By Mark Pettinelli / 07.11.2016
Phenomenology and Reality
Creative Commons
Intentions are gradual because they are emotional. While a person might do something instantaneously, it isn’t obvious when their intention to do that action started. Some cognitive processes are very fast, like vision is fast however the emotional processes that accompany vision are often slow. It makes sense that vision is tied in with consciousness and emotion because vision is a large part of how humans and animals see – whether or not they are blind.
So how can someone separate out basic vision and the basic emotional processes that are tied in with vision with more complicated or slower emotions? A vision could immediately invoke a feeling – or a feeling could be more stored and come from deeper or more complicated emotions – the feelings that come from someones consciousness can come from their immediate environment or from
what they are feeling and thinking.
Sometimes what people see matches what they are thinking and feeling, and sometimes it doesn’t. Obviously it is going to vary on the situation i.e., what they are seeing and what they are thinking and feeling, that is going to determine what they are conscious of and what they are feeling and thinking. Some stimuli is more stimulating and rises to consciousness easier than other stimulation. Vision in combination with what the person is thinking helps to determine what the person is paying attention to at any given moment.
There could be a question of if the person is aware of the stimulation before it happens or is thinking about something that prepares them for the stimulation what effect that might have on the stimulation. They could be paying attention to something initially and then that object could respond, or it could come into attention suddenly. If you think about the thoughts and feelings that are involved it adds more detail about what is going on – because they obviously are a factor in the feelings and thoughts before, during and after a stimulus – and if that stimulus has a ’leading-up’ lesser stimulation.
Mental Processes and Reality
Baby Sees The iPad Magic / Photo by SteveChippy, Creative Commons
There can also be unconscious and conscious processes. The mind has feelings and thoughts that are complex, and there are different levels of conscious and unconscious attention.
How does the mind perceive reality? Is reality the environment, culture or nation that someone is in?
The country that someone is in could have a large impact on how the person perceives the world, there are different values that ’hold sway’ in different places – such as different morals and beliefs and abilities. How does that differ from a humans conception of other human beings? People can conceive of different people differently, and similarly, they can think about different nations or culture groups differently.
How does a babies conception of reality or other human beings differ from an adults conception? I don’t really think it would matter to a baby or even a small child what country they were in – though maybe that is because they are just being influenced and it isn’t under their control.
So a humans perception of reality must be formed since birth – and initially when the child is young ’reality’ is simply imposed on him. If reality is imposed on humans when they are born, then how could they possibly determine their own reality?
However, what is reality? What is the reality that is imposed upon humans, as children or as adults?
Children theoretically have less cognitive ability than adults, however that is simply related to how intelligent they are – they might have a similar level of technical ability, or even greater skill and ability to learn technical things – by technical ability there I mean an amount of competency that deals with the management of physical objects. They also might have greater skill that is adaptive,
like the ability to play video games. That skill requires a lot of ability to understand what is going on in the game, and what the rules are about how the game is played that adults might not be able to figure out because it requires a more creative type of intellect that is also adaptive.
Or perhaps the ’reality’ in video games is one that is simply more attuned to the world of a child and isn’t suited for adults. The young adults hand-eye coordination is faster and that is obviously why they could perform better at the video games, however if you consider what a ’reality’ is then a ’reality’ could be any world that needs to be understood, imaginative or real.
What is Reality – What Influences It?
What is reality? And what influences reality? Human beings are in reality, human interaction is an important part of human emotion – however, how could I define what ’reality’ is?
Is reality simply human beings and the ideas that they hold? Or is reality interpersonal communication? Why does phrasing reality that way mean what it does? On that account, what would even be the definition of reality?
Reality would usually mean what is considered to be ’real’. The world is real, human beings are real, and the physical objects in the world are real. I wrote a lot of articles about emotion and cognition, and clearly emotion and what influences human thought is incredibly significant for how they feel, and how a human being feels and his or her consciousness is going to be what the reality is for them – however reality usually refers to the external elements in the world which happen to determine the persons thoughts and feelings, instead of implying that the person determines their own thoughts and feelings, using the word ’reality’ implies that the world imposes order on them from their environment and then that is what determines their reality.
Intentions
Interpersonal interaction is a large part of life, or ’reality’. People function and part of that cognitive functioning involves interacting with other humans. Other humans are part of peoples visual field (what they see) and their minds influence how emotions and feelings from the other person are interpreted.
How does someones mind ’interpret’ emotion? Is feeling simply felt, or is feeling interpreted? What does that mean exactly anyway? If feeling is interpreted, then it isn’t literal – by that I would think that that means that feeling things isn’t simple. What would be gained by determining if feeling something is simple or complex? What would be the difference between a ’complicated’ feeling and a ’simple’ feeling?
Feelings are obviously tied in with a higher ’cognitive’ type of understanding, and that could help to make the feelings more complex – because the thought structures and idea groupings influence which emotions are felt. In that way emotion and thought are intertwined – people think things, and those thoughts are linked with emotions that influence their feelings.
Feelings and Reality
What would happen if reality influenced someones feelings? Could that be compared to the world ’pressing’ in on someone? How could that be visualized? Can ’reality’ be visualized? There could be artistic representations of the world, however I wouldn’t think that the image of a globe or map or an image of the planet from outer space would properly represent ’reality’.
The Will and Its Relation to Feelings
From Michelangelo’s Vatican painting / Wikimedia Commons
Every thought that a human has is motivated by a feeling. However, which feeling would be the feeling behind that? It would seemingly be a selfish feeling, however, perhaps it is just at its core a selfish feeling. That is, humans have selfless feelings, however they are probably motivated by a more basic instinct that seeks to only respond to the human that is doing the action.
That makes sense – human being have instincts, and this can be compared to the human will. That brings up a question of definitions – what is the difference between the definition of instinct and the definition of ’will’?
In general, “will” does not refer to one particular or most preferred desire but rather to the general capacity to have such desires and act decisively based on them, according to whatever criteria the willing agent applies. However, instinct is an impulse, usually an innate impulse. So a human could have the will to follow an instinct, or a decision could be ’willful’, ’instinctual’, ’determined’, or ’decisive’. They basically all mean the same thing – if someone is intending to do an action, then their feelings are going to be motivating the action – and if feelings are motivating an action it is going to be more decisive or driven.
The Influence of Feelings
Feelings are important to human beings because it makes them feel. That is a rather simple statement, however that doesn’t necessarily mean that feelings are simple or that understanding feelings is simple.
If a feeling is simple would that mean that it is easier to understand? How could a feeling be understood, or what does that mean, to ’understand’ a feeling?
Humans can feel feelings, or they could understand them, or some combination of the two.
If a feeling is understood then it is probably a salient or powerful feeling. However, a feeling could be powerful but the person experiencing it might not know that it is a large or significant feeling. What then is the difference between a ’significant’ feeling and a large feeling?
