Emotions (aka bringing Dan home)

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

Over at Future Philosophy, Dan wrote:

I don't understand why people talk about ridding themselves of emotion (or not doing so) without first understanding what emotions are and how they arise. It's incoherent to do so.

Do you have any debate with the definition of emotions being feelings that which arise from psychological rather than physical origins?

This brings an interesting examination on if the sorts of feelings that arise from chemical imbalances in the brain from such conditions as clinical depression, bipolar, or PTSD are actually emotions. There is a certain amount of chicken-and-egg to feelings and brain chemistry, and one would naturally be inclined to call depression an emotion whatever the origination was, but based on the above definition, certain kinds of depression would not be emotions.

dictionary.com defines emotion as:

1. an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness.
2. any of the feelings of joy, sorrow, fear, hate, love, etc.
3. any strong agitation of the feelings actuated by experiencing love, hate, fear, etc., and usually accompanied by certain physiological changes, as increased heartbeat or respiration, and often overt manifestation, as crying or shaking.
4. an instance of this.
5. something that causes such a reaction: the powerful emotion of a great symphony.

How would you define "emotion" and how would you describe how they arise? (edit to note that later in this thread, I acknowledge that you did partially answer this already in another thread - but only the surface was touched there)
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[Katy]

All emotions (and in fact everything that takes place in the brain) are caused by brain chemistry. The fact that some people's brains fire wrong and cause depression, PTSD or whatever else doesn't affect that. All things have a cause and in the case of emotions, whether disordered or not, one of those causes is chemicals in the brain.

I know several people who have taken themselves off of drugs for bipolar disorder and continue to do fine. Though it is certainly not the case that every bipolar patient can do this, but it is possible in certain circumstances. There is also an entire field of psychology that's either biofeedback or neurofeedback. A friend of mine uses it to train ADHD kids to not require medications anymore.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

All emotions (and in fact everything that takes place in the brain) are caused by brain chemistry.

So how would you define the difference between an emotion and other brain processes, and what would you say gives rise to emotion?
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[Elizabeth Isabelle]

I've made a definition of emotion, but I have not stated what I think gives rise to emotion.

I would say that some emotions are based on falseness, but other emotions come from the meeting or lack of meeting of needs or perceived needs (either in the self or in a greater scope). Kevin mentioned in a podcast that a millionaire could feel poor, but once he realizes that he is not poor, he has solved his problem. Poverty isn't really an emotion, but a worldly state. Poverty, or the perception thereof, can lead to emotions such as anxiety or sadness - and in Kevin's example, that would be emotions based on falseness. Love could arise from recognition that having another person in one's life is beneficial to them - and so long as that is true, that would be an emotion based on the meeting of a need or perceived need. Fear could be based on recognition that danger is present, and if indeed there is, that would be an emotion based on a lack of the basic real of perceived need of safety. Sadness could arise from seeing the needs of others not get met, such as people getting killed or injured, or living in the pain born of falseness.

Too much emotion can cloud one's judgment (hide the truth from the perceiver), so too much emotion would be a bad thing to anyone who values truth above all else. I do not see the problem with having a moderate amount of emotion, as it can be an ongoing source of motivation (to meet needs or avoid pains), so long as reason plays the higher role in one's life.
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[Elizabeth Isabelle]

In another thread on this forum Dan did start to answer this (and other posters made good and complete responses of their opinions), so to save some repetition, I'll cluster Dan's previous answers:

David, Nat, Kevin, and Dan specifically, as well as anyone else who wants to reply,

What do you think of the accuracy and/or level of insightfulness in this article on the Buddha and love?

I didn't get very far into that article. Compassion and universal love are not emotions. Kevin wrote a very good post to Genius-l years ago. It's probably fitting that I offer it again here:

Agape is Infinite Love, which is fundamentally different in kind to all other forms of love, which are finite in nature.

There a number of different kinds of love which are commonly mistaken for agape, or selfless love:

1. Motherly love.

This kind of love is in fact finite in nature because it is limited to those people the mother feels motherly towards - and these few may exclude those most in need, or most deserving of her love. This kind of love is only selfless in the sense that women generally have not evolved to the stage of having a self - a fact which prevents them from becoming selfless (in the spiritual sense of transcending or growing beyond the self).

