How voluntary are emotions?
There are at least three ways in which emotions can be said to be voluntary:
*How we behave when experiencing them.
*How we experience them internally.
*Which emotions do we experience, and to what degree.
For each of these:
How voluntary or involuntary are they, for you?
How wide a range is their voluntariness expressed in the population?
To what degree can training increase their degree of voluntariness?
*How we behave when experiencing them.
*How we experience them internally.
*Which emotions do we experience, and to what degree.
For each of these:
How voluntary or involuntary are they, for you?
How wide a range is their voluntariness expressed in the population?
To what degree can training increase their degree of voluntariness?
Comments (49)
This is utterly at odds with everyday experience. We can say to ourselves, "I will now think about tomorrow's meeting", and then think about tomorrow's meeting. We generally cannot say "I will now be happy" and be happy.
In order to be free of the tyrannies of this mostly autonomous activity, a different approach is needed.
If you identify with the biology, though, you would be under your own jurisdiction. Self-tyranny is a paradox.
Nonsense. You have no choice in autonomous bodily actions/reactions. Your body doesn't depend on your word games.
I am my body. So what else besides me commits these actions/reactions?
No you are not. If you were, these processes would be under your control. They won't be "autonomous".
Are you not your body? So be it. You can always pretend and say you are not your body, but you will forever be unable to reveal your true self, in any case.
Don't be silly. Come back and talk to me when you are able to demonstrate control over the body's autonomous processes. Until then feel free to live under the delusions and pretend you are the body.
Note: Nobody said anything about any "true self". You seem to be hearing voices of your own prejudice.
Right, you said “the psych”, another phantom you could never reveal or prove even if you wanted to.
Pfft, you need some sort of medication like Advil to cure something as simple as your headache....and the audacity to claim you are the body?!.
See the response above.
Anyone can prove what they are by pointing to themselves. What do you point at when you point to yourself? What do you use to point? What points? In each case it’s the body.
"Jurisdiction of biology" does not seem to be the relevant distinction here
One does not need "distinctions", bookish idiocy, or word play to see obvious facts. The fact being pointed out, emotions are not under your control. They are under the body's control. A very revealnt point to OP.
My hand is under the "jurisdiction of biology" and I have control of it.
You have some degree of control to move it, under ideal circumstances. In fact that's the only control you have over the body, to move your arms and legs, only under ideal conditions. But you do not have the control to heal your hands, if they get infected or afflicted in some way.
And so is my heart rate and.blood pressure, and I have a degree of control.
Yeah right. say that to those that have chronic heart and blood pressure problems. Ask them to exercise "some degree" of control. It's not the same as playing with biofeedback toys.
But then, your post doesn't really state any reasoning or argument, but seems to be a silly strawman attempt to say something, when you know you can't really say anything. Are you saying emotions are voluntary?
Not as much as you might think. We don’t normally say to ourselves “I will now think about tomorrow’s meeting” unless we are sending ourselves a mental memo. Normally , the thought about the meeting pops into our head before we formally ‘decide’ to think about it. We only say we ‘ chose’ to decide after the fact. The thought thinks itself into our head. And this is t the whole story. Thoughts never just occur neutrally. They occur with some attitude. I think about tomorrow’s meeting with trepidation or nervousness , or with excitement. The attitude come over me wrapped up i the thought that comes to me.
As Nietzsche said:
“ As far as the superstitions of the logicians are concerned: I will not stop emphasizing a tiny little fact that these superstitious men are loath to admit: that a thought comes when “it” wants, and not when “I” want. It is, therefore, a falsification of the facts to say that the subject “I” is the condition of the predicate “think.” It thinks”
Your boss barks at you, "think about tomorrows meeting!". You can obey if you choose, because you have at least has a high degree of voluntary control over your thoughts.
Your boss barks, "now be happy!". While you might be so already, you generally cannot choose to obey this command, since emotional state is generally involuntary.
It does, if you weren't so wrapped up in your own variety of idiocy you might see it.
I'll try once more:
You claim:
"Emotions are involuntary since they are under the jurisdiction of biology."
Your argument seems to be:
If X is "under the jurisdiction of biology" (whatever this means), X is involuntary.
Emotions are "under the jurisdiction of biology"
Therefore emotions are involuntary.