A feeling could be large but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is a salient feeling – salient means that the feeling is significant – however what makes one feeling important and another feeling not important?
If a feeling is important it probably has a greater impact on cognition. The persons thoughts are influenced by the feeling more, basically.
Feelings Interact
Some feelings interact with other feelings, or it would probably be better described as drives interacting with other drives, because a feeling could be small and there could be many feelings, while there are probably only a few drives or strong desires a person can have at any one time.
A drive is like an emotion because it is powerful, however drives could be driven by thoughts while emotions could have any cause.
A feeling could be complicated, and have elements of thoughts and other feelings interacting. However some of this information about feelings isn’t completely necessary for someone to understand in order to properly experience feelings.
While feelings can be complicated, and thoughts can be complicated, drives are often simple because they are basic emotions that are driven by simple thoughts – such as the drive that most humans and animals have to eat food – it is a strong emotion or feeling that is powered by cognition, i.e., the idea that they are hungry.
Experiencing Feelings
Humans experience feelings all of the time.
How could a feeling be described? It is basically something that someone feels – different things in life evoke different feelings. Therefore thought is really an insignificant component, because feelings occur continuously with human beings.
If a feeling isn’t continuous, then it could get interrupted suddenly. Feelings mix in complicated ways, and if it is complicated it might create a weird feeling because simple feelings are easy to understand. If it isn’t simple then you might not know what is going on or it could be strange, which could cause the feeling to be weird. This could be compared to other weird feelings or things in life that
are also weird. However there is a difference between something being weird because it is unknown, and it being weird because the feeling is unknown.
Normally someone would just describe something weird as being strange or unusual – however then it is possible that the unusual feeling is more powerful because it is different from what the person is accustomed to. New and different feelings or stimulation could be more powerful because the mind hasn’t experienced it before and needs to adapt.
Feelings that are powerful could be considered to be tangible components of the mind, or be part of life experiences, life experiences that generate feelings are called ’experiential’ phenomena.
Feelings that are the result of experiences are different from feelings that are the result of someones inner thoughts. Humans can think to themselves all of the time, and this inner type of thinking can also cause feelings. However, experiences can cause a different type of feeling because it is stimulation, and stimulation is more of a physical feeling. Thoughts are just thoughts in your
mind, while stimulation from the world or from the external senses could seem more ’real’.
Thinking of things in terms of if they are strange could also help to identify what the feeling is or what it is like. Would an external feeling from the world feel more strange than someones thoughts? How could a thought seem strange, and, how would that be different from stimulation from outside in the world seem strange? What does that mean exactly – a thought being strange? That wouldn’t seem to make any sense because people think to themselves all of the time, so it wouldn’t seem like thinking would be out of the ordinary, and it is usually strange types of stimulation or things in the external world that are different – not someones internal cognitions or thinking.
Feelings and Drives
I stated previously that emotions could have any cause while drives could be driven by thoughts. Emotions could also be the result of thoughts, or drives could be the result of thoughts. However drives come from powerful emotion so it is unlikely that simple thoughts would cause a strong emotional drive.
I also basically stated that you can look at how strange a feeling is in order to understand it better. However, what about the strength of feelings? If drives come from strong emotion, then the drive would probably not be a strange feeling because drives are basically never strange. That is because people are only motivated by selfish desires, and there is nothing strange about a selfish desire. Either that or the ’strange’ feeling is a feeling and not a strong emotion.
Feelings are shallow – when you touch something you get a feeling that is simple (and tactile), however emotions are strong and deep and more related to thoughts because thoughts are intellectual. What about drives? If drives are strong then they too would be intellectual. That makes sense because it is something that you are driven by – hence the word ’drive’.
My Take on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity
Albert Einstein / Wikimedia Commons
Einstein described that if a rock falls from someone on a train down the ground outside the train then it would appear to the person on the train as falling in a straight line – but it would appear to the person on the ground watching the train as a parabola. That is because the person on the ground isn’t moving, and the train is moving away from the person (so they see it from different angles). Air resistance makes the rock move in a parabola – the train is moving fast so when it drops it goes in a parabola. The person on the train simply sees it from an angle that doesn’t reflect the entire nature of the parabola – if you look at some things from only one angle you might not be able to see everything that is going on. If you look at something from all angles so you can account for its movement in all three dimensions.
Time would be the same from both perspectives only the speed of the objects for both people would be different relative to how fast they were traveling. If one person is travelling fast then it is moving at a different speed relative to that person, so the person would be travelling faster away but the speed of the object could be viewed as being two speeds because everything in the universe is moving relative to something else.
The Gravitational Field
If the brakes are applied to the train, then the train stops and the person experiences a sudden jerk forward.
The person jerks forward because of gravity – the friction of the wheels of the train are influenced differently by gravity than the person sitting on the seat. The person is not pinned down to the seat, so his force is not stopped as well as the force of the train is stopped.
Gravity helps to determine the force of friction on the wheels of the train, and considering the speed of the train and the person on the train (which are the same before the train starts to stop) the train simply stops faster than the person because the persons motion is harder to stop because it is only the train that stops. If different elements of the body that is stopping its motion (like the
element of the person in the train and the body of the train, or perhaps something else that is loose in or part of the train) stop at different times then they are going to move separate from the other different elements, and appear disjointed.
My Ideas about the Nature of Time
Time is only measured based upon what can be observed changing in a certain period of time. Some things move faster than other things, and if you take into account how everything moves at different speeds then everything can be changing relative to a ’normal’ constant.
But what would be moving at a normal speed? How could someone define ’normal’? Everything on the earth moves relative to the ground of the earth, but the entire earth is spinning. So everything could be ’normal’ compared to the center of the earth, or other places on the earth and how things are moving there – that is how time and speed on earth is measured and compared and contrasted – and that is because everyone on the earth is only on earth and we don’t really care very much about stuff outside the planet – because people live on the ground of the planet.
So what would be a ’normal’ speed? Everything moves relative to something else. That is what reality is about – physical objects that move in a certain pattern, sometimes the pattern is organized, and sometimes it is chaotic.
The Components of Consciousness – Mental and Phenomenological Processes
By Allan Ajifo, Creative Commons
Subjective Perception
How are various experiences in life perceived mentally? What does that mean anyway – to perceive something mentally. I wrote in a previous article that life can be viewed or perceived cognitively and emotionally. If life can be perceived in different ways then it can give rise to different experiences. Different emotional and intellectual experiences.
Different ’things’ in life can be phrased in different ways. How can the experiences or phenomena in life be divided? People usually simply use the term ’thing’ but phenomena could be experiences or occurrences. How does that relate to verbal phrasing, however? If someone uses a different word then it could mean something completely different then using another word or phrasing something
differently. You would need to look closely at the definition of the word and see what it does for someone psychologically – and assume that it would have a similar psychological impact on different or similar people.