2. Poetic or romantic love.

I have in mind the kind of deeply passionate love expressed in some love poems which speak to a relatively profound yearning for something such as the "Woman" principle - a yearning which is relatively constant, or seemingly "infinite". Yet this kind of love is also finite, because it seeks a particular thing, and is directed towards that thing, and necessarily away from all else.

3. Love of those close to one.

Such as loving one's spouse, or friends, or pets, or plants. This kind of attachment, or appreciation, usually happens purely through familiarity. One's environment tends to grow on one, and to interpenetrate one. This kind of love feels infinite because it is all around one, but it too is truly finite, because it does not extend to those things outside of one's immediate environment, and if there is a radical change in one's local environment (such as the death of every person one has ever met) then there is grief.

Agape is different to all those mentioned because it is not directed towards any particular thing. And it is not experienced as joy, as all other loves are, because it comes out of Joy - which is to say that it comes out of an understanding/experience of Reality. Agape is really an understanding - an understanding of all things - and is hence identical to Wisdom and Compassion. It is not a desire, or a need, or a feeling towards some particular thing or concept. It is equal towards literally all things. It doesn't perceive more beauty in one place than in any other. Such a love is exactly the same "towards" one's enemy as it is "towards" one's friend. Both are understood the same, and are experienced the same. It sees life and death as the same. But
it understands all these things for the right reasons. It is a correct understanding.

I'll return to the rest of Elizabeth's post as it requires a rather substantial and substantive response.

Dan Rowden

David,

How can one have purpose without a perception of gain or loss?
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There is only gain or loss where the ego is engaged with one's purpose. One can have purpose without attachment, which is the whole idea, actually. It's only the ego that experiences loss and gain in the flux of things.

Feelings are not automatically products of emotional effect. They are just sensations, forms of awareness. Any understanding can be described as a feeling. "Compassion" as conventionally defined and considered involves emotion and is basically a form of empathy. It's a kind of understanding, but one limited to the ego's interests and experience. This is the key difference between finite and infinite love and finite and infinite compassion - the scope of the understanding; the terms of reference.

The "infinite" form of these things does not issue from self-considerations and therefore doesn't involve emotions, which are of necessity borne of such. They are universal in their application because they possess universality of understanding.

I'm still awaiting the "rather substantial and substantive response." One could be truly happy for another person having succeeded at a worthy goal or having their own needs met, or be disgusted with a group that is spreading falseness. I would consider these to be emotions. They are not of the intensity of someone who may become homicidal because another group is not meeting the tenants of a particular religion, but they are emotions nevertheless.

Also, this remains unanswered (referring to the second to the last Dan quote above):

A purpose necessarily involves a goal. One's ego need not be involved, as one need not take the attainment or non-attainment of the goal personally. I do not see how one can have a purpose without the intent of attaining the goal. The gain does not have to be a personal gain, and one who does not live in a self would recognize that there is nothing to be gained or lost on a fundamental level, but to not desire the accomplishment of the goal would seem to negate the purpose of doing the steps to get there.

If one does not desire the survival of wisdom, one might as well not promote it. Here, there is a perception of the possibility of loss of wisdom.

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[Dan Rowden]

This could be a very intersesting thread, and yes, I have left certain things hanging. I'll reply when I get done with the transcript of the Blackmore podcast. If I stop my momentum with that now I'll never get it finsihed.

[Faust]

It should be important to remember that emotions all first have an original psychological or philosophical reason, then the chemicals act on that. No one gets depressed for no reason. For example, a truly successful and fulfilled person in life whatever that is (dreams, wisdom, enlightenment) will not feel any problematic depression.Or, they may suffer depression from too much wisdom and the recognization of their attachments. Either way, all depression and emotions has some cause, it's not just a "chemical" thing that happens randomly.

[Elizabeth Isabelle]

No one gets depressed for no reason.

Well, causality would forbid that...

For example, a truly successful and fulfilled person in life whatever that is (dreams, wisdom, enlightenment) will not feel any problematic depression.

I dispute that. There are many cases of people who will even say "Everything's going great in my life - so why am I so depressed?"

One might see that the more successful people don't suffer from depression, but much of that relates to if a person has depression, their performance suffers, and they are less likely to become successful.

Or, they may suffer depression from too much wisdom and the recognization of their attachments.

