Do Feelings Exist as Real Entities or Just Neurological Responses?

[Pythagorean]

Oh yes, of course. Our teacher passed out many of tests that patients fill out, and they are used to scored the "10 cognitive distortions". But I wasn't ever presented a list of "10 things". It was more that different disorders had different tests and these qualities were associated with them (one I remember that I don't see in the list I found online is "magical thinking")

But this was presented to me as a clinical tool, not a basis for scientific assertion.

 

[Boy@n]

I like the way it's parsed in Cognitive Therapy. Perception leads to thought which leads to emotion. Any emotion a person feels is actually a reaction to a thought, and the thought may or may not be appropriate to the perception that triggered it.

Seems simple and logical, but it doesn't really agree with me. Feeling emotions is not just mere "reaction to thought", as you put it, but it's more about what we "make out with thoughts".

Well, the more un-consious one is of oneself the truer it is what you mentioned, and vice versa, the more one is aware, the more one can control own emotions and feelings in a way they are not negative and perhaps even harmful to oneself. Positive thinking truly works, but just being positive is not enough, one has to have solid (logical) foundations about it, only then being positive follows naturally and spontaneously, without doing any hard work for it.

Whatever happens in our life, good or bad, it has reasons behind it. Now, if we are unable to accept this as a simple truth, then it's easy to understand how someone can constantly get upset by all sort of things, and claim that responsibility for experiencing the bad is in situation itself or in other people doing.

Feelins and emotions give us motivation to live and survive, to prosper and evolve within. They are surely very important to our existence. Alike discussion goes (t)here: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=549836

 

[zoobyshoe]

Oh yes, of course. Our teacher passed out many of tests that patients fill out, and they are used to scored the "10 cognitive distortions". But I wasn't ever presented a list of "10 things". It was more that different disorders had different tests and these qualities were associated with them (one I remember that I don't see in the list I found online is "magical thinking")

But this was presented to me as a clinical tool, not a basis for scientific assertion.

All I was thinking is that you would have run into it since you're interested in psychology and it's out there in the air, pretty much ubiquitous.

I'd characterize Cognitive Therapy to be a sort of common man's guide to logical thinking. It's like a large, but more or less informal, tree grown from the seed of Occam's Razor:

: a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities

meant to be applied to everyday matters and problems, rather than toward a scientific goal. (Not that Cognitive Therapy ever references Occam's Razor.)

If you're familiar with the list it's pretty easy to see that the crackpots and malcontents who post here and end up banned are people who are extremely prone to the cognitive distortions. In most cases you can tick off all ten items from a mere one of their posts.

The book that's the easiest read is "Feeling Good" by David Burns, M.D. if you ever get the urge to actually look into it. (There are other books with less pop-psychology sounding titles, but I found them to be dry and austere, less readable.) The Burns book was a best seller for years so there's tons of cheap, used copies out there - very little financial risk.

 

[Pythagorean]

I can see how Occam's razor applies (adding things to reality that aren't there) but the's also the other side of that critical point, where we deny things that are right in front of us; where we make theories that ignore and contradict evidence.

EDIT:

what I mean to say, is Occams razor refers to speculating about unfalsifiable things. People can do this while still accepting evidence from observations (though it may require assimilation/accomodation of unfalsifiable ideas, of course). Scientists use Occam's razor on each other all the time in peer-review because most scientists, being human, are prone to adding superfluous things from their secular belief sets (which is why we have peer review, we acknowledge that the sample size of one individual is too small and our own intuition often betrays us).

The more scary kind of crazy in this world is people that ignore and deny direct evidence. A scientist will let you cut the fat with Occam's razor, a crackpot (as defined on physicsforums) will not.

 

[Bob Spencer]

Our existence is sensory.
Feelings are reactions to sensory stimuli.
Emotional absence can be a reaction.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I can see how Occam's razor applies (adding things to reality that aren't there) but the's also the other side of that critical point, where we deny things that are right in front of us; where we make theories that ignore and contradict evidence.

EDIT:

what I mean to say, is Occams razor refers to speculating about unfalsifiable things. People can do this while still accepting evidence from observations (though it may require assimilation/accomodation of unfalsifiable ideas, of course). Scientists use Occam's razor on each other all the time in peer-review because most scientists, being human, are prone to adding superfluous things from their secular belief sets (which is why we have peer review, we acknowledge that the sample size of one individual is too small and our own intuition often betrays us).

The more scary kind of crazy in this world is people that ignore and deny direct evidence. A scientist will let you cut the fat with Occam's razor, a crackpot (as defined on physicsforums) will not.

Yeah, don't scrutinize my comparison to O.R. too closely. The operative similarity is that they're both guidelines for logical thinking.

And the main reason I brought C.T. into the discussion was to demonstrate that emotion can be discussed within a reasonable framework as opposed to everyone taking wild stabs at what it might mean for an emotion to be said to "exist" or be "real".