There are also conscious and unconscious phenomena – that makes sense – if something can be conscious or unconscious it is also going to be tied to its conscious or unconscious phenomena in the real world.
Unconscious Perception
What is an unconscious perception? If there can be unconscious perception and conscious perception then what is the difference between the two? Is that the same as asking what the difference is between consciousness and unconsciousness?
If something is unconscious then it isn’t conscious – but what does that mean? If you understand something consciously then that means that you are aware of it – you understand it and are possibly aware of that understanding. However where is the line between being aware of the phenomena and a meta-awareness (aware that you are aware)?
There could be an endless number of degrees of awareness to different things – and different types of awareness – some of the awareness is going to be metaawarenesses – awareness of other types of awareness – and some of the awareness is going to awareness of stuff that doesn’t require further reflection or you already know you are aware of.
If someone already knows that they are aware of something then it doesn’t require further reflection.
Consciousness is Multifaceted
There are different ways of being conscious – the two most obvious are unconscious vs aware or conscious. Other ways are emotionally conscious, verballyconscious, semi-conscious or conscious in a speculative way, intuitively conscious, immediately conscious, more fully conscious, slightly conscious, visually conscious, some combination of visually conscious and emotionally or
cognitively conscious, or some combination of all of those ways.
Different ideas or objects in life are mental constructs – so a simple object could represent a more complex mental representation. That idea significant because it can be applied to all mental cognitions or architectures. All mental or intellectual interactions in the mind have their own mental representations and are linked to other thoughts or representations. A representation of a park could be tied in with the representation of a picnic – or I could simply say that the events or meaning or definition of someone having a picnic is tied in directly or in a more complicated way with the persons conceptions of parks – it could be much complicated than simply tying in the ideas of ’picnic’ and ’park’ and arriving at the conclusion that ’you have picnics at parks’.
Some stuff in life is obvious and can be more conscious than stuff that isn’t obvious. That relates to how conscious or unconscious ideas or experiences are. How is an experience emotionally or intellectually absorbed? How else can an experience be processed by the mind? Maybe it can be stored more visually or more unconsciously – so it might be stored unconsciously but stored intellectually even though it might seem like the experience should be stored emotionally since the unconscious is emotional.
If an experience is processed emotionally what does that mean? Would that mean that it makes the person happier or is it possible to process pain in an emotional way – pain is more physical so I don’t know if you could say that humans process pain emotionally. It is different to say that there is an emotional component to pain than to say that pain is processed emotionally. Obviously it is processed physically but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it processed cognitively and felt more deeply. Clearly someone in physical pain is feeling a lot – but they probably aren’t as emotional as when they are having fun or experiencing more pleasurable physical stimulation.
Subjective Reality
What is an emotional reality? The physical reality is obvious – that would simply be what happens in the world physically – how that affects a persons mind is much more complicated, however.
A single physical reality can influence the different components of consciousness – how someone is aware of the different components of reality. Those= components become a part of the persons mind in various ways – with the other major factor being what the persons mind is thinking and feeling independently and how that changes based upon the different inputs from reality.
People need to be aware of what the reality is otherwise their minds could simply determine how they interpret reality unconsciously – instead of it being something more under your control or that you are at least aware of.
So the question then is – how does someones mind influence the reality in their mind – or how does their understanding of reality or how they are influenced – influence their own mind?
Defining Component of Mind
In order to sort out the task of ’discovering the mental and physical reality’ first the different components of mind and reality need to be defined.
Components of Reality
- Unconsciousness or the elements of your unconscious that someone isn’t aware of
- The feelings and thoughts that someone is aware of
- More complicated aspects of consciousness such as the ideas their reality is making them or leading (’influencing’) them to think
- The conclusions people reach based off what they think the reality is – not just the ’background’ ideas that are ideas that people have that influence them significantly that they aren’t aware of – such as delusions or not-so-delusional delusions
- That means that there are different levels of ideas that people hold with different amounts of influence over their minds – some ideas are more delusional and they have different amounts of influence over their feelings and other cognitions
- The rest of physical and emotional processing and how that ties in with their higher cognitions – much of the physical stimulus might be obvious but it can be emotional or intellectual as well (like how the ideas that people hold and think about can be different degrees of emotional and cognitive)
Is Mental Reality Subjective?
First off – what could be a ’mental reality’? It could mean different things or be perceived in different ways. Is the mental reality in peoples minds the physical reality that they interpreted from the real world? Or is the mental reality subjective and something that their minds created?
There are different components of the intellectual. There is obvious intellectual – some things are more obvious or important intellectually while other ideas or understanding is more detailed or less important – or less detailed and sort of important, etc.
Some ideas or understandings are very important – but what are some of those understandings? It wouldn’t be like the understanding of how to do cooking or solve mathematics problems. Perhaps it could be an understanding of how to interact with other people or a persons understanding of their own emotions. Some understandings are going to be more related to consciousness or the self. This would incorporate a hierarchy of needs relevant to what is most important to someones sense of self or core emotions. It is different from a hierarchy of needs for survival – it is a hierarchy of needs for personal satisfaction and the attainment of higher consciousness – which is a key goal that human development has focused on for millennia.
So there are different intellectual things that humans can focus on at different times. There are different intellectual skills that they can have and different understandings of those skills. Once a birdy, twice a wordy, once a birdy, twice is there, once a birdy, twice a wordy – once a birdy, twice is there. Twice is here, twice is there, twice twice twice, over there. That is an intelletual understanding
of a rhyme. How could that understanding possibly be significant? It doesn’t even make any sense – it just sounds rhythmical. How could a song influence someone intellectually? It wouldn’t really matter that much I suppose. Songs can make people feel what the emotion is behind what the song is – that is obvious if you look at a song and analyze it and think about the feelings that it generates. Songs could generate a humorous mood or a sad or happy mood. But are all intellectual cognitions like songs? With songs it seems obvious – songs are emotional and carry emotion easily – but would a certain conversation or environment create emotion in the same obvious manner that a song would? A song conveys the emotion of the theme or message of the song (or the rhythm) – however other emotions are much more complicated – the question that brings up is that perhaps making more complicated emotions makes the emotions dulled down because there are so many emotions – it isn’t a simple emotion like how a
song has one simple emotion.
So, if there are many different emotions and complicated ways of feeling is mental reality then subjective and diverse – or concrete and obtuse?
How is Intellect Processed in the Mind?
I stated in previous articles that different feelings and thoughts are connected in the mind – and that the feeling or thought of one thought can influence the feeling or thought of another.
However, that means that certain ideas or thoughts can have a tangible presence and influence the feelings of other ideas and thoughts. They can also be grouped into categories – for instance a humans delusional or emotional thoughts could be exerting feelings while their logical or non-emotional and intellectual thoughts are producing conflicting feelings with the more intelligent thoughts at the same time. Such an interaction would be an example of cognition interaction with emotion – a humans cognitive or more intellectual thoughts could be exerting a certain type of feeling while their less intelligent or emotional thoughts could be
producing a different type of feeling.
