0.2 Emotion and reason - how we decide  (Page 2/4)

Feeling and motivations are also going to be tied to emotional biases (heuristics) and thinking biases (schema). Basically humans can be biased from more emotional drives or drives that are more related to goals and certain thoughts they may have.

Is thinking automatic?

How much of thought or feeling is consciously derived vs. derived from a persons environment? Humans don't 'create' the world around them - the world around them gives inputs for their minds (not the opposite).

Depending on the input (or the situation) a human mind could interpret the inputs in different ways. They could cause the person to feel emotions that they didn't expect to feel or that they didn't ask for. Their mind also biases the information that it thinks. It seems like the mind could structure new ways of thinking about things and how the feelings are generated when thinking about those things by practicing new ways of thinking.

Old habits die hard; however. When thinking about things feelings are automatically triggered - and these feelings have real sources in the world (which is perhaps why it is hard to change how they make you feel).

It probably depends if the thinking is context independent or context dependent - for instance if you are thinking in a different environment or have different emotions when you do the thinking. The context I am talking about here must be more complicated than 'background' feelings because the content is highly informational. There are a only a few background feelings someone could experience however there are many more ways of feeling in your mind if you combine the feelings with thoughts or specific situations.

Unchangeable feelings

So feelings aren't entirely based on the environment or external stimuli - what the person thinks or who they are probably influences the feelings to a great degree.

How does that work exactly; however? It probably depends on what the situation is and what the inputs and thoughts are. Also, what aspects are unchangeable from situation to situation - or how does the mind construct feeling and thought from an environment?

Engaging stimuli

Stimuli from thoughts, emotions and the environment all help keep the mind active and alive. That doesn't necessarily mean that a person needs strong motivations all of the time, however. In order for the brain to function a complex set of inter-actions needs to be occurring. Emotions, thoughts and stimuli must be continuously triggering complex feelings that form a sort of 'feeling base' for the unconscious.