emotions are a reaction to certain interpretations in the subconscious mind

thoughts are conscious and above that. slower,

Can we do anything without emotion? We certainly wouldn't feel motivation. So if we would otherwise die without one aspect of the mind, why seperate emotion from thinking as a process? Can't it be argued that all conscious mental process of the brain are thoughts?

Depression/melancholia is an extremely potent demotivator.

On the other hand, manic episodes are characterized by intense mental and, some times, physical activity/exertion.

The knife cuts both ways.

It can cut both ways, but if it doesn't cut at least one way we'd die.

Don't limit your options. It's better to be enraged and get an additional adrenaline boost for your muscles (fight/flight response) than feel nothing and get injured/killed. Asterix' magic potion, Druid Getafix' concoction, may have been adrenaline.

That's exactly my point. Without emotions we die. Sentimentality asides.

That's exactly my point. Without emotions we die. Sentimentality asides. — TiredThinker

Yup.

So than why isn't emotion considered apart of thoughts? We can't actually know the moment a thought starts or is complete and ready for publishing. So who says the two aspects aren't apart of the same thing?

Spock — TiredThinker

I've always been puzzled as to whence the idea that Spock is "without emotion". Just because he isn't a drama queen like Kirk doesn't make him "without emotion".

So than why isn't emotion considered apart of thoughts? — TiredThinker

Perhaps separating the two is an attempt to control one with the help of the other.

When thinking dark thoughts, cheer yourself up in order to think optimistically.
Think optimistically to cheer yourself up when feeling down.

Thoughts come and go but only when we identify with the thought is when we are moved in a motion rather it be a good one or a bad one . They did a study on rats and cocaine and the rats would pull a lever all day long inorder to get a little drop of cocaine water but if they gave the rat a poison that destroys the part of the brain that makes dopamine
The rat would still pull the lever all day long, but if they moved the lever 6" away from the rat the rat wouldn't move at all . In fact it wouldn't even move to go eat it just sat in 1 spot with 0 motivation

Thoughts are cognitive states: believing, doubting, questioning, reasoning, guessing, comparing, etc.
Emotions (e.g. fear, joy, anger, disgust, surprise) are occurring sudden and spontaneous (non-deliberate) bodily/physiological reactions to what happens.
Thoughts can trigger emotions, but there can also be emotionless thoughts.

Thoughts are cognitive states: believing, doubting, questioning, reasoning, guessing, comparing, etc.
Emotions (e.g. fear, joy, anger, disgust, surprise) are occurring sudden and spontaneous (non-deliberate) bodily/physiological reactions to what happens — neomac

Heidegger writes:

“Psychology, after all, has always distinguished between thinking, willing, and feeling. It is not by chance that it will always name feeling in the third, subordinate position.
Feelings are the third class of lived experience. For naturally man is in the first place the rational living being. Initially, and in the first instance, this rational living being thinks and wills.
Feelings are certainly also at hand. Yet are they not merely, as it were, the adornment of our thinking and willing, or something that obfuscates and inhibits these? After all, feelings and attunements constantly change. They have no fixed subsistence, they are that which is most inconstant. They are merely a radiance and shimmer, or else something gloomy, something hovering over emotional events. Attunements-are they not like the utterly fleeting and ungraspable shadows of clouds flitting across the landscape?”

In opposition to these assumptions, Heidegger says:

“…all understanding is essentially related to an affective self-finding which belongs to understanding itself. To be
affectively self-finding is the formal structure of what we call mood, passion, affect, and the like, which are constitutive for all comportment toward beings…”

“moods “are the 'presupposition' for, and 'medium' of thinking and acting. That means as much as to say that they reach more primordially back into our essence, that in them we first meet ourselves-as being-there, as a
Da-sein. Precisely because the essence of attunement consists in its being no mere side-effect, precisely because it leads us back into the grounds of our Dasein, the essence of attunement remains concealed or hidden from us; for this reason we initially grasp the essence of attunement in terms of what confronts us at first, namely the extreme tendencies of attunement, those which
irrupt then disappear. Because we take attunements in terms of their extreme manifestations, they seem to be one set of events among others, and we overlook this peculiar being attuned, the primordial, pervasive attunement of our whole Dasein as such.” (Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics)