Cognition and emotion are always in balance – just like the left brain is theorized to be more logical and right brain is theorized to be more emotional and those two brains are always in balance – so tp emotion is always in balance with intellect or cognition.
Why would a thought balance an emotion? If more intellectual thoughts are more conscious – and more emotional thoughts are less conscious – than that makes sense because thoughts are single points of information while emotions would probably take a longer time to experience than a thought – so say someone is experiencing an emotion – they could suddenly stop experiencing that emotion and think certain thoughts or even just initiate a period of more intellectual thinking which could stop the emotion, assist the emotion or hinder the emotion.
So certain types of thoughts are going to be more emotional and possibly assist emotion more than other thoughts that people can think. If the thoughts are delusional that might make the person more emotional than thoughts that make sense and are logical. There are also ideas and thoughts that can be grouped together – if someone thinks something through more clearly then maybe they can make the idea or thought structure more intellectual and less emotional. If it is more intellectual it could interfere more with emotional processes because thinking too much stops emotion or feeling.
It is obvious how thinking or thoughts could interfere with emotions = if someone is feeling good about something and they then think – ’I hate that thing’ then it could stop the feeling good about the emotion completely. If someone continues the good emotion with thoughts that assist the positive emotion then the intellect or thoughts would be encouraging the emotion. However, if they think
too much then they might become less emotional about it because they would be interfering the emotional process.
So someones emotions could be feeling one thing (that would be like a thought or group of ideas – but they would being conveyed by the persons emotions) and their intellect (which is more conscious) could be thinking about or conveying something completely different. The emotional is unconscious – so unconsciously someones emotions could be making the person feel stupid and telling
them that they are emotional and stupid while their intellect could be trying to override their emotions and make them think clearer.
The persons emotions could be telling them one idea unconsciously while they could be trying to communicate or enforce a different idea to their mind consciously.
Ideas Can be Cognitive or Emotional
Ideas that people have can be conscious ideas or not conscious ideas – they can come from the conscious mind or they can be more unconscious. If they are conscious they it is probable that the person thought about them more consciously to themselves then an idea that came from their unconscious mind. How could a thought even stem from the unconscious anyway? Some ideas people simply absorb or learn from their environment and the person doesn’t necessarily need to think about as consciously.
If the person doesn’t think about the idea as consciously then it could still be understood consciously – they just might not be able to verbalize it as clearly. That makes sense – it depends on what the ideas and concepts are basically. Some ideas could be very conscious while others could be very unconscious – that brings up the point of how someone would define a ’conscious’ idea versus
an ’unconscious’ idea or concept.
Other than the fact that the unconscious concept the person wouldn’t be described as being as consciously aware of anyway – some concepts a person could be aware of in a different way yet could still be described as being conscious of. Some concepts don’t need that much conscious thinking about either – if someone is hungry they don’t really need to think that much about that in order to understand that they are hungry – their body is communicating the information about how hungry they are and they become aware of that because they are in touch with their physical senses – that is all that is required to be aware of that in that circumstance – a slight physical awareness.
Other things that people might be aware of could require large amounts of intellect, however. All animals know when they need to eat and when they are hungry – so that isn’t a very complicated desire. What about social cues – those might be hard for a person to process consciously and could be unconscious for a long period of time before they become more absorbed consciously. All of a
persons emotions could be unconscious to different degrees and further thought could influence how much they ’absorb’ or understand those emotions.
How Does the Mind Process Information?
PsyPost.org, Creative Commons
A mental model could mean any kind of mental model. There are models of how emotion functions and models of how intellect functions – and models of how intellect functions and is processed in the mind with emotion.
So what is the mental model for how the entire mind works then? First there is a sensory input -and then it is processed emotionally and cognitively by the mind. That seems rather obvious. Sensory inputs cause a reaction in the mind. That is what happens – there is some sort of stimulus – and then that stimulus causes a human to think about what that stimulus does for the person. Different stimuli trigger mental reactions that can be cognitive or emotional. That happens all of the time when someone sees something that triggers a reaction.
Vision helps humans to notice various kinds of stimuli. That means that the stimuli must be processed first by one of the human senses. That is only for external stimuli or stimulation, however. A stimulus or trigger could come from within the mind from memory or what the person is thinking about.
Emotional and Cognitive are Intertwined
If there is an emotion stimulus (like seeing a dog) then that could trigger a cognitive or emotional reaction in a persons mind.
So what kind of reaction does it trigger? A cognitive reaction or an emotional reaction? A cognitive reaction would be considered or viewed as the person thinking more – while an emotional reaction would be the person feeling more. Since dogs are emotional it would probably trigger an emotional reaction and not a cognitive one – however, what if an emotional stimulus starts something
cognitive? It might start off as emotional since the person is seeing a dog and dogs are cute and they are animals (and animals think less and are more feelingbased than humans) but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it converts into being more emotional.
What kinds of thoughts would seeing something emotional (like a dog) trigger? What kinds of emotions would it trigger? If thought about that way then it seems simple – seeing something emotional would ’probably’ trigger a more emotional reaction in the mind but could also just simply cause the person to think more depending on the mood that they are in. It would seemingly produce an association of similar ideas or feelings that the dog is associated with. However, the person might see dogs all of the time and in that case it wouldn’t generate much more or different stimulation for the person.
Emotional and Cognitive Simulation
So mental stimulation can be either emotional or cognitive. If the stimulation is emotional then it produces feelings; however cognitions can also produce feelings – an example of that would be someone laughing after hearing a good joke.
So what is the relationship between knowledge structures and emotional and cognitive stimulation? There must be some sort of emotional-cognitive relationship between each mental process or mental node that produces a combination of feelings or thoughts (I could call the thoughts ’intellectualizations’).
Consciousness can also cause feelings or intellectual stimulation. What is that saying – that ’consciousness’ can cause stimulation? That is basically just saying that someone is in a state of feeling in which they are largely aware of what they are feeling. So the question then is can someone direct what their feelings or thoughts are aware of? People have important feelings and less important thoughts and feelings. Can someones consciousness feel certain feelings better than other feelings? That person might more largely be aware of some types of stimulation more so than other types of stimulation then.
Different types of information could also be processed by the mind – not just different types of feelings. Feelings are also just communicative so they could fall under the title of ’information’ in the mind. So feelings and thoughts are processed as information by the mind.
Mental Representations
Different ideas, concepts and thoughts can interact in the mind. One idea can be a ’meta-idea’ – an idea of another idea, or an idea could simply be associated with another idea. If different ideas produce different feelings and different amounts of feeling then an idea that is a meta-idea of another idea could produce a similar or associated feeling.
