Post by mikey117 on Nov 9, 2017 23:12:35 GMT
So, long story short, emotions and feelings are how we predict future events based on our own experience. Emotions(our bodily states) are remembered when we are considering a course of action, which will influence our feelings when that particular context comes up again because in the past we gained pleasure or pain from "the last time" X happened.
Eaiser to explain with an example
Lets go with trees again!
The 1st few times I tried to climb a tree I fell down and got bruised, nothing to serious but I didn't want to try climbing trees for a while afterward, as I would approach a tree with the thought of climbing it I would "feel" apprehension, my inner reflection of my experience with trees(most likely unconsciously) didn't really make me feel all that excited about climbing them...HOWEVER later I had incentive to climb one....as there were nice fresh apples, and I was really hungry which the emotional state of hunger overruled my slight apprehension of climbing trees, so I climbed to the top(it wasn't that big of a tree) then started gathering apples and now if I see a tree, since my LAST experience with trees resulted in me eating some juicy apples(and falling down yet again!), I most likely would hesitate to climb a tree as I would FEEL like its a "bad idea" since I would most likely get hurt. But mabye if there was something on the tree, say apples again, I might do so again. Or not, depends on my mood
Connecting this to another question......
"is there room for free will?"
YEP! the example above actually shows it, as I really could have made either one of two choices, either... 1) try to climb the tree to get apples thus stating my hunger OR 2)find another means of sating my hunger(and other means I did have at the time). Just because I have biological tenancies(say avoiding climbing trees cause im afraid of heights and climbing trees has pretty much guaranteed that I will get hurt) doesn't mean I don't have freedom of choice, I didn't have an instinct to climb said tree to get the apples(actually there were easier ways of going about it), I just wanted to climb said tree to eat apples on the top of it and per chance look like a panda(the mental image was funny to me so I wanted to see if I can pull it off...and note how that had NOTHING to do with survival)
Eaiser to explain with an example
Lets go with trees again!
The 1st few times I tried to climb a tree I fell down and got bruised, nothing to serious but I didn't want to try climbing trees for a while afterward, as I would approach a tree with the thought of climbing it I would "feel" apprehension, my inner reflection of my experience with trees(most likely unconsciously) didn't really make me feel all that excited about climbing them...HOWEVER later I had incentive to climb one....as there were nice fresh apples, and I was really hungry which the emotional state of hunger overruled my slight apprehension of climbing trees, so I climbed to the top(it wasn't that big of a tree) then started gathering apples and now if I see a tree, since my LAST experience with trees resulted in me eating some juicy apples(and falling down yet again!), I most likely would hesitate to climb a tree as I would FEEL like its a "bad idea" since I would most likely get hurt. But mabye if there was something on the tree, say apples again, I might do so again. Or not, depends on my mood
Connecting this to another question......
"is there room for free will?"
YEP! the example above actually shows it, as I really could have made either one of two choices, either... 1) try to climb the tree to get apples thus stating my hunger OR 2)find another means of sating my hunger(and other means I did have at the time). Just because I have biological tenancies(say avoiding climbing trees cause im afraid of heights and climbing trees has pretty much guaranteed that I will get hurt) doesn't mean I don't have freedom of choice, I didn't have an instinct to climb said tree to get the apples(actually there were easier ways of going about it), I just wanted to climb said tree to eat apples on the top of it and per chance look like a panda(the mental image was funny to me so I wanted to see if I can pull it off...and note how that had NOTHING to do with survival)