yeah, i guess you win just by pure persistance. have a great day.

If that's your retort, then I definately did win.
Ministry still rocks though.

the painting (all physical bodies that evoke an emotional response for that matter) tells us nothing. What is interesting is that a sitituation can derive as many varied emotional responses as there are stars in the sky. Relizing this diversity can tell us something about what it is to be human. But as far as understanding emotions - we cant even icolate a trigger (I see a picture of a cat which makes me sad, becuase it reminds me of my cat that died, why was I sad because I liked the cat why did I like that cat ect ect. If we both feel saddness from looking at a painting but the reason for that experince is diffrent we have learned nothing. We do howerver share a more intimate bond, in that the painting evokes the same emotion, the cause is diffrent but the glue that binds us togther is the same. Much like gravity we dont know what emotions actually are but they do bind us togther. In this we have a greater understanding of humanity

Yes, but that is only the dyonisian aspect of the painting (the cat) . . . but I agree, this aspect which triggers an emotional response is linked into one's own experience . . . NEVERTHELESS, if before you saw the painting you felt emotionally happy, then the painting itself was the trigger of your feeling emotionally sad. Granted, why this was tirggered was based on your own experience, but if it weren't for your ability to reason/recognize/interpret/empircally-percieve the painting, you wouldn't have felt sad . . . OR RATHER, not the sadness that is directly linked to your experience (of the cat). Ergo, the painting itself has the ability to trigger an emotional response . . . just like your empirical-experiences (even if it is just looking at a painting, remembering a cat from the past, then feeling the emotion).

Furthermore, what about the apollian aspect of art work? The colors, the strokes? Is it not true that certain tones have pre-destined emotional attributes. Why does blue evoke a sense of sadness while red evokes a sense of anger? If one has had no negative experience with a cat, and sees a painting of a blue cat with a droopy face, would said individual not feel a sense of sadness? Is this not then a direct case of the physiological aspect of a human?

So . . . emotions: what are they really?

The painting triggers a memory which is the incubas for the the emotional response a subtle diffrence but one of improtance. In other words the painting itself does not cause an emotional response. Unless we are talking about apollian, which correct me if Iam wrong, puts no substance in form but in the aspects that make up the form. In the case of the painting what the painting depicts is meaningless only the colors and textures matter. So the cat with a droppy face is not appolian but creates the memory of saddness (human empathy) the fact that is blue may or may not affect the acutness of the emotional response. Now lets say you looked at a blue square and felt sad now were getting somwhere. Emotions are linked to colors but why one step forward for two steps back

Indeed, that much is the appollian, but the form (colors, textures, strokes) is of crucial importance. I was speaking of this with my girlfriend who is an artist and a graphic designer . . . she told me that to envoke a sense of hunger, companies use the color orange (since orange triggers hunger). We then did a home test, where we took markers and colored squares on paper. Now, granted this wasn't very scientific, but we discovered that with warm colors, the squares were "scribbled" (that is, we did them half-assed) but with cold colors, we really colored the shit out of the sqaure. Why?

We also discovered that cold colors seemed to envoke the same feelings, but not the warm. And I got to thinking, is the reason because we scribbled the warm colors, which kind of gave the sqaure a haphazord design . . . hence a picture? Was there a hint of the dyonisian with these sqaures?

But cannot such aspects of the dyonisian cause emotional responses? Or is it the appollian? Take music for example . . . why do fast-paced rhythms make one feel joyous while slow-paced rhythms seem to be rather dreary. This is the appollian aspect of the song, but the notes and tones . . . what's the difference between a fast song that's happy and a fast song that's angry? A slow song that's sad, and one that's pretty? Is this still a trigger for one's memory? I mean, I don't know about you, but when I hear music for the first time, and I grab a feeling/emotion from it, it's not necessarily directed to some memory or prior feeling. Sometimes it is, but not always. And I listen to a lot of music.

Think on that for me would ya . . .

I think we are looking at the begining from the end. We are trying to understand emotions from things that contain multiple aspects of emotion generating responses. A song or a painting is made up of both appollian and dyonsian. To understand them as a trigger for emotion you need to break them out into parts. Perhaps an experiment like this. You have an elivator you scan the peoples body tempatures on the elivator and then when the doors open you play diffrent notes and see how the body tempature changes this should be fairly indictive of the types of emotional responses once you have a base you can begin to modfiy the tones pitches stings of notes ect.

the depth of our abaility to divide both aspects is also an important question. of the senses sight is probably linked the most to cognitve reasoning. perhaps this is why it is so easy for us to deferintiate emotional responses from the form of the object vs the texture color. where as a song this seperation becomes more difficult. I have also often wondered if this impacts are abaility to percive correctly how an animal interects with its enviroment for example a dog has a greater sense of smell its "view" of the world is diffrent.

the answer to cold vs warm and how you and your girlfriend painted them has great signifcance to the conversation (largely because it was involantary) but what it tells us i dont know. I think if someone spent alot of time looking at how kids paint and then doing alot of background analysis some useful information could be ascertained. Do abused kids paint mostly cold colors for example

Resonance.

Oh, and i'll throw this in for the mix. You can induce emotion without any form of stimulus in the surrounding different than an injection of drugs. Say a person who has been hooked up to an IV who cant see that drugs are being put into the IV just to ignore any kind of "but placebo factor" stuff. Adrenaline, steroids, some antibiotics can do whacky stuff to different people. You can chemically induce emotion.

On the other hand you can just think of certain things and induce chemical effects. Thinking of someone you're 'madly' in love with activates the same motivation and reward sections of the brain as chocolate does. And for this counterarguement in the same post as my thoughts to stirr the shit,

"i like chocolate"

Mmmm... chocolate. I think I'm in love.

Athiest means to not believe in God, thus your statement makes no sense. If it were necessary to have something other than Athiesm there wouldn't be any athiests. If the replacement for raw athiesm is something other than God, it's still athiesm if you don't believe in a God.

We do understand what gravity is, it's a property of mass which can be measured and accurately predicted. To most, this is enough, to others it gets deeper into space/time distortions and possibly the existence of gravitons. Einstein had a lot to say on the subject .

Anger also is a comprehensable phenomenon, an evolutionary instinct made intricate by the convoluted modern hemispheres interfering with our basic survival traits. You can see anger in many forms but like all emotions it can be many 'shades' of emotion subsumed under an umberella term....A term decided upon by social convention and categorized by social norms. We percieve sadness and happiness as being clear states of being like being hot or cold but it is the magic of language that simplifies the complex neurological, psychological and physiological into clear cut signs and signifieds.