The ideas don’t even have to be of each other – one idea could be a further reflection of another idea without the person being aware that that is occurring. Meta-representation (meta-ideas) do not have to be conscious – humans naturally reflect on stuff and feelings and thoughts or ’intellectualizations’ naturally reflect and build on each other.
David Rosenthal proposed that a representation is only conscious if it is presented by a higher-order thought. However, I don’t believe that to be completely accurate – representations could be simply thought about more without the person consciously thinking about it to themselves. Thoughts that aren’t conscious naturally reflect on other thoughts or ideas or experiences and these concepts or ’understandings’ build in the mind naturally by themselves. Furthermore, Any time someone becomes more conscious of something it could be the result of a feeling enhancing another feeling – not necessarily a thought enhancing another thought.
For instance – if someone ’has a feeling’ for something and they then think more about it they don’t need to necessarily be consciously directing that feeling (the further ’meta’ feeling) because humans minds naturally reflect on things all of the time and they don’t need to consciously say to themselves ’I need to think more about that’. It could simply be a feeling in their mind that triggered another feeling or there are possibly ’reflective feelings’ whose purpose is to reflect and build and make more conscious other feelings. These feelings could be understandings of experiences or understandings of anything in life (though I would think that most understandings would be of experiences).
Florid vs Pastel Representations
Daniel Dennett suggested that there are representations that involve a sense of action or agency which he called ’florid’ representations while ’pastel’ representations are more basic intentions that do not necessarily involve as much intention.
However, how does a representation have an intention? A representation could be an idea – and in that case, the representation could have intentions attached. If the representation is a feeling it could also have intentions attached. An intention is a strong feeling – so it could be obvious that some representations have strong feelings or other thoughts attached.
Why do they need to even be labelled ’representations’ then – I could just say that some ideas have stronger motivations and feelings attached than other ideas, and that some ideas form ideas or ’understandings’ of other ideas that could be objects in the world or other concepts in the persons mind. However, when some object or idea is ’represented’ as or in another idea or object in the mind it is called a meta-representation, or just a ’representation of another representation’.
So the term representation does have some use – because people represent things in the world that are happening all of the time. There is a difference then between the definition of an ’understanding’ and a ’representation’. Humans could have understandings of anything basically, some of the stuff in the world is going to be represented in their mind as a single object, and other stuff is just going to be ’understood’ as an ’understanding’ to the person. ’Understandings’ could involve multiple representations and ’understandings of understandings’ could involve multiple meta-representations.
The important question then is – which components of our representations or understandings have strong feelings attached? That is what Dennett suggested by his distinction between ’florid’ and ’pastel’ representations. The word ’florid’ by definition means elaborately or excessively intricate or complicated or excessive – so that makes it obvious that some feelings have components that are more motivated or salient.
The Use of Representations
Dennett also pointed out that there is knowing and a use to representations – if someone simply has a representation that is different from it being a practical representation. This is different from ’symbols’ in my view because some symbols have a greater significance on the human psyche. That makes it seem simple – obviously different objects in the environment are going to have a greater psychological impact than other objects, and different objects are going to be represented differently.
Take is a step further and it becomes obvious that different mental constructs interact with each other within the mind. Mental constructs have been defined a long time ago – Carl Jung talked about mental constructs when discussing dreams and other significant psychological phenomena. I would think that much could be understood if it could be sorted out the different mental constructs – these are different from simply grouping ideas and subjects and experiences and ’understandings’ in life into different categories – but the significance of each would need to also be understood.
The question then is – which subjects or categories or experiences could form a significant mental construct? Do different emotions form mental constructs? Can different thoughts or constructs be formed from significant life experiences and the emotions that these experiences generate? Then is it simply an emotional world that needs to be analyzed? If complex mental constructs can be formed it is certainly more complex than a few simple categories in life evoking certain emotions.
This is obviously going to be more complicated than simple symbols, a physical symbol is going to be more simple than a mental symbol – if you could call a mental symbol a representation anyway. Jung called significant mental constructs or symbols ’archetypes’. However – those a just single symbols or constructs – what would happen if a mental construct combined with another
mental construct? A representation is just a single object – but a representation can be of a mental construct which could consist of multiple representations, and different mental constructs can combine and influence each other in the mind – and obviously are going to be emotionally significant.
Object Representations
One form of a mental representation is simply objects from the world forming a mental representation – either multiple objects in someones vision or a single object in someones vision – this is called the ’object-based attention’ model – Montemayor and Haladjian (2015)[2]:
Such diverse theories and studies give us good reason to believe that different attention systems work together in complementary ways to process perceptual information, and that object-based attention is an evolutionarily newer processing strategy that developed after the more basic featurebased and spatial forms of attention. The usefulness of the object-based model of high-level representation is that it provides a structure wherein low-level information from the various visual pathways can be integrate to form a coherent and persisting representation of a visual object (Ballard et al. 1997, Kahneman, Teisman, and Gibbs 1992, Noles, Scholl, and Mitroff 2005). Some studies, however, suggest that this binding can happen even when pairs of features are simply superimposed spatially (Holcombe and Cavanagh 2001) and thus not necessarily bound in an object file format. Nevertheless, such forms of ’conjunction attention’ enable the crucial integration of multiple features. This ability is particularly important for guiding actions and for conscious attention, which we discuss further in chapter 4. Our position is that before you can have a conscious representation, visual information must be organized in some useful way. Object file representations provide this organization, especially since visual features usually belong to discrete objects. Without the ability to select an individual object and bind its feature, an agent could not sustain a persisting representation of the object.(
We are particularly drawn to the object-based attention model because it provides a nice structure for the integration of information from the various visual subsystems to form a coherent representation of a visual scene, in a way that allows mental representations to refer to external objects. Whether or not mental representations truly are organized via object files remains debatable, but for our purposes the form in which features are integrated is not problematic as long as there is some account for this integration. we believe that object files are theoretically important for providing the content of mental representations and for integrating perceptual information from multiple modalities, as well as from other forms of attention, in order to produce a cohenerent representation. It is these representations that most likely make up the contents of conscious experience.
I already mentioned in a previous article that vision was like the base-line cognition. They stated that vision is necessary for mental representations, which I pointed out before them that vision was the baseline cognition which is basically saying the same thing. People that can see use their vision to think, and when they aren’t looking with their eyes open they are visualizing things which they are thinking about. That is going to influence their cognitions greatly because vision is always needed and is a part of the thought process.
I also pointed out in my previous article that vision is tied to more simple cognitions – which seems fairly obvious on the surface but could be extremely complicated if someone wanted to analyze it because it would basically be analyzing all of a humans thinking and where that thinking comes from. Does it come from vision, emotion or feeling or other thoughts or memories?
