Philosophy Now Forum

In this post, I would try to explain a theoretical method that I have conceived to explain emotions. This method uniquely related the psychological phenomena of emotions to the neurological phenomena of brain development. Again as a warning, those with faint hearts and closed minds, please skip over this post, for it would not make much sense to you or worse, make you very angry

But, before I go about describing this method, I need to get the audience clear on 3 crucial points.

1. I have made the assumption that pleasure attracts people and pain repels them. (note: I have used the word assumption, because it hasn't yet been proven to be absolutely correct.)
So, for example: If a stimuli pleases you, you would be attracted to it, whereas if a stimuli pains you, you would be repelled by it.

2. I have also assumed that individuals (humans, animals, etc) have the inherent capacity to differentiate their experiences in terms of state variables. A few example of state variables: Direction in time (past, present, future), direction in space (self, other (non self)), etc)
So, I have assumed that an individual (fairly evolved) would be able to differentiate its experience of past from its experience of future and so forth.

3. I have assumed that emotions are simply motivations with attributes (hang on for now). In my previous post, I explained that the intensity of pain/pleasure is directly proportional to the strength of motivation. The higher the intensity of pain/pleasure, the higher the strength of motivation they form.
We assume that the individual is virtually moving from his present self state to the state described (just like electrons move from one orbit to the other) and in this transition, they experience the emotions that they feel. The choice of emotions is limited, since the no. of state variables can be easily accounted.


Now, to the main point!!!!

If we assume that an individual possess the ability (due to certain neurological achievement of the individual/species) to differentiate his experience on the basis of the state variable of direction in space (possible choices: Self, others), we can then find out the emotions that this individual can experience.

Case 1- State variable --- direction in space (Self, other)



In the picture above, one can see how the various elements of state variable and pleasure/pain play together to from the four emotions.

Case 2- State variable --- direction in time (past, present, future)



Simple as above.
When an individual moves from the ground state to the state variable of future and experiences pain in the transition, it feels pain. On the other hand, if it feels pleasure in the same process, it feels pleasure.

The same goes for the other things.


The emotion tree can be made more and more complex by adding more and more state variables. The above mentioned case is just an example.

I know my explanation isn't very lucid, but I would be willing to explain further if you have any doubts.

Signing off now
Siochi

siochi wrote:Again as a warning, those with faint hearts and closed minds, please skip over this post, for it would not make much sense to you or worse, make you very angry

Do you only want positive feedback? (and if so, who are you calling closed minded?)... I have unfortunately no positive feedback right now, but I'll give what I have nevertheless.

siochi wrote:But, before I go about describing this method, I need to get the audience clear on 3 crucial points.

1. I have made the assumption that pleasure attracts people and pain repels them. (note: I have used the word assumption, because it hasn't yet been proven to be absolutely correct.)
So, for example: If a stimuli pleases you, you would be attracted to it, whereas if a stimuli pains you, you would be repelled by it.

Hugely contrary to experience. A lot of people very often are attracted to pain because their thoughts just happens to like that direction, be it physical or mental. Faith or clouded judgement are typical ones. The former can be a rejection of the negative value of pain (and doesn't have to carry rewards), the later can be caused by inability to measure pleasures versus pains and therefore one ends up making choices based upon insignificant information.

siochi wrote:2. I have also assumed that individuals (humans, animals, etc) have the inherent capacity to differentiate their experiences in terms of state variables. A few example of state variables: Direction in time (past, present, future), direction in space (self, other (non self)), etc)
So, I have assumed that an individual (fairly evolved) would be able to differentiate its experience of past from its experience of future and so forth.

It's a crude assumption that humans differentiate between themselves and others. While this is the tendency, this doesn't always, if ever, happen fully, and it doesn't always even happen at all. Natural empathy (as opposed to learned empathy, which is a weaker form) is the prime example of where an individual mistakes him- or herself for another person.

siochi wrote:3. I have assumed that emotions are simply motivations with attributes (hang on for now). In my previous post, I explained that the intensity of pain/pleasure is directly proportional to the strength of motivation. The higher the intensity of pain/pleasure, the higher the strength of motivation they form.

This is not true either, because while it may often tendencate that way, motivation comes from impression, and there are other forms of impressions than just pain and pleasure. Some impressions are "neutral" but can still motivate us. Examples are things like abstract reality and abstract truth, as well as metaphysics. These are usually "nested" however in chains of ideas that might go back to some pain-or-pleasure principle, but even if they went back there, it would not be pain and pleasure which decided the choice to be made, instead the choice is made whatever is the strongest impression. Pleasure is a way to open our hearts, pain a way to shut it, but if we have faith, and it doesn't have to be religious faith, just a faith in general, then we might keep our hearts open even in the face of pain or neutral impressions.

