Emotion

I wanted to know what the arguments were for either. Do you think an emotionless society would run better or would it crumble, and why?

Without emotions knite, we are not humanistic, we won't function wisely at all.
Emotions are working for our understanding and prognostication of what is right, what is wrong.
We have motivation to continue, by the pleasing success bring us.
We feel bad when we did wrong, when a weakness is threatening our survival expects.
We learn from it.
We live according to it.
Emotions are our reactions, after all, to help us find the best way. Whatever we do. We may go wrong sometimes. But the sage will know to not repeat it.
Without it, you wouldn't be able to decide being a human, you'd feel nothing about it anyway, you wouldn't be able to decide something you are not aware to.

Necessary.

Yours truthfully
~Infernity

Define emotion.

Umm, Im fairly certain you know what emotions are Hege.
Pretty much anything that affects your decision making without a concerted effort to think about the choices and consequences before hand (aka logic).

Here are some interesting things I found whom classifying "emotion".

• emotion
[>] Any of a number of extremely complex phenomena that are a synthesis of subjective experience, expressive behaviour, and neurochemical activity. Though psychologists have not found a simple yet comprehensive definition of emotion, they have generally agreed that emotions entail, to varying degrees, awareness of one's environment or situation...

• emotion
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[>] emotion
\e*mo"tion\ (?), n. [l. emovere, emotum, to remove, shake, stir up; e out + movere to move: cf. f. émotion. see move, and cf. emmove.] a moving of the mind or soul; excitement of the feelings, whether pleasing or painful; disturbance or agitation of mind caused by a specific exciting cause and manifested by some sensible effect on the body. how different the emotions between departure and return! irving. some vague emotion of delight.

• emotion
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[>] Noun
1. any strong feeling
(hypernym) feeling
(hyponym) conditioned emotional response, CER, conditioned emotion
(derivation) emote

• emotion
[>] n emotion (= agitation of the feelings)

Yours
~Infernity

Interesting discussion. I believe that emotion is an extremely difficult thing to define exactly. It is there, we all know it is there, we all know it is part of our subjective reality. But putting it into words...now that is a tall order. It is like describing the saltiness of salt or the greeness of green, at a certain very basic level the nature of consciousness eludes us.

This is not to say that one can not make empirical observations about individuals in a particular emotional state, and proceed by attaching various probabilities to various sorts of associated behaviors. This doesn't really get to the heart of the matter though, does it?

Oh well, I guess it is futile to actually try to define emotion (which would make an assessment of its utility much more legitimate), but I'll give my opinion on the subject nonetheless.

Emotion, by its very nature, is separate and distinct from the domain of logic. This is not to say that the two can not arrive at similar conclusion, but that their mechanisms for arriving them are very different. Emotion is an evolutionary construct, designed to produce certain instinctual behaviors which confer a fitness advantage on the individual/species in question.

Now doing away with motion, hhmmm... As a person who values logic the idea does have some latent appeal for me, being that I perceive emotion as often interfering with logical policies/discourse, etc. There is a strong likelihood that some of the parameters that allowed emotion to confer a fitness advantage have changed since the time of our pleistocene ancestors, so indeed there may be some merit to diminishing human emotional capacity.

At the same time, humans continue to be predominately *social* creatures who rely extensively on their ability to infer other individuals' "internal states". Emotion is a key component of this cognitive infrastructure. Doing away with it could prove catastrophic, or perhaps even impossible -- It may be that the human mind depends too much/ has emotion too thoroughly integrated into their conceptual systems to function properly without them.

Another thing that your query has me wondering...

Is this purely a utilitarian analysis for you? Is nothing to be said for the value of human *pleasure*? I mean, I know personally that I am quite the fan of the emotion that goes by the name *happy*! [lol] Yep, I really like to be happy, and I like even more to be euphoric. it is this very human desire which, when taken to its excess, leads to the ever problematic behavior of substance abuse.

Like most aspects of human behavior/nature, as a THist I want to take the good and leave the bad. Or, at the very least, I want to acquire a greater degree of control over my biological parameters. This line of inquiry will lead one to the hedonistic imperative (hedweb), which I believe has some merit although I do not fully subscribe to the philosophy.

So my final answer would probably be no, we should not do away with emotions. But we should gain a greater degree of control over them.

Yes, well said Don, for such unexplainable term...
Lemme add:

Every thoughts and awareness are involving somewhat emotions. All by the singular self experience.

That's why we sense a lot that no one understands us.

As there are infinite thinkable thoughts, there are infinite sensible emotions and feelings.

The singularity is what keeps us existing as a race. One's bad does harm the whole generation.

Too bad aging does...

Yours truthfully
~Infernity

I removed emotion from my life when I was younger, but I eventually found that without emotion my reason lacked direction. Emotion is the base of our fundamental goals in life.

