Robert C. Solomon.

It is really starting to get quite interesting.

Another few cool passages from further on into the book:

Here I am noticing some correlations to my other thread: Why do people have the desire to talk?

From this section: 3 The Rationality of the Emotions (1977):

Interesting, I somewhat agree.

Still I am not yet ready to dispute my logic first approach - although I am working on another approach whereby logic and emotions are equal which this book kind of points at from what I can determine thus far - Robert states somewhere before Section 3 that emotions are rational if I remember correctly.

In any case I am getting plenty of food for thought. It may well be the case that I have to read it again to fully absorb it.

Back to reading . . .

Very insightful . . .

From: Not Passion’s Slave: Emotions and Choice by Robert C. Solomon.

I am too tired to make a comment - I have finished up to chapter four. Let the structural analysis begin . . . After a sleep . . .

From the section: 4 Nothing to Be Proud of (1980)

This book is thoroughly stimulating for all the right and all the wrong reasons - that is - reasons contained within my mind.

I still find Hume’s impressions inspiring - they inspired in me the idea that: what if the emotions are contained within a system, an emotional system. The emotional system in my head is based on pattern differentiation and integration of past and present patterns that form future patterns of complex emotional states. I think it is narrow minded to look at emotions individually and stop there - sure there are benefits to identifying each emotion but I think that knowing the state of the emotional system is of far greater benefit.

I grow as I learn but in the preceding paragraph I was at a stage whereby the complex emotional state forms the mood over time through changing associations of each impression through a feedback loop. Still I think that looking at things from a more abstract level of passions has its merit. Perhaps passions do “form a complete chain of reasoning by themselves”.

Which makes me wonder whether Hume was in fact satisfied with his work - I doubt he was able to write down everything that he had in mind just as I doubt whether he was actually fully satisfied with his output. The value of Hume’s work still persists; and why is important to take into consideration. I am not saying that Robert has not taken this into account just that we should not dismiss valuable texts entirely because of a hunch. An unnecessarily complicated theory to me is in the eye of the beholder and as Robert says: no doubt one could pursue a number of different interpretations of Hume’s work.

Why can we not rely on purely causal connections when it comes to emotions?

And look at how complex the situation that precedes being a parent is, yet it could still be explained with causal connections.

Exactly. I myself have a useful interpretation even if it is somewhat flawed, but whose interpretation of Hume is not flawed?

As Robert C. Solomon writes: What is a proposition, other than a semantic construction of philosophers?

Some food for thought later on down the track. I do like the way it is stated later in the book: neither is it the case that ideas and beliefs are merely the
causes or the cognitive presuppositions of our emotions — and — “Intentionality” is a concise but hardly precise way of characterizing the fact that
emotions are always “about” something — from the section: Taking Emotions Seriously: Beyond Intentionality.

Arcturus Descending

I don’t know. Do you think I was getting just a bit too carried away? Do I really value my mind over other things?

I am still not too sure about the demon possession thing. If I had to answer the question:

Do you want a demon to possess you to cut off your own dick with your own arms?

I would say: No

Should I have answered the question?

So no: I am not TOO SURE about that.

How would you have approached the whole ordeal? Provided you had a dick.

:evilfun:

Arcturus Descending

Why do you say that? Are you sure you have that in the right order?

:smiley:

Notes: The cause of any given emotional state is going to be a complex set of events to be sure. If there is a pattern to be discerned, then this is how we would analyze the multiple causes leading to an emotional state. There would definitely have to be a simple way to do it and a difficult way to do it. Finding the simple way is paradoxically more difficult than to find the difficult way - we have perhaps already worked out much of the difficult approach.

I am thinking that instinct, mood and emotion are all part of a complex set of overall patterns that have many feedback loops and that is why it is so hard to work out moods and emotions - perhaps it is easier for us to understand instincts, perhaps not. It is fairly safe to say that there is logic of some sort underlying all three of these mechanisms and the difficulty lay in two areas - how complex the underlying logic is and how far up the abstraction tree we tend to look at emotions and moods. This might help explain the mind/body problem somewhat.

If as James says: Socially an “emotion” is an emoting, an urging, or instigation for motion — and — personally an emotion is the subconscious urging conscious cooperation toward particular directions then the patterns are subconscious. If on the other hand: emotions are more rational than we give them credit for then the patterns are conscious. It would make sense to me then that if the patterns are conscious then they are flowing at such a high speed that we are unaware of them and perhaps that is a clue into the subconscious. The subconscious is thought of as a sub-process to our conscious which is the main process.

If the emotion is the starting point for motion then I am thinking that the input to the emotional system is fed through from the main process. The emotion system provides feedback as input to the main process(system) — once the main process has processed the input then the motion is initiated and the emotional system is updated. If there is a mood system/process then that system/process is potentially updated too. Whether the main system is the core logic or there is another system for that is another possibility - the main system may well be a referee system to all the other systems.

