Philosophy Now Forum

Yes, you would need to be conscious in order to be aware of the emotion that you are feeling at the time. Without it, you wouldn't know what you are feeling.

Blueswing wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote: Are you sure that you have it the right way round? Maybe consciousness is a manifestation of emotion?

I'm sure I have it the right way round. It is possible to have consciousness without emotion (for example one might experience a flash of light or a pinprick without emotion) but it is not possible to have emotion without consciousness.

Try it yourself sometime when you are unconscious.

A worm can experience a p****, but is it conscious. But a worm does seem to yearn food, and spends its life eating the earth, the passion to do this precedes any consciousness of it.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:A worm can experience a p****, but is it conscious. But a worm does seem to yearn food, and spends its life eating the earth, the passion to do this precedes any consciousness of it.

When I use the word "experience" in this context, I mean "conscious experience". So if a worm can experience a pinprick it is conscious. I think it is unlikely however that a worm is conscious, and if it isn't then it wouldn't experience a pinprick but instead it would be reacting by means of an unconscious reflex.

Humans also have unconscious reflexes, but we don't describe these as emotions. Emotions, I would suggest, always have a physical component which we consciously experience, so you do need consciousness to have emotion.

You raise an interesting point about what you call the worm's "passion". Even the simplest plants and animals seem to have a drive to do what is necessary for their survival. The algae volvox forms spherical colonies, with eye spots at one end and tiny tails at the other, and this enables it to swim towards the light, and the surface. I think it's completely implausible that algae is conscious, it doesn't have anything to be conscious with, and even you and me are not conscious unless our stunningly complex branes are in good working order and switched on.

But still something drives the volvox to form into spherical groups, and to bud off little spheres inside.

Blueswing wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:A worm can experience a p****, but is it conscious. But a worm does seem to yearn food, and spends its life eating the earth, the passion to do this precedes any consciousness of it.

When I use the word "experience" in this context, I mean "conscious experience". So if a worm can experience a pinprick it is conscious. I think it is unlikely however that a worm is conscious, and if it isn't then it wouldn't experience a pinprick but instead it would be reacting by means of an unconscious reflex.

You have nothing to say but world play.
DO you heave anything of substance?

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Blueswing wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:A worm can experience a p****, but is it conscious. But a worm does seem to yearn food, and spends its life eating the earth, the passion to do this precedes any consciousness of it.

When I use the word "experience" in this context, I mean "conscious experience". So if a worm can experience a pinprick it is conscious. I think it is unlikely however that a worm is conscious, and if it isn't then it wouldn't experience a pinprick but instead it would be reacting by means of an unconscious reflex.

You have nothing to say but world play.
DO you heave anything of substance?

If you mean I have nothing to say but wordplay I can assure you that no wordplay is involved. I am trying to state what I understand as clearly as possible without using metaphor, wordplay or other figurative language.

"Experience" can have meanings that don't involve consciousness, we could say for example that San Francisco experienced an earthquake, so I started by clarifying what I mean by "experience". You seem to be using "experience" in a confusing way. If you experienced a pinprick, that would be a conscious experience, yet you imply that a worm might experience a pinprick without consciousness.

I'm disappointed that you have so completely misunderstood my post. You should go back and read it without prejudice. Philosophical discussion benefits when you try to take your opponent's argument in its strongest form. You should assume that your opponent is speaking in good faith and try to understand their position. This is known as the Principle of charity.

Principle of charity
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity requires interpreting a speaker's statements to be rational and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation. In its narrowest sense, the goal of this methodological principle is to avoid attributing irrationality, logical fallacies or falsehoods to the others' statements, when a coherent, rational interpretation of the statements is available. According to Simon Blackburn "it constrains the interpreter to maximize the truth or rationality in the subject's sayings."

RG1 wrote:

Philosophy Explorer wrote:Do you need consciousness to have emotion?

No. Consciousness is only the ‘knowing of’ the emotion. The emotion is a felt experience. If the experience is high enough in intensity, and long enough in duration, then it can be retained and recalled from memory as ‘recognition’ of said emotion.

