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Emotions and Intellect

waechter418 November 13, 2019 at 15:29 4825 views 16 comments
Imagination and Emotions are responsible for cultural developments and the formation of civilisations.
Imagination and Intellect are responsible for scientific and technological developments – combined with Emotions, latter can have destructive results.

Fear, hatred, envy, greed & the likes, have played major roles in the disappearances of previous civilisations and seem – when goading contemporary sciences and technologies – to be able to bring about global catastrophes and even the disappearance of Sapiens.

Yet, instead of doing his Latin title “reasonable, wise” justice and trying to get rid of this menace, he not only justifies his emotions, by claiming them to be essential for his survival, but boosts them with media and commerce to a rampant force that apparently is able to overpower the intellect – at least it would explain the increasing readiness of scientists to surrender their works and themselves to the lures of money and glory - and the attempts to infect AI`s with emotions.

Comments (16)

OmniscientNihilist November 14, 2019 at 18:34 #352463
Reply to waechter418

emotions are just a reflection of beliefs, they follow that, so they have no blame in themselves for anything

anyone who blames emotions is ignorant of the beliefs creating them

negative emotions come from negative beliefs

if that belief is true then that emotion is justified

so the real problem is true vs false. not positive vs negative
waechter418 November 14, 2019 at 22:46 #352523
There are innumerable works about emotions and their effects, but only few do mention that emotions can be addictive too.
An omission that ought not to surprise, since addicts do not only tend to deny their predicament, but elaborate sophisticated cover-ups, excuses & deceptions, and sometimes even try to seduce and to corrupt those who do not cherish anxiety, angst, distrust, hatred, envy, greed, frustration, grief, guilt, shame, hostility, regret, humiliation, jealousy, rage, remorse, resentment, sadness, sorrow...
Pfhorrest November 15, 2019 at 00:14 #352541
Quoting OmniscientNihilist
emotions are just a reflection of beliefs, they follow that, so they have no blame in themselves for anything


I used to think that, but now I have to disagree. For the past year I've been finding my thinking at the mercy of a rollercoaster of emotions the likes of which I never knew before. I start feeling the emotions physically first, without any apparent prompt, and then over time as the emotions linger I find that my mind latches on to things to try to blame them on, and so my thinking turns dark as well. I'm aware in those states that previously I had thought differently, and I try to remind myself of what I thought then and why, but it doesn't make the emotions go away. Then in time they go away of their own accord, or for reasons I haven't completely sorted out, and I start thinking clearly again, and see the ways that I thought while those feelings were drowning me as incorrect, and I make mental notes about all the fallacies involved in them to remind myself later when I feel that way again that the thoughts I end up thinking are wrong. But that's still not effective, and the thoughts don't go away until the feelings do.
OmniscientNihilist November 15, 2019 at 00:54 #352550
Quoting Pfhorrest
start feeling the emotions physically first


1- beliefs which are subconscious
2- emotional reaction to your own beliefs
3- thought reaction to your emotions

cause and effect
waechter418 November 15, 2019 at 01:04 #352551
Particular Projection/Reflection* modes engender particular emotions.

Emotions tend to distort and impede the operations of mind.

* "Another view of Consciousness" chapter 2
Deleted User November 16, 2019 at 00:35 #352944
Reply to OmniscientNihilist Would you agree that calm rationality is as much an emotional state as anger, anxiety, love, joy, etc? I often feel that people get into the notion that calm and rationality is an absence of emotion when really it is just one of the least negatively stressful and materially and emotionally lucrative emotional states to be in. Born of a desire to be part of a collective which perceives itself as rational above all other things because it owes a lot of its success to rationality.

Possibility November 16, 2019 at 06:05 #353032
Reply to waechter418 Reply to OmniscientNihilist
From my notes on Lisa Feldman Barrett’s ‘How Emotions Are Made’:

Lisa Feldman Barrett:Social reality: When you are born, you can’t regulate your body budget by yourself - somebody else has to do it. In the process, your brain learns statistically, creates concepts, and wires itself to its environment, which is filled with other people who have structured their social world in particular ways. That social world becomes real to you as well. We’re the only animal that can communicate purely mental concepts among ourselves. No particular social reality is inevitable, just one that works for the group (and is constrained by physical reality)...

Culture works most smoothly if we believe in our own mental creations, such as money and laws, without realising that we’re doing so. We don’t suspect the involvement of our own hand (or neurons, as it were) in these constructions, so we just treat them as reality. But we constantly mistake perceiver-dependent concepts - flowers, weeds, colours, money, race, facial expressions, etc - for perceiver-independent reality. Many concepts that people consider to be purely physical are in fact beliefs about the physical, such as emotions, and many that appear to be biological are actually social...

When you create a social reality but fail to realise it, the result is a mess. Every psychological concept is social reality. Not all cultures have them...

When we misconstrue the social as physical, we misunderstand our world and ourselves. In this regard, social reality is a superpower only if we know that we have it.
Galuchat November 16, 2019 at 12:13 #353065
Reply to waechter418

Inasmuch as the human psyche is a complex system which includes interactions between body, environment, sensitivity, affect, emotion, motivation, perception, cognisance (cognition and recognition), self awareness, and social awareness, the OP consists of simplistic (hence, unsound) premises and conclusions.

For example: it focuses on negative emotions (fear, hatred, envy, greed) without reference to positive emotions (e.g., attraction, interest, love, joy, acceptance, gratitude, relief, etc.), or to the combination of negative and positive emotions in secondary (or complex) emotions (e.g., submission, awe, remorse, aggressiveness, etc.) which are appropriate responses in various circumstances, or to social emotions (e.g., sympathy, compassion, kindness, etc.) and common phobias which are essential to human survival.
waechter418 November 16, 2019 at 14:57 #353079
Best to cultivate the positive and to get rid of the negative
Galuchat November 16, 2019 at 15:22 #353082
Reply to waechter418
Okay, let's get simple: if your nation is invaded by another nation, aggression would be an appropriate (reasonable) response.
waechter418 November 16, 2019 at 16:52 #353104
:groan:
Galuchat November 17, 2019 at 12:23 #353398
Reply to waechter418
Good case in point.
You required a negative emoticon to communicate.
waechter418 November 17, 2019 at 13:05 #353402
Like all his weaknesses, Homo justifies his emotions too, claiming that they are essential for his survival as well as for being human, which might also be the reason for his belief that emotions make up a “person” (Latin: actors mask). A belief which has reached religious scales, considering that all the lost, the losers & those who want to play a role in life, make – with the help of media & commerce – ever more spectacles of their emotions, thus turning them into the most popular and successful self-deception-tool of modern times.

from "Selfrealisation" by waechter418.wordpress.com
Galuchat November 17, 2019 at 13:40 #353403
Reply to waechter418
Yeah, like I have time for your vanity project. We are done here.
waechter418 November 17, 2019 at 14:50 #353410
Thank you for joining.
Sir Philo Sophia February 02, 2020 at 03:46 #377892
Quoting waechter418
Imagination and Intellect are responsible for scientific and technological developments – combined with Emotions, latter can have destructive results.


so, you think scientific and technological developments were driven by Intellect ???? LOL! They were driven historically by warfare , and scientist primarily driven by ego greed and glory and winning pure competition and the emotive rush of conquering the unknown. What about reproduction? Take out emotion, and I say you would not have humanity's intellectual achievements.

Also, I posit that you cannot have human qualia consciousness w/o emotive states.

any solid counterpoints/evidence?