Is it possible to experience more emotions?

Quoting Fruitless

Every single person on this earth has the capacity to feel as much as the next.

How do we know this? It doesn't fit my experience that this is the case.

Where you say 'more emotions' do you mean like types of emotions? Like seeing ultraviolet when before we could not and just could see up to violet? Or do you mean more strongly?

I think we can learn to suppress and experience our emotions more. And if there are particular emotions we have felt we should not feel, start allowing them to be felt and expressed.

Reply to Coben When you asked me how do we know that every single person has the capacity to feel as much as the next, I'm referring to the biological processes of the brain.

And referring to your last sentence, does that then mean the amount of intelligence that someone possesses determine their scope or range of emotions?

Quoting Fruitless

Every single person on this earth has the capacity to feel as much as the next. Everyone on this earth may or may not have the same brain. I like to assume we all have the same brain just each has different thinking processes from their environment. But aren't we all physically wired to feel to a certain extent?

I don’t think we can assume that everyone has the same brain beyond the most basic structure - particularly since the majority of our brain’s processes (not just thinking processes) are refined by experiences - including biochemical influences prior to birth. I think there are many experiences in life that affect what and how much we feel, but I also think the brain is more malleable than we give it credit for. I think we have much more capacity to be aware of and experience feelings, without letting them push us around as legitimised ‘emotions’, than most of us have had the courage to explore.

Quoting Fruitless

The amount of love we can feel...is it the same as Love? Hate, what really is hate? Is it possible to generalise emotions so much?

Different people have very different experiences of what we call ‘love’ and ‘hate’, so generalising emotions in this way can result in confusing discussions. Personally, I see love and hate as decisions we make that are strongly influenced by how we feel. What many people refer to as feelings of love - desire, pleasure, excitement, etc - inspire us to increase awareness, connection and collaboration, while feelings of fear, frustration and anger lead us to decrease awareness and refuse to connect or collaborate: to hate. In my view, there is a capacity for humans to feel emotions internally that need not play out in our thoughts, words or actions unless we choose.

Quoting Fruitless

Futuristically, could we enhance the ability to feel. I'm not talking about drugs because that already makes use of what is already in our body. But to biologically enhance our capacity to feel. Different emotions never felt before.

I think the more we explore our capacity to experience feelings without necessarily acting on them - that is, through self-reflection and productive expression - the more we enhance our capacity to feel.

Reply to Possibility "I see love and hate as decisions we make that are strongly influenced by how we feel." Very well said!

I appreciate your response :)

Quoting Fruitless

When you asked me how do we know that every single person has the capacity to feel as much as the next, I'm referring to the biological processes of the brain.

But we know that brains have different capabilities, temperments, size of brain components,neural pathways, and seemingly, at least in my life, different levels of emotional expression, detachments, passions, desires, engagement. There is a range of intelligence and even types of intelligence, for example. I just wonder why there wouldn't be the same thing with emotions. Yes, nurture plays a role, but it even seems like genetics plays a role in intelligence also (not speaking about races, here) and other facets of who we are.Quoting Fruitless

And referring to your last sentence, does that then mean the amount of intelligence that someone possesses determine their scope or range of emotions?

No. It was an answer to the question: can we feel more emotions? I am still not sure what 'more' means in that question, but it if you mean can we feel more of our emotions or feel our emotions with greater intensity, then yes, I think we can learn to not suppresse and avoid noticing our emotions.

Reply to Fruitless No, everyone on earth does not have the same capacity to feel as everybody else, and everybody doesn't have the same brain.

"Feelings" and "emotions" are a product of the limbic system (of the brain) and not all limbic systems are exactly the same. Some people, for instance, are more "emotionally labile" and "emotionally volatile" than others. Some people feel some emotions more intensely than other emotions. So there's quite a bit of variability.

The more or less normal human brain (normal at birth) is put together on the basis of DNA and all sorts of signals. Yes, brains are all very similar, but even at birth some people are likely to be smarter than others, have better memory than others, have better motor skills, and so forth. Then there is the sensory equipment which feeds information to the brain as the person has experiences. As noted by several people, experiences vary and differing experiences lead to more differences in the brain (and emotions).

Putting all that aside, I would say we can become more tuned to the quality of the emotions we have, and we can become aware of, and counter, efforts on the parts of our so called "super-egos" to suppress certain kinds of emotion. I'm not sure whether or not we can dial up the amplitude of our emotions the way we turn up the sound or the heat.

Reply to Coben With emotions, I mean we have happiness and sadness. They are two different emotions, is there another different emotion which we can experience?

