Do Feelings Exist? Exploring the Illusion of Emotions

[Nernico]

Are feelings just biochemical-based illusions?

Although we percieve ourselves as having emotions, and those emotional perceptions come from real chemical reactions, and those chemical reactions come from real stimuli, it is still the case that emotions don't "Exist"?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

"Feelings" most definitely exist. They, like the rest of our awareness, are thought to be an emergent property of our brain. Exactly how this works is currently unknown and is called the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness" .

 

[Evo]

This doesn't meet criteria for posting in philosophy, moved to GD.

 

[Pythagorean]

Feelings exist in the same way the weather exists. The weather isn't a particle or an object, it's a phenomena that arises from particular configurations of particles and their interactions.

In the same way, feelings arise from particular energy/matter configurations in your brain. They aren't objects but the phenomena of feeling is a property of sentient matter like you and I.

 

[Hobin]

While feelings will most likely keep existing, it seems equally likely that the definition of what a 'feeling' is, is going to change over the course of time, just as it has done in the past.

 

[256bits]

I guess by analogy, pain, smell, taste do not exist either.

 

[Evo]

While feelings will most likely keep existing, it seems equally likely that the definition of what a 'feeling' is, is going to change over the course of time, just as it has done in the past.

Explain and cite sources please. I have no idea what you mean.

 

[wuliheron]

Are feelings just biochemical-based illusions?

Although we percieve ourselves as having emotions, and those emotional perceptions come from real chemical reactions, and those chemical reactions come from real stimuli, it is still the case that emotions don't "Exist"?

Feelings are not illusions and can literally cripple and kill people without any external stimulation required whatsoever. Newborn infants tend to die from what is called "failure to thrive" if not held and loved. In general, the more intelligent the animal the wider the range of emotions it displays.

Antonio Damasio is a neurologist who has made a career of studying people who have lost the ability to emote. They tend to have extreme difficulty making even the simplest decisions such as whether to get out of bed in the morning or tie their shoes and rely extensively on memories from their past when they still had emotions to decide what to do any situation. The lights are on, but nobody is home adding to the evidence that it is impossible to be a person without ever having emotions.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Feelings are not illusions and can literally cripple and kill people without any external stimulation required whatsoever. Newborn infants tend to die from what is called "failure to thrive" if not held and loved. In general, the more intelligent the animal the wider the range of emotions it displays.

Antonio Damasio is a neurologist who has made a career of studying people who have lost the ability to emote. They tend to have extreme difficulty making even the simplest decisions such as whether to get out of bed in the morning or tie their shoes and rely extensively on memories from their past when they still had emotions to decide what to do any situation. The lights are on, but nobody is home adding to the evidence that it is impossible to be a person without ever having emotions.

On the other hand, consider the paranoid schizophrenic who killed several people because the only way he could explain the fear they induced in him was to suppose they were embodiments of the Devil. We can easily conclude that his emotion was illusory. How do we know all emotions aren't just as illusory?

While the phenomenon of experiencing emotions is real, is there any guarantee the actual emotion felt, and its intensity, is actually objectively appropriate? If so, by what standard?

It is a tenet of Cognitive Therapy that "feelings aren't facts". The strength and character of an emotion is not a gage of its "reality" as we would all agree in the case of the devil-plagued schizophrenic. On the other hand, no one questions the intense fear of the person running from the murderous madman. We reckon them to be in authentic danger.

Between those extremes there are a lot of pockets of gray mud where the appropriateness, the "reality" of an emotion can be seriously debated back and forth.

 

[Hobin]

Explain and cite sources please. I have no idea what you mean.

Perhaps I was a bit unclear. What I meant was that while it seems likely that most people will continue to think of feelings as existing in some way or another, the definition of what exactly a feeling -is- has changed considerably over the years. This should not be surprising, considering the amount of progress we've made in psychology/neurology. Thus, we may find out some more about how the brain works, but this most likely won't make people say feelings don't exist. Rather, the definition of what a feeling is will change.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Name one thing that exists. I hope it's me because my next installment payment on the car is due and I don't want to waste the money if I don't need to.