So far in this article I discussed mental representations and how they influence the mind cognitively and emotionally. The question that comes up when trying to measure how reality is expressed and represented in the mind is how could such subjective mental functions be measured?
Some things in life are obvious and their influence on the human mind is obvious also – however it isn’t really that simple. Things in life have an unconscious and a conscious influence on people. If the influence is unconscious then it could be completely unknown what the influence is. Alvin Goldman phrased meta-representations on a simple lower level ’first order representation level’ and a higher level a ’meta-representational’ level. There are simple beliefs and desires on the first level and the second level is more reflective – it is a metarepresentational level by which people think about their attitudes and their basic representations of the world – their basic beliefs and desires.
He talks about ’mental attitudes’ and these attitudes are different from concepts. If someone has an attitude then it is different from a concept that they can form. Attitudes come from beliefs and desires and intentions and other mental attitudes – however – how do these attitudes become concepts?[3]
What concepts do the folk have of mental representations? How do they conceptualize or represent to themselves such states as belief, desire, intention, and the other mental attitudes? What properties do they endow these states with, in their fundamental grasp of them? These questions should be contrasted with questions about the essential nature of mental states. …do not conceptualize beliefs and desire as neural states. How do they conceptualize them?
So they conceptualize by looking at their first level representational state – their basic beliefs and desires – then they form higher or more complex representations of those basic needs. This might be related to a hierarchy of needs because it has to do with different levels of thinking. Thinking is basically the same as different levels of representation, because, just as the world is represented simply and more complex, so too can thinking be simple and complex – and it can be about the world or about the self and world intertwined.
Are Religious and Political Ideas Delusional Manifestations of the Human Psyche?
Photo by Anosmia, Creative Commons
Different ideas that humans hold help shape their psyche over time. Some ideas occur simply- for instance the interaction between cognition and emotion can influence a single thought in a few seconds or minutes. Other ideas are much more complex and can influence a person over a long period of time. These ideas can be political, religious and spiritual or just common ideas related to how they manage their lives.
The different types of ideas that people hold can be grouped into different categories. I already mentioned how there are religious ideas and common daily ideas – but there are more categories that can be described such as delusional ideas, ideas related to emotional speculation and ideas that are more concrete and mathematical.
People can make instinctual and deliberative decisions, and similarly, there are deliberative and instinctual ideas. A deliberative idea can be more or less concrete (like mathematics) and an instinctual idea can also be more or less concrete. The question then is what combination of deliberative and instinctual classifies the different ideas, and how much emotional speculation is involved.
If an idea is held and it becomes reality then how it influences the person changes significantly usually. For instance, someone may have the idea that they want freedom of speach, however obviously if the government is restricting their actual freedom of speech it might greatly impact their emotions. So the interaction between the ideas and goals that people have with how these goals occur in reality is significant for a persons psychological, spiritual and emotional well-being.
Are Religious Beliefs Political Ideas?
Religious beliefs are different from political beliefs – although in order to incorporate some beliefs into society they might need to be political policies.
For instance, Jesus’s message of an earthly and heavenly kingdom could be viewed politically as democratic or ’positive’ governments to take over the earth. Jesus’s message was just a religious way of phrasing a political message – there are different ways of thinking about certain concepts. One way is religious – but that often relates to more practical beliefs that people think about every day.
Maybe the trinity in Christianity of God, the Son and the Holy Ghost can be seen as a division of power like how the government of the united states tries to have a balance of power between the presidency, the congress and the supreme court.
However, how God influences peoples lives is very different from how the government influences peoples lives. God created the world, Jesus was sent to bring a kingdom to God’s world – and the holy spirit resides in each person.
So does an earthly kingdom mean that all government policies could come from god? What about the ways in which people treat other people – perhaps that could be considered to be like the holy spirit – something that guides our actions and behaviors. God creating the world at the beginning of the universe is very different from a current earthly kingdom or a spirit residing in each person.
Perhaps someone can be just spiritual and reach their own conclusions of how they should act and interact and the values they hold instead of being taught by a religion. That could be classified as personal values with spirituality and religious values if they follow the values of their religion.
What Religious Ideas Mean
Religious ideas such as immortality and a spirit can actually be translated into more common or practical words or terms. I already mentioned how religious ideas were just a different way of thinking of things. Being in touch with your spirit or with reality could be described in a different way that is more understandable to people – such as how in scientology people can repeat painful experiences on purpose people who are Hindu could get in touch with the ’ultimate reality’ through suffering and sacrifice.
Pain and the Unconscious
Pain is an important part of the unconscious mind. If you think about it, since emotion is unconscious then pain is extremely unconscious because pain is both physical (instead of intellectual) and emotional.
Many religions involve dealing with pain and pleasure and the influence of those feelings on people’s lives.
What Exactly is a Religious Idea, a Value, or a Political Policy?
Religious ideas can be political policies. But the important question really is – what kind of ideas are religious ideas? Are they psychological ideas or morals that guide someones life? Not all religious ideas can be described exactly as values. I am not just suggesting a debate about the definitions of the words ’political policy or theory’ ’value’ ’moral’ and ’religious idea’ but I am also suggesting that entire doctrines can be described in that fashion.
Are Religious Values Psychological Constructs?
In order to start this section first I need to ask the question – what is a mental construct? The unconscious mind can construct or manifest many ideas that the conscious mind holds. A humans imagination is largely unconscious because it is too difficult to think clearly about such things. Dreaming is unconscious and uses a significant amount of imagination, but I am not suggesting that the
conscious minds ideas that come from an unconscious imagination are false or not accurate.
An example of an unconscious motivation generating a mental construct is a religious value – a religious value can mean different things to different people and be interpreted in different ways because it is an abstract concept. There are many ideas and concepts that people think about every day that are abstract; however some are very powerful concepts and have a long term hold over a person’s mind. A single value can tilt or modify how more regular emotions are felt throughout a day. An example of such a value could be depriving oneself of excessive amounts of pleasure – there is the real emotional effect (the reality) – and there is how that person thinks about that experience, both could both help determine the feelings involved.
So there are different religious values. Different religions value different things, ideas and values. They also have different ways of worship. Ideas about how much pleasure someone is supposed to experience in life is one of the major concepts. What is a spirit? What is reality? Who is god? These are some of the important religious questions that different religions ask.
Sacrifice is an important part of religious values because it relates to how much pleasure people experience in life. If someone sacrifices, then their understanding and experience of pleasure can change. This could include personal sacrifice and sacrificing something to god – sacrificing something to god is a more historical form of sacrifice, possibly because those objects were more valued and scarce and activity in life was different so more attention and value was placed on rituals. However, personal sacrifice such as fasting is also difficult and something that changes someones values and forces them to think.
So there must be some combination of perspective and reality that is constantly interacting and changing. The different types of reality are emotional reality, physical reality, and intellectual reality. Physical reality is extremely powerful and emotions are physical in many ways – and that is perhaps why they are so potent. It is subjective to label an experience as being physical, emotional or
intellectual. However, if those three classifications can be related to religion then more detail can be found.
