Are Emotions, Or Neither?

The ability to identify emotion and carry it out into one’s daily life is what defines an individual as human; if one lacks emotion, then the individual will become a robot of society. Emotion is defined as a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others

This paper will examine Robert C. Solomon's Emotions and Choices article, to best identify what anger is, and to what extent a rational human being is responsible for their anger. Firstly, Solomon's argument must be described. A quick summation of Solomon's argument can be found in the following four points: Emotions are judgements, emotions are chosen, emotions serve a purpose, and emotions are rational.1 To quote Solomon, he explains that “Emotions are not occurrences, and do not happen to us. They ... may be chosen like an action.”2

Let’s begin to examine what Jagger’s method of investigative dispassionate belief means. Jagger realizes that emotion, like sensory observation is ignored or not taken into consideration in western epistemology. Jagger believes however, that emotions are needed for human survival and thus, emotions have an essential and useful value and “without emotion, human life would be unthinkable”. (pp.190, Jagger)

Attempts to define “emotion” have proved to be rather difficult. Instead of searching for a comprehensive definition, Gross (2011) describes the three core features of emotions. First, emotions occur when an individual decides that a situation is relevant to his or her goals. Second, emotions are multi-faceted, and involve both subjective and physiological experiences, as well as behaviors. The third feature involves the authoritative nature of emotions. They have the powerful ability to interrupt ongoing processes, assert their priority over other activities, and force their way into awareness. For example, some traditions describe emotions as “disorganized interruptions of mental activity” (Salovey & Mayer, 1989). Emotions are such an

Emotions are like tools that let you know where you are in life and if you need to make changes. In “Brave New World”, emotions are eliminated so that their society can enter a chain of dehumanization in order to control their society. With the World States decision to eliminate emotions from humanity has made their society worse. Emotions are the most basic and important characteristics that make up a human being. Though they could be positive or either negative, they can cause you to take important or necessary actions in your life.

This book is divided into three parts. The first, 'Emotional Strategies: An Existentialist Perspective ' observes in some detail the ways in which we engage the world through sixteen different emotions, with several of their permutations. Following Heidegger; who believes that emotions tunes us to the world and Sartre; who reasons that emotions have a purpose, Solomon claims that we are responsible for our emotions. This coincides with the fundamental Stoic insight that we “are” our emotions. Aristotle discussed certain emotions at length, notably anger, which he described in remarkably modern terms. Commonly classified as a basic negative and destructive emotion, emotional reactions can usefully be read as, and ultimately even identified with, strategies we adopt as a way of dealing with the challenges of our lives- for example, prompting us to fight for justice and protecting our rights. Thus even

Morality is a complicated matter, one which requires rationality, but is often driven by emotions. A person’s behavior is almost completely driven by emotions and often times emotions are what tell us when something might be wrong or right. Motivation also comes from emotions, so without feelings of anger, depression, frustration and the like we would hardly ever do anything in order to change things in our lives (Shafer-Landau, 2015, p. 258). Virtue ethics then is concerned with what makes a person virtuous versus vicious when it comes to making moral decisions, with emotions playing an important role. In this paper, I support Aristotle’s emphasis on emotions as a key to being virtuous, especially since emotions tell us what is important and motivate us to act (Shafer-Landau, 2015, p. 257-258).

The concept may sound reliable, however, there isn’t any set of ground rules to carry it out. That is to say as much of this sounds ideal in the article, however, doesn’t translate well to the real world. Frankly, emotions are hard to handle or even interpret because of many factors, especially since it one’s personal response on how they feel at a given time. The article proposes great points of views which provide many examples, especially of prominent people like Plato, Elias, and Durkheim. With these authors credited in, it provides the article with reliability. Furthermore, the article is well researched based on the findings and is logically

Emotions are a necessary part of our whole humanity. They may be more than we have learned to be comfortable with, but they are not too much.

Human emotions can be considered a blessing. They enable people to show empathy and kindness to others; to comfort or help someone that needs it. To be human means to have emotions. However, it is important that people have control over their emotions. This is especially true with strong emotions or feelings. This essay will focus on three emotions in particular: anger, love, and hatred. These three feelings commonly cloud people’s judgements, which in turn, causes them to make bad decisions. Overall, making decisions based on emotions leads to negative outcomes.

Haidt, J. (2003). The moral emotions. Handbook of affective sciences, 11, 852-870. Retrieved March 18, 2017 from http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/articles/alternate_versions/haidt.2003.the-moral-emotions.pub025-as-html.html

The natural human impulse is the largest savior of mankind while simultaneously being its greatest downfall. Man is subject to emotion every day, intensity and reaction vary with everyone, but in every person emotion is the core influence on human impulse. An illustration of such submission to emotion is William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, the lovers are ruled by their love, their heartbreak, their anger, unable to think sensibly ultimately leading them to an avoidable demise.

The complexity of human emotions has been an unsolvable conundrum that has plagued the minds of philosophers for hundreds of years. In fact, to this day, philosophers still feverishly debate the various components of emotions. Whether it is the origins of emotions or the effect on the human body that emotions have, actual facts and proven theories about emotions are impossible to one hundred percent be verified. One emotion that is particularly complex and powerful is the emotion of fear. For example, there are times when an individual is totally paralyzed and unable to move purely because of the fact that the individual

Researchers have debated about the phenomenon with emotions. Debates on this topic have and will continue to for many more years. Researchers have attempted to understand why one has emotions and came up with the five different theories. The first theory is the James-Lange theory, which argues that an event can cause physiological arousal first and, it can be interpret this as an arousal. Second theory is the Cannon-Bard theory that argues that all humans experience a physiological arousal and an emotional one at the same time. It still does not give any attention to the role of the thoughts or an outward

For many people, they live their lives based on emotions. Emotions of happiness, love, success, and many more, could possibly be the most satisfying feelings. Except we commonly experience unpleasant emotions. There are emotions of anger, hatred, sadness, and disgrace. A very important question in the understanding of the human mind and highly related to cognitive science, is how do these emotions affect human cognition and the impact on our abilities to be rational? To tackle this question, we need to understand what emotions are, but not solely in the manner we are all familiar with, we need to understand them from a cognitive nature involving our physiology, psychology, and environment. Cognition, according to the Oxford definition