@Joshs I'm not sure how you understand Heidegger''s remarks wrt what I wrote. The first observation is that H. is talking about mood, attunements, affective self-finding while I’m talking about emotions. The second observation is that I provided examples of emotions: joy, sadness, anger, fear, surprise. While H., in your quotations, doesn’t give any examples to illustrate what he means by mood, attunements, affective self-finding . Said that, I can concede that emotions can be more or less intense and that sometimes we are not even aware of them. However emotions are actual, non-dispositional phenomena (differently from “mood”, at least to me) and we learn what emotions are based on their most intense and “expressive” manifestations not on the mildest and concealed (indeed some psychological acumen is required to detect mild, inauthentic, or concealed emotions). Besides in our life there might be activities not emotionally triggering like when we are following some daily routine or chore (e.g. cooking or do shopping).

Joshs I'm not sure how you understand Heidegger''s remarks wrt what I wrote. The first observation is that H. is talking about mood, attunements, affective self-finding while I’m talking about emotions. The second observation is that I provided examples of emotions: joy, sadness, anger, fear, surprise. While H., in your quotations, doesn’t give any examples to illustrate what he means by mood, attunements, affective self-finding . — neomac

I cut off the first part of the Heidegger quote:

“Yet people will reply: Who will deny us that? Attunements-joy, contentment, bliss, sadness, melancholy, anger-are, after all, something psychological, or better, psychic; they are emotional states. We can ascertain such states in ourselves and in others. We can even record how long they last, how they rise and fall, the causes which evoke and impede them. Attunements or, as one also says, 'feelings', are events occurring in a subject. Psychology, after all, has always distinguished between thinking, willing, and feeling.”

Besides in our life there might be activities not emotionally triggering like when we are following some daily routine or chore (e.g. cooking or do shopping). — neomac

Heidegger’s point is that what we call emotions are just more intense variations in the affective attunement which grounds and orients all of our thinking. Attunements are never absent , even in the most seemingly neutral state of mind.

@Joshs if we are talking about "emotions" and emotions are considered "more intense variations in the affective attunement" while "Attunements are never absent" then we can still claim that emotions can be absent. The question is if attunements in H.'s terminology correspond or not to emotional dispositions in my terminology .

Emotions ( :smile: :sad: :lol: :rofl: :blush: :angry: :cry: etc.)

Thoughts ( :chin: )

There appears to be a difference and going into the details requires a sincerity to the matter which, at the moment, I lack. Suffice it to say that in addition to a causal relationship between the two, there's a variety to emotion that thought doesn't possess at least with respect to body language/facial expression.

For a philosophy forum, supposedly dedicated to the cerebrum (thought), there are too many emojis appropriate only for to the limbic system (emotion).

Thoughts can trigger emotions, but there can also be emotionless thoughts. — neomac

Good, but incomplete, in that “thought” is the subject in both parts of the proposition. In a discussion of differences, a congruent proposition is needed, in which the other part of the difference is the subject.

@Mww indeed I limited myself to draft some ideas on how I would distinguish thoughts and emotions. Or at least where I would start with. The problem depends also on the vague boundaries of concepts like thoughts and emotions. Do you have any suggestions on how you would make it less incomplete?

I agree thoughts and emotions are different, and I agree with your statement on thoughts. To complete, all that’s needed is an exposition for what emotion is, along the same lines as what thought is. If that can be done, the difference between them is given.

But the onus is on you, as the thread author, to set the stage with a statement similar to the one you gave on thoughts.

@Mww Then as a starter I said that emotions (e.g. fear, joy, anger, disgust, surprise) are occurring sudden and spontaneous (non-deliberate) bodily/physiological reactions (like the facial expressions) to what happens. To complete I would say that emotions require thoughts not the other way around.

To complete I would say that emotions require thoughts not the other way around. — neomac

How would you define feelings like sadness, anxiety, trepidation , uneasiness, concern, satisfaction? Do thoughts require feelings? Do we have feelings all the time? If emotions are more intense versions of feelings, then wouldn’t the underlying processes be the same between feelings in general and emotions in particular?

