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We can't prove black holes actually exist either, but apparently they do, according to Stephen.

The Universe and the non living things it's made of may be made of matter, energy, dark or not, but it's things like Life itself, and the sentient Mind which we can't explain. Not its origins or nature anyway.

What is the Mind made of? Who knows. What are the emotions that it creates made of? Who knows. That's when you bring in God and extra planes of existence, irrelevant really.

Or perhaps emotions really are just chemical results produced from the brain that our human consciousness defines as feelings, ideas etc. in order to comfort ourselves by telling each other we understand such boggling concepts.

Who knows?

Originally posted by Regret
Emotion is the brain's interpretation of states of physiological arousal, it is a portion of the response cycle, or chain, from stimulus to overt response. The degree to which reinforcement and punishment are probable combined with contextual cues. Emotion is simple.

I don't think you understand what I am saying. Yes, we can explain what chemicals get released to create emotion but that does not really address what emotion is. I'm not talking about the chemicals responsible for emotion, I am talking about FEELING itself. Science can't prove the feeling itself exists.

I am not very educated in this area but this is what i got from wikipedia,
"Although a widespread word, it is not easy to come up with a generally acceptable definition of emotion." From what I understand, emotion is not very simple, correct me if I am wrong.

Originally posted by Atlantis001
I agree. There are scientists that consider the possibility of reviwing the methods of science. Something that is not a big deal since the methods are really open to revision and do not imply in contradiction. But in practice I think it is not so simple to find a situation where scientists accept a change in perspective to accept a new theory for example. But it is becoming more common today I think, at least in physics.

If you think about it, the rate at which we are gaining knowledge is truly amazing. We are actually living in a incredible time.

Originally posted by Regret
I must begin by stating my position. I am a Skinnarian Behaviorist. This may have little meaning to someone unknowledgable as to the overall history and philosophies that combined are the broad field titled psychology, but we are, imo, almost an entirely separate field of study from the cognitive and internalist schools of thought. I have actually considered entering the university teaching area of the field to begin shaping the population of psychology into a split in the field so that behavior analysis would be an entirely separate degree from psychology, but the concepts of internally based schools can be viewed entirely from a behavioral perspective if one does an in depth study into the methods and results while avoiding the discussions until a thorough assessment can be made. The difference between the cognitive and the behavioral is our statements as to locus of origination and the variables we choose to view as important.

Now, are you sure that this "feeling" exists? Or is the experience termed as "feeling" merely a description of physiological activity that has, given a previous ignorance as to the physiology of Man, been given improper terminology? Do you "feel" hate, love, despair, etc. or do you only feel the arousal and then, given a history of improper terminology and belief, label the arousal combined with context such? The "emotion" is a term used and widely accepted, but what that actually is is in question. Man has a tendency of assigning spectacular explanations to himself at times due to lack of information on a subject.

Now, as to localization, we know of areas that are fairly localized for a few concepts, but overall at the present time localization is minimal at best. The brain is complex and a very wide range of areas are implicated in much of our neural activity, we have specific areas we know play important roles in various functions, but to say that "love" occurs here or there, is still very much premature. We do know of areas implicated, as I said earlier, in emotion, but we cannot state this area or that area is where "love" occurs.

Interesting...But I still remain somewhat confused. The "experience" still exists? The sensation still exists?

Originally posted by Hydrono
Interesting...But I still remain somewhat confused. The "experience" still exists? The sensation still exists? Those have been defined, your statements lead to the conclusion that you are speaking of something beyond the physiological response that is the "emotion". I am skeptical about the existence of such.

We know, personally that we experience. How can you be skeptical of something that is known? I know I feel, I can call these sensations whatever I like, but I still experience. I am 100% certain that I experience. I am 100% sure that I can only experience through experience.

The center of this question seems to lay in the nature of experience. As far as stimuli are involved, Regret has it. I wouldn't go as far as saying we behave in "Skinnerian" ways, but that can just depend on what you define as the nature of stimuli. Anyways, this isn't a discussion of behaviorism.

So, what is experience? Well, I'm going to make some assumptions. The first is that experience in this case is limited to conscious perception. And secondly, that by "experience" we are talking about reportable and evaluated memories or thoughts, ie, what you are thinking about. Meaning that our experience is based upon the conscious perception of external stimuli and our couscous evaluation of it. This isn't a scientific definition by any means, as "experience" isn't really a scientific idea. Experience could mean so many things really, it is almost useless as a concept for rational discussion. In fact, even the term "conscious" runs into this same problem, but not so far as this post is concerned.

