Emotion -- What is it?

[Gees]

Most people that I talk to seem to think that emotion is unruly thought; or thought that is difficult to control. But is it? Emotion and thought have different abilities, different limitations, different functions, and don't work the same way at all.

 

I suspect that emotion and thought are as much alike as blood and bones. Blood and bones are both part of our bodies, both made up of cells, both necessary, but definitely not interchangeable. It would be difficult to walk around using blood as our body structure and using bones to supply our organs.

 

Another thing that people seem to think is that emotion is produced by the brain, just like thought. I seriously doubt this.

 

So what is emotion? What are its limits, its abilities, its functions? Is it necessary to life? Is it interchangeable with thought? Does it influence thought or our bodies? Does thought or our bodies influence emotion? Help me put some parameters around the subject of emotion.

 

I am posting this in the Philosophy forum because there is no Science forum that completely covers the subject, as it is relevant to neurology, psychology, biology, animal behavior, and more.

 

What are your thoughts on this subject?

 

Gee

[Skeptic134]

Another thing that people seem to think is that emotion is produced by the brain, just like thought. I seriously doubt this.

 

 

So what do you think produces emotion? Liver, gall bladder, tonsils?

 

Or perhaps a "soul"...

 

And if you seriously doubt the brain has anything to do with emotion how do you respond to measured/mapped brain activity when subjects are presented "emotional stimulation"...

Edited April 4, 2015 by Skeptic134

[pavelcherepan]

So what is emotion? What are its limits, its abilities, its functions? Is it necessary to life? Is it interchangeable with thought? Does it influence thought or our bodies? Does thought or our bodies influence emotion? Help me put some parameters around the subject of emotion.

 

Personally to me emotion is Instinct 2.0, an upgraded version of instinct for intelligent beings. Many will probably disagree.

[hypervalent_iodine]

!

Moderator Note

I have removed the last few posts in this thread. randomc, outbursts like that can result in an instant ban from this site. Please keep your abusive and unwarranted comments to yourself.

[randomc]

you intuition is reasonably good, Gees. i've found neuroskeptic's blog informative on the "brainporn" side of things, mostly because he denies ,most of it which i find reasuaring.

 

Broaching the personal philsophy side of it, i don't find traditional "sciency" sounding explanations any more convincing than the religious alternatives.... thought and emotion... is that just a question of the amount of time available? dunno

free will persists terminally, though.

Edited April 4, 2015 by randomc

[Gees]

Skeptic134;

 

Please consider my following thoughts.

 

So what do you think produces emotion? Liver, gall bladder, tonsils?

 

Sorry, but I am not feeling froggy enough to jump to conclusions and answer that question. Don't you think if would be better to figure out what emotion actually is, before trying to figure out where it came from?

 

 

Or perhaps a "soul"...

 

If this is what you think, you are in the wrong forum. Religion is the next forum down. Easy to find.

 

And if you seriously doubt the brain has anything to do with emotion how do you respond to measured/mapped brain activity when subjects are presented "emotional stimulation"...

 

First, consider that "produced by the brain" and "doubt the brain has anything to do with emotion" do not equate. (Italics is mine) Since the brain is literally swimming in chemicals and hormones, and since there is substantial evidence that hormones and emotions are intimately connected, I would have to be an idiot to say that emotions have nothing to do with the brain. I can make mistakes, and even say some dumb things, but generally speaking, I am not a damned fool.

 

As to my response to "measured/mapped brain activity", I would say that there are other people, who are also trying to learn what emotion actually is.

 

 

 

Pavelcherepan;

 

Please consider my following thoughts.

 

Personally to me emotion is Instinct 2.0, an upgraded version of instinct for intelligent beings. Many will probably disagree.

 

This is a very good response. There are many studies that link emotion to instincts, and this is how I first started to investigate this subject. I was in a different science forum working with a neurologist and an animal behaviorist, who are both professionals in their respective fields. I wanted to understand instincts better, but ended up with more confusion.

 

According to Wiki, instincts are behaviors that we are born with. According to the neurologist, there are "learned instincts", which seems kind of ridiculous because the word "instincts" means that it is something that we do automatically without having to learn it. So what are learned instincts?