PS: the second image is too small to read, if I zoom in the text blurs away.

haha, I love criticism, but you would agree too that criticism from someone who doesn't share your base views is useless. So, that's what I meant from closeminded people who would not venture out for the unknown. If all we knew now is all we could ever know (the closeminded person's view of the world), then there's no purpose of science of philosophy.
And, i only asked the closeminded people to not read it, not everyone. You see, I wouldn't like to be bogged down in progress just because some guy (aristotle, let's say) thought 2000 years back so and so, and so, my thesis couldn't be right, even if I have supported the thesis with fresh evidence. You, on the other hand, are a different case

Now, to tackle to your criticisms!

Hugely contrary to experience. A lot of people very often are attracted to pain because their thoughts just happens to like that direction, be it physical or mental. Faith or clouded judgement are typical ones. The former can be a rejection of the negative value of pain (and doesn't have to carry rewards), the later can be caused by inability to measure pleasures versus pains and therefore one ends up making choices based upon insignificant information.

You aren't seeing things in elemental form.

Here, let me give you an example.

Think of a fictitious demon who does not have any perception of pain and pleasure. Do you think he would ever move from its place? If the sun is too bright, it would not pain him because he has no perception of pain, and if he is hungry, he would not feel the pain, and hence never move from its position.

Only the perception of pain and pleasure would make the person move from one place to other, and hence, only the perception of pain and pleasure can create motivations.

Now, to the other part of your objection

I believe the innate response to pain is flee, unless it is superficially coated with drops of pleasure. I haven't caught your example very well, but let me give you an example of myself. I have been thinking about the masochists among us for a while, and how they can find pleasure in pain. But, on closer review, things become much simpler.

Every act of masochism is somewhat directly or indirectly related to a greater source of pleasure. In the case of sexual masochism (BDSM), you would agree that the source of pleasure (from the act) can in principle override the source of pain. In the case of religious masochism, the act of devotion (from the act) can again in principle override the source of pain. It is not that they are attracted to pain, but they are, as always, attracted to greater sources of pleasure (which unfortunately, also brings a little pain).

It's a crude assumption that humans differentiate between themselves and others. While this is the tendency, this doesn't always, if ever, happen fully, and it doesn't always even happen at all. Natural empathy (as opposed to learned empathy, which is a weaker form) is the prime example of where an individual mistakes him- or herself for another person.

I think you are completely missing the point here.

I was talking about the neurological capacity of individuals (maybe, humans) to differentiate their experiences. So, tell me, can you not always (in the realm of your sanity) differentiate between the past or the future? or between yourself and others? If your answer is yes, that's all I wanted to hear. I have nothing to say about natural or learned empathy. That's just psychological bullshit.

This is not true either, because while it may often tendencate that way, motivation comes from impression, and there are other forms of impressions than just pain and pleasure. Some impressions are "neutral" but can still motivate us. Examples are things like abstract reality and abstract truth, as well as metaphysics. These are usually "nested" however in chains of ideas that might go back to some pain-or-pleasure principle, but even if they went back there, it would not be pain and pleasure which decided the choice to be made, instead the choice is made whatever is the strongest impression. Pleasure is a way to open our hearts, pain a way to shut it, but if we have faith, and it doesn't have to be religious faith, just a faith in general, then we might keep our hearts open even in the face of pain or neutral impressions.

haha, as i said before, you aren't thinking of it elementally. Think of it this way- A proton and an electron comes together and hence, doesn't attract any other charge. Does this mean that proton and electrons seperately would not attract any other charges?

What do you mean by neutral impressions, and to whom is the impression perceived as neutral? is it to you, or the subject? if a subject perceives the impression as neutral, the subject would not be attracted to it or be motivated by it. If it is neutral to you, then hell with you. It doesn't matter, for I have already established in my previous post that happiness is relative and it doesn't matter what you think of an impression, it just can't be always correct in the respect to the subject.

I have also not understood how you could related impression and stuff alike to faith.
What I simply meant by my third argument was the pleasure and pain produces motivations, and when these motivations are attributed (that is... attached to a certain state variable), we call them emotions.

