Emotions
Introduction
Love, hate, happiness, fear, boredom - everyone has experienced emotions. Most people take them for granted as some uncontrollable forces that have no logical cause. This article will explore emotions from the Objectivist perspective. Philosophically we must find out what causes emotions, and what their purpose is.
What Causes Emotions?
Simply put, emotions are triggered by your thoughts. They don't just appear out of nowhere, and they don't arise from an unreachable part of your subconscious. Not only are emotions triggered by your thoughts, they are also defined by your thoughts. Emotions can only possibly stem from some kind of understanding or concept. Hearing words such as "murder", "God" or "paedophile" will trigger emotions within you. This is only because these words signify a specific concept in your mind. The same words in a language you do not know would not trigger the same emotions, since the sounds would be meaningless to you. This shows that one must have an understanding or knowledge of something before one can have an emotional response to it.
A further example may be that of a crocodile. If an adult were to be confronted with a crocodile he would likely have sufficient understanding of the situation so that he would perhaps feel fear, or maybe even excitement. However, if one didn't know what a crocodile was, you wouldn't make the connection, and wouldn't experience the fear or excitement. The emotion is only triggered when understanding of the situation is present.
So, an understanding of a given situation or concept leads (potentially) to the emotion being triggered. Particular emotions are felt for different kinds of situations though. The emotions themselves are not defined by one's thoughts, but are part of the brain's "operating system" so to speak. Certain types of judgements will engage certain emotions. Being confronted by a crocodile would trigger the emotion fear for example because you see your life as being in danger. This is a split second, but conscious, judgement of values. On the other hand, pleasure or happiness would be felt when one identifies a value as having being gained or kept. The basis for what type of emotions are felt is the type of value judgement made by the person.
Emotions are Automated
Obviously, one does not need to go through the entire thought process of a value judgement through to the emotion itself to experience emotions. This is because emotions are automated responses. Emotions occur almost immediately after something has happened, for example seeing a crocodile or winning a sporting event. This is because the judgement has (almost always) been made previously. For example, fearing a crocodile is based on the value judgement that life is worth living and therefore the threat of death posed by the crocodile is to be feared. The evaluation of whether life is good isn't made at that time. It was made before. The understanding of the situation combined with this previous judgement is what sets off the emotional response.
Emotions are Based on Value Judgements
Since emotions are automatic responses to previous value judgments, and it is possible that the original judgement was faulty, it is possible that the response is not proper. The emotion will be faulty as well. One may have been afraid of the dark as a child due to feeling threatened by the absence of light - i.e. harmful things could be hiding in the shadow. As an adult one should have a greater understanding of the dark and know that in certain situations the dark is not something "worth" fearing. However, since the value judgement had already been made as a child, some people may never alter the judgement and remain afraid of the dark, often without fully understanding why. Value judgements are not instantly changable, it does take the brain time to adjust, but once one understands this relationship between the judgement and the emotion, one can eliminate such unecessary emotional responses.
The above is a demonstration that emotions are fallible due to their nature. They should not always be trusted, and certainly not used as tools of cognition. One should validate one's emotions through introspection and reasoning. If an emotion seems to have no validity, one should try to understand why this conflict exists and where it came from. The emotion could be correct whereas the reasoning could be false, or vice versa, or both could be incorrect. One should be careful to resolve errors in one's thinking and emotional responses.
So What's the Point of Emotions?
This article may seem to have over-simplified a topic which confuses and confounds people everywhere, but the philosophical basis of emotions is that simple. Emotions are like a computer printout giving us a figurative "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" after any given situation. Emotions can be rewarding, so long as they are not taken at face value. They enable faster responses to time-critical situations and give insights into complex problems. Emotions aren't some kind of hokey supernatural force or some unknowably complex mental function. It is true that long held value judgements are difficult to change, and one must be brutally honest with one's self and think about their responses from a totally objective position, or from as objective a position as possible at least.
