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There's no such thing as emotions!


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binary suns

think about it :o there are no such thing as an emotion, they do not happen at all! 

 

there are feelings sure, sensations in our bodies. and thoughts of course also, even if it is only an intuitive thought, something abstract without full form, an itching idea at the tip of our subconscious ready to become a more distinct thought. even then it is still just thought!

 

and sure I guess you could say there are moods, but those are more or less just a certain section of our life which we attribute pattern too, it isn't really an actual thing but just a claim that a pattern is there. TBH, I don't think that really counts as existing either! but moods certainly have their use in naming them. Strategically planning our week around high and low moods. 

 

and so what is an emotion? it is just a feeling [sensation] and a thought that we group together as if their association is an imperative. We name it as if it is necessarily true, but the joke is on us, because it only exists at all because we name it! 

 

emotions are nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy :o

 

 

 

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I think you have that backwards. An emotion is a physical response that can be empirically measured through things like blood flow and brain scan. Anger activates the the same part of the brain for all humans. Feelings are your personal and social reactions to emotion which completely very from person to person. Something sad could happen to two people, one person may take that emotion and feel sad but another person would take that emotion and feel comfort. Both experienced the same brain activation for the emotion sadness but each person had different feelings about it.

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ChillaKilla
47 minutes ago, Meow. said:

because it only exists at all because we name it! 

What proof of this do you have?

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ChillaKilla

This just makes absolutely no sense

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1 hour ago, Mistake Maya said:

Humans don't even exist anyway

It's true. One of the most renowned philosophers once posed the thought-provoking question: "How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real"?. It changed the entire philosophical landscape, really.

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I have emotions, I have feelings, I exist. I admit that, sometimes, I wish I did not have emotions (especially when I was a kid and kept getting left out of things by other people), but emotions are actually a defining characteristic of life in general.

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binary suns
2 hours ago, aeimquy159 said:

I think you have that backwards. An emotion is a physical response that can be empirically measured through things like blood flow and brain scan. Anger activates the the same part of the brain for all humans. Feelings are your personal and social reactions to emotion which completely very from person to person. Something sad could happen to two people, one person may take that emotion and feel sad but another person would take that emotion and feel comfort. Both experienced the same brain activation for the emotion sadness but each person had different feelings about it.

the same argument applies regardless of name. 

 

Ps. also, one would say they feel emotions, but they would not say they are emoting feelings.oh wait that does work - just - I think it is clear - feeling is experiencing, and emotion is to project purposeful. to create an image of. 

 

pps. yes I am basically saying that an image is not real. like how colors are not actually existent - color receptors are there in our eyes, and there is light which travels quickly around. those are real. but the colors? the image? that is nothing but patterns of how the light has manifested.. they only "exist" because we percieve them, as a mirage they are, think of a rainbow. it is not actually there - if you move, so does it. it is some illusion that comes about, but not an actual thing. This I am saying is what an "emotion" is - we may percieve it, but it does not actually exist, it is not actually there. if we change our perspective, so will it. it is not set in stone, it is not "True" in any way. we assume that the light and the receptors are "true" but if they are true - the image certainly is not! in the same way the sensations and the thoughts - if true - do not include emotions, an illusion, emotions are false, inherently, as the rainbow is false. 

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binary suns
48 minutes ago, Nai said:

Ehh, I tend to believe that if it has an impact on me, then it exists.

the thing is that they do not have an impact on you. you behave certain ways and then retroactively name the patterns. the patterns could be for any reason, but we all insist that we know them, name them, and then continue to reinforce the pattern because we've identified it. 

 

"emotions" or however you want to name it - is circular logic. it is false, and what is real is certainly not emotions. Emotions or however you name it is some name and concept we create to explain a memory we have of events. but what is the event? it is physical sensations, and thoughts. there is nothing else. anything else is just an idea we create to somehow link those things. and like I've mentioned a few times, to then continue reinforcing our belief thereof. 

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binary suns
1 hour ago, ChillaKilla said:

What proof of this do you have?

a distict lack of proof of the opposing hypothesis. I have done many tests to pay attention to my "emotions" and discovered that a large majority of them is physical weakness due to holding stress in my body, combined with thoughts which I've listened to as if they are true, only to later, through hard work, discover that those thoughts are just thoughts and nothing more. (edit: it is true that some of the sensations are not weakness but instead various sensations that seem to result from events, or various physical manners of tiredness which affects my mental performance, but even those are clearly not anything more than a responsive sensation to external and internal events. this is what I call "feelings" and I claim that there is nothing deeper to what I call "emotions" beyond these sensations, and/or thoughts. nothing else is there.) 

