Are they a function of body, mind or soul? Are they their own category of being? Are they illusions that are simpyl meant to be overcome?

:p

i believe they are a part of the "soul", if you will

I will.

The mind. Soul is mearly energy to me and any action that would make me feel otherwise is only it overcoming my senses to the point that I would be thinking of it as a seperate power.

Care to explain that in greater depth?

Me?In depth? Ok I`ll try:

The soul is the life energy in side of all living things but is not (for the most part) controlable.When an emotion gets to the point that it is all-consuming(loss of control) it can appear that a force outside of our control is causing it. Some people over romantise the emotions they get and would remark that they are power outside of human understanding, that they are on another plane of existance in this case spirtual.

Ah.

I think they're an combination of memory and chemicals released because of those memories.

well it all starts in the brain...something triggers certain chemicals and they start the synapses all firing and then the brain reacts and starts sending the appropriate signals to the various body parts that are needed...and then the body jumps in...so I agree with Redmeat...it's not a soul's function...

If the soul had anything to do with it then a lobotomy must remove the soul?!?!

A frontal Lobotomy (Which seperates the memory part of the brain from the hypothalmus) or any surgery on the hypothalmus (to remove a tumor etc.) removes all emotions.

reminds me of the classic psychological example of that guy who was railroading and got a steel rod slammed through his head...clean through...he lived a long and well not a happy life because he lost all emotional control...I once posted something about emotions...

What about emotions being a function of the soul, but being passed to the mind as soon as it became capable of them.

To answer this I was forced to put a hiearchy in the offered options. Here is what I came up with:

Soul
|
Mind
|
Body

At the very top, the part of us that is our essence, the part that percieves, and processes all the experiences the mind offers. It is our concious and subconcious mind, all that goes beyond the more neurochemical processes in the mind.
Below, the mind. Here, all commands to the body are issued, and all messages (sensory input: Sight, touch, hearing ect) are recieved. They are converted into a means the soul can interpret.
At the bottom, the body. This is all the cold flesh, without any advanced senses. Compare this layer to the frogleg you gave a jolt, in biology classes. Does a frogleg still feel? No, and still, it's motoric functions remain intact...

Now, where to put the Emotions. First, we need to define emotions.
Are they impulses, commands sent to the body? No...
Are they sensory input? Something you hear, or touch? No...
They will not fit in the body layer. Then the mind...
Are they chemical processes? Partly...
Are they neurological processes? Partly...
The mind reacts on certain sensory input differently. Often creating it's own extra sensory input... Simulating feelings that are not caused by external effects on the body. Emotions are one of these, I think. As certain forms of input mingle, the mind tries to order them, to categorise the current mix... An emotion is the category it falls under. Such would make emotions a function of the mind...

As for the soul... Would it be put there, then emotions would not have a direct, measurable effect in the brain. They would be thoughts, like any other. Yet the process of thinking and the process of feeling is different. Therefor, I must put it in the mind...



... and yes, I know I try and think of humans as advanced computers too much. Sue me :p ...

AAaaawwwwWWW....

Aeternus, you so pwetty.

Can't help it, alas. I was born that way...

i think emotions are a product of both the mind (thoughts) and the body (chemicals released in response to thoughts) (though the fact that the chemicals are released as a result of the thoughts could mean that they are only a product of the mind....hmmmm), as i'm not sure i believe in the concept of a soul. a body has a certain, fluctuating, amount of electro-chemical energy, but i'm not entirely convinced that it can be construed as anything as spiritual as a soul. don't get me wrong, i would love to be able to believe in a soul because it would mean that we are more than just the sum of our bodily parts, but i'm just not sure i can, but i do like to think it's a possibility.

Emotions?
They are our driving force...what gets us up in the morning.
Even our sorrows drives is to keep us going.
I believe that they are all in our minds, and that we act upon 'mass hysteria' when it comes to emotions...

If we hear a joke, we laugh...and are happy.
If we see someone die, we cry...and are sad.
Because THAT IS HOW WE ARE SUPPOSED TO ACT.

This may seem a little bleak, but I got pissed with a friend one night 9you know how it is..!), and we started talking about it...and this was the best explanation we could come up with.
And I think it's the right one.

...But Love...(get out the romantic violins :p)...I believe, is this interaction between two souls... and if you've ever felt it, you know that you get a "funny feeling" inside...
And you'll also know that you feel giddy and happy and confused and sad and worried and.... and I think that since we get that "funny feeling" inside, we trully don't know how to act...

Anyway, that's just my way of thinking, I guess...

i think that emotions are a function of the body and the mind.

by the way an imu is not an emotion. <~~~full of cutiness thingy

Why can't the mind, body, and soul work together to create emotions? Obviously, anyone who's seen the Water Boy knows that instinctive agressive and angry emotions come from the medula oblangata... so the body counts as a creator of emotions. But the mind gets imprinted with ways to react to things... we learned other emotions besides pleasure and pain from our instinctive states when we were children from those around us... we rose from mere instinct and came to more complex emotions. Yet, what about those feelings when something really touches, when we seem to transcend both body and mind into something else together? Perhaps that could be applied to the theory of the soul.

I always thought emotions were this crazy hyperspace bunnies or moths that lived in an alternate dimensions teasing me with visions of squids as they possessed my body and made me do bad bad things... I swear, officer, it was an ACCIDENT!

*ahem*

yes...

Theory of the soul. Yes just a theory for now.