Thoughts can trigger emotions, but there can also be emotionless thoughts. To complete I would say that emotions require thoughts not the other way around. — neomac

There ya go. Now the parameters are set for the assertion of pros and cons.

@Joshs I would be inclined to consider sadness, anxiety, trepidation , uneasiness, concern, satisfaction as emotions because they can be easily described in accordance to the definition I’ve given, maybe with some caveats though: for example if uneasiness is an expression of embarrassment then it’s an emotion but if it amounts to feeling queasy because I’ve eaten something toxic, then it is not an emotion. Why? Because in the latter case the triggering factor is physiological and doesn’t involve thoughts.

Joshs I would be inclined to consider sadness, anxiety, trepidation , uneasiness, concern, satisfaction as emotions because they can be easily described in accordance to the definition — neomac

Can you see how we could easily parse such ‘emotions’ into subtler and subtler versions of themselves? Isnt it the case that all of our experiences are accompanied
by a feeling tone, an affective attitude, a way in which things matter to us , in which we care about the world? Isnt this caring , mattering, relevance the manifestation of feeling? And is there really any hard and fast separation between the always present feeling tone and ‘emotion’?

Couldn't thought be the logical and orderly pattern of things that are predictable while emotion is always the reaction towards the unpredictable that hasn't yet been fit into the system of expected? Both thought and emotion are reactions? Perhaps the latter seems more spontaneous, but they both rely on external ideas? I would argue all thought are always accompanied by emotion. Stronger emotion makes the thought memorable, weak emotion makes it humdrum. And if it were zero noticeable emotion perhaps subconscious?

@Joshs I can see how we could easily parse such ‘emotions’ into subtler and subtler versions of themselves. This is why I mentioned the psychological acumen necessary to detect certain emotions. Yet the existence of subtler emotions doesn’t logically exclude the possibility of occasional or chronic absence of emotions (if this is harmless or harmful is another matter): for example when we do some daily routine/chore (imagine when you have to fill up a brief questionnaire about general biographical trivia) or when there is no emotion where we would normally expect it (indeed psychologic and fictional literature is plenty of emotionally obtuse characters e.g. think about the main character of “The Stranger” by Camus). Since in this context I’m more interested in the ontological questions than in the phenomenological or the empirical questions about emotions, I am inclined to admit the logical possibility of having thoughts without emotions.
BTW this possibility is also readily compatible with evolutionary and ethological considerations like: 1. emotions have been selected in the broad animal world for their “communicative” function, so their excessive subtlety may play against this ) 2. Emotions are energy consuming since they involve physical and bodily reactions, so there might be an ethological incentive to saving “emotional” energy where it is not needed.

I am inclined to admit the logical possibility of having thoughts without emotions. — neomac

What’s the difference between a feeling (not of physical pain or pleasure) and an emotion? Are they the same ?

I follow enactivist approaches to affect:

“ According to Damasio, background feelings are ever-present, although ordinarily tacit. They serve to structure the everyday ways in which we encounter the world, the basic ways in which we find ourselves in the world “ (Ratcliffe 2002, p.298)
Damasio wrote:”. . . I am postulating another variety of feeling which I suspect preceded the others in evolution. I call it background feeling because it originates in “background” body states rather than in emotional states. It is not the Verdi of grand emotion, nor the Stravinsky of intellectualized emotion but rather a minimalist in tone and beat, the feeling of life itself,
the sense of being.”

@Joshs unfortunately I don’t know enough about the enactivist approach to affect or other mental states, and I’m not sure how to process your quotation.

What I would say about the concept of feeling, is that I find it more vague and general than emotion: for example, sensations (like pain) can be considered feelings as you also suggested. But I would also label emotions, moods and passions as feelings. While emotions are actual mental states, moods and passions are dispositional emotional states. By passion I’m referring to e.g. love and hate, and I understand them as complex emotional dispositions revolving around a subject of interest: e.g. love is someone’s disposition to feel joy when in company of the beloved one, sadness in the protracted absence of the beloved one, anger when someone mistreats the beloved one, or when the beloved one is flirting with someone else etc. While moods are emotional dispositions identifiable independently from any reference to their genesis (but still useful to guide our expectations about other people’s emotional patterns): e.g. the mood of a moody person is an unpredictable emotional disposition, the bad mood can be an occasional disposition to get easily angry, being “in the mood for love” is a disposition to enjoy flirting, romantic occasions and fantasies, being in a “good mood” is a pro-social or auto-affective emotional disposition (don’t get easily angry, enjoy company, don’t feel particularly anxious about something or to do things), etc.