I don't think too much wisdom would cause depression. If anything, insufficient wisdom would cause depression. A wise person would know how to be happy.

Either way, all depression and emotions has some cause, it's not just a "chemical" thing that happens randomly.

For myself, a few times a depression hit when nothing was wrong at all. I even started recognizing a warning signal (which I didn't get with this last one) of despite things going well, or even everything looking promising for even more improvement, having say, an overwhelming urge to stab myself in the neck (that's not where I'd stab myself if I were to kill myself) or shoot myself in the head (if I were to commit suicide by gun, which I would not do because it would be rude to people fighting for more gun rights for people, but anyway, shooting in the head is not the most effective place to aim for suicide), and these urges would not be accompanied by any emotion at all, and my thought in response to it was "that was weird." Once I recognized that as a warning sign because a bad depression would follow a month later, I'd know it was time to go back on antidepressants. Although the condition itself was caused by growing up in hell and made worse by some hellish situations as an adult, the exacerbations themselves don't necessarily have a psychological cause. It would be nice to know what physiologically triggers it ( air quality triggering my asthma? a germ, kind of like a cold or flu?) especially if there was something I could do to prevent it, but having everything going well does not guarantee no depression.
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[Dan Rowden]

Faust,

You need to consider the difference between situational and clinical depression. It's a slightly complex issue but one can actually be "depressed", clinically, without feeling "sad" as we normally understand it.

I'll expand on that when I deal with the broader issue of the thread.

[Katy]

Kind of an aside - but I don't think emotions are purely mental, either. According to Malcom Gladwell, smiling can actually make you happy rather than smiling because you are happy. People instructed to sit and smile actually rate themselves as happier at the end of the time period.

Myself, I have bad allergies and in the springtime if I go to the lake, I have to constantly be putting drops in my eyes. I noticed this spring that I could be in a perfectly good mood - having a great time; then I put the drops in my eyes. At which point, the excess ran down my cheeks in the manner tears would if I were crying. I suddenly felt quite depressed for several moments, until I realized what had just happened consciously. Then I got a good laugh at my own expense :)

[Jamesh]

You need to consider the difference between situational and clinical depression. It's a slightly complex issue but one can actually be "depressed", clinically, without feeling "sad" as we normally understand it.

I'll expand on that when I deal with the broader issue of the thread.

Please do. I can't work out whether I'm mildly clinically depressed or not. I'm nihilistic so I have to be kind of clinically depressed but I'm not sure if I'm really actually situationally depressed.

I think I have both, but each tones down the other, so my depression never really becomes deep. If I become emotionally depressed, which in my case I think has a lot to do with not caring for my body, then I can turn to nihilism and say "what the fuck there is no true meaning in anything anyway so ignore these negative emotions", whereas the nihilistic side of me strongly desires pleasant emotions, as these seem like the only true benefit of living, which when not forthcoming leads to emotional suffering.

[Jamesh]

In terms of bodily sicknesses, I'm wondering where folks would draw the average causal % between

A) sicknesses of the body cause the mind to become emotionally ill.

B) Sufferings of the mind cause the body to become physically ill.

I lean towards the later being a stronger influence. People who have a consistently pleasant time rarely get continous ailments (other than accidents), while people who are suffering mentally will develop all kinds of bodily sicknesses. It is almost like humans have an inbuilt unconscious suicide mechanism. As such people are often a disadavantage to the wellbeing of the herd, perhaps evolution has resulted in a "loose" suicide mechanism that aids the whole herd by making the least emotionally fit, self-destruct, and thus become least capable of being the fittest for survival. It would just take a hormone in the brain - which would be why anti-depressants often work [anti-depressants take no notice of the content of one's thoughts].

The thing is low to medium levels of suffering are a major advantage to prompt further evolution of the herd. Only by suffering will members of the herd be forced to adapt. Suffer to much though and they begin to become ill and die. In past times when food was scarce, it would have been an advantage for some of the herd to die off. Where suffering occurs for long periods and the hormone is consistently being produced, and the person cannot find a way to adapt so as to alleviate the suffering, such as what occurs with depression, then this hormone may begin to instruct the body to decay, so as to try and kill off this non-beneficial member of the herd, allowing more resources to go to the rest of the herd.