What exactly is emotion?

By

Dr Kuldip Kumar Dhiman 

Are you a bit ashamed of being emotional. Do you think shedding tears or expressing love is a sign of weakness. Do you feel you do not reason properly, and are unable to make any decision because of your emotional profile. Do you think reason alone should be relied on in decision making, in relationships, in getting along in the world. You need not have such fears, for current research into the emotional domain shows that without emotions, you would neither be strong, nor intelligent, nor caring, nor would you be able to achieve anything in life. And those who think that reason alone ought to be our guide in life do not know that without emotions one cannot reason at all. You would be a cold automaton unable to experience the richness of life, unable to love, unable to hate, unable to share the finer sentiments that make us what we are.

It is rather surprising that those who have denigrated 'emotion' have done so very passionately, they have been very emotional about it, very touchy about it. The dichotomy between emotion and reason, however, is very ambiguous. The head versus the heart debate goes back to antiquity, yet nothing much seems to have been achieved. First of all people do not agree on what is 'emotion' and what is 'reason', yet they go on arguing endlessly about them. The first task, therefore, ought to be to understand the two terms, the concepts behind them, and the mechanisms behind them. Only then can there be some fruitful argument about them.

Emotions: Conceptual Issues

We use the word 'emotion' frequently, but if asked to define it, to explain it, we are at a loss. This is because though emotions are an integral part of our daily experience, they are extremely difficult to understand. Philosophers and psychologists say that emotions are mental states that were called 'appetite' by the Greeks, and 'affect' and 'passions' by other philosophers such as Rene Descartes and David Hume. The sheer range of phenomena covered by the word 'emotion' and other related terms makes it difficult to define it. The problem was summed up well by J. S. Brown and I. E. Farber in their theoretical paper on emotion. They begin by saying that no 'genuine order can be discerned within this field. Instead, examination of current treatments of emotion reveals a discouraging state of confusion and uncertainty. Substantial advances have been made in recent years with respect to theories of learning and motivation, but the phenomena of emotion have not, as a rule, been considered in these formulations and remain a tangle of unrelated facts'.

Such theoretical difficulties in the study of emotions have led some theorists to deny the very existence of emotions. Predicting the redundancy of the term 'emotion', M. F. Meyer said in 1933: 'Why introduce into science an unneeded term, such as emotion, when there are already scientific terms for everything we have to describe? . . . I predict: The 'will' has virtually passed out of our scientific psychology today; the 'emotion' is bound to do the same.

Not all go to such extremes however, but among the numerous difficulties in analysing emotions, one is due to the fact that so many systems of the body are involved in emotion. A second problem has been the tendency to separate emotion from cognition or rational thought processes. Recent studies show that the physiological and psychological processes that are responsible for the emotions are, however, interrelated.

The study of emotions remained neglected for centuries because it is believed that one the characteristic features of humans that separates them from the rest of the living creatures is the capacity to reason. It is no wonder, therefore, that thinkers have always emphasised this aspect at the expense of others.

The Problem of Terminology

The use of the word emotion in philosophy and psychology is comparatively modern. Hume wrote about it, but even he speaks generally rather of 'passions' or 'affections'. As various thinkers have used the word 'emotion' and other related terms, there has always been confusion and disagreement. A. Baier has noted, for example, that while 'emotion' used to mean 'violent passion', we now seem to use 'passion' to mean 'violent emotion'.Later, when the word 'emotion' gained currency its application was very wide.

According to the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, 'emotion' is an 'agitation, tumult, physical disturbance, disturbance of mind or feeling, affection of the mind. The word, the dict

1 2 3 >>