i love this idea....and sadly, there isn't much philosophy out there pertaining to emotions....or rather, i haven't come across much....

what lil' i did come across, is that emotions are the key to linking our mind to our bodies......which, even in a psychological stand point, tries to prove (i.e. insane psycopaths, etc....most serial killers are emotionless, hence disconnecting the mind from the body).......

but, as for emotions being "learned".....i dunno about that.....but i wouldn't quite call it instinctual either.....

the tricky thing about emotions is that it is something your mind recognizes, yet your body can feel.....there's nothing else like this.....i mean, your mind can think and your body can respond, and your body can feel and your mind can respond, but as for emotions, they do both....your body feels and responds and your mind thinks and responds....

for example, sumtin' sad....say, your girlfriend dumps you....mentally, a plethera of things are happening (memories, good and bad, questioning your love, or yourself, and how you respond is through the feeling your body has; which is, most likely the heart-ache, which in turn triggers a response of perhaps crying).....

but whatz interesting about emotions, is that they can be linked....you can feel two emotions at once.....when you feel sadness, you are liable to feel depression.....or you could also feel anger........your mind can't really have two thoughts at once.....in a manner of speaking, it seems it can.....because the mind is so quick that it can jump from thought to thought, but it really can only think one thing at a time......as does your body.....it can only feel one thing at a time, which ever is more prevalant.....now, someone might say: "well, what about feeling pain as pleasure"......but, its the pain that results in pleasure.....you feel the pain, then you feel the pleasure....but then again, is pleasure an emotion?

anywho, i got kinda off topic......i would conclude emotions as being more metaphysical than physical, though certainly retaining physical properties......where they come from, is a tricky question.....'cuz that in turn asks where any metaphysical essence comes from....the body? or the mind? or both? if you say itz learned, then it comes from the body (i.e. empiricism)....if you say itz instinctual, it comes from the mind....or perhaps still the body (i.e. the brain controlling bodily functions, such as breathing)......

so, i wouldn't necessarily declare emotions simply as feelings, as that would limit them to an actual physical sense (i.e. touch/feel).......and to prove to know we feel is how we've come to prove anything else....using that forever cliched philosophical concept "cogito ergo sum".....

give me more.

Emotions seem to have always had alot of value placed on them. History, in fact, has struggled with where exactly emotions should be placed on the significance scale. Stoics vs. Romantics, Men vs. Women, X vs. Y. In short, regardless of how 'significant' one so chooses to view emotions as, the whole idea of thought and action united contributes to the very essence, indeed, of what seems to make us human--capable of the greatest acts of mercy and the cruelest of injustices. Sponteneity, as it were, is the spice of life, non?

Seems like pharmaceutical companies, however, contribute a wide gamut of emotions to physio-chemical reactions of the brain and blood stream. Even if this were proven to be the case, I believe, given the history of emotions, that it would upset a great many people. Rapes us of our mystery; our individuality, and what else really do we have to call our own?

only if you believe in behaviorism.....but alas, science has yet to prove the location of the mind.......nonetheless, it is so that the mind is altered through physical means.....yet, emotions are the only alterations that doesn't involve actual physical involevment (i.e. ingesting in some form).....take a drug, the mind is altered....meet someone and fall in love, the mind is altered.....

i think the emotions come from the mind and your body reacts... when it reacts it would creat emotions.....

like if you were to see kermit the frog have sex with piggy.... first something in your mind has an alert. it has an alert to be shocked so shocked you shall become shocked. and with your second reaction to kermit the frog having sex with piggy. mind again once becomes alert.... with that kind of a second alert. your mind is gonna tell your body to start laughing. so you come out and start laughing at kermit the frog having sex with piggy...........

and the samething would go with crying and all these other emotions that us humans are to feel......

i'm too tired and not really paying attention. but you got a short brief of an idea on this one.

Emotions stem from both the physical(brain) and the metaphysical(mind). Part of my belief is that the mind can control the brain. I do believe that our minds can control chemical reactions in our brains. What is the mind guided by?.....


BTW Silent Trigger I like your avi....did you do that yourself?

I seem to remember studies that have suggested that babies appear to be born with some emotions but not others. That might indicate that not all emotions are equal. Some may be pre-programmed, as it were, and some may be learnt. It may be that a learnt emotion is no different to one that we were born with, like computer programs installed at different times, or it may be that different emotions actually have different relationships with the mind.


We can then ask what has an effect on our emotions? What we see, hear etc, particularly when put through the filter of what we already know. Chemicals can effect our emotions. Not just drugs, but even the most harmless food. Sleep can affect our emotions. I would class all of those as external influences. We react to the things that happen to us. If it comes from within it comes from memories of things that have happened to us. People are complex reactive beings, in my view.

ooooh, very interesting

Maybe the emotions of a new born are developed in the womb. They are conscious you know.

So you believe emotions are based on totally physical stimulus and physiological construction?

After watching a newborn from birth I have learned something that I have been wondering myself about emotions, weather we pick it up from others after we are born, or are born with them. Now what I don't know, is are they somehow learnt while in the womb as Soulfull said, or is it just natural instinct to get pissed off or frustrated when you don't get what you want, which newborns seem to have down pretty well, as laughing and smiling when they are happy, they certainly did not learn that after they came out.

