Emotions

Nowhere is language more confused than regarding words falling under heading "emotion": love, hate, fear, etc. Definition: emotion = pre-coded thought pattern with associated bodily response. Primitive lower-mind emotional thinking to be contrasted with advanced higher-mind logical thinking, which lacks associated bodily response. Emotional thinking has advantage of speed, but is unable to deal with complexity. Vice-versa for logical thinking. Emotional thinking works well for simple situations faced by animals (including human animal) in primitive natural setting, but works poorly in modern society. Goal of wise should be to replace emotional thinking with logical thinking as much as possible. This assumes that higher logical mind has not been corrupted by false teachings of some sort. Otherwise, lower emotional mind may give better results even in modern society. But it is a mistake, in the long run, to substitute lower emotional mind for corrupted logical mind. Rather, logical mind should be cleansed of corruption so as to work properly.

Desire, pain, pleasure and happiness are commonly considered to be emotions. However, concepts associated with these words do not fit definition of emotion given above. Desire, pain, pleasure and happiness are that which thinking, whether emotional or logical, is attempting to satisfy, minimize or maximize, as the case may be, rather than pre-coded patterns of thinking. Happiness is sometimes used as a synonym for joy, which is an emotion, as opposed to composite of much pleasure and little pain. In this discussion, happiness has latter meaning only.

Consider animal whose thinking is primitive and falls into standard pre-coded patterns, and thus is mostly emotional rather than logical. Faced with new object or situation, animal will become excited above baseline arousal level while deciding on appropriate response, which can be: (a) ignore object or situation, thus returning to baseline arousal level; (b) move away from object or situation; (c) move towards object or situation; (d) stay in place while reacting to object or situation. Arousal level can also descend below baseline (quiescence), which implies no movement, and which typically occurs in aftermath of failure, when best course of action is to stop doing whatever it was that caused failure, give body time to repair illness or injury, conserve energy while reflecting on what went wrong and devising new strategy which will lead to success in future.

Summary of states:

Neutral state (neither excitation nor quiescence with respect to arousal baseline) and either no movement or slow steady movement unrelated to response-generating object or situation (wandering about looking for food, but not yet finding any).
Transient initial excitation above baseline arousal. Top of excitation-quiescence axis in diagram, however could have been placed anywhere above neutral state along this axis.
Excitation and movement away from object or situation (flee predators or larger competitors).
Excitation and movement towards object or situation (pursue prey).
Excitation while staying in place (defend territory against equal-sized or smaller competitors).
Quiescence (resting in aftermath of loss, reflecting on what went wrong).

emotions diagram 1

Movement away from object or situation has been subdivided into two states. This is because when cause of movement is itself capable of rapid movement (such as predator or larger competitor) then high excitation is best in order to escape quickly. Whereas when cause of movement is not itself capable of rapid movement (such as poisonous food), then low excitation better, since high excitation costly.

Staying in place while excited also subdivided. Defending territory by fighting off equal-sized or smaller competitors requires high excitation, which is costly. So if either invader or defender is confident it can win fight, best to clearly express confidence from outset, such as via facial expressions or body language or sounds, so as to induce opponent to retreat without fighting, rather than immediately launching attack. Merely expressing confidence requires lower excitation than fighting. Obviously, opportunities for bluffing here. That is, clever animal may express confidence even when it lacks confidence. If bluff fails, animal that was bluffing may or may not proceed with attack.

In some cases, object or situation is persistent or repetitive, and thus response should be sustained, in order to obtain optimal results. For example, once predator, competitor or food source is recognized as such, response should be immediate, rather than repeating process of determining what sort of response is merited by object or situation. Sustained response to predators and competitors is similar, in that in both cases goal is to increase distance (animal flees predators and larger competitors, animal tries to make equal-sized or smaller competitors flee), which is why these states are grouped in diagram. In extreme case, distance is increased to infinity by destroying response-generating object or situation. By contrast, sustained response to food is to reduce distance between animal and response-generating object or situation, implying that goal is to preserve rather than destroy.