 

[toky_world]

First we would have to define emotion.We can define it as "emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical (internal) and environmental (external)".

These so called "feelings" are a perception of these emotions. We all living beings experience them at some degree. And display different reactions/behavior to it. We can easily manipulate feelings by interacting with the chemicals in our brain/body, it's almost demoralizing that we are so delicate machines in order to work properly. Any slight unbalance can make you act in such ways that would embarrass you or completely change your personality.

It's interesting.

 

[apeiron]

And the main reason I brought C.T. into the discussion was to demonstrate that emotion can be discussed within a reasonable framework as opposed to everyone taking wild stabs at what it might mean for an emotion to be said to "exist" or be "real".

Another such "reasonable framework" is the orienting response - everything that catches our attention results in a physiological adjustment of the sympathetic/parasympathetic system. So the reasons that feelings feel like something is that the body is responding as a whole. The heart accelerates/decelerates, pupils dilate/contract, etc.

So thoughts can strike feelings (when attended to, we respond with physiological appropriateness so as to be "ready" for what the thought imply). And perceptions also demand some constant adjustment of the state of the body.

The explanation gets more complicated with motivating drives like thirst, hunger, sex. But this is a form of perception and attention too. When our body dries out, this is mapped as a sensation to the brain and so drives a response.

The mapping of internal sensation is hierarchical and complex just as it is with any external sensation. So the hypothalamus might be signalling "thirst" while the orbital prefrontal and cingulate cortex are saying "shut-up", we've got more important things on our mind right now.

So short answer is that emotion/feelings are part of cognition generally. There is a natural need to keep the body in the right mood, the right set-up, to match the demands of the world. This is happening both in a constant fine-grained way (the orienting response) and in a more dramatic, long term fashion (drives and their satisfaction).

On top of this, humans have socially constructed emotions - google Rom Harre as the central figure in that field.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Another such "reasonable framework" is the orienting response - everything that catches our attention results in a physiological adjustment of the sympathetic/parasympathetic system. So the reasons that feelings feel like something is that the body is responding as a whole. The heart accelerates/decelerates, pupils dilate/contract, etc.

So thoughts can strike feelings (when attended to, we respond with physiological appropriateness so as to be "ready" for what the thought imply). And perceptions also demand some constant adjustment of the state of the body.

The explanation gets more complicated with motivating drives like thirst, hunger, sex. But this is a form of perception and attention too. When our body dries out, this is mapped as a sensation to the brain and so drives a response.

The mapping of internal sensation is hierarchical and complex just as it is with any external sensation. So the hypothalamus might be signalling "thirst" while the orbital prefrontal and cingulate cortex are saying "shut-up", we've got more important things on our mind right now.

So short answer is that emotion/feelings are part of cognition generally. There is a natural need to keep the body in the right mood, the right set-up, to match the demands of the world. This is happening both in a constant fine-grained way (the orienting response) and in a more dramatic, long term fashion (drives and their satisfaction).

On top of this, humans have socially constructed emotions - google Rom Harre as the central figure in that field.

I'd never heard of the orienting response. Thanks for bringing it up. I agree, from your digest, it could be a good starting point from which to discuss many aspects of emotion.

More than anything, I now think, the OP needs to rephrase his query. As is, it's insidiously designed to be unanswerable in the terms it was posed.

 

[wuliheron]

Another such "reasonable framework" is the orienting response - everything that catches our attention results in a physiological adjustment of the sympathetic/parasympathetic system. So the reasons that feelings feel like something is that the body is responding as a whole. The heart accelerates/decelerates, pupils dilate/contract, etc.

So thoughts can strike feelings (when attended to, we respond with physiological appropriateness so as to be "ready" for what the thought imply). And perceptions also demand some constant adjustment of the state of the body.

The explanation gets more complicated with motivating drives like thirst, hunger, sex. But this is a form of perception and attention too. When our body dries out, this is mapped as a sensation to the brain and so drives a response.

The mapping of internal sensation is hierarchical and complex just as it is with any external sensation. So the hypothalamus might be signalling "thirst" while the orbital prefrontal and cingulate cortex are saying "shut-up", we've got more important things on our mind right now.

So short answer is that emotion/feelings are part of cognition generally. There is a natural need to keep the body in the right mood, the right set-up, to match the demands of the world. This is happening both in a constant fine-grained way (the orienting response) and in a more dramatic, long term fashion (drives and their satisfaction).

On top of this, humans have socially constructed emotions - google Rom Harre as the central figure in that field.

Or we could simply say they are a category of neurological responses to any stimulation whether it is internal or external. Someone in a vegetative state or with severe brain damage might not be capable of an emotional response, but the rest of us are. People can split semantic hairs all they want about exactly what constitutes an emotion, but the overwhelming evidence that they are a category of well documented neurological responses is more then enough to establish their existence objectively. Whether or not they are "real" or reflect "reality" or "exist" other then as some sort of demonstrable phenomena are metaphysical issues which by definition cannot be proven.