Emotion

[dr_mabeuse]

Reading an interesting book now called What is Emotion? in which the author's trying to just answer that question, trying to come up with a working definition of "emotion". It's a complicated and fascinating question.

Different cultures recognize different emotions. The same culture recognizes different emotions at different times. Children are physiologically incapable of feeling certain emotions because their brains haven't developed fully enough. Because the corpus callosum, the part that bridges the two hemispheres, isn't fully developed until they're like 3 or 4, they can't compare their behavior with an ideal model and so can't feel shame or guilt when they're younger than 1 because the part that stores memories and ideals can't be accessed by the part that plans actions. They're literally without a conscience. Maybe some criminals are too.

Is pain an emotion or a sensation? Maybe both. Are there "elementary" emotions that combine to form more complex emotions? Certainly in some cases, but no one knows for sure. Emotions fade into sensations on one side, into ideas on the other.

According to this guy (Jerome Kagan of Harvard), there are four parts to a definition of emotion: (1) a measurable change in brain function, as shown by EEG or other imaging technique (this is to separate those changes in mood you can cause by just thinking happy thoughts. Or dirty ones. They don't cause any change in EEG) (2) A consciously detected change in feelings or somatic sense. (Note: feelings are not the same as emotions.) (3) A semantic recognition of the emotion. I.e. - giving it a name, labeling it. "I feel sad." "I'm happy!" (4) A behavioral manifestation of the emotion. i.e. moping or clicking your heels, as the case may be.

Notice that new emotions can be defined into existence. No one was laid back or chilled or spaced out 20 years ago. Now that the semantic space has been carved out for them, people slide into the holes like moray eels into reef caves.

It's a cool book. I'm going to pieces over it.

 

[rgraham666]

When you're done let me know.

I've got Crazy Glue™.

 

[Katyusha]

Notice that new emotions can be defined into existence. No one was laid back or chilled or spaced out 20 years ago. Now that the semantic space has been carved out for them, people slide into the holes like moray eels into reef caves.

It's a cool book. I'm going to pieces over it.

Nobody "spaces out" anymore. We all "zone," or "zone out." Otherwise we look at someone and say, "He's spacey."

 

[jomar]

Notice that new emotions can be defined into existence. No one was laid back or chilled or spaced out 20 years ago. Now that the semantic space has been carved out for them, people slide into the holes like moray eels into reef caves.

It's a cool book. I'm going to pieces over it.

Interesting topic. I don't think new emotions are defined into existence. I think different generations put their own lingo on it and sometimes it sticks. Hippocrates's four humours weren't catchy enough.

 

[lisa123414]

Not sure why thinking happy thoughts, or dirty ones, does not count as emotion However, I am entralled at moray eels sliding into reef caves.

 

[Guest]

Not sure why thinking happy thoughts, or dirty ones, does not count as emotion However, I am entralled at moray eels sliding into reef caves.

Slut.

 

[TriggerHippie]

Interesting that children and sociopaths have a similar lack of "bridging". Gives lots of "ifs" to the question if sociopaths are born or created. At what point is the inability to intuitively feel certain emotions normal? And at what point does the inability to learn to feel emotion become sociopathic? What is nature and what is nurture?

Interesting topic, Dr. M.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Is pain an emotion or a sensation? Maybe both.

My experience with tattooing tells me-- both. There's the "something is damaging our body" information, and the "That's a bad thing!!!" message.
When you get a tattoo, you learn to process the two separately. You know quite well that you are not damaging the body, so the "THAT'S BAD!!" message is disregarded at first, and then no longer sent.

If you step out of the tat parlor and stub your toe, you'll know the difference.

Interesting that children and sociopaths have a similar lack of "bridging". Gives lots of "ifs" to the question if sociopaths are born or created. At what point is the inability to intuitively feel certain emotions normal? And at what point does the inability to learn to feel emotion become sociopathic? What is nature and what is nurture?