I presented three bodily functions, all of which presumably fall under "the jurisdiction of biology":
Motion of the hand: High degree of volitional control.
Blood pressure, or to use a more obvious example, breathing: patrial and limited volitional control
Secretion of the spleen: no volitional control.
Demonstrating that the relationship you propose is false. There is no apparent relation at all between "the jurisdiction of biology" and degree of volition.
BTW I read the post where you
Quoting skyblack
this claim.
:rofl:
If you are so wrapped up in your “X’s” and “Y’s” like the rest of the educated idiots, oblivious to facts (our own bodies and how our emotions function) which even a janitor can tell you, or, lack even the most minimum observation to see the obvious, then I suggest you educate yourself in some basic biology in order to understand “whatever it means”, if interested. In the link I have provided above, you will find I have also provided some resources where you can do so. The resources come from Stanford University which I suppose will appeal to your habit of following authority, and are simple to understand for the wannabe’s. The educator is one the finest. You may then understand why one said “under the jurisdiction of biology”, which once again means, emotions are under the body's control, not yours.
That said. you know what they say about arguing with idiots? “They will beat you down by their experience”. As I have no wish to educate idiots I think I will heed to that wise counsel and get me outta here.
Glad you had that insight about yourself. Always happy to help. Don't hesitate to go over the evidence given to you.
Well played, sir!
Lets answer the main question at hand first.
How voluntary are emotions?
They are 60-70% voluntary.
Now, lets see how it changed within the years.
When the first organism appeared in the ocean, it had no emotions, nor a brain, so lets go a bit ahead in time.
Mammals and other animals started to experience emotions. They felt fear, empathy towards other animals, need to protect their children. These emotions were 99% involuntary.
Next came humans, the creatures nature blessed with the power of intelligence, but this intelligence hadnt grown up to a point where humans could make good use of them. People were still blindly following their emotions. Here, emotions were 50% voluntary.
Now, in the modern era, we have so much advancement in science, that we dont need emotions to make false logic for us.
Emotions told us, that thunder is dangerous, so we should pray to the one who controls thunder.
Science and logic told us, that thunder is dangerous, but a thick coil of copper wire attached to the ground can negate it.
In both these cases, we can clearly see that thunder is being regarded as dangerous correctly, however how humans should react to it is regarded on different basis.
As a result, emotions now are 60-70% voluntary.
I hope I have answered your question, using only facts.
If we follow these statistics, we might refer that in the future, emotions will become 100% voluntary.
If that happens, can a human exhibiting such characteristics be called a human?
Since most people believe an emotionless person to not be regarded a human, would a person who has 100% control over their emotions, who can choose to feel any emotions at any time be regarded as a human?
Since you have been able to attribute something to me that i have never said (not even typed once), a phrase i have never known to use and can be verified in my posting history, it's now clear you/your account has post editing capacitiess in this forum, or had the help of someone that has these editing capacities.
Regarding "well played": Not sure what you are trying to say but yes, one can play along and entertain themselves if they wish. Especially if the other party is so entertainingly obvious and thus easy, like y'all.
except to......bwahaha
If we know about the causes, nature, and more accurate definitions of emotions, perhaps, we could understand emotions better, and answers to the OP could emerge naturally?
Quoting hypericin
CBT, cogntive behavioral therapy, is based on the theory that emotions are the result of cognitve
attributions that we make. To change our emotions , we must change those assessments. But such a change will only be effective if the new assessment more accurately corresponds to our situation than the old assessment . To find this out, we have to test out the new assessment to see if it is valid. happiness and sadness , as opposed to a momentary feeling , are stable moods which reflect the way we are thinking about our situation. So the reason emotion is resistant to change is the same reason that our cognitive assessments are resistant to
change.
So you can choose to think or not think i about tomorrow’s meeting, but you can’t choose your attitude toward the meeting , that is, your assessment of the import and value of the meeting.
But even in saying this much about the choice to think something, we are already presupposing that one is motivated to think a thought. We say that to be voluntary, a thought must come when we want it to come.
But wanting something implies desire, which is an affective process. We want , we need, we desire , we strive , which tells us what to choose. So what we choose is at the mercy of , is controlled and dictated by, what we desire. If your boss says “choose to desire to think about tomorrow’s meeting” , you could no more
comply with this demand that you could choose to be happy on command.