While emotions are actual mental states, moods and passions are dispositional emotional states. By passion I’m referring to e.g. love and hate, and I understand them as complex emotional dispositions revolving around a subject of interest:

the bad mood can be an occasional disposition to get easily angry, being “in the mood for love” is a disposition to enjoy flirting, romantic occasions and fantasies — neomac

Wouldnt a disposition to experience a certain mood or passion have to do with more abstract and longer range categories such as personality traits? For instance, one could say a particular individual has a temper , or is inclined toward depression. But these dispositions are not the actual experience of a mood. So and so many be predisposed to anger, but that doesn’t mean he is presently in an angry mood. Isnt that why we say that we are IN a mood , but we dont say we are in a disposition? If we are in a loving mood, we say we are on cloud nine. But if we say we are in love with someone, I think we mean that when we are with that person we frequently slip into a mood of loving feeling for them. It doesnt mean we are constantly and uninterruptedly in that mood with them.
To be in love is to experience moods of loving feeling , but it implies more than such actual moods. As you say, it is more of a disposition. Moods are something we fall into , get captured by, and snap out of. Dispositions are not.

Don’t we need to be continuously feeling the mood in order to be in it? Sufferers describe being in a depressed mood as having a pervasive orientation which distorts every aspect of their interactions with the world, like Sylvia Plath’s description of depression as like being in a bell jar everywhere she went. The lifting of the depression is the escape from an encompassing, suffocating atmosphere of thinking and feeling, not a mere change in disposition or inclination.
An angry mood is a continuous and incessant brooding over a situation. The hostile thinking is accompanied by angry feeling. The mood lasts as long as the ruminations.

Moods are states we can briefly pop out of. We say that we were in a bad mood but forgot all about it for a few moments when we were distracted by something that snapped us out of our bad state of mind. The distraction temporarily changed our mood.

@Joshs ,

There are 2 hints that I can get from your comments: 1. Moods and passions can be related to personality traits 2. Moods are actual states.
Let me focus on the second point and leave the first point for another occasion. First off, I noticed that in you comments, you do not talk about emotions, but about angry feelings and angry mood, so it’s not clear to me if you distinguish or conflate “angry emotion“, “angry feelings“ and “angry mood“. As I said anger is for me an emotion, and my impression is that your idea of “angry feeling” and “angry mood” simply correspond to my idea of angry emotion (indeed also of emotions we can say they can capture us and some of them are so volatile that can quickly fade away or easy forget). The difference you seem to suggest between emotions and moods sounds more phenomenological than ontological to me: you seem to prefer to talk about “angry mood” when an emotion or “angry feeling” is particularly intense and/or persistent (e.g. “a continuous and incessant brooding over a situation”). Yet you also talk about volatile moods (“Moods are states we can briefly pop out of. We say that we were in a bad mood but forgot all about it for a few moments”) so I’m not sure after all if intensity/persistence are relevant in distinguishing angry emotions, angry feelings and angry moods. And if it is not that then what else?
Anyway, as I said, for me emotions and sensations are actual states, while passions and moods are dispositional states. Emotions are actual states triggered by what actually happens, while moods refer more to emotional patterns in someone’s behavior that guide people’s expectations (expectations may be grounded on actual events but are directed toward possible future events). The example I have in mind is the employee who warns his/her colleague of the employer’s “bad mood” what does the employee mean? That if the colleague runs into his employee he/she can trigger an angry emotional reaction from the boss if doesn’t act enough cautiously. This kind of conditionals render the dispositional nature of moods. That is why the case of “moody” persons is particularly striking since in their case the emotional pattern could mislead our expectations, in other words their emotional dispositions are less or not easily predictable.