Humans and emotions.
Offline In evolutionary terms, humans are emotional machines that learned to think. Now what I have been thinking about was the idea that if a human being is deprived of all emotion, does that human being lose its logic. If there were a way that humans lost all emotion, would they lose their ability to think? Emotions came first, and emotions are the guides to logic. So, if humans were desensitized to a point where we were inept of all emotion, would we just die inside? Would we be shells of humans, emotionless and dead, or would we become robots or animals. I don’t believe a human would be able to function without emotions to guide them. If we did lose our emotions, we wouldn’t be human anymore. I really don’t know what we would be. Lifeless organisms with no motive, or soulless meat bags wandering to attempt self-preservation. I can’t decide what would happen. Your thoughts?
Damn dude..
I've never once in my life actually went into deep thought about that.
I think you're right in the sense that, we wouldn't be able to live without emotions. Emotions, pain-happiness-pride-hate, all that, builds up who we are. Without that, we're nothing. We're merely just a, sort of robot clone in a sense. Without emotion, we wouldn't really have any personality whatsoever. So we'd all be the exact same.
Emotions are simply gauges of reactions. Meaning, if you lose a leg from a manic weilding a scimitar, you'll feel panic and fear as a natural stimuli. Your body loses effeciency and functions when it loses a limb, and so out of the natural desire to live (being the outcome of an evolutionary process), it alerts and alarms you so as to prevent further injury should you come into the same situation.
The same goes for love. Love is a reaction to the desire to mate and continue the specie, being also of an evolutionary process and a survival tactic.
Without emotion, which animals have by the way, we would become able to process logic, but unable to survive. We would die out either by inability to react to situations that threaten us, or merely by our own hand when our desire to live and reproduce is lost and we realize the Earth works much better without us.
Hm. I completely overlooked the whole reproduction and love aspect of it.
Without emotion, I don't think we'd reproduce at all period. Because there's no excitement, happiness, pleasure etc. in it if we can't feel emotions. So like you said..We'd die out.
We would be significantly less efficient If emotionless humans were better at passing their genes, that is what we would be today. Of course, there are two types of emotion. Physical, as in holy fuck, I just lost my hand, or emphatic, as in donating to charity cuz it makes you feel 'good'. The former protects the preson, the latter, the species, and makes us the efficient, dominant species we are.
that about sums it up right there. I agree entirely ^^^
As intelligent as we are, would we even be able to function? We would derive no meaning. There would be no purpose at all. So... we really wouldn't do anything. We'd all just sit around. Working feels the same as doing nothing after all, so we would exert no effort. There would be nothing. We would all die very quickly I expect.
[quote=Nick_Poling]As intelligent as we are, would we even be able to function? We would derive no meaning. There would be no purpose at all. So... we really wouldn't do anything. We'd all just sit around. Working feels the same as doing nothing after all, so we would exert no effort. There would be nothing. We would all die very quickly I expect.[/quote]
I'm not so sure I follow.
If human beings lacked emotion entirely, they wouldn't grow tired of work, because growing tired is an emotional response to the monotony of work. Even in the absence of emotion there is basic instinct (though emotions are a subcategory of instinct, not all instinct is emotional.) Take a simple creature like a roundworm; it's nervous system is composed of 302 neurons which control basic properties of morphology and connectivity. It does the same thing day after day, yet there is no emotion about it; survival is simply instinctual, and the passing on of genes is as well. Such would be the same for humans.
We would exert effort because breeding and the passing on of genes would still be built-in to our genetics.
i believe people need emotions...when fighting i do not use fists atack them mentally using their emotions against them most will back off and if they dont they are fighting blind...but if you dont control your emotions it will rule you like it does those around you then you become something i never wanna be again close minded to all but your own petty needs...inside everyone there is a strive to be accepted wether you admit it or not it is natural for humans to need some sort of acceptace till they become secure and at peace with themself and at that point you become open minded and accept what you see as true...unless you are raised to be open minded (luck people)
Of course this is just my personal speculation...it may or may not be true...everyone needs to find their own truth to it all...
Without emotions there would be no drive to exist. The will to power would be entirely absent. Without sadness or emptyness there would be no will strive for improvement, as happiness is a byproduct of fulfillment. However, emotion is something that must be limited to its lowest common denominator when possible. A society or philosophy that bases itself on fulfilling emotional needs rather than logic is doomed for failure.
I put forth these points in hope of not being bashed. I will try not to debate as much as discuss.