Freud recognized this fact about rationality being at the behest of drives and feelings.
I should also add that the boss telling you to think about tomorrow’s meeting is like him telling you to ignore the pink elephant in the room. The instant he mentions the meeting, you automatically produce an image of the meeting, before you have a chance to resist. This is how language works. The language we share with a community chooses for us every time we interact with others, just as our desires choose for us from below. This doesn’t mean we are completely determined from culture and the body , it just means that these five us our direction and expectations. Voluntary thought doesn’t appear in a vacuum , it is always motivated.
I don't know if it is meaningful to talk about acting voluntarily without a desire or aversion of some kind. If an act fulfills neither I don't think it can be voluntary. But the desires and aversions themselves are emotional, and largely involuntary.
Lets presuppose the desire:
Given a desire to think about X, I can directly think about X.
Given a desire to feel Y, I cannot directly act to satisfy this desire. Instead I have to do things like go to therapy.
Do you acknowledge this difference? How do you account for it?
Thank you DK. Well said, and apology accepted.
Emotions as voluntary? Well, it's like this: I can't choose whom I love but I can choose whom I marry.
:up:
The way I see it , the desire IS the feeling. Why do I say this? Because a mood is always pointing ahead of itself every moment of experience. The mood isn’t just about our current assessment of a situation. It also anticipates ahead and in this way forms our desires. Our happiness is looking to continue and deepen itself. Our grief is looking for relief or escape. So try desire isnt a blind urge. It is a meaning intention that partially shapes what we think. The context of our immediately previous thinking and feeling and desiring predisposes us toward our next thought. We can liken this to the way perception works. 90% of what we see when we look at a thing like a table isnt out there but what is filled in via our expectations. What we expect to see comprises much of what we do see. Let’s say I try to free associate. This would seem to be an exercise in pure voluntarism. But as the psychoanalysis have shown, it reveals much about our desires and expectations.
This seems plainly untrue.
While desire is *a* feeling, and is often closely bound with the feeling of its fulfillment, in the ways you point out, it hardly seems identical with the feeling of its fulfillment.
Yes DK, your arguments are just too devastating, to the point that I had to call in some favors from the moderators to edit your posts, and I can valiantly pretend you didn't crush me with your brilliance.
If this belief makes *you* feel better.. carry on!
You’re right. If desire always fulfills itself, there would be no experience of negative emotions. I should instead say that desire connects us up with new experience that either fulfills or fails to fulfill our desire. There could never be perfect fulfillment because all experience is unique in some respect. But even when experience disappoints us , shocks us, makes us miserable , it is still
framed by our relevant concerns and goals. The parallel here with thinking is that we can try to think what we want to think, but unpleasant thoughts can intrude in spite of our efforts, as is the case with ptsd, depression and anxiety.
Yours truly plays the game at his whim and wish, because his buttons/emotions cannot be pushed (at least not this easily), as can be evidenced. Unlike the buttons of pussy cats and weasels, who fall for the bait each time, from the very first time.
Sorry, you aren't big enough to push his buttons.
This is why I wouldn't says that thinking is *perfectly* voluntary, only that we have substantial voluntary control over it, in a way we lack with our emotions.
Calm down tough guy!
This one is kool as kool-aid. Not sure about you though. From the "emotions" you have displayed, it seems as if you are enjoying being the joke huh. Glad to be of help.
If only you knew what a joke you've been!
Shoo, joke.
Your hands are shaking (seen from the way you are quoting above), central committee sock/stooge. But hey, if that belief helps you feel better, go for it!
I believe they arise from brain states. They are a perceptual dimension no different than the five senses. But what they are perceiving is internal.
Quoting Corvus
Or, we can examine what is phenomenologically right in front of our noses.
What you lack in wit, you more than make up for in incomprehensibility.
Do I control my breathing, or does my body?
What absolute is being aimed at? I deliberately phrased the question "how voluntary are emotions", not "are emotions voluntary".
Breathing is somewhat voluntary. You can exercise control, but within strict limits, and this is not the default state. By default the autonomic system is in control. The body (as distingushed from the brain), does not control breathing, it effectuates it.