Newborns cry if they are hungry or uncomfortable (appears instinctual), but they do not smile or laugh until 1 -2 months old; which would indicate that it is a learned emotional response. And then we have to broach the subject that appearance does not necessarily indicate emotion. I suppose it's safe to say emotional response and appearance is learned. But are emotions themselves, instinctual, genetic, learned, metaphysical? Or are all of these factors contributors to complex emotions?

interesting.... I recently read in an article that after 2000 years of trying to understand where "happiness" comes from, that mankind has basically had no progress at all.

Our emotions are a response to something we have experienced, we are subject to something, and we just automatically react to it, I would think its pretty much chemical myself, but as we grow, our EQ increases and we learn more about how to control or express them, but it seems they are just there in some for or another from day one.

"Where does emotion come from? Does emotion come from physiological sources? Or does psychology play a role in the determinism of the expression of emotion? Alone, neither of these disciplines can answer the main question for a single discipline cannot attempt to answer the complexities of Nature's mysteries."

do you go with the NeuroScience belief?:

The seat of emotion in the human brain is referred to as the amygdala(pronounced a-mig-da-la). It is a small mass near the center of the brain shaped something like a chestnut. It is responsible for our'base' emotions. By 'base' emotions I mean fear, excitement, passion,and so on. However, the complexity of our emotions are not well understood. For instance, fear is a general response; heart rateincreses, oxygen consumption increases, beta-endorphines are oftenreleased to reduce fatigue and pain - this is called the 'fight-or-flight' response. The body prepares to run or do battle. This response can be triggered by an arousal, such as a 600 pound angrymeat eating gorilla foaming at the mouth (rabid) charging to attackyou - would probably generate such a response in your body. However, some people experience these symptoms for no apparent reason - wecall that a panic attack, and it is a condition that is generatedfor unknown reasons in the amygdala. We do know, however, that certain traits go along with people who experience panic attacks,or the worse form, general anxiety disorder, which is something likea 6 month long panic attack. These people exhibit a decrease in alpha production in the brain. Alpha waves are medium-slow waves that the brain produces a lot of as you are just falling to sleep.Healthy brains produce a certain amount of alpha waves while youare awake. An uptight brain produces very little. Often, anxietyis treated by 'teaching' a person's brain how to produce alpha waves.This is called biofeedback, or sometimes by other processes such ascranial electrical stimulation, photic driving, or binuaral sound.These other three methods also teach the brain how to produce theright amount of alpha (or other brain wave types). It is interestingto point out that the 'Do-do' bird got its name from sailors who would grab the birds (they were quite large) and kill them withouta struggle, for food, of course. But the Do-do bird had no 'fight-or-flight' response becasue it had no natural predators on the islandswhere it evolved. Thus, the species had no need for using its amygdala in this way and had no fear. Since they had no fear they never ran from the sailors - who ate every last one until the speciesis now extinct...Passion is a basic emotion also seated in the amygdala. Passion isnecessary for reproduction. Our DNA just loves to replicate, thus,the amygdala makes boys chase girls and girls taunt boys so that our DNA can carry on. It is, after all, the DNA that lives forever,merely changing its 'body-coat' every generation.

Most of it seems pretty chemical to me, but I guess we build upon these things as we grow and learn.

i think that itz both really....like i said earlier, i think emotions are what connect our metaphysical attributes (such as the mind) to our physical entities.....i imagine that some may indeed be "chemical" while others are "empirical" and some "metaphysical"

sumtin' i saw on TLC was very interesting (forgive if i said this already), but they took a group of people and had a party, but all the people were hooked up with lil' patches and whatnot so scientists could monitor what happens when people meet, especially with flirtations and the such......turns out, when two people meet and seemingly like each other and flirt and converse, their heart-beats beat in unison, their brain-waves match, and their body tempatures are the same.......

now thatz odd......

I also think that it is both, that sounds like an interesting show you saw, I would have liked to have seen that.

Very interesting, I didn't know that. I wonder if that's what happens when people feel they have a soul mate? I wonder if that's what happens at evangelistic meetings or, in the negative, when mobs attack?

Panic attacks are pretty interesting too. My sister suffers from them and I can often talk her through. It is often a situational response with her, usually in a car. It could be memory based.

I believe the amygdalas messages can be directly influenced by action and metaphysics as well as the little chemical explosions in the brain. Tests have proven that if you laugh when you are not happy the same chemical reactions will occur as if you were happy and therefore you will feel happier(faking it is as good as the real thing?). Music makes people heal faster. Meditation is a conscious changing of the brain waves.

Dontcha jist lurv it.

this isn't really on topic, but i have always wondered where "ourselves" / "perspective" has come from...... are your eye perceiving or your brain?

It's an interesting thought

I have done drugs, and mushrooms alot... your perception changes when on them and in one case I was seeing from an area about at my neck and this still boggles my mind to this day, I could see everything in my peripheral vision but as though it added about 30° in all directions, if that makes sense... i still don't understand the only thing i can think of is that it was my vision with a mix of memory....

if that didn't makes sense.... think about looking strait forward and adding 30° extra to you peripheral vision to the back on both sides and if while looking forward you could also still see strait up maybe even a bit behind you

Like i said, i still don't get it
but is was complete normal vision, like if someone moved in that area i could "see" it still... I dunno i guess it's just sort of one of those visceral type things...