In next diagram, phrases have been replaced by single words. Recall, however, that what matters is underlying concepts, not words used to label concepts.

emotions diagram 2

Pity was not shown on first diagram, since it is not clear that animals have such an emotion—it appears to be uniquely human. Pity typically implies that we try to help object of pity, which means movement towards. Pity is associated with at most low degree of excitation, or even quiescence if pity is mixed with sense of failure and loss. Pity thus is a mild form of joy, perhaps mixed with sadness.

According to modern psychologists, there are seven universal human facial expressions: surprise, fear, anger, joy, disgust, contempt, sadness. These emotions are common to both humans and higher mammals, because they reflect essential nature of animal existence, as discussed in relationship to first diagram above. Universality of these seven facial expressions suggests association between emotion and facial expression is coded deep into structure of lower brain, which is where both emotional thinking and muscular control take place. There is no universal human facial expression for pity, which is not surprising: pity is emotion of recent origin and does not reflect essential nature of animal existence. Most common facial expression for pity is combination of universal facial expressions for joy and sadness. Facial expressions for love and hate are those of related short-term emotion—joy in the case of love, and fear, anger, disgust or contempt in the case of hate.

There are many possible transitions between states. For example, while fighting, we feel anger. If we win fight, anger turns to joy. If we lose, anger turns to fear. After fleeing due to losing fight, fear turns to sadness and we reflect on what caused loss and how to prevent losses in the future. If we win easily, anger turns to contempt. If we come to regret being involved in fight, anger may turn to disgust. And so on.

Surprise is more closely related to fear than to joy or anger, because fear is safest follow-up response. That is, if we aren't sure how to respond to an object or situation, responding with fear is safer than responding with anger or joy.

Expression "joy of the hunt" indicates active nature of this emotion. This expression is useful as way keeping in mind distinction between emotion joy versus composite of much pleasure and little pain, which is meaning we have assigned to happiness in present discussion. (It is perfectly acceptable to use happiness in ordinary English as synonym for emotion joy. We limited meaning of happiness in present discussion because we needed a word for concept of much pleasure and little pain, and happiness seemed best choice.)

It is possible to have joyless pleasure or pleasureless joy. Furthermore, intense joy creates stress, though perhaps less stress than intense fear or anger. Constant intense joy thus means constant stress, which will likely increase pain. There do not appear to be any negatives associated with concept of constant joyless pleasure; however, it is questionable whether constant pleasure, joyless or otherwise, is possible in this world. This is because most activities which generate pleasure when performed for short period of time, will generate pain if performed for sufficiently long period of time.

Especially in humans, complexity of higher mind and necessity for individual to fit into society can disrupt simple schema presented above. For example, humans often feel feel joy and love towards things which cause pain, and fear and hate towards things which cause pleasure. It is also common for humans to simultaneously experience mixture of conflicting emotions. For example, to love and hate something at same time.

"Unconditional love" is particularly misleading term. If beloved object causes pleasure, then no need for qualifier "unconditional". Otherwise, qualification is legalistic and suggests higher logical mind has resolved to feel love for something which should cause hate. However, essence of emotions is that they occur below control of higher logical mind. Furthermore, it is doubtful that "love for something which causes pain" endures in the face of extreme pain. "She gave her son unconditional love" is a typical usage. Now suppose son tortures other children of this mother to death, sets house on fire repeatedly, and finally threatens to kill mother if she doesn't give him all her money, and when mother looks into eyes of this monster son, she sees the dead gaze of a heroin addict. Is she still going to feel love? Unlikely, which means love was never truly unconditional, but rather was ordinary love that could forgive and forget a few faults, but not utter depravation.

Excitation, wonder, astonishment, amazement, awe are synonyms or variations on surprise.

Terror, dread, horror, trepidation mean great fear.

Anxiety is type of chronic fear, usually towards something abstract, such as fear of God's disapproval, where God is personification of society's moral code.

Guilt is similar to anxiety, but specifically refers to fear of future punishment for something we are doing now or did in the past.

Shame, embarrassment, remorse, regret are similar to guilt.

Distrust, suspicion, paranoia, humility are more variations on fear.

Distaste and revulsion are variations on disgust.