" Do you think an emotionless society would run better or would it crumble, and why? " It would crumble. What motivation would people have for doing anything? Why would people bother to work if they had no values, and how can one have value without emotion? An emotionless could society define their goals and good and bad based on the values of archaic emotional societies, but what motivation would they have to do this initially?

I removed emotion from my life when I was younger, but I eventually found that without emotion my reason lacked direction. Emotion is the base of our fundamental goals in life.

I mostly agree with you Chris. How exactly did you detach youself from emotions though... I mean, did you really detach yourself from emotions, or did you just live your life under the false belief that you had? I find it rather hard to believe that any human, no matter how sophisticated their mind, could truly detach themselves entirely from emotion, but this is just an opinion on my part.

But yes, emotions definitely do anchor down our goals and our values. In large part it could be said that they direct our actions. This is one of the areas of thought that a resident philosophers, Nate Barna often brings up. From my perspective (operating within a relativistic framework), the consequences of this reality is that value judgements about emotions are largely inappropriate. The process that they can be attributed to is neither good, nor bad, it is simply indifferent. Emotions just are. This may in turn lead us to a Consequentialist approach, although I am not sure that a subjective catagory such as *emotional well being* could be fit into this framework.

Regardless, we find ourselves in quite a delimma at this point for a number of reasons.

the tension and impulses between head and heart are the fuel which propels us against the vacuum and toward desires. The quality of the desires determine the quality of the trip.

Yes, Chris I agree with you.

Don, it is possible to server yourself from emotions, but not for 100%. There is no such thing. Deciding to to that is something based on emotion an so leaning on it. For as long as you decide you feel nothing about stuff, you are affected by some inner emotions.

The essence of us being humans is leaving us with no choice but be emotional somewhat.

It's like you cannot judge something without a self perspective at all, we are always involving opinion by life experience, what seems to us right, and do take unto account relations. Always.

Yours truthfully
~Infernity

One area that is particularly problematic when approaching the topic of emotions from a Transhumanist perspective (and I am saying nothing new here, but instead going with ideas that i agree with from both Kip W and Nate B) is precisely the fact that emotions do provide the "primer" for all of our goals and actions.

Is this a desirable reality in the long term? Will we always wish to operate under the constraints of our biological imperatives?

Some how I doubt it. I think at some point in our future we will attempt to detach ourselves, if for no other reason than that it might supply us with a greater (perceived... or possible) degree of autonomy. There are philosophers who would disagree with this assessment, arguing that it is not possible to fully detach oneself from their origins. Other philosophers believe that such a detachment is a likely reality and that the conundrum this presents them with in terms of formulating legitimate values is the ultimate question of existence.

Infernity

Don, it is possible to server yourself from emotions, but not for 100%. There is no such thing. Deciding to to that is something based on emotion an so leaning on it. For as long as you decide you feel nothing about stuff, you are affected by some inner emotions.

The essence of us being humans is leaving us with no choice but be emotional somewhat.

I guess I was typing my reply at the same time as you Infernity.

Yes, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. However, I wanted to emphasize the last sentence because I sense that many of the participants of this thread are basing their comments on the nature of *human existence* and not considering what it would mean for a complete redesign/ overhaul of what is commonly referred to as Homo Sapien Sapien. Changing the OSs and the substrate on which computations are performed -- the very logic and base line assumptions upon which our brains operate -- this presents the philosopher with some formidable challenges.

Without emotion there is no reason to do anything

I mostly agree with you Chris.  How exactly did you detach youself from emotions though... I mean, did you really detach yourself from emotions, or did you just live your life under the false belief that you had?

I guess I will give the story.

When I was in middle school, I doubted the existence of god for the first time. I could never again make myself believe, but at the same time I could not accept death (and still can't). Seeing how large of an impact emotion had on everyone's choice of religion, I resolved to never again let emotion play a role in my decision making process. I felt the emotions, but they had absolute no impact on my actions. I adapted a philosophy which was a combination of stoicism, skepticism, and darwinism - although I did not know any of those terms then.

This led to a decline in motivation. I am very intelligent, but without any emotion I lost all interest in academics and social interactions. Despite not caring, I made good grades and ended up getting a full scholarship because my reason told me that I should not limit my opportunities because I may find goals in the future. I have engaged in about only about a dozen non academic or family related social interactions since I adapted this lifestyle; my social skills are presently quite weak.

I constantly feared death. I would cry every night when I thought about it. Philosophers have written that prolonging life is foolish due the insignificance of an additional finite period when compared to the infinite; applying this same reasoning, the entirety of my life seemed insignificant and meaningless since our lives are only composed these finite periods.