 

[wuliheron]

On the other hand, consider the paranoid schizophrenic who killed several people because the only way he could explain the fear they induced in him was to suppose they were embodiments of the Devil. We can easily conclude that his emotion was illusory. How do we know all emotions aren't just as illusory?

That doesn't mean his feelings were illusory, it simply means his feelings are wrong or misplaced. There is no reason to assume that our feelings are somehow always right anymore then there is to assume any other knowledge or awareness we might possesses is always right.

While the phenomenon of experiencing emotions is real, is there any guarantee the actual emotion felt, and its intensity, is actually objectively appropriate? If so, by what standard?

It is a tenet of Cognitive Therapy that "feelings aren't facts". The strength and character of an emotion is not a gage of its "reality" as we would all agree in the case of the devil-plagued schizophrenic. On the other hand, no one questions the intense fear of the person running from the murderous madman. We reckon them to be in authentic danger.

Between those extremes there are a lot of pockets of gray mud where the appropriateness, the "reality" of an emotion can be seriously debated back and forth.

I'd suggest that "reality" and "appropriateness" are less important then whether or not our emotions serve useful purposes. For example, there are "miracle babies" that have survived up to 10 days without food and water when trapped by earthquakes. For the first several hours they may cry, but when no one comes to save them they fall asleep and conserve their energy. An adult might feel so anxious they can't sleep making their emotions counter productive for that situation.

 

[Boy@n]

Name one thing that exists. I hope it's me because my next installment payment on the car is due and I don't want to waste the money if I don't need to.

You do. For eveything else, who knows, perhaps you imagine it all up. Or I do.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I think it's important to breakdown the word "feelings" into perception, emotion and thought. All exist but it is more meaningful to talk about whether or not they are illusionary one by one. Perception can clearly be illusionary, much of what we see and remember is just filled in for example.

 

[arildno]

Does "a table" exist?
Or is it mostly empty space, just like everything else?
Or as Marvin put it:
"But even if it matters, does it matter that it matters?"

 

[Deveno]

i find it difficult to discuss things like this. i become unsettlingly uncertain of what it is i know, and even less certain of what you (the abstract all y'all out there) know, and to what extent we can agree on what we have in common.

i know, for example, that my senses lie to me: there is sense-data being recorded by my retina, for example, but that's not what i see (for example, the world is actually up-side down, if i understand the optics of the eye correctly). so there's neurological processing going on that isn't necessarily faithful. we experience a lot of what i call "frog-vision": we only actually focus on a small percentage of the data coming in, and pretty much fabricate the rest.

and then there's the problem, of what a "thought" is. I'm not talking about a series of voltage-gated transmissions along the neural network, I'm talking about the information encoded by the transmissions. where does my own internal dialogue come from? and why is language so effective, when most of what we know about it, is entirely in undefined terms?

i dimly recall first learning to talk. it was as if a box opened, and all this stuff started unpacking itself. there was an intent to communicate, with a full knowledge of what that meant, far before i had the means to do so.

of course, i do not know if the "redness of "red" is quite so red for others, as it is for me. in fact, short of some kind of brain-transplantation, i don't think anyone can. and yet, even in our total ignorance of the actual subjective state of other beings, we still mange to interact, in ways that make it appear as if we understand each other, it's a bit mystifying to me.

of course, the chemical basis of a great many feelings is well-known. certain kinds of organo-phosphate poisonings have been known to trigger irrational rage, and the mood regulating effects of certain neurotransmitters is exploited in a dizzying array of anti-depressant medications. but, yeah, the chemistry doesn't do justice to the glory of love, or the harshness of abject terror, never mind the subtle shadings of "micro-feelings", like the ambivalence i feel about what I'm writing, even as i write it.

what I'm certain of is this: there's something going on besides what we can capture in data. something fluid, subtle, almost impossible to put into words. it's like the black layer they use in 4-color printing, to increase definition: it's not actually a color, and it ought not to make a picture look more "realistic" (RGB values, or magenta/yellow/cyan should take care of that), but it does.

yeah, consciousness is a problem. i seem to have some, but then...well, my brain has lied to me before.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I think it's important to breakdown the word "feelings" into perception, emotion and thought. All exist but it is more meaningful to talk about whether or not they are illusionary one by one. Perception can clearly be illusionary, much of what we see and remember is just filled in for example.

