Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Lagayascienza]

I don't understand why some people say science doesn't deal with emotion. Qualitative research in all the human sciences has to deal with emotion. It's their bread and butter. Psychology, sociology, history, human ethology, evolutionary ethics, economics, linguistics ... emotion informs them all. For example, linguistics tells us that in all human languages, certain grammatical structures such as the imperative mood are associated with emotions. "Leave that child alone!" is nothing if not emotional. This sort of locution would be meaningless without the emotion that provokes it and which it serves. The emotional component is central to its meaning and purpose. Psychology is used to treat emotional disorders such as OCD, depression... It just wouldn't be possible for the human sciences to ignore emotion and still be science the sort of sciences they purport to be.

[Belindi]

I'm sorry, the signals you describe can be observed, and they might provide useful indications of emotion ... or they might not. Human emotion is mostly recognised and communicated via language — speech and 'body language'. I think it would be very discourteous of me to require you to monitor my penis to see if I am attracted to you. There are many linguistic ways I could communicate this to you that are much more common, and (usually) more acceptable. You seem to be referring to this linguistic recognition yourself, in your final sentence.

Finally, you seem to be looking at emotion in a medical, and not human, context. I think that might be unhelpful...? [Because, after all, emotion is as invisible to medical science as it is to any other branch of science. The presence of emotion can only be inferred, indirectly and remotely, which is next to useless, in scientific terms.]

Yes, I prefer to apply the word 'emotion' to a clinical context because it is so useful for any clinician to use 'feelings' and 'emotions' for separable aspects of experience, and potentially beneficial for the non-clinician to enable them to rationally control unwanted feelings. E.g. feelings of romantic love may not be making one happy in which case it's useful to see that romantic love is sexual desire interpreted according to a cultural norm.

Your view is too remote and detached for me, when we're discussing something that seems to be intimate and personal, whether we use the label "emotions" or "feelings". As this isn't a medical discussion, your perspective, which seems medical/clinical, puzzles me. How is it helpful?

Existence is viewable from the perspective of physical body and also from the perspective of the subject's 'mind'. Your own perspective on existence I find to be too much devoted to subjective experience.
If you care to mention any existence (e.g. the experience of a swan, a grand piano, a corpse, New York, the climate crisis, the experience of a patient with schizophrenia, a hydraulic pump, ) There are also forms of language that apply separately to each. Please note inanimate existences don't experience anything but are perceptible to third parties only.

I am sure it is very useful for you in real life to objectively describe your sick dog to the vet , and also to describe how you feel about about Charlie to your friend down the pub. In the latter case if you seldom seem to emote about anything including Charlie you will appear to your friend at the pub to be emotionally flat. It's true that some people do seem to communicate in terms of feelings while others find that to be somewhat too 'emotional' while another may be rather too reasoning for her own good .

[Gee]

Gee wrote:
"But I did not state that science is about increasing control over people -- that would be a rather stupid thing to say. What I stated is that "the only thing that science studies with regard to emotion is behavior". From understanding motivations, values, and to mental disorders, the study of emotion is all about behavior and how to control unwelcome behavior. If I am wrong, please do explain the other aspects of emotion that science studies."

I forget how to make a quotation box.

Emotions can be studied subjectively as in when you introspect, and hypothetically a neuroscientist can look at your brain's behaviour while you feel an emotion;emotions can be engendered by music, pictures,insults, pornography and so forth.The neuroscientist can compare your reports of what you feel with what is going on in your brain or body proper. Properly speaking, emotions are what is going on in your body and are the result of nerve and endocrine activity. Feelings are emotions that you attribute( via your central nervous system) to incoming or remembered data , and that you can verbalise if you are human or an advanced AI.

What you are talking about here are subjective studies, that relate to behavior, specifically human subjective studies. What I think that spirituality is, is an objective study. Whether one calls it "God", or Oneness, or something else, it is a connection between people and life forms, or life. It is not the subjective feeling and emotion that causes us to feel spiritual, it is the objective feeling. That is why meditation can open us up to life and spirituality, much like a beautiful vista can.

Science studies the objective, but it does not study objective emotion because it insists that emotion is all in our heads. Science is wrong on this point, but I think they are afraid to study emotion objectively because they would in a sense be studying "God", and I think that scares the heck out of them.

Gee

[Sculptor1]

Gee wrote:
"But I did not state that science is about increasing control over people -- that would be a rather stupid thing to say. What I stated is that "the only thing that science studies with regard to emotion is behavior". From understanding motivations, values, and to mental disorders, the study of emotion is all about behavior and how to control unwelcome behavior. If I am wrong, please do explain the other aspects of emotion that science studies."