Despite all of this, when I was not dreading my ultimate fate, I was loving life. I could willfully choose my mental state, and I usually chose an out of control, euphoric, borderline ADHD state. I valued my alone time spent thinking about philosophical issues. Due to my inhuman lifestyle, I had a strong sense of superiority above other men. I enjoy experiencing all human experiences – even pain: I love the adrenaline rush.

I entered college last year. Leaving my family for the first time, I achieved a new degree of isolation. I quickly accomplished a personal record: going an entire week without talking to anyone. I still was very happy for the first few months.

During the week before final exams, I finally achieved my goal of no longer experiencing emotions. This may be hard to imagine, but I would periodically experience times in which I had no true consciousness; my life continued entirely through the subconscious.

You have probably experienced these subconscious actions. For me, driving to familiar places or doing any repetitive mental activity has always been subconscious, but my brain would multitask so my consciousness would be occupied with other thoughts.

This was different, because the consciousness totally shut off while the subconsciousness took over everything. I felt like I was viewing myself from a third person perspective. This continued for two weeks. I finished every final exam without conscious thought. (and college is supposed to be cognitively challenging...) To this day, I still have my 4.0 grade average...

After these surreal experiences, I became mildly depressed for the first time. I cried for no reason one day while simultaneously laughing at myself for lowering myself to such womanly behavior. Becoming so totally inhuman made me aware of exactly how human I am and that I have a degree of normal human and emotional needs. I am trying to change my life so that it becomes more than a thoughtless continuation of habits.

I began to doubt the existence of the soul for the first time. While I have always made all decisions under the assumption that we are mere chemical machines, I previously could not remove the belief that I possessed a soul. I could not imagine how a chemical machine could have consciousness. I used to be unable to define what I mean by consciousness, but now that I have lacked it I am able to describe it in words. Consciousness is not intelligence with self awareness – as it is easy to imagine a machine which possesses both of these. Consciousness can only be described by contrasting it with the subconscious: and the subconsciousness has both intelligence and awareness. My picture of the potential of a chemical machine only possesses this subconscious. Consciousness cannot be measured, so it is possible (although unlikely) that I am the only being experiencing it.

Excellent discussion, I must say. I also believe that it would be impossible to do without them and still remain human in any meaningful sense of the word. Though I wish that there were a way to do without them, it seems that the drive to better ourselves and humanity as a whole would go with them.

Without emotion there is no reason to do anything

Are emotions really a reason, Elrond [?]

Being on the pathway of understanding reality and manipulating some of its elements, my beliefs are updating accordingly. As such, I’ve thus far been able to understand enough to realize that emotional states aren’t required properties of cognitive systems.

Emotions are spontaneous neurological events and can be consistently distinguished from reasoning and perceiving. Behavior based on emotion is simply behavior without conscious effort in reasoning. To behave based on emotions, whatever their content, is to indulge in the emotions. To behave based on reason is to be driven situationally rather than dispositionally from the bare-bones perspective of the agent having quantitatively more relational bonds with reality than less complex agents, no value judgment implied.

If a cognitive system happens to have a sophisticated production system with a robust set of sensors and actuators, allowing it to meaningfully interact with reality, then any backward trace along the causal chain of the entire system is simply more knowledge that might be considered in a present situation. But this knowledge needn’t have any meaning beyond perhaps what might’ve been learned under similar circumstances. That is, the fact that crazy whimsical creatures believed that sophisticated cognitive systems were logical necessities rather than natural contingencies is irrelevant.

In order to break out of the belief that rationality must fundamentally be based on emotional whim, however, one only needs to understand that rationality is a tool that needn’t be used if it works against the agent using it, for soon enough it then could no longer be used anyway. Rationality adequately justifies itself. Emotions needn’t have anything to do with it.

I find emotion to be a series of instinctual adaptations designed for the survival of the human species rendered obsolete once sufficient consciousness is achieved. That is if "emotion" is defined as a feeling which controls the consciousness rather than is being controlled by. When emotion is controlled I see it as a completely different thing. I can lay around all day drugging myself silly with the chemicals my body provides just for enjoyment. But while I'm in thought and action, I do so logically as possibe, I find absolutely no use for emotion unless logical thought breaks down. At which point prepared emotions act as they've been prepared to do.. which I believe would also be different from emotions which control the consciousness.

So basic instinctual emotion would be labeled chaos forced upon it's victim. Controlled emotion more of a vice and the inbetween (Where control breaks down yet prepared instincts are ready in place as "back up") would be a last ditch effort to avoid drifting with the current the body forces upon consciousness.

So, Obsolete.