 

The neurologist explained that "learned instincts" are actually learned muscle reflexes, like when a ball player automatically catches something thrown at him, or when we automatically hit the brakes in our cars when something appears in front of us. So the word "instincts" has come to mean any automatic response, or any reaction that comes from the sub/unconscious aspect of mind, which makes it a difficult concept to study. It is almost impossible to learn anything using that broad a term, so in this thread, I would like to limit the discussion of instincts to the basic survival instincts. This is something that we know more about and can study.

 

As far as emotion being related to intelligence, I don't see it. I will agree that higher intelligence promotes a larger variety of emotions and more subtlety, but I do not see a causation between intelligence and the existence of emotion.

 

 

 

Randomc;

 

Please consider my following thoughts.

 

you intuition is reasonably good, Gees. i've found neuroskeptic's blog informative on the "brainporn" side of things, mostly because he denies ,most of it which i find reasuaring.

 

Broaching the personal philsophy side of it, i don't find traditional "sciency" sounding explanations any more convincing than the religious alternatives.... thought and emotion... is that just a question of the amount of time available? dunno

free will persists terminally, though.

 

What is "neuroskeptic's blog" and where would I find it?

 

For this thread, I would like to concentrate on an analytic study of emotion and avoid the ideas of religion and free will, as the subject matter is already too broad.

 

Gee

 

 

I would like to thank each of you for responding and have some thoughts to share regarding the differences between thought and emotion.

 

1. Thought is known, but emotion is felt. We can not actually know emotion.

 

2. Thought is private, but emotion is shared. Thought is only shared if we choose to share our thoughts, but emotion can be seen through body language, facial expression, and even in the eyes, so it is only private if we intentionally hide it.

 

Consider that another person may be able to 'read' our moods, feelings, or emotions by just looking at us, but they will never be able to 'read' the shopping list in our minds, or the maintenance schedule that we have planned for our vehicles. Thoughts are private.

 

Gee

[Ten oz]

IMO emotions are just truncated thoughts, shorts cuts, that allow for action with less deliberation. Processing information takes a lot of work and at any given moment there is more information than can processed. Emotions like fear, for example, make us animals compelled to act without needing to fully process all the information around. The emotion of fear is a full package of preset concepts that at once makes us alert and ready to act. Another example is attraction. Rather than having to intellectualize wanting to reproduce, what qualities in a mate would best provide offspring success, and etc the emotion of attraction is a short cut. It allows an animal to see and simple feel compelled to act without tedious deliberation.

[pavelcherepan]

 

 

As far as emotion being related to intelligence, I don't see it. I will agree that higher intelligence promotes a larger variety of emotions and more subtlety, but I do not see a causation between intelligence and the existence of emotion.

 

The causality is that an intelligent being due to its intelligence and being able to analyse situation better can overcome instincts. Instincts as I see them don't offer any incentive to an organism but on the other hand emotion brings a carrot-and-stick situation where you're rewarded with endorphins or some other feel-good hormone for doing what's best for the organism itself and get punished for refusing to do so.

 

Although it's a good question whether it's only humans that have emotions or that animals have those too and to what extent.

Edited April 4, 2015 by pavelcherepan

[iNow]

Emotion is a somewhat arbitrary label we use to describe some of the less rational parts of our psyche. It is just a label, though. Not rigid. Not immutable. Not necessarily even accurate.

 

Remember, the map is not the territory.

[Gees]

Ten oz;

 

Please consider my following thoughts.

 

IMO emotions are just truncated thoughts, shorts cuts, that allow for action with less deliberation. Processing information takes a lot of work and at any given moment there is more information than can processed.

 

Your above statements very closely align with my original thoughts on this subject. I had already learned that emotion works through the sub/unconscious aspect of mind and reasoned that it is faster because it does not have to be processed in the rational conscious aspect of mind. Then I learned that unlike thought, emotion is shared and works outside of the body. Thoughts are within us, but emotion works between us. Emotion can create bonds between people.

 

So then, still thinking that they were the same thing, I started to wonder if emotion was just fast moving thought that we feel, or if emotion actually carried thought/knowledge to make it faster. I debated this for years without ever coming up with any real resolution. Are thought and emotion the same thing with different speeds, or are they different?