For instance sacrifice or fasting or prayer worship could be considered to being physical realities because all involved a lot of physical effort. Prayer worship is a physical effort because it involves speach. Obviously, since the intellectual and emotional combine those physical activities could also be extremely intellectual. It is easy to see how they are physical = however the important and even spiritual question is to ask how they are intellectual.
Spirituality
Saying that the intellectual is spiritual is comparing ghosts to spirits – a ghost is like a spirit because it has no physical form, and similarly, the physical is extremely real and emotionally potent.
What is the definition of spirituality? I like this definition: predominantly spiritual character as shown in thought, life, etc.; spiritual tendency or tone. Something needs to be added to that what this “spiritual” character is, however. I would say that it is the same attitude that a religious person would have about being religious, that is, by “spiritual character” they mean someone who is likely
to be religious. Spirit is someone’s soul, so spirituality would be focused on the self, but focused on the self in a manner in which they can understand it more deeply than just standard cognitive thinking about it, so religion might help you understand yourself in that “higher” manner. That is, it is almost like faith to believe in yourself like that, so it is like religion. The relationship between
faith/religion and spirituality then is that both are “higher” methods of understanding the world. Spirituality is just focused on the self, while religion is focused on god. So there is an inner peace that spirituality brings because spirituality is about yourself. You can also say it is about your soul, not just your state of being, because soul is who you really are, the core of yourself, and if you are more connected to the core of yourself you are going to be more at peace, and therefore have more of that spiritual connection, which is one that is a “higher” connection to yourself, like how religion is a “high” connection to god. This “high” connection is higher because it is connected to who you really are, which is the spirit part of spirituality which implies a soul, because when you imagine someone as being a spirit or a ghost you take away their physical form and focus more on who they are mentally, or the core of their being or soul. Also use of the word soul, like that is using energy from your soul, appeals more to your higher morals which you would consider to be more consistent with who you are at the core.
So people can compare reality with intellectual and religious questions that they can ask themselves. Does it matter how a person perceives how much pleasure they experience? If someone experiences a certain experience (which would be a combined emotional, physical and intellectual reality) then how would it matter how it is perceived? It can be perceived over the long term and over the short term by a person – and perceived cognitively and emotionally.
Connecting Religion, Politics and Psychology – and Possibly Physics
How could the study of Physics, religion and psychology be related?
Physics is about the connection of matter to matter – and psychology is about understanding abstract emotional concepts. It would seem that it would hard to find a connection between the two subjects. However it is probably easy to find a connection between religion and psychology and politics.
Politics consists of political theories that governments use to govern their populations.
These ideas and political policies can help influence the lives of the people in the population of their respective governments.
Could a person want their government to tell them what to do with their life? Not all religions don’t necessarily tell someone what to do with their lives – if someone has freedom of religion then they can decide whatever beliefs they want to follow – whatever religion or religions those beliefs come from.
But that certainly doesn’t relate to the study of physics. Physics is simply physical objects interacting with each other – while politics and religion are both about the ideas that people hold about life – such as how to live their lives and what to think about life in general and their individual lives and how they are being led.
This raises the question of the point of such thinking – how would it matter if someone thinks that they are being sinful (in Christianity for example) – or how would it matter if someone thinks that they are living a peaceful and pleasureless life (in Buddhism and Hinduism for example)?
Religions certainly have a set of ideas that they follow – if you link up all of their studies, prayers and sacred texts then a more concise set of ideas about their beliefs could be formed that is easier to understand. Religions do a ton of stuff that could be reinterpreted into a more simple form or set of ideas that describes what those religions do for each person who follows that set of beliefs – if that is the best way to describe a religion anyway – as a set of beliefs.
Maybe someone could simply believe in the policies of their government instead of believing in a religion. At least the policies of their government have a real impact on the persons life. However, perhaps some religious ideas have a real impact on a persons life also – each religious idea would have to be analyzed and thought about – then the impact of that idea on the persons life could be further explored.
How Can Physics and Religion be Connected?
How can physics be connected to religion? Religion matters because it influences how people feel and the things that they think about. Physics doesn’t really relate very much to it. It relates in a way – that religious ideas can directly impact a person and matter directly impacts matter. That is the only way that physics and religion really relate.
What does it mean to believe in God? Does it really matter how the events of our lives unfold anyway?
Life doesn’t really matter anyway so it doesn’t really matter how our lives could be influenced by a god.
Those previous statements weren’t even really that significant – it is obvious that the events of life are significant or not significant – some events in peoples lives are significant and other events aren’t as significant. It could be viewed as being a bunch of little details or bunch of moderately small details.
God can be portrayed as being mighty or the universe as being everywhere and god as being all powerful. Are those ideas delusions? Why would it matter that much if god was all powerful? It seems like that idea is delusional – every religion believes in an all powerful god. While different religions have differing views of how they view god they all believe in an omnipotent being of some
sort.
If you think about it, people have delusions all of the time, and god would certainly seem like something to be delusional about. But what is the person being delusional about exactly? Are they being delusional that life is grand and extensive, or are they being delusional that god is going to help them in some magical or realistic way?
These are all important questions – how can an idea influence the human psyche so significantly? What emotional or cognitive processes are being influenced when people frame things in different ways?
Religion and the Unconscious
To what extent is religion unconscious? Religion seems to be extremely unconscious because it involves ideas that are powerful and emotional.
When I say that religious ideas are emotional does that mean that they are delusional? Whenever someone thinks that their life is going to be a certain way and that it is going to happen magically that way then they would be both delusional and emotional – I am not suggesting that people who follow religion are delusional – or more delusional than people who are just planning out their lives
anyway.
Why would the understanding of how much pain or pleasure someone is in need to be cognitively interpreted? Does that mean that it needs to be verbally interpreted or does it just need to be understood more consciously? If something is understood consciously does that mean that they are going to be less emotional about it or more emotional about it? The unconscious can deviate from the conscious mind, and, in that case, could be the opposite of what the conscious mind wants to think or believe.
I would think in that case doing something like reciting a prayer or thinking about something religious could be done consciously but the persons unconscious emotions wouldn’t follow. Perhaps that is what it is like for someone who doesn’t believe in a religion who tries to follow it but fails.
I suppose it doesn’t really matter if the people who follow various religious beliefs and values care excessively about them. I am just wondering what the point of repeating certain values or beliefs to oneself is. Having not practiced any religion or prayer worship consistently I cannot speak from personal experience.
However, if you think about it, religion is sort of like therapy in that the person repeats the things that are occurring in their lives – or at least repeating the things or ideas that lie behind what is occurring in their lives. That is what religious values and ideas are – they are the foundation for someones life – and you don’t need to necessarily discuss your life with a therapist in order to enhance it or think about it. If the idea that lies behind your life is that you need to be pleasure-less or dutiful to your society or family then you ca think about those values to yourself or in prayer worship and don’t need to discuss them in therapy.