You feel what you feel. And sometimes you can know what you feel.

how can one have an emotion without knowing it?

alpha wrote:

RG1 wrote:

Philosophy Explorer wrote:Do you need consciousness to have emotion?

No. Consciousness is only the ‘knowing of’ the emotion. The emotion is a felt experience. If the experience is high enough in intensity, and long enough in duration, then it can be retained and recalled from memory as ‘recognition’ of said emotion.

You feel what you feel. And sometimes you can know what you feel.

how can one have an emotion without knowing it?

How can you have knowledge without feeling?
Place a worm in a jar of vinegar. Does it not feel? But can you know it is conscious?

i honestly have no idea whether the worm actually "feels" anything, but even if it does, i'm certain it's nothing compared to what we feel. maybe one can say that it's possible to feel very low level feelings without consciousness. that still doesn't solve the problem of unconscious, anesthetized, or comatose people not feeling anything.

what are your thoughts?

Briancrc wrote:

raw_thought wrote:I feel love and hate regardless if I know what to call those feelings.
They are more then just a social construct. Babies cry before any social influence.

True, babies do come biologically prepared to cry. However, the environment teaches the baby to cry under different conditions. When a baby cries, it's mother will try different things to sooth it (e.g., give it the breast, pick it up and bounce it, get close and make different noises) and some of those things will cease the crying. Over time the crying sounds will be altered by the mother's responses and the mother will be able to discriminate the cries of the baby. The mother will say, "that cry tells me he's hungry" another cry will indicate illness (e.g., ear infection). The effect of soothing the baby (I.e., ceasing the crying) will strengthen the responses of the mother and teach her how to sooth more quickly in the future.
Later, when the child begins to experiment with vocalizations and gains some control over those vocalizations, the mother's narration ("oh why are you so fussy today") starts to associate feeling language with behavior. The child will come to imitate the language under similar conditions, but it could only be a fuzzy description of internal states as our nervous systems have not evolved to the point that we can identify where in our body certain processes are taking place and other people do not have access to the internal states of our body. For example, how would one know how to teach another when to say that they are embarrassed or nervous? We do it, but it's not by knowing what is going on inside the person.

bounce the baby, or the breast?

if i cry, would she give me the breast, and bounce it for me? i can use different cries for different cravings, lol.

just some harmless humor, in case anyone is offended.

Hobbes' Choice wrote: Place a worm in a jar of vinegar. Does it not feel? But can you know it is conscious?

I've already dealt with this, twice. Would you like to go back and read what I said again?

alpha wrote:i honestly have no idea whether the worm actually "feels" anything, but even if it does, i'm certain it's nothing compared to what we feel. maybe one can say that it's possible to feel very low level feelings without consciousness. that still doesn't solve the problem of unconscious, anesthetized, or comatose people not feeling anything.

what are your thoughts?

My thoughts are simply to question the accepted notions of feeling, consciousness, emotion, awareness and experience. They seem to be no more than pragmatic and often culturally defined concepts which sunder areas of understanding into neat packets. BUT they are not necessarily natural categories, and when you look close they are ill defined. Whatever life and our reception of it is is not easily divided up this way, and I doubt if such banal distinctions are really meaningful.
Further - I rather suspect that these distinctions anticipate any thing we want to say about them.

Blueswing wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote: Place a worm in a jar of vinegar. Does it not feel? But can you know it is conscious?

I've already dealt with this, twice. Would you like to go back and read what I said again?

The remark was not directed at you.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:
The remark was not directed at you.

Er, no, but you did direct a very similar remark at me, and I addressed it for you. So could you go back and have a look at what I said to you? That's kind of how a discussion works.

Blueswing wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:
The remark was not directed at you.

Er, no, but you did direct a very similar remark at me, and I addressed it for you. So could you go back and have a look at what I said to you? That's kind of how a discussion works.

Well sorry to have missed it, but considering you think very poorly of my contributions, I don't really think it is worth my while to respond., though I might.

Hobbes' Choice wrote: Well sorry to have missed it, but considering you think very poorly of my contributions, I don't really think it is worth my while to respond., though I might.

That's the most feeble post I've seen on a philosophy forum in a long time.