Does the utility of emotion justify it's retention? If emotion isn't integral for the proper cognitive function of agents, then it can and may be phased out of posthumans (if they're realized). The alternative, the hedonistic imperative, might be achievable but would it be favoured over the removal of emotions entirely? Again I raise the question of utility, a persistent engineered euphoric state perhaps independent of external stimuli, may be subjectively pleasurable but what are the objective advantages? What degree of obsolescence has emotion approached up to this point, should we expect increasing obsolescence as we face the prospect of increasing progress?

I don't care if an emotionless society would run better or not. I enjoy emotions and it is one of the main motivating factors in my life. The drive to be happy is very, very powerful. To live in a zombie world of non-emotions would be mundane and would lack creativity.

Cosmos, I think that engineered euphoric states might, at the very least, have novelty value. However, contrary to suggestions in Hedweb, it probably would be folly to argue that states of perpetual orgasmic bliss are necessary for all mind types in order to have the impetus to eliminate all existential threats. Just because humans subjectively observe that more motivation, and hence effectiveness, correlates with increased happiness doesn’t mean this is a truism of minds in general. To believe that it is would be an anthropomorphic fallacy.

But regardless of actual utility and the nature of rationality not requiring emotion, artificial euphoric states should be a future lifestyle choice with zero non-artificial and artificial inhibitions. There’s no reason that superintelligence should operate as though other minds are either instrumental or non-instrumental in achieving goal states, as do human minds in today’s bullshit world.

Without emotion there is no reason to do anything

Are emotions really a reason, Elrond [?]

They are a method evolution has devised to prompt conscious beings like ourselves to action of some kind.

Name one conscious action of any merit that doesn't have some kind of emotion as it's base.

Rationality alone doesn't say that life is worth living. There is no rational reason to build space ships or cure aging. The root causes of these come from our desire to survive and our curiosity. Without emotion you can forever be trapped in the philosopher's loop of "Why?".

I suppose you could find other irrational concepts to replace emotion with. The Vulcans on star trek seem to have done this.

I think of my "soul" as a machine to be molded toward my purposes, nothing more. Perhaps because of this I've found emotions to be completely worthless, beyond studying them to learn functions of the body.

I have no desire for happiness, I gain nothing from imposed euphoric states but information on my body's functions. Though, my mind is currently trained to focus on an objective and nothing more, perhaps that is the cause. Truth be told, when I hear someone praising emotion as anything beyond a vice, I think them to be complete fools. The reason? They never have one.

Nate:

Cosmos, I think that engineered euphoric states might, at the very least, have novelty value. However, contrary to suggestions in Hedweb, it probably would be folly to argue that states of perpetual orgasmic bliss are necessary for all mind types in order to have the impetus to eliminate all existential threats. Just because humans subjectively observe that more motivation, and hence effectiveness, correlates with increased happiness doesn’t mean this is a truism of minds in general. To believe that it is would be an anthropomorphic fallacy.

Novelty value? I can't disagree with that.

But regardless of actual utility and the nature of rationality not requiring emotion, artificial euphoric states should be a future lifestyle choice with zero non-artificial and artificial inhibitions. There’s no reason that superintelligence should operate as though other minds are either instrumental or non-instrumental in achieving goal states, as do human minds in today’s bullshit world.

Yes. I never suggested that others should be barred from pursuing artificial euphoric states. Although I may have inadvertently implied that people should hold such inhibitions.

jaguar and chris_h, we're all humans for the moment. Some studies suggest that happiness in humans is associated with better health. If you value better health, and you both have control over your emotions as you claim, you may want to consider asserting a happier mood.

Coincidentally:
http://www.imminst.o...f=106&t=6076&s=

To clarify, I don't think happiness is necessarily linked to better health in all life forms capable of experiencing that emotion, but in humans that seems to be the case.

Something I feel that is missing here is the inclusion of experience with no emotion which is called depression. (It really gets to me when people equate "depression" with "sadness" so please refrain stating anything reminiscent of this and educate yourself if you feel compelled to do so.) Without emotion the world is a completely worthless, futile, mechanical trap. I've felt it and so have many others. Removing any of our human experiential parameters in the name of efficiency is a bit ludicrous; let's work on disease and aging before we start removing things that have proven to be essential tools for dealing with, if not fully justifying, life throughout history.

Edited by liplex, 20 April 2005 - 11:29 AM.

Would a society "run better", accomplish goals more effectively with LESS emotion, absolutely.

Would we want to ditch emotions ENTIRELY... no.

Does the utility of emotion justify its existence?
Possibly. You would have to know a lot about how our intelligence actually works. I would say emotion to some extent, the transfer of goals from overall motivations to actual implementation, is absolutely necessary.

Without emotion, you can't take pride in what you do, you can't want to see anyone live or die, including yourself. You can't have desires at all.

Robbing us of emotion not only would make our society worse, it would be the end of our civilization.