Alright then, conscious perception of stimuli is really interesting, and poses what is called the "binding problem" in cognitive psychology. Basically, we have evidence of how all the stimuli gets into our brains via receptors, and where certain values are attached to it for various evaluative properties, but we can't pinpoint any location where all the stimuli "meet" to become our overall "experience". Stimuli does not become conscious until it has already received emotional and evaluative processing. This is show by the existence of conditions like agnosia and in the effects of optical or other sensory illusions. Agnosia is a break in the pathway that processes emotional information of stimuli. Once that is done, the victim is unable to attach emotional value to objects. And in the case of optical illusions, we are unable to make ourselves "not see" them, even when we know the processes behind them consciously. Both of these points are proof that our conscious perception of stimuli is built upon underlying unconscious processes that we have no control over (this is a lie, we can have some priming effects, but I am being very general).

alright. Moving on we deal with the way we think about the stimuli that have just come in. Well, to begin with, what ARE these stimuli now? the best estimate (in my opinion) is that they are represented as a pattern of neuron activity. This pattern of activity must be processed through a part of the brain aptly named "the interpreter" that is responsible for our semantic and linguistic (reportable) experience of an event. In epilepsy patients, sometimes a part of the brain known as the corpus callosum is cut to prevent seizures. This unfortunately prevents any information from the right side of the brain from being processed by the interpreter, as the corpus callosum carries information from one side of the brain to the other, and the interpreter is on the left side of the brain. Subtle experiments in a laboratory can elicit various arousal states based on the subconscious processing of information presented only to the right side of the brain, and the subject will have no explanation at all for their arousal, simply because the interpreter has no idea what information is being given to the brain. For instance, women were shown erotic images to their right brain, got all hot and flustered, but couldn't consciously conceive why they had, attributing it to what was available to their left brain.

This poses a major issue for memory and where I think your question may be better answered. I really want to stress that this is not my area of expertise, and I am making a couple of assumptions that I am 90% sure of. However, I digress. Generally speaking, there are two kinds of memory, working and long term. Working deals with what we are currently experiencing and how it relates to our goals, long term is more to what we remember and how we feel about things. A very important point to make here is that Working memory is based more on evaluative and stimuli based processing whereas longterm is based more on emotion. An example of this would be in the type of error made by each type of processing, in short term it is more likely to be stimuli based errors (so, when trying to say the word six you say the word sex ) whereas longterm memory errors are more along the lines of misjudging the recency of favorable events or remembering events that support various ways you "feel" about an object, idea, or person.

The real significance of this is that, for memory to move from the working memory, where it is forgotten very soon, to the long term, it must have an "interpreter" interpretation to go along with the emotional arousal state. This means that, in the future, the "interpreter" will associate brain activity that you had previously given the linguistic label "happy" to as you being "happy". The more often this occurs, the more readily you will associate those patterns with "happy".

This sort of leads to how the "binding problem" of experience is solved, imho. Basically, I don't believe that the mind does bind things anywhere (specifically because there is no evidence of this) but instead forms very complex associations between each of its senses and emotional processes based on certain predetermined genetic dispositions. Basically, at a basic physiological level, we think pain is bad but soft touch is good, and other weird instinctive things. As we develop, those predispositions to certain behaviours allow us to form bonds between what we see and what we hear, and where we are in the world. To the interpreter, this would seem a continuous experience, not segregated functions because our memories would be such that certain visual stimuli would always be associated with certain smell stimuli. This is clearly evolutionarily advantageous because creatures that saw themselves as an individual would be able to make much better long term plans than those who had to respond to each receptor channel individually, without associating sight and touch.

So... happy....

There are certain "things" that can fall upon our receptors in any of our "senses". These receptors will produce natural genetic reactions that have, through evolutionary processes, been hardwired into us to have some idea of what will or wont be good for ourselves (ie, those organisms that were not able to dictate "pain" as "bad" naturally were less likely to pass on their genes than those who could). Those things that have, over time, proved to be beneficial to humans will release things that make us "happy".

This is the best answer I can give you. However, I think you are asking the question in the wrong way. You seem to have a top down approach to the problem at hand saying "I experience happiness, therefore where is it?". That question assumes a couple of incorrect things about the brain. To begin with, the brain is not the liver. You can look at the actions of a liver and pretty much figure out what is going on. You can't with a brain. Every "experience" is based upon billions of neurons firing in specific patters to elicit specific memories based on past experiences with the perceived stimuli. You can't just look at a brain and say "Oh, that lad is happy" and more than you can say "that guy is good at math". Thought is based on patterns of firing, that for each individual will be specific and unique.

Lastly, you are presuming that because we have a "word" or "symbol" for something that is used in colloquial, that is how the brain works. "Happy" is not a measurable phenomena in the brain just because we have a word that seems to insinuate that it should be. Just because we use terms like "consciousness" or "self" or "experience" does not mean that they are accurate terms for what is occurring. You can't start with the assumption that humans "experience" "happiness" without proving that they do. To say they do because we all feel happy is a tautology, making it a logical fallacy. Humans to not experience "happiness" as we would commonly use the word on the street.

Perhaps I should clarify my objection to the claim (and similar claims):

Originally posted by Atlantis001
We can say that there are two kinds of "happiness". There is a physiological happiness which involves serotonin, action potentials and biochemistry but which is only mechanical. The experience of happiness does not fit into this description. The experience of happiness itself is another kind of happiness and is not mechanical. Just the word used is the same.

There is no evidence of such. My experience of happiness, if placed in another individual, may be perceived as hate or pain or anything else. I disagree with the assumption that claims of personal internal experience and perception is necessarily similar to any other individual's experience and perception. Thus, we have language to translate our internal experience, perception, and organization into a mediating form that can be communicated to another. Language has always been flawed, no language currently known is wholly adequate to the task of conveying completely the entire internal experience, imo. Thus, to discuss the experience of "happy" adequately is also impossible, the only semi-adequate method of discussing a subject of the type similar to emotion is scientifically and objectively through observables.

I think that inamilist has presented the state of affairs well. It is interesting to read his description as I myself have never had an interest in the cognitive and have, as of yet, been able to take the time to read much cognitive literature aside from the required coursework when I was pursuing my documented education.

Don't worry, you came off fine Atlantis

I agree with both of you. I know I experience emotion, but adequate comparative analysis is impossible due to current limitations. I do not deny the existence, I only deny the ability to compare one's experience with another's in any meaningful manner.

Hardcore scientists whether religious or not, beleive they can reduce everything, mental and emotional, into physical means.


XMarksthespot and Regret are big examples of this....while Xmarksthespot will reduce the state of mind we know as "love" to a chemical reaction in the brain caused by physical/visual stimuli, and Regret will reduce dreams, thinking, reasoning, and emotions into simple nueron activity, while also regarding behavior as valid, and thought as invalid....


We know there is much more to it than that.


Everything is not that simple...Regret even went as far as to argue that desire does not really exist..... (?!?!??) He explained desire as a simple pattern of actions caused by a pattern of thought(s), even though we all know the desire can exist without the actions caused by the desire itself.


I am not taking a stab at you guys, I like you both very much. But I feel that many people like yourselves, who have education in scientific studies of biology, physics, and psychology will feel you know all there is to know and that's that...even though your explanations leave much to be questioned.


Also, science was once used to determine that Anglo saxon and other white races were far superior to African and Hispanic races due to comparisons in the sizes of the skull and brains.


Science was also used as a way to discriminate against Homosexuals, by arguing that Homosexuality is a mental disorder (Homosexuality and Bisexuality have been removed from the Psychological Evaluation's list of mental disorders, but the point is at one time it was scientific fact that homosexuals were "sick"



Science is not math....science is not an absolute. It is simply our discovery of the nature of things, of our universe and environments, and is constantly changing.


Science textbooks are retconned every single year. Findings are re examined and re explained all the time.


Hypothesis and Theories are either supported further, or proven false. Facts change.


THERE ARE SOME THINGS SCIENCE CANNOT EXPLAIN TO US RIGHT NOW...PERHAPS IN THE FUTURE WE WILL UNDERSTAND EMOTIONS AND OTHER ANOMALIES MORE CLEARLY, BUT AS OF NOW...WE ARE ALL IN THE DARK, AND NONE OF US CAN TRULY CLAIM WE KNOW THE TRUTH

Without emotions then we really wouldn't value anything we've learned from life.

Without delving into nonempirical aspects of emotion, I find it easiest (for the moment) to interpret "the place of emotion" as I might interpret anything else: what is its survival value? There may've once been organisms which, because they did not experience Fear (as an example), did not run away, got eaten and so had less chance to pass on their genes. Or there may've been creatures which did not know Love, thus less communal bonding occurred, translating into a lower survival rate for offspring (again, just an example).

Returning to the nonempirical aspects of emotion...
I see this discussion involving what might be called "subjective (inner) experience" vs "objective" (outer) experience, and I always liked to emphasize the reality differences this way: your mother's actual face as opposed to what you see when you envision your mother's face. Both are real experiences, yet clearly, one can be empirically assessed while the other can not (though one can empirically assess the neurochemical activity of the envisioning process).

Is the subjective experience of your mom's visage "less real" than her actual face? It certainly is a "different kind" of reality, but one can respond just as readily to the subjective experience as the objective one.

(As an aside, Behaviorism doesn't really deny the existence of subjective experience. Its stance is simply that, consideration of subjective experience for understanding behavior is unnecessary, distracting and detrimental to the empirical assessment of behavior).