Interesting topic, Dr. M.

There's a lot of evidence that damage to the top of the skull-- being dropped on one's head-- damages the emotional responses. Perhaps it damages the corpus callosum during its formation?

 

[impressive]

If you step out of the tat parlor and stub your toe, you'll know the difference.
There's a lot of evidence that damage to the top of the skull-- being dropped on one's head-- damages the emotional responses. Perhaps it damages the corpus callosum during its formation?

But, even in the absence of physical insult, there are emotional dampeners that result in disassociation or detachment.

 

[jomar]

Interesting that children and sociopaths have a similar lack of "bridging". Gives lots of "ifs" to the question if sociopaths are born or created. At what point is the inability to intuitively feel certain emotions normal? And at what point does the inability to learn to feel emotion become sociopathic? What is nature and what is nurture?

Interesting topic, Dr. M.

Even people with a certain level of autism can learn the rules of social behavior. True psychopaths not only treat others as objects, but tend to enjoy others suffering, they're sadistic that way. Your run of the mill antisocial person is missing the empathy gene, but can actually be quite socialized if they are smart enough. Many a CEO fit this category. But sociopaths generally come from pretty disturbing backgrounds in addition to the biology (their brains are different) that makes them vulnerable to that path. Exceptions occur, of course.

 

[jomar]

nada...

 

[lisa123414]

Slut.

yowsa baby, please call me that again?

As I stub my toe on the way out of the tatto parlor - yes, I have decided to get "Stella and Sarahh" emblazoned on my right cheek.

 

[shereads]

What about tickling? Pain that makes us laugh?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

My experience with tattooing tells me-- both. There's the "something is damaging our body" information, and the "That's a bad thing!!!" message.

My experience with nitrous oxide taught me that pain was both sensation and emotion. On laughing gas, the things the dentist does to you still hurt but you don't care, so they just feel like sensations. Pain loses that awful, damaging aspect. You don't dwell on those images of him jamming a pick down into your nerves.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I'm a big believer in emotion, and I think we live most of our lives in emotional space - much more than we live in intellectual space - but when it comes to having words to describe emotions, we're in pretty bad shape. We're much better at describing and thinking about ideas than we are at describing and experiencing emotions.

Our history books will go to great lengths to explain the intellectual climate of an age, but not the emotional climate, although each era has one. The dominant emotions during Shakespeare's time were quite different from the ones felt during the Romantic Age, and the emotional tone of the 60's or 70's or 80's was totally different from the mood that prevails now. Every social movement sees the birth of a new emotion, and each generation has a different emotional profile than the one that came before it.

In the book he also mentions subliminal emotion - emotions that are felt but below the level of perception, the emotional correlate of subconscious thoughts - and he points out that Descartes' famous "I think, therefore I am" is actually an emotional, not a rational, proof of existence, because it appeals to the experience or the perception of existence rather than to pure logic. In other words, existence is an emotion.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

What about tickling? Pain that makes us laugh?

Well, we all know about you.

 

[Guest]

Well, we all know about you.

No we don't.

We'd sure like to.

 

[xssve]

Nobody "spaces out" anymore. We all "zone," or "zone out." Otherwise we look at someone and say, "He's spacey."

Before the Sixties, they were merely stupified, or perhaps catatonic - possibly they were only musing, or lost in thought. Then again, they may well have been stoned, which I believe has a long history; I heard non drug using adults use it in my youth to describe persons drunk to the point of stupification.

Not sure why thinking happy thoughts, or dirty ones, does not count as emotion However, I am entralled at moray eels sliding into reef caves.

Good question, I'd like a clarification on that as well - if elation and lust are not emotions, what are?

But, even in the absence of physical insult, there are emotional dampeners that result in disassociation or detachment.