I forget how to make a quotation box.

Emotions can be studied subjectively as in when you introspect, and hypothetically a neuroscientist can look at your brain's behaviour while you feel an emotion;emotions can be engendered by music, pictures,insults, pornography and so forth.The neuroscientist can compare your reports of what you feel with what is going on in your brain or body proper. Properly speaking, emotions are what is going on in your body and are the result of nerve and endocrine activity. Feelings are emotions that you attribute( via your central nervous system) to incoming or remembered data , and that you can verbalise if you are human or an advanced AI.

What you are talking about here are subjective studies, that relate to behavior, specifically human subjective studies. What I think that spirituality is, is an objective study. Whether one calls it "God", or Oneness, or something else, it is a connection between people and life forms, or life. It is not the subjective feeling and emotion that causes us to feel spiritual, it is the objective feeling. That is why meditation can open us up to life and spirituality, much like a beautiful vista can.

Science studies the objective, but it does not study objective emotion because it insists that emotion is all in our heads. Science is wrong on this point, but I think they are afraid to study emotion objectively because they would in a sense be studying "God", and I think that scares the heck out of them.

Gee

"Science does not study emotion" - did you really want to say that?

Let's pretend for a moment that science dismises emotion as "all inside our heads". What makes you think they are wrong. Where is YOUR evidence?
Fact is that science is the only disipline that does in fact study emotion. Please let us know where else it is studied please. I'd love to see the methodology.

[Lagayascienza]

Gee wrote:

What you are talking about here are subjective studies, that relate to behavior, specifically human subjective studies. What I think that spirituality is, is an objective study. Whether one calls it "God", or Oneness, or something else, it is a connection between people and life forms, or life. It is not the subjective feeling and emotion that causes us to feel spiritual, it is the objective feeling. That is why meditation can open us up to life and spirituality, much like a beautiful vista can.

Science studies the objective, but it does not study objective emotion because it insists that emotion is all in our heads. Science is wrong on this point, but I think they are afraid to study emotion objectively because they would in a sense be studying "God", and I think that scares the heck out of them.

Gee

Gee, it is not clear to me how a "feeling" can be objective. Aren't feelings subjective by definition? You could tell me that you are experiencing a feeling. I would perhaps then have some "objective" evidence that a feeling is being felt by you. Or if you are happy, or sad, I could see by your facial expressions and body language that you are having the subjective feelings of happiness or sadness. Providing they were genuine, your expressions/body language would be objective evidence of you feelings of happiness or sadness. But, even though we can empathize, I cannot actually feel you happiness and sadness, just as I cannot feel your pain when you stub your toe, and you cannot feel my feelings because feelings are subjective. But, again, we can, and do, empathize. However, empathy, too, is about feeling, and so it, too, is subjective.

[Pattern-chaser]

...you seem to be looking at emotion in a medical, and not human, context. I think that might be unhelpful...? [Because, after all, emotion is as invisible to medical science as it is to any other branch of science. The presence of emotion can only be inferred, indirectly and remotely, which is next to useless, in scientific terms.]

Yes, I prefer to apply the word 'emotion' to a clinical context because it is so useful for any clinician to use 'feelings' and 'emotions' for separable aspects of experience, and potentially beneficial for the non-clinician to enable them to rationally control unwanted feelings. E.g. feelings of romantic love may not be making one happy in which case it's useful to see that romantic love is sexual desire interpreted according to a cultural norm.

Your view is too remote and detached for me, when we're discussing something that seems to be intimate and personal, whether we use the label "emotions" or "feelings". As this isn't a medical discussion, your perspective, which seems medical/clinical, puzzles me. How is it helpful?

Existence is viewable from the perspective of physical body and also from the perspective of the subject's 'mind'. Your own perspective on existence I find to be too much devoted to subjective experience.
If you care to mention any existence (e.g. the experience of a swan, a grand piano, a corpse, New York, the climate crisis, the experience of a patient with schizophrenia, a hydraulic pump, ) There are also forms of language that apply separately to each. Please note inanimate existences don't experience anything but are perceptible to third parties only.

I am sure it is very useful for you in real life to objectively describe your sick dog to the vet , and also to describe how you feel about about Charlie to your friend down the pub. In the latter case if you seldom seem to emote about anything including Charlie you will appear to your friend at the pub to be emotionally flat. It's true that some people do seem to communicate in terms of feelings while others find that to be somewhat too 'emotional' while another may be rather too reasoning for her own good .