Something has to be defined. It's like everyone's talking about a different inertial frame in a discussion of Relativity.

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. The perception, itself, might be inaccurate, as you said, but what's more likely to get someone in trouble is a distorted thought i.e. "those people are possessed by the devil". If you actually believe a thought like that intense fear and the urge to kill them is actually an appropriate emotional response. What's distorted and inappropriate is the thought. (In the case of a paranoid that thought might be triggered by an hallucinated perception - a disembodied voice telling him the people are possessed.)

Take something less extreme: a person gets a C on a test. If he reacts to that by thinking "I'm an academic failure," the emotions that thought triggers will be very negative. If he reacts by thinking "I'm going to study harder and do better next time," his emotions won't be so bad. If his thought is "Wow! I thought I was going to fail altogether," his emotions will be upbeat. The perception is the same in each case. What's different is the thoughts that follow.

So, it's not the perception that generally matters, but the train of thought the perception engenders, that triggers the emotion. Cognitive Therapy aims itself at the thought and asks "Is this thought realistic?" To the extent it isn't ("I'm an academic failure!") the emotion that follows is an unnecessary illusion. Hence "Feelings aren't facts."

That doesn't mean the experience of that emotion isn't an authentic physiological phenomenon. In that sense, as an experience, they're quite real.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Something has to be defined. It's like everyone's talking about a different inertial frame in a discussion of Relativity.

I like the way it's parsed in Cognitive Therapy...

Very good points I don't have much to add to it except to also point out that some emotive responses are inappropriate due to biological conditions like those seen in hormone imbalances.

 

[I like Serena]

Agreed! I haven't seen "feelings" defined so rigorously before!

 

[Evo]

Feelings. This should end any doubt.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drmQe-Y64O4

 

[MarcoD]

Posting about feelings on a physics forum? Reminds me that famous quote by Einstein:

Gravity cannot be blamed for people falling in love.

 

[Pythagorean]

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.

I don't believe that "any" emotion a person feels is always a reaction to a thought (unless maybe you were to define all unconscious processes in the brain as 'thought'). As far as I can tell, emotion and thought run in parallel and there's no actual clear cause-effect chain.

Sometimes a thought can trigger more intense emotions, but in my not-so-humble opinion, the emotions weren't ever absent.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I don't believe that "any" emotion a person feels is always a reaction to a thought (unless maybe you were to define all unconscious processes in the brain as 'thought'). As far as I can tell, emotion and thought run in parallel and there's no actual clear cause-effect chain.

Sometimes a thought can trigger more intense emotions, but in my not-so-humble opinion, the emotions weren't ever absent.

This is true to some extent, sometimes the emotion comes before any thought seems to be there e.g. fear at thinking something in the dark. But then thoughts themselves can cause/affect emotions e.g. relief and calm from working out that that thing in the dark is your coat.

 

[baywax]

Its often said that solids are an illusion born of our inability to see the space between each molecule that makes up the "solid", on a microscopic level. Yet, the illusion that we have built that represents a solid, is our way of avoiding being hurt or killed by slamming into the solid (which, by our perception, represents a collection of molecules and spaces between them) because, through experience, we have learned that a solid can hurt or kill us.

Similarly, feelings and how we perceive the collection of hormones and electrical activity they are, are warnings and stimulus that help us survive as humans amongst humans. So, a feeling may appear as an inescapable waft of insight and comprehension etc... but, that is an illusion and the truth is that feelings are a wash of hormones and electrical activity in our body that is helping us survive in some way.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I don't believe that "any" emotion a person feels is always a reaction to a thought (unless maybe you were to define all unconscious processes in the brain as 'thought'). As far as I can tell, emotion and thought run in parallel and there's no actual clear cause-effect chain.

It doesn't matter. The point is that any time you focus on the thought, an emotion can be seen to follow from the thought, and the thought (and style of thinking it represents) is what can be changed from distorted to realistic.

I would be surprised, given your interest in matters psychological, if you hadn't run into Cognitive Therapy and its list of the ten common forms of distorted thinking.