And yes I agree when you compare intelligence with the degree of emotion...I can see where you're going with that

Reply to Bitter Crank Are you saying the emotions humanity can experience is absolute? There is nothing more to feel than what our brain gives us to feel? We cannot produce more different emotions?

Quoting Fruitless

With emotions, I mean we have happiness and sadness. They are two different emotions, is there another different emotion which we can experience?

There are a number of different emotion classification systems out there, each with a different number of emotions. I can't see having less than four. Happiness, sadness, fear and anger seem very distinct to me, even if you can be feeling more than one of them on some occasions. Others add disgust and contempt and even surprise to the list, and some lists get much more nuanced. Personally disgust and surprise seem not quite the same kind of thing to me. I couldn't be surprised for a long time, whereas I could be sad for hours and hours and nto consider it bizarre or pathological. But, in any, case, I think you have to add at least fear and anger.

Reply to Coben Isn't emotion a side effect of logic?

Reply to Fruitless Can you elaborate? And how did you connect this idea to my post? IOW i am not sure where this question comes from`? but interested in seeing what you mean.

And what did you think of adding anger and fear to your two emotion list?

Reply to Coben Ok so, you where saying we can only experience a minimum of 4 emotions. Which made me think, emotions are caused by effects of thinking. We think about what someone has said which creates anger. The same for happiness, sadness and fear. I

So, aren't emotions a side effect of logic?

Reply to Coben And if that holds true, we have infinite logic = infinite emotions???????

Quoting Fruitless

Ok so, you where saying we can only experience a minimum of 4 emotions.

I am not quite sure what 'only' means in this sentence. I would say we experience a minimum of four emotions, since I cannot see taking any of those four out and experience them as distinct. Perhpas there are more, but not less.

Quoting Fruitless

Which made me think, emotions are caused by effects of thinking.

How did my suggesting this make you think emotions are the result of thinking?Quoting Fruitless

So, aren't emotions a side effect of logic?

We think about what someone has said which creates anger. The same for happiness, sadness and fear.

I think even fairly simple experiences can make me feel an emotion. I see an animal in the woods. I cool shower on a hot day. A car does nto slow down when I am in a crosswalk.

IOW I don't need to think about these events, give them a meaning or mull over future results or think about what it says about me to feel even extremely strong emotional reactions.

I do think thinking has all sorts of effect on emotions. Though I wouldn't conflate logic with thinking. Thinking that is not logical can have all sorts of emotional effects. Logical thinking may have little effect. Logical thinking about fear may not reduce the fear at all.

Reply to Fruitless Have you experienced infinite emotion?

Reply to Coben I see how you are saying that events do not need a cause to create emotion, but is our own conclusion and perception which creates emotion. I see a fence outside my window, I feel disgusted at the absence of flora and fauna and how little vegetation there is because we need it to contribute the wellbeing and ecosystem of our planet. Therefore I feel disgusted.

That's what I'm getting at.

Let's consider a thoughtless object, does it have emotions?

No, a printer, a glass, an atom has no emotion and therefore no logic. I think you need logic to feel emotion otherwise your existence is empty.

Reply to Coben If you experience infinite emotion then it is finite because you have experienced it.

Rather I feel new emotions swept over me every week.
I couldn't tell you what they are but they're not the foundational four you speak of.

For example when I typed 'I think you need logic to feel emotion otherwise your existence is empty' I felt something similar to 2 wings slowly rising within my lungs and ending at the apex of my heart. Then another pulse which rippled through my entire ribcage. Like a faint tickle.

What the hell do you call that?

This strikes me as a "robot question," where a robot asks about a phenomenon that the robot doesn't experience but is trying to gain some understanding of.

As others have pointed out, we don't all have the same brain. Just like we don't all have the same nose or toes or hair, etc. And we don't all have the same mental or brain abilities, just like we don't all have the same abilities to lift weights or play a guitar or even breathe with the same lung capacity.

As a nominalist, I don't believe that we ever experience the same emotion on two occasions. Terms for emotions tag a range of different feelings. And it's often a matter of just how we've conceptualized an emotion, just how specific and/or nuanced we want to try to get, tempered by how difficult it might be to communicate those nuances, especially since we can't simply point to an emotion. Different cultures have terms for emotions that might be difficult to understand from another culture, or where a word might be lacking in another language. Examples (which you can look up) include schadenfreude, obhimaan and saudade. Here's a list of some others: https://www.thecut.com/2016/06/10-extremely-precise-words-for-emotions-you-didnt-even-know-you-had.html

You might find this interesting: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion_classification

First you wrote this describing mentioning two emotions and wondering if there are any others....