Oddly, I was musing on this in the wee hours this morning, while cleaning up my childs bodily excretia (stomach flu) - I'm really a very emotional person, too sensitive really, and I developed the logical faculties of my left brain as a sort of defense mechanism - I can switch pretty rapidly between the two, and if anything, I'm probobly too logical now.

Confuses some people, half the people I know think I'm an emotional puddle of goo, the other half think I'm some sort of machine, a lot seems to depend on first impressions, i.e., what kind of mood you happen to catch me in.

The functional use of emotions is pretty much that: first impressions - that and behavioral reinfocement. Emotional responses, which are essentially anoetic neurochemical responses, selected for their efficacy in promoting survival and reproduction, predate noetic cognition by a few hundred million years or so, and not everyone is able to tell the difference.

i.e., thinking on it, it seems that most of the people I know respond emotionally, and then use their logical facuties to justify their emotional response - the process involved in fundamental attribution error - rather than using their cognitive faculties to examine those responses and test them for empirical validity through further observation of the subject/phenomona in question.

The pathology of this, is the state where you obsess over your every move and utterance in an attempt to assess what kind of impression you've made on someone.

I seldom see this sort of dynamic expressed in fiction - it's used in film a lot I think, i.e., people are victims of mistaken impressions, good dramatic tension/conflict, but it doesn't seem to be as common in prose - or maybe I just don't read the right stuff.

 

[CharleyH]

Is pain an emotion or a sensation? Maybe both. Are there "elementary" emotions that combine to form more complex emotions? Certainly in some cases, but no one knows for sure. Emotions fade into sensations on one side, into ideas on the other.

Fascinating, Doc. In my experience pain is ... I think women have a different sensation of physical pain, but an emotional attachment to it. Men have an emotional attachment to the pain, but its not as physical as it is for a woman. Not sure if this makes sense for you, but that's my take.

 

[Brute_Force]

I try not to over-examine the things that are obvious in life. A flower smells good because it does. I don't really need or want to know why. Will knowing make it smell better or worse for knowing? I think not. So, I just don't care.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

i.e., thinking on it, it seems that most of the people I know respond emotionally, and then use their logical facuties to justify their emotional response - the process involved in fundamental attribution error - rather than using their cognitive faculties to examine those responses and test them for empirical validity through further observation of the subject/phenomona in question.

My own feeling is that the brain is really an emotion-processor more than it is a reason-processor. Every memory has an emotional tag associated with it and we shuffle these emotional symbols around all the time (We even know where those flags are handed out - in the amygdala. That's where memories are given emotional content, and lesions in the amygdala produce all sorts of strange effects) If you pay attention to your thinking what you'll probably find is that most of the time you're playing out little emotional scenarios, looking for the ones that give you the most bang for the buck. The time you spend dealing with pure reason is really rather minimal. You're somewhere between a dream and a wish, playing with feelings.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

The world of 1967 is very different from today.

Neuroses were epidemic (no one has neuroses now).

Mothers caused schizophrenia.

Gay was a psychiatric disorder.

Kids were hyperactive from sugar.

In another 40 years we'll laugh our asses off about the nonsense we worship today. Like: sociopaths are very empathetic; they know exactly how others feel and respond. The empathy is what allows them to manipulate people so well. Predation is what makes them different from you and me. Theyre hunters.

 

[NoJo]

The brain does lots of different things. Different sections of it work differently. I think that pound-for-pound, the human brain is a vision processor and langauge processor. But all that cognition is totally influenced by our emotions. I used to think of emotions as colored gelatin filters over the light-bulb of consciousness.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Judgment is the switch for many emotions. We observe, form opinions about what we observe, and feel whatever we feel. Unless, of course, someone smacks you with a club.

 

[jomar]

The brain does lots of different things. Different sections of it work differently. I think that pound-for-pound, the human brain is a vision processor and langauge processor. But all that cognition is totally influenced by our emotions. I used to think of emotions as colored gelatin filters over the light-bulb of consciousness.

And vice versa.