I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I was offering the 'human' perspective as a challenge to the medical perspective that you offer. I think we both know it isn't like that. Both perspectives are valid and correct (AFAIK), but I wonder if mine could have more use to us here in this topic, maybe? Yes, I also think there is a balance to be found here, and, as you have already offered one view, I sought to offer another complementary perspective, not a correction or a substitution for your view.

I think we have here a similar issue to the difference between being able to detect photonic electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength of around 700 nm, and the human experience of seeing something red. The context of this exchange in this topic is spirituality, and in that context, I wonder if the human experience of emotion is more helpful than a seemingly scientific view?

[LuckyR]

Why the emphasis on atheists? Deists (and pagans and druids for that matter) practice spirituality without religion every day.

[Belindi]

...you seem to be looking at emotion in a medical, and not human, context. I think that might be unhelpful...? [Because, after all, emotion is as invisible to medical science as it is to any other branch of science. The presence of emotion can only be inferred, indirectly and remotely, which is next to useless, in scientific terms.]

Yes, I prefer to apply the word 'emotion' to a clinical context because it is so useful for any clinician to use 'feelings' and 'emotions' for separable aspects of experience, and potentially beneficial for the non-clinician to enable them to rationally control unwanted feelings. E.g. feelings of romantic love may not be making one happy in which case it's useful to see that romantic love is sexual desire interpreted according to a cultural norm.

Your view is too remote and detached for me, when we're discussing something that seems to be intimate and personal, whether we use the label "emotions" or "feelings". As this isn't a medical discussion, your perspective, which seems medical/clinical, puzzles me. How is it helpful?

Existence is viewable from the perspective of physical body and also from the perspective of the subject's 'mind'. Your own perspective on existence I find to be too much devoted to subjective experience.
If you care to mention any existence (e.g. the experience of a swan, a grand piano, a corpse, New York, the climate crisis, the experience of a patient with schizophrenia, a hydraulic pump, ) There are also forms of language that apply separately to each. Please note inanimate existences don't experience anything but are perceptible to third parties only.

I am sure it is very useful for you in real life to objectively describe your sick dog to the vet , and also to describe how you feel about about Charlie to your friend down the pub. In the latter case if you seldom seem to emote about anything including Charlie you will appear to your friend at the pub to be emotionally flat. It's true that some people do seem to communicate in terms of feelings while others find that to be somewhat too 'emotional' while another may be rather too reasoning for her own good .

I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I was offering the 'human' perspective as a challenge to the medical perspective that you offer. I think we both know it isn't like that. Both perspectives are valid and correct (AFAIK), but I wonder if mine could have more use to us here in this topic, maybe? Yes, I also think there is a balance to be found here, and, as you have already offered one view, I sought to offer another complementary perspective, not a correction or a substitution for your view.

I think we have here a similar issue to the difference between being able to detect photonic electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength of around 700 nm, and the human experience of seeing something red. The context of this exchange in this topic is spirituality, and in that context, I wonder if the human experience of emotion is more helpful than a seemingly scientific view?

Emotion which is physiological motivates me to think . Thus when overcome by deep sleep I don't think ; but I still emote and remembered dreams are coloured by feelings as I approach wakeful awareness.This the stage of wakeful awareness when I see the colour red and all manner of slightly disconnected other qualia.

Are you preferring the common usage of 'emotions' as a synonym for 'feelings' perhaps because you choose to include everyone in the conversation? That's not really academic philosophy. I don't think we can do philosophy unless we spend a lot of our time using explicit language.The use of explicit language does not include jokes or poetry so it's also a good thing to intersperse the explicit stuff with the more sociable linguistic register .

True, the title of this conversation is not explicit and a lot of the conversation has been about what is meant by this or that. If I had thought that explicit language was not the proper register I'd not have joined.

[Sy Borg]

Why the emphasis on atheists? Deists (and pagans and druids for that matter) practice spirituality without religion every day.

Does a deist necessarily practice spirituality? A deist might imagine that some intelligence was present from the start but they might not presume as to what that intelligence wants, of if it cares - or still exists. Maybe the intelligence was like the sacrificial Engineer in Prometheus, where his death was required in life's creation.

Or, of course, it could be the Great Programmer, who created this very convincing simulation. Like any game creator who seeks to minimise the code and processing needed to play, the scenes only render when observed. Consider also that there's no aliens; The Makers might only be able to run one planet at a time. And why does our universe have rules?

