What are emotions? Tough question! Little agreement! Why? Because "when we learn such words, we each attach to them variously different and personal accumulations of conceptions in our minds."
"Our earliest emotions are built-in processes in which inborn proto-specialists control what happens in our brains. Soon we learn to overrule those schemes, as our surroundings teach us what we ought to feel." (NB: This strikes me as interesting, in the sense that emotions appear to be portrayed as cognitive primitives. This makes sense, though, if you view emotions as the expression of conflicts among goals, and if the primitive goals (agents) in the system are very basic and important needs -- strong emotions will result when such goals conflict!)
Pearl Street | Society Of Mind Home Page | Dawson Home Page |