As philosopher or student of philosophy, what is the #1+philosophical reason you can give for having emotions?

Question

or for having an emotional side to our nature?

Last I looked science is humanistic. Read Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" This is the philosophy category and we here question science, even as we treasure the results and methods of science.

Re Sartre "At the core of Sartre's philosophy, from beginning to end, is the concept of freedom. His intention in Being and Nothingness, for example is to characterize human existence such that it is "without
245 excuse." He argues relentlessly that we are responsible for everything we do and everything we are. And this includes our emotions. Thus Sartre could not disagree more with William James's theory, according to which emotions are largely instinctual, physiological reactions over which we have no control. Our emotions, Sartre says, are "magical transformations of the world," voluntary ways in which we alter our consciousness of events and things to give us a more pleasing view of the world. Typically, Sartre argues, these "transformations" are a form of "escape-behavior," ways of avoiding some crucial recognition about ourselves.Perhaps his most elegant and simple example is Aesop's fable about the fox and the grapes; the fox tries to reach the grapes on the vine, but cannot.

He makes light of his failure by deciding "They are sour anyway." But, "it is not the chemistry of the grapes that has changed," Sartre says-it is the fox's attitude. He has come to look at the grapes as sour, to prove he didn't want them anyway. So too, he generalizes, our emotions are strategies we employ to avoid action, to avoid responsibility, to "flee from freedom," in the language of Being and Nothingness.

Although Sartre never developed a full-scale theory of the emotions, he nevertheless continued to use The Emotions in his later work, in particular, Being and Nothingness. There his view of emotions becomes even more voluntaristic; and some emotions, for example, anguish (angoisse) and shame, become the key to his overall interpretation of the "human condition" and the various ways we took at ourselves and others and come to make ourselves into the kind of creatures we are. His analysis in The Emotions of the way emotions are strategies for avoiding facing up to ourselves

into the kind of creatures we are. His analysis in The Emotions of the way emotions are strategies for avoiding facing up to ourselves and our situation became the prototype for the notion of "bad faith," a central idea in Being and Nothingness."

see--> http://www.geocities.com/pdf_luciani/serveur/panoramix/art_inter/sartre_emotions.htm

The Sartre info came from googling "Sartre and emotions"

All philosophy A's are interesting to read if only to note the differences in approach to the Q. There are many reasons and I readily admit it is unfair of me to limit it to the #1 reason, but in doing so, many of you put more effort & focus into the subject over which many philosophers have struggled to develop a logic of emotions. All input is appreciated as my googling of Sartre gives evidence to one of the A's.

I appreciate the edits and the efforts as we all seek the BA

BTW Sartre had his good pts and his bad pts! But lets move on to the arguments!

"in accordance to your restrictions on the scope of the question..." catch! Too many lose focus and placing limits helps to stay on topic!! I make no apologies for my measures!

I only pointed out that humans do science and that claims that ignore that fact are immature. I have not "bashed" science and claiming I did is only putting up a "strawman argument" to shoot down. If your philosophy is based on science to the degree that it is why come to this subcategory which is part of the humanities category?

Does saying "even as we treasure the results and methods of science." sound like I'm a science basher? If it does you can't read and another thing science was parented by philosophers that is a historical fact that you recognize yet deny the implications at the same time. Do you even see the contradiction in defense of science-a totally unnecessary defense!

Huh? "Also if James was correct about the purely deterministic nature of emotions" James was a free will advocate.

Answer 1

"Just as the pleasure-pain mechanism of man's body is an automatic indicator of his body's welfare or injury, a barometer of its basic alternative, life or death—so the emotional mechanism of man's consciousness is geared to perform the same function, as a barometer that registers the same alternative by means of two basic emotions: joy or suffering. Emotions are the automatic results of man's value judgments integrated by his subconscious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers man's values or threatens them, that which is for him or against him—lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss.

"But while the standard of value operating the physical pleasure-pain mechanism of man's body is automatic and innate, determined by the nature of his body—the standard of value operating his emotional mechanism, is not. Since man has no automatic knowledge, he can have no automatic values; since he has no innate ideas, he can have no innate value judgments.

"Man is born with an emotional mechanism, just as he is born with a cognitive mechanism; but, at birth, both are "tabula rasa." It is man's cognitive faculty, his mind, that determines the content of both. Man's emotional mechanism is like an electronic computer, which his mind has to program—and the programming consists of the values his mind chooses.

"But since the work of man's mind is not automatic, his values, like all his premises, are the product either of his thinking or of his evasions: man chooses his values by a conscious process of thought—or accepts them by default, by subconscious associations, on faith, on someone's authority, by some form of social osmosis or blind imitation. Emotions are produced by man's premises, held consciously or subconsciously, explicitly or implicitly..."

Answer 2

Agreed with Plato. No one in philosophy makes you question your own beliefs, is as entertaining or expresses complex ideas as simply as Plato does. I make the suggestion to everyone beginning to have an interest in philosophy to read The Apology. It's not very long, it should only take an hour or so to read, but it so clearly shows why philosophy is relevant in such a clear, artistic form. From there, you can go on to reading some of Plato's other dialogues (such as Euthyphro, Phaedo and The Republic). After Plato, it is probally best to read Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy (Which will open the door to a whole new world of ideas for anyone who first reads it, as well as shows how much philosophy has changed since the time of Plato)... After that, read a little bit into the history of philosophy and what many of the great philosophers thought and you should find a few who you find interesting, so try reading them first and before you know it you will be a great expert on the subject!

Answer 3

I have to say that I more or less subscribe to Sartre's theory of emotions. This being that emotions are a fight or flight response. True to his phenomenological background, Sartre saw emotions as the moment between apprehending a situation and understanding it. Perhaps there might be some miniscule adjustments needed, but this broadly strikes me as a sound approach.

[edit] I'm not partial to giving longer answers on YA, but this one needs some elaboration.
Firstly I don't write this as a confirmed expositor of Sartre. I don't subscribe to every part of his 'system', but there are many fertile approaches to be drawn from it.

I think Sartre's approach is more subtle and useful than William James's. James diagnoses emotions as instinctual, but doesn't really explain their workings. Also if James was correct about the purely deterministic nature of emotions I think their outcomes would always tend towards sameness and inevitability and this is not always the case.

Sartre's doctrine of freedom enters when he claims that emotional responses have an element of choice. This is the part I have the most trouble with. I wonder how applicable it is to moments of sheer surprise as in when someone taps you on the shoulder when you think you're alone and you 'jump'. Still, I think the idea that emotional reactions as 'ways modifying circumstances' is a rich concept. But, because his was a 'sketch' for a theory of emotions I think it is left open; and I nor anyone else is under the obligation to accept it as a whole.

What I think his theory does best is highlight the dullness of behaviouristic approaches to emotion by asking the question: is emotional response a fully mechanistic reaction or is there some element of deliberate purpose (on the part of an emotional agent). Emotions would probably then have to be divided into emotional behaviours and surprise emotions.

Answer 4

as my perspective on animals is that they are beings of pure instinct and emotion. i say that emotions are the guiding light to what is right, and should be followed to find the way appropriately to live, so the purpose of emotions are to show you how to live, but in this time of convenience that has been unaccounted for in our DNAs knowledge of the world that it has began to encompass things that havent been there before or as important, or just hasnt been grasped yet, or written into code.

the point iam trying to get to is that the emotions are the beginning to the start of the next step in evolution, once unencumbered and completely full filled they will eventually over time move on to unlock the secrets of the mind

Answer 5

Philosophy does not answer the question of why we have emotions; that is up to neurologists who study the centers of the brain that are connected to all other bodily functions. Whether they ever find an answer will be interesting.
But philosophically, emotions are the body's reactions to metaphysical values: what do you love; whom; why; why did someone's words hurt you?; why did someone else's words elate you?
Every instance of a metaphysical value that affects your concept of yourself elicits a corresponding emotion. It does not mean the emotion is a correct evaluation: sometimes, as we all know, our heads and our minds do not agree. Emotions are simply cognitions of value judgments. It takes thought to decide if the emotion is correct, causing us to perhaps change our heads, or if it is a shocking contradiction to what we thought we believed.

Answer 6

On a "philosophical" level, in accordance to your restrictions on the scope of the question....

I'd say, humbly, that my take on it is that the presence of emotion *further* defines us as specific *sorts* of beings.

But first, a brief comment--a sidebar if you will. Sciences as they stand today may reflect more "humanist" philosophies, and you may not want to *hear* commentary of a psychological sort to avoid that bias, but...bashing science by implying that philosophy is somehow "above the program" isn't the answer either. A bias against *another bias* is still in fact a bias.

Not to mention, this does go against much of the *historical* relationship between philosophy and the more logic-oriented, pre-Newtonian takes on sciences. Long before a "scientific method" even had a chance to be heard, never mind become dominant (the religious persecutions of Galileo and Copernicus both come to mind here), people did in fact create crude "scientific methods" based upon the recorded thoughts and philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. Much of the work both Sir Francis Bacon and Leonardo Da Vinci did was based on this pre-Newtonian, philosophy-derived science.

So to try to isolate science from philosophy in the name of warding off a "humanist bias", especially when human psychology does have a lot to say on the matter of emotion and human nature, strikes me as a bit too willfully erroneous, not to mention provincial, and not to mention a bit too callously ignorant of the symbiosis of philosophy and early sciences.

^_^ Of course, all of this is in my humble opinion...you can ask your question any way you like of course, so long as it parses into something that can be answered.

And now, answering your face-value question. ^_^

Essentially...we are aware at this point of the principle Descartes enunciated so clearly in saying "cogito ergo sum", or "I think, therefore I am." This principle does define us, as thinking beings who *do think* after some manner, so long as we exist. But...

What the "cogito ergo sum" statement does *not* do is it doesn't differentiate us from say, a highly advanced computer program. Yes, it seems like a fairly facile thing to say, that the Cartesian principle doesn't really *tell us* if we are real people, or just "brains in a vat", but honestly....it doesn't. It can't. All it does is demonstrate a correlation between *thought* of a sort and *existence* of a sort. And yes, there is an "I" present in that principle as well, but it can just as easily be replaced by any other pronoun under the sun, *including "IT"*, and still the principle parses.

This, I would humbly submit, is where emotion comes into the picture. It is the interface between body and mind, or between a flight/fear/fight condition and one's response to it. Emotion is the *reminder* that not only do we "think/exist", but that we do so according to a specific paradigm: we do so courtesy of *having* biological bodies we live in. Emotion is a buffer that seems specific not just to life but to *animal life* that possesses neurons and a hormonal system of *some sort*. It exists within us physically much as it does for earthworms....whereas it does *not* exist, a priori, for synthetic, constructed intelligences such as what might appear on a computer, computer network, or within a human-shaped machine (a.k.a., a robot or android). Within such a constructed system, so far, *everything* is computational a priori....everything operates at the "think/exist" level *only*, even when a program executes a function with a direct physical consequence...after all, *cybernetics* as word is derived from the Greek "cyber netes" or "system of governance".

Compare that to a human being....who for all his or her intellect, computation and "thinking/existing" on the Cartesian level, still *by necessity* executes some functions by way of a physical auto-pilot, things like heartbeats, breathing, taking in food and water, voiding wastes. We are physical, experiential beings first, computational second, and the emotions *remind us* of this. A robot on the other hand, is computational first, and physical/experiential second or third.

So Descartes proves that we "think/exist", but it took folks like Freud and B.F. Skinner to prove that we also "feel/live/experience" as well.

I hope this makes some sense. ^_^ Thanks for your time.

Answer 7

The reason for having emotions from the philosophical point of view!?!
Ah, First I need to define emotions, these are feeling created by input from the world around us. they are connected to the most primitive part of our information system.
The base level responses to for example pain, pleasure, satisfaction, serenity, and fear which operate on the subconscious level and interact with the body by creating chemical cocktails causing sensations which we have tried to categorise in class of emotions giving them names such as remorse, awe, rage and many other such feelings including, vigilance, ecstasy, admiration, terror,amazement, grief, loathing, and Joy.
Emotion are never totally clear cut we tend to imagine them as so, but just look at love, which often bring with it pain, lust, greed, envy and sometimes rage.
Ok the basic intro is over. Now I must admit to having a problem with answering this question, for I am neither a philosopher nor a student of philosophy, I only search for knowing in as many realms as I can for it is my feeling, that a great knowledge limited in a little area, is unhelpful in solving the greater problems of mankind. It is my belief that the solution can only be found by bring together all parts of the puzzle.
I fear my ignorance, I love the satisfaction of learning and having good results, I these feeling spur me on.
I need nutrition for my biology, but to exist as a seeker of knowledge I need emotions, for me curiosity is just another member of the family.
So I'm sorry, though I am humble in my admission of my sense of failing, my pride will not allow me to stop try to satisfy my desire of scientia.

But anyway I'll take a guess. If you don't love her then there's no point in staying with her!

Sorry I got lost there that was my reason for emotions in philosophy as for those in our nature. We're simply are too evolved to survive without them.
No fight or flight and you're a dead biped.

Sorry I don't want to moan, but why didn't the first guy just put the Link
http://www.skysite.org/philo.html

Or at least say that he had ripped it off the net, the Source list is useful for future reading and not everybody takes it in mind to copy and paste to see if it came from the web, plus its much easier to read in html formate. Tut tut tut.


Good answer Oracle I could have saved myself all the merchant of Venice stuff if I had stuck with the logical path of my brain.
omg you got my synapses in a twist with that one.

Yaoi Shonen-ai, Yours was a much better explanation than my cocktail bar theory!

Answer 8

....neurochemical reactions formed thru evolution as a method for survival...


i believe all sentient beings have emotions but u seem to be more on the humanistic side so u can interpret it however u want

Answer 9

Emotions ?

Just that exploration AND discovery....can be...exciting,etc.

Answer 10

I Feel,therefore I am