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Origin of Feeling

SolitaryWalker

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Feeling is defined as a cognitive faculty of emotive valuation. For example, when an animal gets a pleasant feeling, or an unpleasant feeling, it engages the faculty of feeling.

Obviously feeling is concerned with how we relate to the external environment, and not with how the external environment is. This cognitive faculty is subjective by definition.

Richard Dawkins, in the God Delusion has stated that we tend to have an instinct to antropomorphize entities around us, or personify them. In other words, we treat entities around us as if they were living things. As aforementioned, Feeling is a subjective attitude, it bestows an emotional reaction upon all things it is concerned with. When our reaction is emotionally oriented, it is easy to assume that all things around us have a personal quality.

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Why do we tend to assume that entities around us tend to have a personal quality. The easiest and most superficial answer one can concoct is that animals by nature are instinctive animals, and instinct is an essence of an animal. The question that follows next is, why specifically did we choose to bestow emotion on non-living things. Emotion is obviously most easily associated with living things and since living things generate the most positive emotion within us, we have preferred to attribute characteristics of living things to non-living entities. Or quite simply we saw non-living entities as living entities because doing so was a result of gratification for us.


The claim that our natural affinity with emotion or instinct leads us to anthropomorphize entities explains this phenomenon in terms of our intrinsic constitution or our nature. However, there is an additional component to this explanation, one that is more of a result of our interaction with the external environment than our intrinsic constitution.
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Animals from which we have evolved were forced to quickly recognize potential dangers. In order to survive they had to have had an instinct which enabled them to quickly perceive threats and defend themselves accordingly. Hence, an animal that did instinctually recognize the presence of a tiger was more likely to survive than an animal that did not. In most cases, an animal inhabited an area where many predators were to be taken in consideration. Hence, some of those predators were not frequently interacted with, therefore the animal could not have developed an instinct with regard to treatment of each animal individually. For example, an animal may have encountered many tigers, and therefore has developed an instinct for recognition of tigers, yet may have only seen an ocelot once in its lifetime. Thus, in time, the animals have developed an instinct for recognition as a threat of all entities that resembled a tiger or any particular predator. Obviously in most environments, many different kinds of predators existed. Many of those predators were very rarely experienced.


As a result, the animal was unable to develop a specific instinct with regard to each predator. Thus, the animals that have survived the most, and were most likely to survive were those who have developed the strongest instinct of self-defense. Those were the animals who have acquired an apprehensive attitude towards nearly all things were most likely to survive. That is the case because many predators existed, and one is most likely to survive if one avoided as many predators as possible. Hence, as a zoological principle of this inquiry, it should be established that an animal that excelled the most at avoiding predators is most likely to survive. The most effective strategy for avoiding predators is fleeing all potential dangers.

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As a result of this, most animals who have survived have developed such a firm instinct of self-preservation that they have regarded almost all non-living things, even those that were not dangerous to them as living things. They tended to regard non-living things as living things because they have developed the tendency to regard many things (non-living things among them) as dangerous, and they associated danger with a living thing, because a living predator represented the most clear danger in their mind. Thus, the idea of danger was inseparable from a living thing, and all the things that were regarded as dangerous were regarded as living things. In other words, they took a personal approach to nearly all things that surrounded them. This is merely a distinct form of feeling, or regarding all things as emotive, or personal in nature. In summary, feeling is the essence of our being, or the instinct. Yet because animals were forced to act upon instinct quickly and therefore exercise instinct frequently, the tendency towards relying on instinct has become more pronounced. In other words, our tendency to make instinctual or emotional decisions (Feeling) has become stronger as a result.
 

SolitaryWalker

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NF forum is about NF related subjects. This thread is about an F related entity, namely Feeling itself. It is not just one of the F related subjects, it is the F subject.
 

Clownmaster

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because of what time it is lol.
he prolly got tired and didn't realize where he put it.
 

nolla

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In the opening post I don't see anything about MBTI functions so it would be more appropriate in the other psychology...
 

SolitaryWalker

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In the opening post I don't see anything about MBTI functions so it would be more appropriate in the other psychology...

Feeling is a function of Jungian typology. It is present in the Opening Post, specifically in the last sentence.
 

Blackmail!

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SolitaryWalker,

I really think you shouldn't mess with subjects you're not conversant with, or that you don't understand, and that includes Human Feelings, and Evolutionary mechanisms. :mellow:
 

SillySapienne

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SolitaryWalker,

I really think you should'nt mess with subjects you're not conversant with, or that you don't understand, and that includes Human Feelings, and Evolutionary mechanisms. :mellow:
I agree, especially when it comes to anything scientific, biological, or psychological, Mr. Wing, you are so out of your element.

Anyone who is even slightly well versed in biological and evolutionary mechanisms will scoff at this thread, and you in turn.

And anyone who has a grain of social intelligence and empathy will gag and laugh at your ill conceived "theories".

I think, deep down, you have a heart and a wisdom, but you let your hate fester and manifest and lead you to believe and fortify these ludicrously delusional constructs.

If you push people away, then you will suffer the consequences, namely, a life of bitter loneliness.

Open your heart, then you will open your mind!!

:hug:
 

SolitaryWalker

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SolitaryWalker,

I really think you shouldn't mess with subjects you're not conversant with, or that you don't understand, and that includes Human Feelings, and Evolutionary mechanisms. :mellow:

If that were the case (I do not understand human feelings and evolutionary mechanisms (I am not clear on what you mean by evolutionary mechanisms.), you should be able to do the following with ease.

1)Summarize my argument. (Or what I think 'human feelings' and 'evolutionary mechanisms' are).