First, The example of Love. GrapeScentGuru you said that "Love is a reaction to the desire to mate and continue the specie, being also of an evolutionary process and a survival tactic." I will not offer a counterpoint, but I will disagree.
I find the first part of your definition of Love is more fitting to that of Sexual Desire. Innate Sexual Desire is that which causes one to mate and continue the species. This is not to be confused with Love. All animals, and moreover living things, "desire" (although such a term implies emotion, and should be changed to that of "compelled", since we are speaking from a strictly biological standpoint.) to reproduce, however, such organisms do not have brains that are complex enough to produce "love" (or at least that as we define "love" in humans). Thus, I would disagree with your statement that "Love" is a "reaction" to the need to reproduce, since it is not apparent in all things that reproduce, and therefore there must be another distinct characteristic that living things that can love possess.
Also, to comment upon your statement "[Love] is an evolutionary process and a survival tactic", I think a little elaboration would help, but for now I am only to infer upon what you mean. I assume you are making the point that "Love" and on greater scale "Relationships" were products of evolutionary circumstances, being that on many levels they help us survive. I will not deny the fact that "Love" and "Relationships" enforce ideas of community- which as we all know is one of traits that allows us to dominate this planet. However, one must analyze whether or not "Love" is an evolutionary product - not whether or not it is just a trait that coincidently helps us to survive. It is often that one jumps to say "it is beneficial, therefore it must be natural selection." However, this claim is speculative at best - Perhaps there is another cause? (Not neccessarily a "theist" notion, just a notion made by one who is willing to consider ALL things - the maxim of free thought.) Yes Natural Selection makes sense, there is a degree of probablity to it, ultimatley there is a [b]correlation[/b] (A likelyhood that love was caused by natural selection). However, and I quote my Freshman Psych book - correlation does not prove causation. In your quippet you produce no evidence (I say this kindly, I know that you probably were not anticipating one asking for some, if you have evidence I would be glad to see it). Your statement is based off of what would appear to be common sense, and perhaps it is. But you have produced no empirical grounds. Therefore, your statment should not be made with such axiomatic force, but rather with that of a reasonable, but unproven, solution.
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Its getting late so I will be brief on the rest.
You mention the "desire" to live. This is similiar to the "desire" to reproduce as you previously mentioned. Once again, all organisms are compelled to live. (In this sense "compelled" seems to me to be almost the wrong word, being that it implies the the exsistance of a will, therefore we shall say compelled by subconcious nature) This "desire" as you call it is seen in all organisms - and is not distinctly human, in fact I would not even call it an emotion - rather a natural law or function. Therefore it is irrelevant to the topic, and your point must be discarded, being that it has been established on a false premise, namely that "desire" to live is an emotion.
I feel that your last paragraph is basically a summary so I will not re-iterate my previous points.
However, on a side note you made mention that the "world would be BETTER without us." Allow me to be frank, Better is a word that is far from being classified as being objective. If the world is just a system, it is mechanical and nothing can be considered to be better or worse for it, the course it takes is the course it should take. Therefore, all though the humans may be an anomaly in the system, they are still a part of it, and are nuetral in connatation. Sure from a cultural perspective we may consider ourselves bad, but from a strictly objective posistion we may not.
Well that sums up what I have to say on that given article. Please I responded to you because you seem to know your stuff, and are mature enough to respond nicely. Im sorry if my post bore a high and mighty tone, they usually tend to. In reality I am just a 17 year old, who "knows" very little relatively speaking
Yes, emotions are guides to logic, but logic, not emotion comes first. Logic is intelligent (or semi-intelligent, which are both relative) reasoning. Emotion is just expression of lack of fulfillment of our desires, or a reflection or what are surroundings inflict upon us. We would not be mindless without emotion, we would be emotionless without a mind. Therefore I deffinetly disagree that we can't think without emotion.
heBREW coffee: Since everything is genetically programmed for bettering the species (As is stated in chapters 50-55 of Campbell's/Reece's sixth edition college level biology), love is a way to use emotion to trick you into fucking (reproducing). And it is not a given that the two are separate, nor is it a given that animals can't love, we do not know that. (Though I actually do highly doubt it.)
Also: Saying that the world would be better off without us is questionable, because it is innevtiable that as time progresses, there will eventually come a moment in time where all life ceases to exist, and then looking back (which would be impossible given that we are all dead) nothing will have or or will matter, regarding to anything we were concerned about. Also, if there is nothing or no one to percieve the world as 'better off', is it better of? I believe there needs to be a conscious being able on analyzings it's surrounding in order to come to such a conclusion.