How may we worship The Great Programmer? No pizza we cook, nor coffee we brew, could ever be enough to satisfy a single taste bud of The Creator. So all we can do is stroke his, her or their ego. When at the mercy of forces too great for you to handle, grovel. That's the time-honoured approach, also commonly seen in nature with social animals. If you grovel enough, mercy may be shown.

There appears to be an element of this in many religions. Be humble. Surrender. Common terms in religions, and also amongst those into meditation, new age and self-help. "Surrender to the void".

It's easy to be humbled by the scale of our planet, yet the Sun comprises 99.8% of the solar system's mass. And consider the unrelatable distances between cosmic objects. No wisdom or dogma is needed - it's just very, very obvious that we are dwarfed by most of the universe.

Yet, we Earth creatures are the most complex and most intelligent things for trillions of kms around (unless geological or plasma systems are being intelligent without our noticing). That's pretty cool.
Thus, we Earthlings may be tiny and vulnerable, but we are also pretty cool. That's religion in a nutshell, before it became political.

[Gee]

What you are talking about here are subjective studies, that relate to behavior, specifically human subjective studies. What I think that spirituality is, is an objective study. Whether one calls it "God", or Oneness, or something else, it is a connection between people and life forms, or life. It is not the subjective feeling and emotion that causes us to feel spiritual, it is the objective feeling. That is why meditation can open us up to life and spirituality, much like a beautiful vista can.

Science studies the objective, but it does not study objective emotion because it insists that emotion is all in our heads. Science is wrong on this point, but I think they are afraid to study emotion objectively because they would in a sense be studying "God", and I think that scares the heck out of them.

Gee

"Science does not study emotion" - did you really want to say that?

Yes. It is probably not a fair assessment, but I am so tired of hearing that science thinks that consciousness comes from the brain and emotion is a by-product of consciousness, that I am a little frustrated. It is more likely that the reverse is true, and consciousness sources from emotion which sources outside of the brain.

Let's pretend for a moment that science dismises emotion as "all inside our heads". What makes you think they are wrong. Where is YOUR evidence?

How about some logic? If all species have survival, or self-preservation instincts, and evolution is even mildly correct, then life evolved from species that do not have "heads" to species that do have "heads". Since instincts work through emotion/feeling, then it was not remotely possible for us to evolve from "headless" species that had no emotion to guide evolution.

Fact is that science is the only disipline that does in fact study emotion. Please let us know where else it is studied please. I'd love to see the methodology.

Actually, religion studies emotion.

Gee

[Gee]

Gee wrote:

What you are talking about here are subjective studies, that relate to behavior, specifically human subjective studies. What I think that spirituality is, is an objective study. Whether one calls it "God", or Oneness, or something else, it is a connection between people and life forms, or life. It is not the subjective feeling and emotion that causes us to feel spiritual, it is the objective feeling. That is why meditation can open us up to life and spirituality, much like a beautiful vista can.

Science studies the objective, but it does not study objective emotion because it insists that emotion is all in our heads. Science is wrong on this point, but I think they are afraid to study emotion objectively because they would in a sense be studying "God", and I think that scares the heck out of them.

Gee

Gee, it is not clear to me how a "feeling" can be objective. Aren't feelings subjective by definition?

We are taught that this is so, but the evidence does not support that idea. Most of the time the objective feeling is subtle, so we don't really notice it or even think about it, but occasionally we notice an "atmosphere" in a place or a "mood" that has no simple and obvious explanation. Spirituality could at times be explained this way. When the feeling is very strong, we can react to it to the point where we become irrational; such as, in the riot mentality where people have been shocked at their own behavior.

We see this behavior in a lot of different species and often refer to it as the "herd" mentality, where emotion dictates the behavior of a large group. There is a lot more going on with emotion than we like to pretend.

Gee

[Lagayascienza]

I am so tired of hearing that science thinks that consciousness comes from the brain

Gee, if consciousness doesn't come from the brain, then where does it from? And how can you tell?

[LuckyR]

Why the emphasis on atheists? Deists (and pagans and druids for that matter) practice spirituality without religion every day.

Does a deist necessarily practice spirituality? A deist might imagine that some intelligence was present from the start but they might not presume as to what that intelligence wants, of if it cares - or still exists. Maybe the intelligence was like the sacrificial Engineer in Prometheus, where his death was required in life's creation.

