Emotion and logic {cp}  (Page 4/4)

Since emotion is really thought, when you are experiencing emotion you could almost say that you are thinking. You really are thinking about emotion when you experience it because thought is just paying attention to something in your mind. You also might learn (or unlearn) from processing or experiencing emotion because emotions are similar to thoughts, or could be said to be a type of thought. You are probably going to learn more unconsciously if you are experiencing emotions then not, because that is something that would be occurring causing you to learn instead of just learning from nothing. This also explains Descartes’ statement “I think, therefore I am” because if all emotion is really thought, then that shows how emotions contribute to your existence in a meaningful way. They do because you learn from them like you learn from thoughts, emotions are real things and meaningful because they are thoughts to you (or things (thoughts) that symbolize real things (what you are thinking or feeling about) which cause you to experience the world and learn).

So thought is just a lot of attention on one little thing. And emotion is attention on lots of individual things, or possibly one thing. So things that are emotional are things that cause you to think, consciously or unconsciously. [A conscious feeling would just be a feeling that you have identified (or recognized) more than an unconscious one.] And therefore they would cause you to feel, consciously or unconsciously. So the more you like something you can’t consciously identify as to why you like it, the more emotional it is, and the more you like something where you can consciously identify what it is, the more conscious thought it is going to cause, and the more logical that thing is going to be. Emotion is just unconscious thought.

How This Chapter shows how Intelligence is intertwined with Emotion:

• “Emotion goes on and off for everyone” – this statement shows how there are degrees to which someone can be focused on and feel thought, and degrees to which someone can be focused on and feel feeling. That then also explains the next statement in the chapter “some things in life can identifiably cause more emotion than other things”.
• Since there are parts of emotion that don’t have thought (assuming that emotion and thought overlap – but that is a logical assumption because thoughts generate feelings and are therefore less independent) then emotion (especially emotion without any thought) is going to need less focus or concentration, because emotion is a more pleasurable experience, but thought is one where concentration is usually used.
• Emotions can direct and control thoughts – if you are feeling that your computer is bad, then you might then give it less or more attention, and conscious attention is a function of thought because you need to think to start to focus on something. Or when you notice something you noticing it is a conscious experience because you “notice” it and thoughts are things which you are aware of which would then contribute to consciousness.
• Next mentioned is how emotions and feelings are just harder to identify then thoughts, and that therefore emotions and feelings are really thoughts themselves, or vice versa. If all thought is really emotion, and all emotion really thought, then all intelligence could vary and be dependent on emotions. This is further evidenced by the statement “thus once you find out what is causing the emotion it is no longer an emotion, but it is a thought”. That shows how an emotion is a thought that you just aren’t identifying. It is just a matter of definition of the terms. Thought is concrete things which are real in the world, and emotion is something that you feel but can’t visualize. So therefore intelligence is just the ability to do things which are real, versus feeling something, which isn’t as “real” as thoughts are.
• If a thought is clear then it could be easy to understand. However that doesn't mean that it is a complicated thought. A complex idea or thought could be easy to figure out - and it could relate to its associated feelings.
• What would it mean for a thought or group of thoughts to be clear? An abstract thought could be an abstract concept, which could also be clear, however it would also be more emotional or have feeling.

References

Hunt, W. A. (1941). Recent developments in the field of emotion. Psychological Bulletin, 38, 249–276.