 

sure maybe all the testing I've done is only applicable to my own self, but then, why would I make a thread except to see how others' testing could go for their self? 

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6 minutes ago, Meow. said:

the same argument applies regardless of name. 

No it doesn't, feelings and emotions are two distinct and separate things. Emotions do exist, they are empirically measurable and repeatable across the species, science has shown that. Your stance amounts to saying that hands only exist because we named them but we can prove them through science. Emotions are just as real as your hand and equally provable. Now if you mean this the be philosophical conversation then it's opinion. 

 

My question to you is that if emotions only exist because we named them then were there emotions before humans invented spoken then written language? If there were no emotions then what did humans experience? Since emotions are biological was there a biological change that allowed us to feel emotion when we invented the language to name emotions?

 

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I can't eat pop corn to this.

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4 hours ago, ChillaKilla said:

This just makes absolutely no sense

I love how you tried and then just gave up :P

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Backwards indeed! Teags, by that logic there wouldn't be gravity. It just exists because there's a word for it! There wouldn't be diseases, there wouldn't be any problems at all.

 

All those terms are precisely made to describe something that is already there. It existed before we had a word for it. That's why we needed a word for it. If it hadn't existed, we wouldn't have needed a word for it.

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binary suns
2 hours ago, aeimquy159 said:

No it doesn't, feelings and emotions are two distinct and separate things. Emotions do exist, they are empirically measurable and repeatable across the species, science has shown that. Your stance amounts to saying that hands only exist because we named them but we can prove them through science. Emotions are just as real as your hand and equally provable. Now if you mean this the be philosophical conversation then it's opinion. 

 

My question to you is that if emotions only exist because we named them then were there emotions before humans invented spoken then written language? If there were no emotions then what did humans experience? Since emotions are biological was there a biological change that allowed us to feel emotion when we invented the language to name emotions?

 

what is science? 

why do you think that I claim hands don't exist? 

I do not follow what you say in these regards. they seem quite off-topic to me. 

 

"naming" does not require language, no. Animals recognize family without language. this is what I am meaning, I am sorry if by saying naming I was misleading... really the naming is not the subject matter I am presenting. Names are very useful tools for communication. 

 

I find that you already consider emotions and feelings to be one and the same. so perhaps you already understand what I'm presenting, and we just need to clarify. But what exactly occurs when we have an emotion? There are physiological experiences, some of which are strongly perceivable as sensation, others of which are more minute. And there are thoughts and events which we associate with those physiological activities. And In that association of the physical and the thoughts, we... conceive of a pattern, and identify that pattern in some way. whether that identification is with language, intuition, or similar technique, and then we start to worry about how we always feel this way, or some similar response thereof. in this way, we then reinforce this identification. 

I am claiming that making that identification is false. The physiological activity is a natural part of our bodies functions, and the thoughts are a natural part of our consciousness. It does occur that our consciousness takes not of physical sensations and attempts to track patterns, but there is only logic or intuition in that regard - no such thing as an emotion, except our logical or intuitive claim that it is there. And anything which we have to claim the emotion is there at all - is either a physical sensation, or it is a logical or intuitive thought. Perhaps it is fair to claim that an emotion is a type of intuition, but I find that to distrat from the reality that it is not anything different at all - it is just our minds associated sensations with thoughts. There is no third thing that is "emotion" 

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ChillaKilla
2 minutes ago, Meow. said:

I find that you already consider emotions and feelings to be one and the same

Teagan, please:

2 hours ago, aeimquy159 said:

feelings and emotions are two distinct and separate thing

 

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ChillaKilla
36 minutes ago, Evren said:

I love how you tried and then just gave up :P

I don't have the patience for this pseudophilosophy

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binary suns
41 minutes ago, Homer said:

 by that logic there wouldn't be gravity

in response to the question "what is gravity" Neil Degrass Tyson "we do not know" 

 

Honestly, for all that we theorize about gravity, it is entirely possible that it isn't something which exists, that there is some other thing that exists which creates the illusion of gravity. It actually is quite possible that gravity doesn't exist. 

 

 

 

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1 minute ago, ChillaKilla said:

I don't have the patience for this pseudophilosophy

I'm with you. Back to AVEN related topics. Thanks for the thought provoking topic Meow :) My brain needed some work this morning.

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binary suns
18 minutes ago, Homer said:

 

All those terms are precisely made to describe something that is already there. It existed before we had a word for it. That's why we needed a word for it. If it hadn't existed, we wouldn't have needed a word for it.

so what is a unicorn? 

what is the difference between big and large? 

why do most languages have many things which just do not translate between them? 