 

Then I realized that there are blends of thought and emotion. We can have thoughts that have no emotion attached like in math; we can have emotion that does not have any known thoughts attached like with instincts; but we can also have emotion and thoughts together like in belief or faith. And no, I am not talking about religion here; I am talking about the difference between the words 'belief' and 'faith' in normal life.

 

The neurologist that I worked with explained belief as follows: The sun comes up in the morning, you get out of bed, and have your morning coffee. These things become familiar and comfortable, which means we attach emotion/feeling to these experiences. If the sun did not come up, if you tried to get out of bed and found that your body would not respond, or if you grabbed your coffee cup and your hand went through the cup instead of picking it up, you would be shocked, maybe horrified, because you have learned to expect the familiar and are comfortable with it. So belief is when we attach emotion/feeling to our knowledge and thoughts.

 

Faith is entirely different, and almost the opposite. Faith is when a Mom is absolutely sure that her son could not possibly have murdered twenty-seven people because she knows his heart, and he is a good boy. So faith is when we attach knowledge and thoughts to our feelings and emotions.

 

So if we can have knowledge/thought without feeling/emotion; and we can have feeling/emotion without knowledge/thought; and we can have emotion that we attach thought to; and we can have thought that we attach emotion to, then how could they possibly be the same thing? This is not even considering the other ways that thought and emotion are different.

 

Emotions like fear, for example, make us animals compelled to act without needing to fully process all the information around. The emotion of fear is a full package of preset concepts that at once makes us alert and ready to act. Another example is attraction. Rather than having to intellectualize wanting to reproduce, what qualities in a mate would best provide offspring success, and etc the emotion of attraction is a short cut. It allows an animal to see and simple feel compelled to act without tedious deliberation.

 

 

 

Fear and sexual attraction work through hormones. More on that below.

 

I look forward to your considered response.

 

Gee

 

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday. Please wait another day for my responses to the other posters.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Gees

[Ten oz]

@ Gees, does the un/subconscious mind have thoughts? It is only in my concious mind that thought is realized. My un/subconscious mind clearly has emotion. It also knows things. However I am not sure it processed linearly in any form of awakened state that we'd considered thought. I imagine it being like the difference between hardware and software.

You are right. Calling emotion packaged thought was far to broad. Perhaps trigger is a better word? Emotions trigger different chemical releases in the brain which support what is happening to us in realtime. Those different chemicals are what makes of "feel" compelled to act. Perhaps the un/subconscious mind don't have an opinion at all? It just responds. Maybe that is why emotions can change. People can get over their fears, find new loves, forgive, and etc. Because the unconscious mind has no opinion. It is just works for safe outcomes?

[Gees]

Pavelcherepan;

 

I apologize for being so slow to answer your post, but that is what happens when you deal with old people. (chuckle) I seem to be getting slower.

 

Thank you for your considered response, which I took some time to think about. Please review my following thoughts and let me know what you think.

 

The causality is that an intelligent being due to its intelligence and being able to analyse situation better can overcome instincts.

 

Well, this is true, but does "overcome" instincts mean cause instincts? I believe that evolution has the reptilian brain (don't remember the exact name they have for this) as coming first, which means that the instinctive brain/mind came first. Intelligence is a latter development in evolution, so intelligence could not have caused instincts or emotion.

 

Now one can argue that intelligence can cause the extinction of instincts, but I am not sure that this is supportable with evidence. It is well studied that a domestic pig can be released into a forest, and it will revert to its ancestral self, then after a few generations is almost indistinguishable from a wild boar. So even if they are subdued, instincts seem to still be there.

 

Intelligence does influence emotion and can influence the effects of our instincts. I will not argue this as it seems clear that thought influences emotion and emotion influences thought and both can be influenced by the physical body.

 

Try the following two-part thought experiment:

 

I want you to pull up a strong emotion, love, hate, or fear, into your mind. It should be a strong emotion because strong emotion causes physical symptoms of that emotion, like the full feeling of love, the tension of hate, or the queasy stomach of fear. Using strong emotion insures that it is true emotion, rather than imagining or pretending. When you can actually feel the emotion, then hold it for one minute on the clock. With a little work, most people can accomplish this.

 

Now I want you to try the experiment again with only one change. This time you will not bring up any thoughts that helped you to remember the fear, hate, or love that you felt. You are to conjure up the emotion with a blank mind. So far, I have never met anyone who can accomplish this.