Religious Concepts and Messages
What influence do religious ideas have on a persons life? Why does a religious experience over time influence a person?
Are there similar comparable experiences in a persons life that a religious experience could be compared to? Perhaps that is why some of tales that are preached in different religions try to relate a certain type of life experience through the tale. Fiction can modify how life is viewed – and in religion many of the tales are fictional and these are often used to communicate morals or messages. So the fictional tales in many religious writing or preached in religious temples are significant and a large part of a religious experience. Even if the story is one of the history of the religion – false or truthful – is a part of the religious experience.
What then is the difference between fiction and reality? The religious stories told are often very different from reality. Or what is the difference between religious fiction and reality? The messages communicated through the stories are usually messages that center
around ideas that are central to the religions beliefs. The tales portray the proper or improper thing to do – or could tales of their religious gods or figures – which would be a different type of example or tale.
So, every religion has core ideas or messages that it tries to communicate. However, what is difference between a story and a single idea? A single story can communicate different ideas – however it might be debated which ideas are being communicated in different stories. Each religion has its own story, and its own stories it tells – both of which could communicate messages or concepts about life to the followers of those religions.
Religion and Consciousness
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Religious ideas are often values such as kindness and compassion or a different world-view or perspective on those values. But what is a world view of a value? Say the value is kindness – then there is a way that the manner of kindness can be perceived – maybe simply a different way of describing the kindness, for instance it could be a simple honest kindness or a more complicated and less caring kindness. Perhaps the other qualities and values that people have can change the nature of the simple adjective ’kind’.
For instance, if someone is kind but doesn’t value kindness that could be different from someone who isn’t kind but values kindness. Confucianists value being kindness and it is one of the Hindu virtues. It isn’t discussed as a Christian or Islamic value – however the ten commandments could imply a kindness and following the laws of your religion in Islam could be considered being kind or
honoring your society like how Confucianists value their family and society. Perhaps different ways of discussing the religious values lead to different ways of personally being. Discussing kindness in different ways could lead to a different way of being kind for each religion.
However, what does a different way of being – or I could call that having a different personality orientation – have to do with consciousness? Is it a matter of understanding your own personality or beliefs in what your personality should be? Or are religious beliefs more about someones understanding of the world?
Obviously there are going to be various types of religions beliefs – beliefs and understanding of the world, people and social structure, and an understanding or how people interact with the world. Beliefs of the world could be ideas about consciousness or enlightenment – because consciousness, enlightenment or ’revelation’ is obviously related to a persons understanding of the world – so it relates to humans and world. Some religious ideas can relate to the world and to a person – and to how the world interacts with people and how ideas are shared and more or less dependent on either someones personality and intellect and how much of the intellect is shared or developed or interacts with the rest of the world.
If it is an understanding of a person in the world, then clearly the idea is connecting the human to the world, however, if it is just an understanding of the persons own personality traits or preferences then it is just an understanding of the person – some personality traits are more related to interpersonal qualities and some are more ’inter-global’ qualities.
Are Religious Ideas Motivating?
If religious ideas are often delusional – which I have discussed in previous articles that the idea of God or other religious beliefs could be delusional or manufactured by the unconscious – then it makes sense that they are also motivating. That seems fairly obvious because people become delusional in the first place because they want to feel good. However, feeling good from verbal cognitions is a feature that is unique to humanity.
Animals get excited about reward and punishment also – however they only get excited like that when they see a direct reward or a direct punishment. Human beings cognize various ideas and motivations so they can bring up the same feelings of reward and punishment at different times or in different ways than animals do.
Similarly, religious ideas work in a similar fashion – they are ideas about how people are going to be rewarded or punished from all the events and occurrences in their lives. Whatever someone thinks is going to happen in their life a reward and punishment system is going to change the motivation involved – and that obviously is going to relate to religious beliefs because religions discuss reward and punishment that is determined by God.
That is why many religious beliefs are beliefs about what God does for people. In prehistoric times it might seem like a coincidence if an animal appears at the right time that they could kill – or it if something else happens that uncomforts or hurts someone because the living conditions were more simple and easily effected by coincidence. It is in this environment that the idea of God originally came into being.
In modern times, many more things happen to human beings because their lives are much more complicated. How could their idea of God be similar to how it was in prehistoric times when there was a more simple and obvious reward and punishment motivation system? People in modern times get rewarded and punished all of the time – perhaps their lives are simply more chaotic to focus so
much and so simply – almost in a meditative way – on religion or beliefs about God rewarding and punishing them. Perhaps a change in thinking of that sort could change how humans cognize their beliefs and motivations.
A Physics Work in Progress – The Beginning
I have only studied physics a little – however theoretical or philosophical physics is a subjective topic that could be speculated upon by lay people – some of this article could relate to how the universe was formed.
It would seem to me that physical particles have to combine in manner that makes sense, but the question is – what is logical physical connection? Is it logical for one particle to bond or interact with a different particle? What is inside empty space? Could it be that there are small particles in empty space that aren’t visible or have any interactions with other particles? Maybe I can say that a ’particle’ is the smallest unit of matter or the smallest unit of something that can be physically observed or actually exist – I don’t know if someone else has defined something like that before.
There are different ways that different particles interact – they have charges and strong and weak forces – however, are those all the ways in which they can interact, bond, attract and repel each other, and so on and so forth? What is the difference between energy and matter then? Energy is matter (or could be viewed as being matter), and matter is energy because both are physical substances. I could define the smallest particles as physical substances – but if they don’t exist anywhere then maybe they can be transformed into different types of matter because they are pure energy – but does that statement even make any sense – all energy has to be matter because it has to physically exist.
Why is Understanding the World Important for Human Beings – and How Does that Relate to Religion?
Why do human beings need to understand the world intellectually?
Instead of calling human consciousness intellectual I could call it verbal, ’more conscious’, ’awareness’ or any other term that would indicated that something or some understanding is being understood in a more intelligent manner.
What would happen to a human if it didn’t understand something intellectually? Wouldn’t that just be what animals are like? Animals could be described as simply not being verbal – they might understand emotionally what humans understand – but they simply aren’t capable of intellectualizing or ’cognizing’ it. Perhaps that is all religion is about – intellectualizing things in their lives and making life seem more grand or important to themselves – or is it about changing their emotions in a more basic and important way?
People often do things for intellectual satisfaction. It is interesting that there is such a large mix of the emotional reality and the intellectual reality that is present with human beings. It seems that with humans intellectualizing (being verbal, thinking about, etc) is needed in order to direct and motivate their emotions.
That is what therapy is about also – people think about their psychological problems and it helps them work through those problems. