How do we understand a feeling?

[Wilso]

I've been curious of this, i'm no philosopher, but i have pondered the question for some while: how do we know what a feeling feels like?

for example,

happiness- how do we know we are happy, how do we know that one thing makes us happy rather than something else? It's programmed into our brain that some things make us happy and some do not i suppose, but how would one persons 'happy' compare to anothers? And how do we know we are happy at all? We are never taught what actually makes us 'happy' as each individual is different, so how do we know what happiness actually feels like? Do you know how it feels to be happy? Are you sure? How can you be sure? As i stated there is no definition or comparison.
This theory can be applied to any feeling, how do you know you are feeling it, how do you know what it feels like? How do you know that happy to you isn't wrong? Think about it.

 

[freehugs]

We don't, at all.

Think about the firs time you felt jealousy. You didn't know what that was until someone told you that you're being jealous.

 

[Wilso]

We don't, at all.

Think about the firs time you felt jealousy. You didn't know what that was until someone told you that you're being jealous.

So if you are saying 'we don't at all' then how do you know when you are happy, or sad? You wouldn't cry if you didn't think you were sad, you wouldn't smile if you didn't think you were happy? So why do you? This is not rage by the way, i just find the subject fascinating!

 

[Foreigner]

Feelings are different from thoughts, and your question conflates the two.

Feelings happen in the body and then the semantic process in the brain tries to apply meaning to them. This is how the mind-body connection works. You can have a thought that triggers a feeling. You can also have a thought without an accompanying feeling, or a feeling without an accompanying thought. Ideally, the two are always communicating with each other to paint a bigger picture.

You know that you are having a feeling because your body tells you that the feeling is happening. "Happiness" is just a word, it can mean anything and it's subjective. It's a word your brain applies and has semantic/cultural associations to it. Emotions exist independently of definitions. A definition is not required for a feeling to be real - that is a very rational and linear way of trying to validate feelings.

"What is happiness?" is a question that has been debated by philosophers since the dawn of time, across many different languages and cultures.

 

[ebola?]

I think that our knowledge of our experience of emotion and the viability of their intersubjectivity stem from our neurology. With the experience of emotion also come changes in cardiovascular function, skeletal muscle activity, and facial contortions (and of course also neural signalling only as of yet partially understood). Emotion colors our perception of our cognition and bodily activity, but our experience of our body also shapes how (and even which) emotion is experienced.

The intersubjective key, however, is mirror neurons. These neurons respond similarly to particular actions whether they are observed or undertaken directly. These provide a pre-verbal basis for the implementation of empathy. This process sets the stage for any cognitive elaboration of emotion that occurs, and it is also likely that our experience observing emotion in others (and the social framework that gives such observation its context) 'teaches' us to observe emotions in ourselves.

Feelings happen in the body and then the semantic process in the brain tries to apply meaning to them. This is how the mind-body connection works. You can have a thought that triggers a feeling. You can also have a thought without an accompanying feeling, or a feeling without an accompanying thought.

But can you have a feeling without having an experience thereof? I'm not sure that the mind and body can be so easily teased apart (or that they're distinct entities in the first place)...

ebola

 

[L2R]

ebola, what you are referring to is a point of reference. what foreigner is talking about is stuff like phantom limbs, anaesthesia, meditation, delusions, etc.

as for your question, the imagination can potentially simulate anything, but there is no way to verify how accurate that is without the experience. what is it like to be a bat?

 

[Cthulhu]

But can you have a feeling without having an experience thereof? I'm not sure that the mind and body can be so easily teased apart (or that they're distinct entities in the first place)...

ebola

Hi ebola,

I think that foreigner's point is not that "feeling" and "its experience" can be distinguished, it's that "feeling/emotion" and "thought" can be. With regard to happiness, for example, an infant might "feel" a state of warmth, security, and nourishment but would not be "thinking" that she is happy (e.g., I'm SO happy, this is amazing, I want to stay this way forever, etc.). The infant's mother might notice her smile and say to the father, "look how happy she is!" but that is the mother's thought and her perspective. Eventually, if the mother continues to tell her child that she's happy when she's smiling, the child will associate her internal state with the word "happy" and begin to apply it on her own, as her language develops.

So, I agree with foreigner that a semantic thought is something extra and on top of an emotion, at least developmentally in the beginning. However, it gets more interesting because language and thoughts DO influence feelings, and can run parallel to them. It's as if language and conceptual thought develop after basic feelings, but then they all begin to intertwine in a beautiful web of associations and causal relationships - an integrated system.

To answer the OP's question: How do YOU know when YOU are happy?

 

[ebola?]

ebola, what you are referring to is a point of reference. what foreigner is talking about is stuff like phantom limbs, anaesthesia, meditation, delusions, etc.

Ah. But wouldn't these really be cases of disjuncture between point of reference and the conditions that give rise to points of reference?

as for your question, the imagination can potentially simulate anything, but there is no way to verify how accurate that is without the experience. what is it like to be a bat?

My point was actually that imagination is not properly involved in the implementation of basic empathy. Rather, though social bonds, mirror neurons coordinate between individuals, gluing together empathy as truly intersubjective, rather than as an exchange where each subject tries to simulate the other mentally.

We can't know what it's like to be a bat because we can't neurally coordinate with bats in social interactions; our neural hardware is just so different that we can't implement basic empathy with bats.

I think that foreigner's point is not that "feeling" and "its experience" can be distinguished, it's that "feeling/emotion" and "thought" can be. With regard to happiness, for example, an infant might "feel" a state of warmth, security, and nourishment but would not be "thinking" that she is happy (e.g., I'm SO happy, this is amazing, I want to stay this way forever, etc.). The infant's mother might notice her smile and say to the father, "look how happy she is!" but that is the mother's thought and her perspective. Eventually, if the mother continues to tell her child that she's happy when she's smiling, the child will associate her internal state with the word "happy" and begin to apply it on her own, as her language develops.

So, I agree with foreigner that a semantic thought is something extra and on top of an emotion, at least developmentally in the beginning. However, it gets more interesting because language and thoughts DO influence feelings, and can run parallel to them. It's as if language and conceptual thought develop after basic feelings, but then they all begin to intertwine in a beautiful web of associations and causal relationships - an integrated system.

Very good explanation! Yeah, I might've missed foreigner's main point. Indeed, cognition and emotion intertwine (sometimes in a partially mutually constitutive / dialectical way), so once in a social setting, neither cognition nor emotion can truly be prior.

ebola

 

[Ninae]

Hmm, I wouldn't say I normally have any problem knowing what I'm feeling. It's more like battling my ability to feel it at any point. If you can feel it in some way it's definitely there. I would say it's more something you can confuse yourself with on the mental level. Or trying to suppress/escape or imagining yourself to feel something. A lot of the times what I've imagined to be having positive feelings seems like wishful thinking when I'm looking back and am able to relate to that reality (feel safe). While the good feelings your having is generally always right, as there is no reason to will yourself to feel them.

 

[alasdairm]

Think about it.

the thing about feelings is that we don't think about them. they're visceral.

i think foreigner and cthulhu put it pretty well.

alasdair

 

[MikeOekiM]

 

[pk.]

also:

Can I borrow a feeling?

Could you send me a jar of love?

Hurtin' hearts need some healin',

Take my hand with your glove of love

 

[MikeOekiM]

i dont think they understand us, pk.

or maybe they just don't like us.

either way, it feels bad man.

 

[rangrz]

Step one: obtain sufficient knowledge of how brain works.
Step 2: develop sufficiently advanced brain imaging device.(ideally, able to capture the quantum state information of the entire brain)
Step 3: Use it, look at results. (Ideally, state the Hamiltonian operator on the psi function of the entire brain)
Step 4: ????
Step 5: Profit!

 

[Lab-Test Monkey]

So, I agree with foreigner that a semantic thought is something extra and on top of an emotion, at least developmentally in the beginning. However, it gets more interesting because language and thoughts DO influence feelings, and can run parallel to them. It's as if language and conceptual thought develop after basic feelings, but then they all begin to intertwine in a beautiful web of associations and causal relationships - an integrated system.

To answer the OP's question: How do YOU know when YOU are happy?

Disclaimer: this is personal opinion/whimsy at this point in time whilst high

Wow, I'll probably revisit this thread a few times and indeed have saved a copy thus far for posterity, the particular quote above really struck a chord with me (as would be the case for majority of people who would read it). It seems that nearly everyone and in particular a lot of bluelight users are looking to modify that integrated system towards an ideal that suits them(or at least I do). This modification aka self improvement aka positive disintegration aka finding ones self (reference/credit to Dabrowki, Jesus, Buddha and everyone one else I've ever learnt from ((if they aren't all me to begin/end with)) is the beautiful/tragic journey called life/death.

Knowledge really is power so let's share it with everyone.

 

[Lab-Test Monkey]

Step one: obtain sufficient knowledge of how brain works.
Step 2: develop sufficiently advanced brain imaging device.(ideally, able to capture the quantum state information of the entire brain)
Step 3: Use it, look at results. (Ideally, state the Hamiltonion operator on the psi function of the entire brain)
Step 4: ????
Step 5: Profit!

This is offtopic but for those familiar with the origins of the above, I'm only just starting to realise how popular media can be a powerful tool for good and bad messages on our total(subconscious/conscious minds) The format above I've seen before but I had not considered that whoever created such a thing (most likely intentionally but perhaps subconsciously or perhaps by accident) was teaching people a basic form of hierarchical thinking/planning to achieve their goals.

 

[ebola?]

Step one: obtain sufficient knowledge of how brain works.
Step 2: develop sufficiently advanced brain imaging device.(ideally, able to capture the quantum state information of the entire brain)
Step 3: Use it, look at results. (Ideally, state the Hamiltonian operator on the psi function of the entire brain)
Step 4: ????
Step 5: Profit!

While this will be the general character of success in neural understanding, there are a couple of 'road blocks'. First, wouldn't the neural imaging that you're talking about disrupt various quantum states of the particles it measures? Then, insofar as neural states are not strictly macroscopic, observation of neural activity should disrupt that activity, and thus alter consciousness. But it could just be that quantum-scale dynamics don't really matter for the neural system...

Second, it still might be difficult to connect neural activity with personal experience in 2 ways. We still acquire data about personal experience via linguistic mediation, which makes such data unreliable and dubiously valid.

But also, it could be that there isn't a rationally intelligible connection between patterns of neural activity and patterns of consciousness. The emergent layer (consciousness) might be irreducible to the layer below it. An example of this type of situation is in the relation between particle physics and biology (and in many cases, chemistry). As far as we know, one cannot intelligibly describe a particular set of sub-atomic particle interactions that form cellular organelles. The items in this set are numerous and not clearly tied together in terms of conditions described by particle physics (Though there will be a set of basic physical conditions necessary for cells to arise...eg, a blob of quark-gluon plasma cannot form a cell ). This issue becomes all the more insoluble when we come to more complicated systems, like a brain.

Because of this, it will take a lot of observation and insight to determine the principles through which neural activity gives rise to consciousness.

ebola

 

[rangrz]

While this will be the general character of success in neural understanding, there are a couple of 'road blocks'. First, wouldn't the neural imaging that you're talking about disrupt various quantum states of the particles it measures? Then, insofar as neural states are not strictly macroscopic, observation of neural activity should disrupt that activity, and thus alter consciousness. But it could just be that quantum-scale dynamics don't really matter for the neural system...

Second, it still might be difficult to connect neural activity with personal experience in 2 ways. We still acquire data about personal experience via linguistic mediation, which makes such data unreliable and dubiously valid.

But also, it could be that there isn't a rationally intelligible connection between patterns of neural activity and patterns of consciousness. The emergent layer (consciousness) might be irreducible to the layer below it. An example of this type of situation is in the relation between particle physics and biology (and in many cases, chemistry). As far as we know, one cannot intelligibly describe a particular set of sub-atomic particle interactions that form cellular organelles. The items in this set are numerous and not clearly tied together in terms of conditions described by particle physics (Though there will be a set of basic physical conditions necessary for cells to arise...eg, a blob of quark-gluon plasma cannot form a cell ). This issue becomes all the more insoluble when we come to more complicated systems, like a brain.

Because of this, it will take a lot of observation and insight to determine the principles through which neural activity gives rise to consciousness.

ebola

a) It's kind of a handwave and my take on it was not literal. B) I went to getting the quantum state information as kind of a logical conclusion of being able to capture ALL information. It's indeed not possible, but it was a sort of reduction to the absurd. I'm sure it would be much simpler and more meaningful to capture a higher level/larger scale structure information. Like the depolarization of each cell's membrane in real time for the whole brain. Or something approaching that. (It might be a good idea to figure out the particle physics of the ions and ion channels in a general sense as part of this endeavor, to model how the cells work in more detail, but just produce a general model of it and keep it in mind while designing the algorithms that process the scanner input.)
Then scan a lot of people under specific controlled stimulus presentations, etc, etc.

You get my concept here, yes? I don't know if it's practical or possible, but it's probably the general direction one would have to take in order objectively and quantitatively understand subjective internal states vs the empirical world around us.

 

[Cthulhu]

I don't know if it's practical or possible, but it's probably the general direction one would have to take in order objectively and quantitatively understand subjective internal states vs the empirical world around us.

Why not just observe and measure people's behavior (as the field of psychology does)? This provides an objective and quantitative understanding with the capability to link subjective states with the empirical world of observable phenomena. On the levels of practicality and feasibility, this approach is much richer, informative, and cost-effective than an attempt to link subjective states with cellular processes (which I believe would not produce much more than a mountain of garbage data). I can understand using more general imaging methods such as an fMRI.

I agree with ebola's implication about comparing appropriate levels of reality. I'm kind of amused by the reductionist ideal of explaining everything via very tiny things.

 

[rangrz]

Well, for now the techniques used in psychology are indeed the most fruitful and feasible ones. But again, my idea was sort of an idealized case that should be strived towards as technology advances and more understanding of brain physiology becomes available.

The reductionist approach has proved VERY successful in ALL of the sciences, as it it explains things in the highest level of detail. So, I think as our discoveries in the sciences continue to grow, emotional states will be understood in terms of smaller and smaller things, just like chemistry, physics, geology, biology, etc have been going to smaller and smaller things.