Emotion

= __Emotion__ =

- Emotions allow human beings to express how they are feeling in a variety of ways. They guide humans in situations that things such as intellectual knowledge cannot help with. - Emotions can guide humans in situations of loss, danger, family building, bonding with a mate or friend, trying to reach a goal, etc. - Emotions always existed in human beings. About 100 million years ago mammals' neocortex developed, which is the part of the brain controlling emotions.
 * 1. What is an emotion? Are they controllable?**

- Emotion are feelings or sensations that people have and are not controlled, whereas reason is something that only humans have and is thought out instead of an instant reaction. - Emotions and reason are independent of each other and are located in separate parts of the brain. Emotion is located in the limbic system and reason is located in the neocortex. - In most situations, especially in times of panic, emotion overrides reason.
 * 2. What do emotions do for humans? How and when did the emotions develop?**

- Empathy is important because it allows living thing to connect with one another through shared feelings. - Empathy develops in children by children experiencing it in their early years by watching people such as parents or siblings and how they are treated in their early years. - Possible consequences of abnormal development are that children could grow up not being able to be empathetic as a result of being deprived as a child (parents could have not been empathetic). Children could also grow up not knowing how to react in certain situations such that empathy is needed.
 * 3. The relation between reason and emotion. What parts of the brain correspond to each?**

- Empathy is important because it allows living thing to connect with one another through shared feelings. - Empathy develops in children by children experiencing it in their early years by watching people such as parents or siblings and how they are treated in their early years. - Possible consequences of abnormal development are that children could grow up not being able to be empathetic as a result of being deprived as a child (parents could have not been empathetic). Children could also grow up not knowing how to react in certain situations such that empathy is needed.
 * 4. Empathy. Why is it important? How does it develop in children? What are possible consequences of abnormal development?**

**5. How does empathy happen in the brain? What is its relation to morality?** - Empathy happens in the brain because of things called mirror neurons which can allow living things to almost "feel" the same thing as another. - Since empathy is developed early on in life, it is fixed in a part of the brain, therefore, without the proper development of empathy at an early age, it can affect the level of empathy in some people. This can cause all kinds of problems later in life. - It is shown in various studies that humans who are not empathetic are more likely to commit a crime, probably because of their lack of empathy as children. These people also do not have good morals, which shows how empathy and morality are linked.

- There are studies which show that there is a great deal of compassion in animals. For example, there are instances where animals will do anything to protect their young no matter how difficult, and this is the same thing we experience with humans (for the most part). - Finding this is animals could imply that every living thing is born with a sense of compassion, since it is shown that most animals are compassionate as well and obviously there is no way they could have learned it through human beings. - An example is a chicken who was laying outside on top of her eggs while it was freezing. A rooster than came to sit by the hen, noticing her coldness. The rooster soon died of frostbite, but the hen continued living a long and happy life after that frigid night.
 * 6. Compassion in animals. What are possible implications of finding this in animals? Do we?**

- Innate means existing in or belonging to one from birth, or that it is inherited. - There is an innateness about language, psychology, biology, physics, aesthetics, and morality because many things involving these topics are things which human beings are born with. For example, humans are born with a sense of biology because they know that they are different from other types of living things. They are not told that. - These are "knowledge" because they are things which humans were born knowing, or have acquired through various experiences.
 * 7. Intuition. What does it mean for something to be innate? What is allegedly innate about language, psychology, biology, physics, aesthetics, and morality? How are these "knowledge"?**

- Since situations are things which can come about instantaneously, they are often uncontrollable. - Emotions, in certain situations, motivate people to act in a certain way, which can produce an outcome, good or bad. - An example is the man who thought that his daughter was at her friend's house. He heard noises upstairs and had the gut reaction that it as an intruder in his home. He took his gun and went upstairs to look. Without using any reason, he shot the person who he thought to be an intruder and it turned out that the person was actually his daughter at home. In this situation emotions motivated this man to act in a certain way, even though the outcome was devastating.
 * 8. Emotions as motivation.**

- Emotions are ways of knowing certain things about, especially about oneself. - An example is when one is hungry. Hunger is an emotion which emerges without any thought going into it, it is immediate and all humans will experience this. When someone is hungry, it their body's way of letting itself know that it needs food to refuel. - Some emotions, such as hunger, are completely independent of reason, and do not require it in most situations. 
 * 9. Emotions as a WOK. Role in basic assumptions and in reasoning.**