 

[wuliheron]

Emotions are no more illusory then having a heart or brain. They are physical parts of me I could not survive without or, at the very least, would be severely handicapped. It is already possible to stick a wire into your brain and give you an orgasm on command or surreptitiously beam low frequency sound waves at you to make you feel anxious for no reason at all. Essentially no different from sticking a wire into a muscle and making it contract. Contrary to some cognitive explanations, it can be a physiological response with no thought required whatsoever.

Our most primitive emotions originate in the most primitive parts of the brain and even animals as simple as bees display emotions. Just try offering bees a diet soda and you'll see just how pissed off and agitated they can become. The super sweet smell drives them nuts, but they quickly realize it has no nutritional value whatsoever. Likewise, the more complex and evolved the animal, the wider range of emotions it can display and elephants will circle their sick and dying for days gently prodding them to rise while crying tears.

This suggests that thought is impossible without emotions and that emotions evolved first. My computer can do endlessly complex logic problems, but it cannot feel emotions and it cannot think. In the case of bees, it has also been shown they have some capacity for thought. In one experiment a card table with flowers on it was moved as the bees slept. When they awoke they went to where the table had been, realized their mistake, and headed straight to its new location. By the third time the table was moved the bees woke up and flew straight to its new location.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Emotions are no more illusory then having a heart or brain. They are physical parts of me I could not survive without or, at the very least, would be severely handicapped. It is already possible to stick a wire into your brain and give you an orgasm on command or surreptitiously beam low frequency sound waves at you to make you feel anxious for no reason at all. Essentially no different from sticking a wire into a muscle and making it contract. Contrary to some cognitive explanations, it can be a physiological response with no thought required whatsoever.

Our most primitive emotions originate in the most primitive parts of the brain and even animals as simple as bees display emotions. Just try offering bees a diet soda and you'll see just how pissed off and agitated they can become. The super sweet smell drives them nuts, but they quickly realize it has no nutritional value whatsoever. Likewise, the more complex and evolved the animal, the wider range of emotions it can display and elephants will circle their sick and dying for days gently prodding them to rise while crying tears.

This suggests that thought is impossible without emotions and that emotions evolved first. My computer can do endlessly complex logic problems, but it cannot feel emotions and it cannot think. In the case of bees, it has also been shown they have some capacity for thought. In one experiment a card table with flowers on it was moved as the bees slept. When they awoke they went to where the table had been, realized their mistake, and headed straight to its new location. By the third time the table was moved the bees woke up and flew straight to its new location.

I had an emotional response to each and every thought you presented here.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Here's a PF demonstration of what I'm talking about: Evo posts a thread entitled "Bye, bye, Evo", which plants the thought that Evo is leaving PF, which thought generates great emotion:

... and I thought evo is leaving pf :uhh:

I thought you were leaving PF when I saw the subject, just as rootX did. Don't ever choose a title like that again for any reason OTHER than your departure from the forums.

Wait this thread has 308 views and 40 replies in 2 hours, that HAS to be some kind of PF record.

That's because everyone thought Evo was leaving or dying or worse!

OMG. If today hasn't been bad enough, I come here for some peace and find this thread. Thanks a lot Evo.

Don't... you... ever... make a thread with that title ever again...

 

[DoggerDan]

My emotions are real to me. That's all that matters.

 

[Pythagorean]

It doesn't matter. The point is that any time you focus on the thought, an emotion can be seen to follow from the thought, and the thought (and style of thinking it represents) is what can be changed from distorted to realistic.

I would be surprised, given your interest in matters psychological, if you hadn't run into Cognitive Therapy and its list of the ten common forms of distorted thinking.

CT in general was not covered in either my abnormal psych or learning and cognition class, but the more popular form of it was.

In the texts, CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is the most common non-drug treatment, but both the text and the teacher declared how controversial CBT was (my teacher likened it to a distraction more than a treatment). So, given my interest in the gap between psychology and neuroscience, I approach controversial psychological subjects from a systems perspective. What you stated seems like a very serial statement about a parallel system. But I will look into these so called 10 forms.

For your interest, in general about CBT:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy#Criticism

 

[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.