 

So what does this tell us? It tells us that the rational conscious aspect of mind can not produce emotion because it does not know emotion. In the first part of the experiment, what you produced was thought that had emotion attached to it. These thoughts were from your past and were experiences that you remembered and also experiences that had emotional consequences. There is no "memory slot" for emotion, so we can not know emotion unless thought is attached.

 

Since we know that chemistry affects emotion, what happens when we feel emotion, but there is no experience and no thought to associate the emotion with? Like when a person takes drugs, or when they have a chemical imbalance like schizophrenia. It is my personal opinion, that in this case the rational mind tries to interpret the experience and attach thought to the emotion, so what we end up with is delusion.

 

Instincts as I see them don't offer any incentive to an organism but on the other hand emotion brings a carrot-and-stick situation where you're rewarded with endorphins or some other feel-good hormone for doing what's best for the organism itself and get punished for refusing to do so.

 

But instincts work though feeling and emotion, so I am not sure we should try to separate these issues. You are correct in that it is a kind of reward and punishment thing, but I prefer to think of it as attraction and repulsion. Instincts, feelings, and emotion all work through chemistry/hormones, so I tend to think of this chemistry as little magnets that attract some things and repulse other things. (chuckle) We feel the attraction and repulsion and call it feelings and emotion, but it is all about chemistry.

 

Instincts keep us alive -- that is their job. The basic survival instincts work through hormones, and all life has some kind of hormone. Although hormones have many more functions than just to cause instinctive behavior, it seems clear that hormones help us to relate to the physical world and stay alive in the world -- pheromones are an important part of this work. All of it works through attraction and repulsion, feeling and emotion.

 

The following is from Wiki under the heading of Hormones:

 

Hormones have the following effects on the body:

stimulation or inhibition of growth

wake-sleep cycle and other circadian rhythms

mood swings

induction or suppression of apoptosis (programmed cell death)

activation or inhibition of the immune system

regulation of metabolism

preparation of the body for mating, fighting, fleeing, and other activity

preparation of the body for a new phase of life, such as puberty, parenting, and menopause

control of the reproductive cycle

hunger cravings

sexual arousal

A hormone may also regulate the production and release of other hormones. Hormone signals control the internal environment of the body through homeostasis.

 

The underlined parts of the quote are my work and clearly exhibit the hormone effects that we call survival instincts. So survival instincts are dependent upon hormones, and work through emotion, as emotion is the "mechanism" that activates the instinctive behavior.

 

If there is one thing that I have learned about instincts, it is that instincts require that life continue. Since instincts work through emotion, then it is clear that without the activity of emotion, we would all die.

 

Although it's a good question whether it's only humans that have emotions or that animals have those too and to what extent.

Well, all species have some kind of hormone, all species have survival instincts, and hormones and survival instincts are activated through emotion. So yes, I would assume that all species have emotion, but does that mean that they know emotion? No.

As I noted above, we can not know emotion, we can experience it and only remember emotion because it is attached to our thoughts and memories. So in order to know that emotion exists, a specie would have to have a brain and a rational aspect of mind. I suspect that most mammals, many birds and some others do have the ability to know emotion as we do, because many of them can pass the Mirror Test.

The others may experience the emotion, but would have no knowledge of having done so. I seriously doubt that an oak tree feels bad because it is infested by insects, but it will still send out pheromones to other oak trees to warn them to produce chemicals that will discourage the infestation. So the oak tree will react like it actually feels the infestation and emotion, but will have no ability to know that feeling/emotion.

In my opinion.

Gee

I am tired again. Ten oz, please give me another day or so to answer your post.

[Gees]

iNow;

 

Please consider:

 

Emotion is a somewhat arbitrary label we use to describe some of the less rational parts of our psyche. It is just a label, though. Not rigid. Not immutable. Not necessarily even accurate.

Remember, the map is not the territory.

 

You seem to be a little confused as to the goals in this thread. This is not a thread concerned with the study of language and labels, nor is it a thread to discuss what emotion is NOT. It would be rather foolhardy to start a thread where the main point is to learn what something isn't. It was my intention to learn more about what emotion is -- not what it isn't. So if you intend to post in this thread again, try to be a little more constructive.

 

Remember, the only way to validate a map is to examine the territory that it purports to describe.