What is the existence of a widget? what is a widget, precisely? 

also, more applicable to the discussion - what is the difference between a meme and a photograph? they are the same thing, an image. and what exactly is the image anyway? it is just a screen that displays its light in a particular pattern. 

 

yes there is reason that we have words. I do not deny the fact that most humans put hard faith in emotions being a real phenomenon. But I challenge that there is such a difference at all - my current hypothesis is that there is actually no such thing as an emotion, or feeling or whichever you want to call it, because all there is are certain manifestations of sensation, and certain types of thoughts, which we categorize. The categorization process is nothing more than its own thought - and not some separate thing. 

 

It is like this - "apple" is not an apple. an apple is never "apple". this is what I claim is true of emotions. well - not quite, because "emotions" (or @aeimquy159's feelings) are just illusion altogether - that somehow in the process of naming our phsyiological sensations, we created a false layer, a "unicorn". it is as if we claimed that with every apple there is also a falpple, and that a falpple is entirely distinct from an apple, and then by doing so we see, eat, taste, and smell a falpple every time we do the same of an apple, and insist that there are two things when there is really only one. 

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binary suns
37 minutes ago, ChillaKilla said:

I don't have the patience for this pseudophilosophy

I am not sure I follow. a pseudoscience or a pseudophilosophy are both, things which are criticized as not meeting a certain standard.

 

this is a forum, and I have treated it as such. What exactly is the standard you expected to see, a fully researched paper? references to multiple sources? I am sorry that while much of my reasoning here is based upon many sources, I did not keep track of them all. 

 

This is something which I am proposing based upon... general study of thought and etc. that I've been doing casually for the past several years. There is no surprise that it is a difficult hypothesis to follow for people who have not done the same studies that I've done - and since I am not a payed researcher, it is kind of silly for you to likewise expect that I have a formal essay to present to you. And yes - so far I have shown an interest in attempting to help people get up to speed with what exactly my hypothesis is. 

 

All I ask is that, generally speaking, posters attempt to give a meaningful and respectful response to my posts. I really do not mind if you do feel like this is not your business you want to deal with and you pass upon it. but if so, then what is the purpose of your mockery? I assume it is mockery, because if it was not you would request that I meet a certain standard, which you have not done :) it's pretty straightforward I think. I am here to talk about a theory. if you don't want to talk about it, then do not. if, however, you do talk about it, as you've done, then please help me in meeting your expectations, rather than leave a hanging comment that has no real meaning :P

 

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binary suns
22 minutes ago, aeimquy159 said:

I'm with you. Back to AVEN related topics. Thanks for the thought provoking topic Meow :) My brain needed some work this morning.

feel free to revisit this idea any time you want to workout your brain :) it is quite a perplexing topic.  Don't take my word for it - they are such short discussion points. Ponder the topic yourself :) 

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binary suns

@everyone

 

perhaps I am confusing people by claiming emotions are not real. 

 

Let us ponder what reality is for a second. Let's claim that a hand is real. There is much evidence that is physically there. 

 

But Then, look at the movie in the theater. The movie is not real! at least not what you think of as the movie. what the movie really is, is the film, and the light dancing on the screen. those two things are real. but we claim that there is also a movie too! but it is not existent at all - there is no thing that is the movie itself. 

 

I claim this phenomenal occurance happens with emotions. emotions are like the movie, with our physiological activities thereof being the film and projector, and our responding thoughts are the screen they play on. In this way, there is no "real" thing that is an emotion - it is just a play of lights, so to speak. it is an illusion, a trick of the mind. This is what I say emotions are.

 

 

 

and the next step of that realization - is to, unlike a movie, see fit to cease "watching" the emotions. they are a distraction and our obsession with emotions causes unnecessary stress. but this step is not the topic at hand - the topic at hand is how emotions are as illusory as a movie is. there is no real thing which is a movie - except the plastic and chemicals which make up the film, the projector, and the lights dancing on the screen. 

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I think I got it now... somehow.

 

You seem to acknowledge that all the ingredients are there -

55 minutes ago, Meow. said:

But Then, look at the movie in the theater. The movie is not real! at least not what you think of as the movie. what the movie really is, is the film, and the light dancing on the screen. those two things are real.

...but you somehow refuse to draw the conclusion that whatever the ingredients sum up to is "real".