Correlating any of the mentioned systems with brain activity via scanning should be easy - it would only require speed and precision to do so and isolating the systems involved and the events within those systems. I am thinking that groups of patterns make up these systems and I am also thinking of the possibility of corresponding and concurrent systems taking place in the brain. We are talking multitudes of operations taking place at any given moment but we are also talking about different groups of operations being grouped into systems that can be fed through for pattern analysis.

If the systems are corresponding and concurrent then it is just a matter of splitting the patterns up into their respective groups to be analyzed as a system.

Whether the systems are always taking place in the same part of the brain(which seems unlikely) or the systems are distributed(more likely) is still yet to be seen.

From the section: 5 Emotions’ Mysterious Objects (1984)

From the section entitled: B. The Cause of an Emotion—And Its Object:

Talking my language now . . . I agree mostly with the above - I would add that if a person is angry(or experiencing some other emotion) at something at a particular location and that same person had the opportunity to experience the same emotion at that same thing at a different location that the emotion would be different. If there is a further component to the location such as a certain individual present then that is also a causal factor to the person experiencing the emotion. This presents merely three possible factors among potentially hundreds if not thousands of potential factors that go into the type of anger(or some other emotion) being experienced by the person in question. Things can get quite complex quite quick.

I totally love it . . . it is a little prettier than the way I would have put it . . . but looking back at my addition to the last quote is does make sense.

Oh yeah . . . and to the outside observer . . . they might not get a clear enough picture to read the person who is experiencing the emotion . . . leading to confusion.

And don’t we all know it . . . Controversial maybe but it does point out several things . . . one of which is we should not be too quick to judge or assume anything . . . another is if it is ourselves who are experiencing the emotion then it is also possible that we ourselves might not have a clear picture especially at first instance when we are experiencing the state that we are in . . . I will leave it up to you to imagine what else could be pointed out.

I prefer to think of it as the prime cause(or the primer) - I still think the overall emotional state has a lot to answer for id est it is a measure of the recent history of patterns within the system - patterns which possibly taper off as one goes back in time.

Too true . . .

From the section entitled: C. Objects of Emotion and Objects of Belief

Because people have different beliefs they see the same situation differently and have a different emotional state that results . . .

From the section: 5 Emotions’ Mysterious Objects (1984)

From the section entitled: D. The Existence of Objects: Actual and Possible

Hume rightly argued, seeing the object as signifying one’s own virtue — this is plainly not the whole picture though - lets face it - the mood comes into play - the complex pattern that the overall emotional state forms which feeds back through other systems is likely if you were to take my model into consideration.

The object of emotion can be imaginary - the thought can be directed at the future. People do experience emotions with non physical objects and in turn experience physiological responses. In the case of a mortgage a person can spend a lot of time in their life experiencing stress that is physiologically affective.

And I was saying . . . The psychological impending doom that one imposes upon oneself as in the case of the mortgage for example happens when the person in question keeps thinking about a foreclosure. Not limited to the case of the mortgage either - in effect our fight and flight response were made for us to flee or fight in short bursts rather than the long drawn out emotional turmoil that can also raise the adrenaline but over longer periods leading to a rise in cortisol which can affect the immune system - being the effect caused by the stress of an imagined impending doom. In this case a lot of other factors clearly come into play if the person has no reason to be imagining the impending doom in the first place.

From the section entitled: F. Emotions, Descriptions, and Objects: Beyond Atomism

I do question this somewhat - is it actually necessary to be so focused on the emotion and its object - I do not deny that both are important to consider just that once the event or object has already taken place in the world it becomes a task for the mind/body(brain) to take care of. This seems to me to be an over production of reality. Even though we are bound to reality - once we have sensed it the object becomes the domain of the mind.

I would argue the same thing here - just that I would probably use a different word than judgment - I might however warm up to the word. Just the same it is quite apparent that we are dealing with some sort of whole system made up of subsystems by virtue of the fact that we - humans - structure our information on these topics as such - there is more than one way of doing the same thing.

From the Conclusion:

For me the object once it has become the domain of the mind is an “impression”, only it is a complex impression, as in a pattern. The emotion related to this pattern is a process that was already in a positive or negative state of progress - akin to weighting - much like an action potential but on a grander scale. The process increments a state of analysis on the pattern - once the process has performed many states of analysis and updated the emotional system the perception comes into light - so to speak.

The main difference I notice between imagined “objects” and real “objects” is the mind does work with both separately and in a different way - there is a time factor involved and usually the person doing the imagining is experiencing the lag that the event/object has not taken place yet in reality - this correlates well with lower levels of adrenaline over longer periods for an imagined impending doom. Another thought is that when something happens in reality that there are in fact two objects to the emotion - the real object and the object as it is assimilated by the mind.