Quoting Fruitless

With emotions, I mean we have happiness and sadness. They are two different emotions, is there another different emotion which we can experience?

Then you wrote:
Quoting Fruitless

Rather I feel new emotions swept over me every week.

And I started to wonder if you were just messing with people. You ask us if there are more, then you say you have new ones all the time. Had you really not experienced anger of fear, or did you think they were really sadness or happiness?

And then there was a new line of statements and questions leading to...

Quoting Fruitless

And if that holds true, we have infinite logic = infinite emotions???????

...based on thinking being the same as logic.

Makes me wonder, again, if you are just presenting a persona here.

The last part about such specific nuances to a particular emotion....Quoting Fruitless

'I think you need logic to feel emotion otherwise your existence is empty' I felt something similar to 2 wings slowly rising within my lungs and ending at the apex of my heart. Then another pulse which rippled through my entire ribcage. Like a faint tickle.

I think it can be useful to think of emotions in categories. I think it can also be useful not to box them in and notice nuances. Depends on the context. I suppose I take an instrumentalist view. What is the best way to think or speak about it in this or that context. And I would likely use different ways in different contexts. I do think that each experience is unique and if it is the specificity i want to focus on, then I might go into just such detail or at least let myself notice it. If I am angry at someone, I'd probably speak about it in less detail, just call it anger and say what it is about, since the nuances would often not be useful or would detract from the core message.

Reply to Terrapin Station Well that's new...thankyou. I shall have a look :)

'Different cultures have terms for emotions that might be difficult to understand from another culture, or where a word might be lacking in another language'

Reply to Coben How would I be presenting a persona?

I am exploring what emotion is and how widely it distributes, along with what other ways emotions can be thought of. I'm trying to see different ways of approaching emotion, specifically if there is a set amount of emotions which you can experience.

Quoting Fruitless

How would I be presenting a persona?

It's the internet- It's easy to present personas.

Reply to Coben Elaborate? I'm clueless at what you're going at...

Quoting Fruitless

So, is it possible to feel different types of emotions?

Great question. I once asked a question about what more can we ask in addition to the seven basic questions of what, why, who, where, when, which, and how. It then dawned on me that "what" suffices to ask all the rest of the questions which are simply shorthand for a longer "what" question.

Similarly, I believe all possible emotions are already extant in us. We simply look for different ways to stimulate any one of them.

Why?

We're already capable of the emotion of pleasure and pain; everything else falls in between. Any other emotion we add would definitely involve the enhancement of pleasure and reduction of pain. Nothing added but definitely enhanced to the required level of satisfaction.

Reply to TheMadFool

Similarly, I believe all possible emotions are already extant in us. We simply look for different ways to stimulate any one of them.

Beautifully said!

And...

what more can we ask in addition to the seven basic questions of what, why, who, where, when, which, and how. It then dawned on me that "what" suffices to ask all the rest of the questions which are simply shorthand for a longer "what" question.

You fricken genius! I never would have even thought about questioning that one, but interesting to know!

That's actually quiet interesting...

Quoting Fruitless

You fricken genius!

Everyone disagrees. You might want to join the pack :joke:

Reply to TheMadFool If they disagree within reason, I will. For the moment, reason persuades me to think you have a degree of sense. 'joining the pack' isn't my forte anyway '\_:)_/'

Quoting Coben

Makes me wonder, again, if you are just presenting a persona here.

Again, maybe try not reading everything so literally? You know what condition that tendency is indicative of, don't you?

Reply to Terrapin Station

Again, maybe try not reading everything so literally? You know what condition that tendency is indicative of, don't you?

- @Terrapin Station
I aM VeRy ConFUsEd ?

Reply to Terrapin StationYes, your version of a sense of humor makes Aspies of us all.

Reply to Fruitless He's just cranky from another thread. We won't hijack more.

Quoting Coben

Yes, your version of a sense of humor makes Aspies of us all.

You're going with "I was joking"?

Reply to Terrapin Station It was the most charitable interpretation. I'll end my hijacking here.

Reply to Fruitless Why not let's work with this part of my response? Quoting Coben

I think it can be useful to think of emotions in categories. I think it can also be useful not to box them in and notice nuances. Depends on the context. I suppose I take an instrumentalist view. What is the best way to think or speak about it in this or that context. And I would likely use different ways in different contexts. I do think that each experience is unique and if it is the specificity i want to focus on, then I might go into just such detail or at least let myself notice it. If I am angry at someone, I'd probably speak about it in less detail, just call it anger and say what it is about, since the nuances would often not be useful or would detract from the core message.

Reply to Coben Well sort it out