 

You acknowledge the existence of flour, sugar, baking powder and water, yet don't agree that cake is real. I honestly don't see the point in that :huh:

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binary suns

I don't really think comparing it to objects is very helpful TBH. really the movie playing on the screen, or the rainbow, or the blueness of the sky, are the useful comparisons. All these things are.... quasi-real phenomenon, and not "real". They appear real. 

 

With the rainbow, it does not affect us very much if we believe that it really is there. same with the blue sky. and TBH, believing that the Movie is really there is actually quite good for us. But emotions? I am saying that emotions are nothing except.. an echo chamber within our own mind... an addiction... when we believe that they really exist, we tend to then be a slave to them. and this is problematic. 

 

for some people this is not so much an issue, they are lucky enough to not fall trap to their emotions. or perhaps they find the consumption of their emotions to be good overall. For them, this is just a funny thought experiment. but for people who find that life is misery... this is one strategy in which they can find escape from it, in various ways. 

 

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ChillaKilla
26 minutes ago, Meow. said:

But emotions? I am saying that emotions are nothing except.. an echo chamber within our own mind...

There is biological evidence that emotions occur. Hormones and chemicals secreted by our brain as a response to stimulus.

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Anthracite_Impreza

I don't even get this, of course emotions exist. What else are the feelings we have supposed to be?

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binary suns
1 hour ago, ChillaKilla said:

There is biological evidence that emotions occur. Hormones and chemicals secreted by our brain as a response to stimulus.

there are quite a number of dinosaurs that used to exist, but when the archaeologists discovered that they had actually arranged the bones incorrectly, those dinosaurs turned out to actually never have existed at all. Or sometimes an excavator sees something shiny and golden and gets excited he's struck it rich! but it turns out it is just fool's gold. Sometimes we go around for years in high school thinking that gravity is g = GM/r2, but then get to College physics and learn that gravity is Actually F = Gm1m2/r2 or perhaps Gμν = 8πG/c4 Tμν. Sometimes we go around thinking that the stars in the sky are all stars, and then later we discover that some of them are planets, some of them constelations, and some of them satellites!

 

Just because we see it and believe it doesn't mean it is true. We have to catch where we believe something out of faith, and when we have investigated the theory and understood it to only be a theory, and opened ourselves to the possibility that there are competing theories to explain the same phenomena. 

 

 

 

this is what I am suggesting -- that emotions are not the most accurate theory to describe what is going on. That "emotions" are not actually what is there - instead it is just biological signs which tend to manifest as sensations. and seperately, thoughts. And sometimes we associate various arrangements of sensations and/or thoughts as "emotion" but that is a false association. well, a self-fulfilling association. it is seeing causation where there is only correlation. well, not even correlation, just coexistence. two things which are happening at the same time.

 

 

 

 

Perhaps, let us discuss the brain structure. there are synapses which fire, and when they fire we have some kind of thought or intuition, some form of consciousness. In fact, this is also the source of sensation. firing synapses. 

 

So, do you know about the brain's plasticity? let me explain how it works. when synapses fire together, their connection gets stronger. synapses with a strong connection tend to fire more often together. 

 

so what then are emotions? it is us training our plastic brain to associate certain sensations and/or thoughts with certain other sensations and/or thoughts. there is no such thing as "emotion" except the phenomena of abusing ourself with a self-fueling cycle of negative sensations and thoughts. this is what emotions really are. there is no such thing as emotions - there are only sensations, AKA physiological events, and thoughts or intuitions, and the association thereof. 

 

The more we feed our anger, the more it becomes "real" to us. the more we run from our negative thoughts and feelings, the more they become difficult to approach. 

 

 

There is no such thing as an "emotion" and let me update what I said before - there is no such thing as "a feeling" either. there is "feeling" a physiological sensations - that is what I meant by feelings. Experiencing a physiological event with sensation of some kind. That experience does exists. But the word "emotions" is referring to more than just that - the idea that there is "more" to it than just a sensation --- And that, emotions (and "our feelings"); that is false. A fantasy, or nightmare. 

 

 

 

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But even if you decide that logic is the only thing that exists. Everyone is going to have a different logic. There is no concrete, absolute logic. I have emotions, and yes they are there because my brain is trained to experience them but that doesn't make them less real. My brain is trained that touching a hot burner will hurt me too. But if I just decide that, that is just a response to stimulus and leave my hand there, then I will still be burned. Emotions are the same thing. They are our brains pain signals, ignoring them or saying they don't exist doesn't make that true.

You could argue that nothing is real, but that doesn't really matter, because you are still stuck here in the nothing. We could be figments of somones imagination, or maybe we are a dream or there really is a planet Earth in a massive physical universe, but it doesn't really matter because we can't change it anyway.

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