2)Explain what 'human feelings' and 'evolutionary mechanisms' are.

3)Specify the differences between the two and show why your argument is true and mine is false.

Your input here is worthless, as usual. Save yourself the trouble kiddo.
 

nolla

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If you push people away, then you will suffer the consequences, namely, a life of bitter loneliness.

Open your heart, then you will open your mind!!

:hug:

Yeah, Christmas is time of luv.


blaahg_by_nolla.png
 

erm

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Feeling is defined as a cognitive faculty of emotive valuation. For example, when an animal gets a pleasant feeling, or an unpleasant feeling, it engages the faculty of feeling.

:huh: We're engaging in feeling when we are feeling? Not saying much there.


You seem to have forgotten that predators are only a small threat to survival compared to other things. Those other things would have a larger effect on our instinctual and emotional evolution.

In general feelings are a way of understanding the world much the same as verbal language is. They both can adapt to help survival in near any situation, even things like what colour clothes to wear or what diet to eat, all of which contribute to that. Same with instinct, intellect etc.

Tigers are bad when they look angry, tigers will attack me when hungry/threatened et cetera are all essentially the same message.

Regarding non-living things as living things is purely an intellectual exercise, since it is the intellect which coined those terms. In terms of feelings, both living and non-living things can be dangerous so on that level they are treated the same. When you encounter another human, you access your feelings based around humans to help you survive in this situation, if you encounter a cliff edge, you access your feelings based around heights to help you survive. There is no non-living/living distinction with feelings in the scientific sense.

Feelings are more complex that this however, since they normally have multi-layered systems in order to self-program and adapt, much like all other parts to living creatures. Moral codes, empathy, culture, long-term planning and others that came from this evolved for obvious reasons.
 

Amargith

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Again with the rules and the 'my way or high way approach'. The point is, when you don't speak Chinese, you don't go writing essays on how it originated and how it evolved to what it is to today. And on top of that, you don't ask the people who actually speak Chinese, to prove you wrong in eloquent English and dismiss their statements because they don't know how to use paragraphs or because their grammar sucks.

Write about what you know. It's one fo the basic rules in writing.
 

SolitaryWalker

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:huh: We're engaging in feeling when we are feeling? Not saying much there.


You seem to have forgotten that predators are only a small threat to survival compared to other things. Those other things would have a larger effect on our instinctual and emotional evolution.

In general, feelings are a way of understanding the world much the same as verbal language is. They can adapt to help survival in near any situation, even things like what colour clothes to wear or what diet to eat, all of which contribute to that.

Same with instinct, intellect etc.

Its true that floods, hurricanes, other weather conditions or other non-living entities, however those things were very complicated. Animals did not understand what they were. Or they did not understand what exactly was hurting them. Because of this, they were unable to come up with a symbol to represent those dangers.

However, when a tiger attacked them, they had a clear idea of what their danger was.

It is true that non-living entities were a bigger threat to animals than living entities, however, that is not relevant to the question of why animals and people tend to anthropomorphize things. The reason why they do tend to anthropomorphize things is because they have perceived living predators as their biggest threats and have used them as symbols for danger in general.

Again with the rules and the 'my way or high way approach'. The point is, when you don't speak Chinese, you don't go writing essays on how it originated and how it evolved to what it is to today. And on top of that, you don't ask the people who actually speak Chinese, to prove you wrong in eloquent English and dismiss their statements because they don't know how to use paragraphs or because their grammar sucks.

Write about what you know. It's one fo the basic rules in writing.


Thank you for your contribution. Very eloquent! Profound insights that I did not even hope to have bestowed upon this thread!

Come again soon please!
 

erm

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Its true that floods, hurricanes, other weather conditions or other non-living entities, however those things were very complicated. Animals did not understand what they were. Or they did not understand what exactly was hurting them. Because of this, they were unable to come up with a symbol to represent those dangers.

However, when a tiger attacked them, they had a clear idea of what their danger was.

It is true that non-living entities were a bigger threat to animals than living entities, however, that is not relevant to the question of why animals and people tend to anthropomorphize things. The reason why they do tend to anthropomorphize things is because they have perceived living predators as their biggest threats and have used them as symbols for danger in general.

I don't think there is a living/non-living distinction with feelings. There was no evolutionary need for one.

Instead anthropomorphism arose because, like you sort of said, it allowed an easy understanding of the enviroment. Technical understanding of what, say, a hurricane was didn't provide any more short term survival than any other method of knowing the pattern they came in. Feelings evolved prior to intellectual capabilities, so a simple understanding was to envisage them the same as any other threat.
 

SolitaryWalker

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I don't think there is a living/non-living distinction with feelings. There was no evolutionary need for one.

Instead anthropomorphism arose because, like you sort of said, it allowed an easy understanding of the enviroment. Technical understanding of what, say, a hurricane was didn't provide any more short term survival than any other method of knowing the pattern they came in.

My point is that animals thought that living predators were their main threat because it was easy for them to associate danger with those things than with non-living things.
 

nolla

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My point is that animals thought that living predators were their main threat because it was easy for them to associate danger with those things than with non-living things.

How about fire?

I still don't see what your point is, though. Animals are afraid. So what? Are you going to twist this so that it means you are better than me (again)?

And why are you not using your xmas avatar?
 

erm

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it was easy for them to associate danger with those things than with non-living things.

My point was that it's as easy to associate danger with non-living things as with living things. Feeling-wise it makes no difference if it's a force of nature or a creature pissed off at you, either way you run from it.

It was the intellect that caused anthropomorphism, since prior to it there was no need to distinguish between living and non-living. It was the intellects attempt to translate feelings that made it seem like everything was living.
 
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