The hard problem of emotions.
5 min read by Penev 14 April 2021
So, what exactly are emotions? A friend described them as a "sensory feeling prompted by your biochemistry and hormones". But then, is the emotion this altered chemical state of your brain or is it rather the very thought created by the brain? If it is the state, how do you explain long-term emotions, like an anger towards a person who had wronged you 10 years ago? What about love, hatred, grief, revenge? But if it’s the thought, how do you explain the dull irritability that accompanies hunger? Hmm… So, is it the thought or the state? Can it be both? Neither? Let’s call the biochemical state a “mood”. Moods are the tendency to feel an emotion, but not the emotion itself. Moods are the dictators of behaviour. The landscape, or the climate in your brain. The world of your brain is so much more than that, though. Still, the question persists - how do you distinguish emotions from thoughts?
Revenge is an emotion, but a thought too - a quite intelligent one at that. I’m sure you have seen the many emotional manifestations of vengeful people – cruelty, malice, cunning – and yet – justice, devotion, patience. With revenge you also get intentionality – the emotion has a direct object and subject. The subject seeks justice by harming the object. But how much is enough to “bring justice”? Emotions also prompt cognitive judgements – “I will only feel relieved if I do him this much.”
Emotions are not simply feelings, thoughts, biochemical compounds or behaviour. They are experiences, motives for action, and intelligent lecturers on who you are.
And yet the practical analysis of emotions is a very small part of their essence. We must consider how they work in conjunction with our conscious experiences. After all, animals, too, have emotions. I know cats that will keep a grudge for years. Definitely not a “mood”. And yet, most dogs will probably forgive you quite easily. So, if animals have them too, emotions are not inherently a rational cognitive processes (although they can be). However, they still have an evaluative nature – emotional judgements are still generated (e.g., “he is evil, because I hate him”); therefore, it is very important to rationally analyse these types of evaluations. After all, sometimes it's completely logical to be angry. But it's not logical to murder the cat from earlier, because it doesn't like you.
Since one person will react differently to another given the same stimulus, we can conclude that these evaluative judgements are subservient to your personality. The result of these judgements can very easily shape your behaviour, and consequently, personality. Our "selves" are constantly changing but how do emotions change? Moooore questions.
Let’s take another “emotion”. The feeling of cosiness. Is it an emotion? Are you experiencing a mood, a thought or something else? Can dogs be cosy, or are they just calm? There is obviously no way to tell, since cosiness doesn't entail a behaviour different to calmness. But I do think cosiness is an emotion. It requires a very deep history of thoughts and habits already existing in your brain. Warm home, being surrounded by loved ones, the gentle murmuring of familiar sounds. Can you not be angry at your cousin and still be cosy? So cosiness must be a mood. Would it be safe to assume that cosiness alters your biochemical brain state? I think yes.
I have no idea what exactly emotions are. But perhaps it is accurate to say that they are purely subjective phenomena that are able to alter thoughts, moods, memories and even sensory perception. Like prisms for your consciousness, and yet reducing them to prisms does not do them justice.
So, how have you been today?