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coberst
2nd November 2006, 04:07 AM
It’s an emotional issue

What are the emotions? The primary emotions are happiness sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust. The secondary or social emotions are such things as pride, jealousy, embarrassment, and guilt. Damasio considers the background emotions are well-being or malaise, and calm or tension. The label of emotion has also been attached to drives and motivations and to states of pain and pleasure.

Antonio Damasio, Distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, testifies in his book “The Feelings of What Happens” that the biological process of feelings begins with a ‘state of emotion’, which can be triggered unconsciously and is followed by ‘a state of feeling’, which can be presented nonconsciously; this nonconscious state can then become ‘a state of feeling made conscious’.

“Emotions are about the life of an organism, its body to be precise, and their role is to assist the organism in maintaining life…emotions are biologically determined processes, depending upon innately set brain devices, laid down by long evolutionary history…The devices that produce emotions…are part of a set of structures that both regulate and represent body states…All devices can be engaged automatically, without conscious deliberation…The variety of the emotional responses is responsible for profound changes in both the body landscape and the brain landscape. The collection of these changes constitutes the substrate for the neural patterns which eventually become feelings of emotion.”

The biological function of emotions is to produce an automatic action in certain situations and to regulate the internal processes so that the creature is able to support the action dictated by the situation. The biological purpose of emotions are clear, they are not a luxury but a necessity for survival.

“Emotions are inseparable from the idea of reward and punishment, pleasure or pain, of approach or withdrawal, of personal advantage or disadvantage. Inevitably, emotions are inseparable from the idea of good and evil.”

Emotions result from stimulation of the senses from outside the body sources and also from stimulations from remembered situations. Evolution has provided us with emotional responses from certain types of inducers put these innate responses are often modified by our culture.

jmercer
2nd November 2006, 04:18 AM
So?

coberst
2nd November 2006, 06:09 AM
So?


Damasio concludes that emotions are inseparable from good an evil, i.e. morality, I agree, do you?

Darat
2nd November 2006, 06:12 AM
Damasio concludes that emotions are inseparable from good an evil, i.e. morality, I agree, do you?

Emotions are a result of biology.

kittykatkarma
2nd November 2006, 06:17 AM
You've use double quotes throughout your post. Are you quoting from a source or using them to emphasize?


“Emotions are inseparable from the idea of reward and punishment, pleasure or pain, of approach or withdrawal, of personal advantage or disadvantage. Inevitably, emotions are inseparable from the idea of good and evil.”


Although I agree with much of the post, the last portion I see as being out dated. As more becomes known about mental illnesses, they are less associated with good and evil. Severe depression can cause irrational thinking and prevent a person from thinking logically on any level. But that does not make the person evil. Profound sadness is often described as utter expressionless emptiness, not evil.

On the other hand, the appearance of happiness does not automatically mean a person is good. I’ve known people who on first meeting seemed to be really good people, happy go lucky sorts. However, after getting to know them and learning of their secrets, the lies they had told along the way, and the people they had hurt, or the bad deeds they had done; my opinion changed about them.

Roboramma
2nd November 2006, 06:40 AM
To talk about morality without understanding emotions is unlikely to be very useful. I guess I can agree with that much.
Besides that I don't see your point.

coberst
2nd November 2006, 07:49 AM
You've use double quotes throughout your post. Are you quoting from a source or using them to emphasize?





I use quotation marks only when I quote directly from the author's text. I use bold type when I wish to accent any text such that the reader could just read the bold text and go to the rest of the text only if desired for further clarification.