 

Gee

[iNow]

Let's begin by you sharing a bit more about what YOU already understand about the underlying neuroscience of emotion and what personal exploration of the topic you've already done using any of the great many resources available to educate folks on this subject.

 

Essentially, ask a more specific question and you'll get a more specific answer. Until then, encourage you to stop bitching and moaning when people provide responses less inline with your expectations.

[Gees]

Ten oz;

 

You ask a lot of difficult questions, and I wish I had half of the answers that I would like to have.

 

It was my hope that someone with more expertise would join this thread and answer some of those questions, but it does not look like it. I know that the subject of emotion scares the hell out of most people, but I thought that in a science forum, there would be some people with at least some answers. It appears not, so we will have to work with the little bit that I think I know. (chuckle)

 

@ Gees, does the un/subconscious mind have thoughts? It is only in my conscious mind that thought is realized.

 

Yes, the unconscious mind possesses thought. Neurology tells us that many of our memories are stored in the unconscious and that the unconscious holds our learned instincts, or our experiences. Hypnosis tells us that the unconscious has information that we are unaware of, and psychology tells us that the information in the unconscious can affect us in surprising ways, as in the Freudian slip.

 

So the real question is not if there are thoughts, but does the unconscious mind think? If it does, then how does it think? From what I know so far, the un/subconscious aspect of mind is more reactionary and reacts primarily to emotion or need, but the rational conscious mind is self directed. Also consider that humans develop the rational mind by age seven, so are we saying that anyone under the age of seven does not know how to think? If so, then why do we bother putting them in school at age five?

 

In another forum, a member brought to my attention a tribe of people in, I think, South America. This tribe is being studied because of the limits in their language and understanding, but after reviewing the information, it occurred to me that what was being discussed were limits that would indicate that the people do not have the same rational aspect of mind that we have. I will try to get more information on this, but the guy who told me about it got himself banned. He is a really bright guy, but deals with severe depression, and occasionally has the personality of an angry bull. But I will see what I can find on this tribe.

 

My un/subconscious mind clearly has emotion. It also knows things.

 

I am not sure about this. I know that the sub/unconscious mind reacts to emotion and is activated by emotion, but does that mean that it has emotion? I am not sure.

 

 

However I am not sure it processed linearly in any form of awakened state that we'd considered thought. I imagine it being like the difference between hardware and software.

 

Well, I would definitely throw out the idea of anything linear associated with the sub/unconscious mind. Dr. Blanco, who studied with Anna Freud, is the one who found a logic in the unconscious. He discovered that if one removes the idea of time, there is logic, but the logic seems to be based more on balance and relationships, rather than on time. The unconscious seems to understand same and difference, self and other, more and less, but does not know time -- which makes me wonder if it knows space.

 

In the unconscious, if Mary is Jane's mother, then Jane is Mary's mother. The unconscious sees the connection, but not the time factor which would make this statement ridiculous.

 

This is why psychoanalysis works for some people. If one experiences an emotional trauma at a young age and can not understand it, it seems to never settle because the unconscious sees it as having happened before, happening now, and imminent. It is the job of the psychologist to help the person find the memory, then bring it out so that it can be understood in the rational mind and time can be assigned to it. At that time, it can be assigned to the past, something that has happened and is over, so that this emotional memory is no longer triggered.

 

So no, I don't think there is anything linear going on here.

 

You are right. Calling emotion packaged thought was far to broad. Perhaps trigger is a better word? Emotions trigger different chemical releases in the brain which support what is happening to us in realtime. Those different chemicals are what makes of "feel" compelled to act.

 

Yes, trigger might be a good term to describe what emotion does in the unconscious mind. Wiki used the word 'mechanism' in relation to instincts and how they were activated by emotion.

 

Also consider that emotion causes chemical releases, but chemical releases also cause emotion -- it goes both ways.

 

Perhaps the un/subconscious mind don't have an opinion at all? It just responds.

 

Actually, the sub/unconscious mind is full of opinion as that is where our prejudice comes from. It may well be where all opinion comes from.

 

Maybe that is why emotions can change. People can get over their fears, find new loves, forgive, and etc. Because the unconscious mind has no opinion. It is just works for safe outcomes?