Or, of course, it could be the Great Programmer, who created this very convincing simulation. Like any game creator who seeks to minimise the code and processing needed to play, the scenes only render when observed. Consider also that there's no aliens; The Makers might only be able to run one planet at a time. And why does our universe have rules?

How may we worship The Great Programmer? No pizza we cook, nor coffee we brew, could ever be enough to satisfy a single taste bud of The Creator. So all we can do is stroke his, her or their ego. When at the mercy of forces too great for you to handle, grovel. That's the time-honoured approach, also commonly seen in nature with social animals. If you grovel enough, mercy may be shown.

There appears to be an element of this in many religions. Be humble. Surrender. Common terms in religions, and also amongst those into meditation, new age and self-help. "Surrender to the void".

It's easy to be humbled by the scale of our planet, yet the Sun comprises 99.8% of the solar system's mass. And consider the unrelatable distances between cosmic objects. No wisdom or dogma is needed - it's just very, very obvious that we are dwarfed by most of the universe.

Yet, we Earth creatures are the most complex and most intelligent things for trillions of kms around (unless geological or plasma systems are being intelligent without our noticing). That's pretty cool.
Thus, we Earthlings may be tiny and vulnerable, but we are also pretty cool. That's religion in a nutshell, before it became political.

Yes, when one drills down, given the 8 billion ways that humans currently look at things there's going to be tremendous variation in beliefs as well as definitions of terms such as "religion" and especially "spirituality". Long story short, you'll see at least one actual example of essentially just about any conceivable belief system.

[Sculptor1]

What you are talking about here are subjective studies, that relate to behavior, specifically human subjective studies. What I think that spirituality is, is an objective study. Whether one calls it "God", or Oneness, or something else, it is a connection between people and life forms, or life. It is not the subjective feeling and emotion that causes us to feel spiritual, it is the objective feeling. That is why meditation can open us up to life and spirituality, much like a beautiful vista can.

Science studies the objective, but it does not study objective emotion because it insists that emotion is all in our heads. Science is wrong on this point, but I think they are afraid to study emotion objectively because they would in a sense be studying "God", and I think that scares the heck out of them.

Gee

"Science does not study emotion" - did you really want to say that?

Yes. It is probably not a fair assessment, but I am so tired of hearing that science thinks that consciousness comes from the brain and emotion is a by-product of consciousness, that I am a little frustrated.

You better learn to live with the truth as you are going to continue to me increasingly frustrated. There is no alternative.

It is more likely that the reverse is true, and consciousness sources from emotion which sources outside of the brain.

Very funny

Let's pretend for a moment that science dismises emotion as "all inside our heads". What makes you think they are wrong. Where is YOUR evidence?

How about some logic?

Logic is not evidence. I asked for evidnece.

If all species have survival, or self-preservation instincts, and evolution is even mildly correct, then life evolved from species that do not have "heads" to species that do have "heads". Since instincts work through emotion/feeling, then it was not remotely possible for us to evolve from "headless" species that had no emotion to guide evolution.

This is not even logical. Evolution shows quite clearly the development of consciousness. Evolution is logicall counter to your thinking.
I find your thinking quite puzzling.
You seem to be saying that because primitive animals were less conscious then consciousness cannot have evolved somatically. This does not make sense.
It's live saying that if fish have no hands then hands cannot evolve.
LOL

Fact is that science is the only disipline that does in fact study emotion. Please let us know where else it is studied please. I'd love to see the methodology.

Actually, religion studies emotion.

Gee

No religion studies nothing at all.
It is a sytem of dogma.

[Pattern-chaser]

Are you preferring the common usage of 'emotions' as a synonym for 'feelings' perhaps because you choose to include everyone in the conversation? That's not really academic philosophy. I don't think we can do philosophy unless we spend a lot of our time using explicit language.The use of explicit language does not include jokes or poetry so it's also a good thing to intersperse the explicit stuff with the more sociable linguistic register .

True, the title of this conversation is not explicit and a lot of the conversation has been about what is meant by this or that. If I had thought that explicit language was not the proper register I'd not have joined.

I'm not objecting to vocabulary, yours or anyone else's. I'm only making one point. Talking about spirituality, or emotion as it is experienced by humans in their real lives, the medical view is too distanced, I think. It may underlie what's going on, but it lies deeply buried, while experience is what we notice, and respond to.

And if we return to spirituality, I think it's fair and reasonable to observe that a medical or scientific perspective is of little use or value. Does spirituality even exist in a medical/scientific perspective? I suspect not.