If we are experiencing pain, and we attribute it to future, then we want to escape future and thus, we feel fear.
If we are experiencing pleasure, and we attribute it to others, then we are attracted towards others, and we feel love.
If we are ..... (ans so on)

Of course, my tree doesn't count for all the emotions there are, but if we know exactly the no. of state variables there are, we can then, in principle, find the total no. of emotions that humans can feel, and then also, (in principle) be able to transmute our emotions.

As for the second picture, let me try to post it again now.


I had to compress the image because the forum has certain rules against posting images.

siochi wrote:That's just psychological bullshit.

That was quite harsh. Psychology is a discipline, but empathy isn't merely a concept in the discipline of psychology, it is not even a question of whether it exists. Either you have it, or you don't, and the only way you know what and how it is like, is by asking yourself how you feel about having it.

Natural versus learned is about the difference between those things which comes natural to us and those things that we are pressured towards. For instance, we might feel empathic towards children in Africa experiencing war, but we've not met any of them so that we can form empathic bonds with their real person, hence the empathy becomes, perhaps better than to say "learned" I should say "artificial"/"superficial"/"lacking of naturalness". Even the horrors of those children might not make us as strong as the petty sorrows of our children or our spouses.

siochi wrote:What do you mean by neutral impressions

Impressions that arouses neither pleasure nor pain. Most of the things I do are neither pleasure nor pain. I just happen to do them. For instance some colours are neither pleasurable nor annoying in some situations, typically grey, but some shades of yellow and brown and blue can often be quite neutral as well, they are simply colours, but even so, they can form part of my reasoning surrounding an important decision, like what I want to write about ("it was a grey rainy day") or I want to use it in a metaphor ("grey pubic hair surrounds me") or they can help me come to an understanding which in turn can give me cause for action ("blue is royal colour, therefore it should be a colour for gentlemen"). If you omit the colours in each phrase, what do you have left? Nothing. If it was a rainy day I can't write it was a "red" day or "green" day, and they mean quite different things. Red is not a royal colour either. And who has heard of green pubic hair or whatever it even might mean? No. In each case the specific neutral colour is a condition for me to act from, and therefore it remains a crucial motivation: without it, there's nothing to motivate towards.

siochi wrote:and to whom is the impression perceived as neutral?

Everybody. Including you.

siochi wrote:is it to you, or the subject?

Which subject are you speaking of?

siochi wrote:if a subject perceives the impression as neutral, the subject would not be attracted to it or be motivated by it.

Why not? Unless you've invented circular logic (pleasure is attraction because pleasure is attraction) here then there's nothing which says pleasure must cause attraction and pain cause repulsion. They are just feelings. Nothing physically special or unique about them.

siochi wrote:If it is neutral to you, then hell with you.

Getting hostile?

siochi wrote:It doesn't matter

Doesn't matter? Sure you're not just looking for people to tell you've been a good doggie? I can leave this thread if you feel that I'm contrary to your interests, and you'll not see me pointing out your mistakes anymore, and you don't have to think about their existence.

siochi wrote:for I have already established in my previous post that happiness is relative and it doesn't matter what you think of an impression, it just can't be always correct in the respect to the subject.

But when is it correct then and when is it not? Are you the one to pick and decide that? Btw, we weren't talking about happiness I think, I was of the assumption we were talking about pleasure and pain... ?

Well, maybe I was a bit harsh with psychology, but in my regards, psychology is not a real science. In psychology, all you have are well known effects, but there isn't any explanation for them.

About empathy. It follows from my model of emotions that when an individual moves from his ground state to the variable state of others in the presence of pain, he experiences love. (that is: he is attracted to others.)

Sure, empathy is not the same as love, but it is close enough. As i told you before, the emotions that I listed are very basic emotions. When you input more and more state variables, you get much more and sharper emotions (like envy, jealousy, etc).

Empathy may be learned or may not be, but it doesn't disprove my claim in either sense. All one has to keep in mind is the requirement for the production of the emotion of love. (transitition from state variable to others, and the presence of pleasure).

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Always perceived grey as being a neutral color...







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Apparently, Fifty Shades of Grey is rather exciting.






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Bill Wiltrack wrote:.





Always perceived grey as being a neutral color...







.......................................................................




Apparently, Fifty Shades of Grey is rather exciting.






.

haha

well, things can be neutral in the essence that they are a mixture of two opposites. But, when you look at them elementally, you would find that they too are made of extremes.

The most striking thing about human emotions, is that people pre-calculate how they will feel about something prior to doing it. Then the will avoid things in order to avoid the emotions from happening.

You never see animals do this. You don't see animals "scheduling" their emotional reactions in this way.