 

I don't know why people always say this, that emotion changes. Life is not static. Our bodies change, our thoughts change, and our emotions and moods change. I suspect that this idea comes from the fact that emotion is very fluid, or analog, so it is difficult to determine the causes of the change, whereas thought is more digital so we can trace back to the experience or learning that changed our thoughts.

 

Emotion is not more changeable than thought; in fact, it is more reliable. This is the reason why simple thought can not compete with belief, because belief has emotion attached so it is more trusted. The rational mind and thought can lie; emotion has no idea of how to lie.

 

In my opinion.

 

Let me know what you think.

 

Gee

[iNow]

The problem here, of course, is that nobody is bothering to define any of their terms.

 

Worse still, the words unconscious and subconscious have largely been abandoned in the natural sciences due their ambiguous and deeply subjective/inconsistent nature, yet are being bandied about here as if they are valid accepted terms that somehow magically hold explanatory power or any merit whatsoever outside lay pop culture references (which they don't).

 

Better IMO to refer to things like dendritic connections, neural density, cortical activation, response intensity, autonomic processes, awareness, intentionality, and similar far more precise and useful descriptors than those ill-defined new-agey woo-laden nonsensical terms being so liberally and haphazardly used above.

 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_mind#Controversy

[3blake7]

To me, emotions are neurotransmitters, a unique ratio of neurotransmitters. I'm no expert but one day endocrinologists and neurologists might be able to identify each unique ratio of neurotransmitters and assign them a name of an emotion.

 

The brain was designed ultimately to adapt to a dynamic environment, we have base instincts but we also have the ability to adapt, to form higher level instincts built upon the foundation of base instincts. Like a young boy, entering into the woods for the first time, is emotionally unbiased, he is without fear and full of pure unadulterated curiosity. He explores, finds harmless creatures and plays with them. He goes out the next day and the next. These experiences have a lot of information, like the presence of trees, the smells, the shapes and colors of the harmless creatures. Each memory has patterns and emotions that are connected to them. One day he goes out into the forest and smells an awful smell which triggers a base instinct, the instinct that helps us recognize rotten food and to warn us not to eat it. His curiosity wins the battle and he continues his exploration. He comes upon a large furry brown creature, the creature stands on his hind legs and roars. The roar is so load and unexpected that it startles him. He also has a base instinct concerning roars. His flight or fight mode kicks in and he decides to flee. The next day, he entered into the forest, except this time he is cautious. He is looking around for anything big brown and furry. The recent experience from the day before has now biased him, ultimately overpowering the memories and their attached emotions from the days before the bear. An hour passes and he sees no bear. He begins to relax a little but the memory of the bear is never truly gone, he is no longer pure, his perspective, his emotional disposition towards the forest has become more complex. Now it is curiosity with a latent fear. He goes out into the forest the next day and then the next. The fear becomes ever more subtle and his fearless curiosity returns but never to the purity it once was. He smells an awful smell. Chills go up his spine, goose bumps cover his body, his heart beat quickens and sweat secretes from his facial pores. The awful smell in the present linked to the awful smell in his past memory of the bear. He connected to the emotions of fear attached to that memory. He cautiously explores only to discover that the smell is a rotting corpse of a smaller animal. He begins to relax again.

 

Emotions are ultimately a survival mechanism, a way for our brains to create custom instincts for unique, dynamic and ever-changing environments. As we experience more and more, our stereotypes evolve, they become more granular, more accurate and precise. As with the example of the boy and the bear, his stereotype was oversimplified, he associated all bad smells with the bear and fear. Then he experiences a new explanation for awful smells, unbiasing himself. The next time he smells an awful smell, his fear response will not be as strong as it was. Stereotyping is a survival mechanism and the most accurate stereotype structures can be found in those with higher intelligence quotients and/or a more diverse array of experiences.

 

I also believe that we are as simple as we can be emotionally when we are young. As we grow older, experiences complexify us, make us emotionally less pure and simple. However, with advance years, our stereotype construct can come full circle, we can achieve a perspective that is simple and fits all our experiences, a high-level philosophy, which allows us to return to emotional simplicity.

Edited May 23, 2015 by 3blake7

[Ten oz]

@ Gees, I need to read up some before I respond. INow made a good point. I need, we need, to define our terms. Thus far I referrenced conscious, subconscious, hormone effects, memory, and etc too loosely.