Anger and contempt have many synonyms, reflecting importance of conflict for humans and other social animals. Examples: rage, acrimony, peevishness, pique, frustration, vexation, annoyance, irritation, impatience, displeasure, dislike, sulkiness, loathing, resentment, obstinacy, stubbornness, defiance, bitterness, scorn, disdain, condescension. Many of these synonyms combine anger/contempt with fear. To the extent they imply sustained response, they combine anger/contempt with hate.

Envy and jealousy are both emotions of conflict over possessions, and thus are related to anger, since anger is basic emotion of conflict.

Pride, smugness, complacency, gloating are related to both anger and joy, since they tend to occur in aftermath of struggle in which we prevailed, as anger turns to joy.

Laughter is behavior rather than emotion, and usually occurs in combination with one of emotions of excitation: joy, anger or fear.

Hope is joy where increase in pleasure or reduction in pain occurs in future.

Ecstasy, cheerfulness, enthusiasm, exaltation, ebullience, bliss are all either synonyms for happiness, and thus not true emotions, or else variations on emotion joy.

Greed is anticipated joy

Affection, attraction, fondness, attachment, benevolence are synonyms for love.

Gratitude and trust are special forms of love, to the extent that these are emotions rather than rational thinking.

Lust is mixture of sexual desire, which is not an emotion, and emotion joy. To the extent lust involves sustained response, there is also love involved, since love is emotion associated with sustained movement towards object or situation which increases pleasure and/or reduces pain.

Boredom is pain which results from failure to expend mental or physical energy, and pain is not an emotion.

Ennui, tedium, weariness are synonyms for boredom, and thus not emotions, or else they might be called variations on sadness.

Apathy is synonym for dispassion, or absence of emotion.

Empathy is not emotion itself but rather means feeling same emotion as another creature, whatever that emotion may be.

Sympathy is synonym for both empathy (which is not an emotion, as previously noted) and pity.

Compassion is synonym for pity.

Grief, anguish, mournfulness, despair, despondency, discouragement, sorrow, resignation, loneliness are variations on sadness. As noted previously, sadness is typically associated with loss. Some typical losses for animals would include: loss of territory due to losing fight with competitor, loss of offspring, loss of food due to failure to catch prey. With humans, there is possibility of more abstract forms of loss, such as loss of dignity, loss of reputation, loss of self-esteem.

To reiterate, in modern society, optimal path to happiness, which is goal of life, consists in replacing emotional thinking with logical thinking, other than for some residual physical fear for special situations where quickness of thought is more important than complexity of thought. Dispassionate logical thinking is more difficult than emotional thinking at first, but this difficulty soon passes as mind becomes trained. Though dispassion is ideal, in practice constant mild joy is probably equally compatible with sustained high levels of happiness.

Sadness can be particular bad emotion. Purpose of sadness is to give mind opportunity and incentive to reprogram itself. In animals, where mind is simple and thus required reprogramming is also simple, sadness probably works effectively. In humans, due to much greater complexity of mind, sadness is often counter-productive, so that suffering is pointless. In particular, extended depression often interferes with reprogramming or causes reprogramming in wrong direction. Humans should attempt to maintain cheerful attitude at all times and use logic to reprogram mind as needed, rather than relying on sadness to do the work.

Elimination of emotion does not imply any change of behavior. It merely implies that thought process which results in behavior is conducted at higher logical level rather than at lower emotional level. Elimination of emotion implies nothing about underlying desires which motivate thought and behavior. This can be made clearer with example. Suppose there exists situation in which benefits of war with neighbor would greatly exceed costs, since we are likely to win and neighbor has something that we desperately need, such as food. Clearly, we should attack. But instead of working ourselves into state of anger, as people usually do when they are preparing for war, we should try to maintain inner calm. Behavior that results is same whether or not we are angry—namely, we attack our neighbor. Advantage of maintaining inner calm is that we can think more clearly, and this can be of tremendous benefit. We might, for example, want to change our outward appearance temporarily to one reflecting fear, thus luring our opponent into ambush. If we are truly angry, it will be difficult to engage in such deception. Or we may discover that we are not likely to win war after all, in which case we can stage orderly retreat if we maintain calm. By contrast, if we are filled with anger, it will be difficult to admit we are wrong until too late, and then anger will likely turn to fear, resulting in panicky and disorderly retreat.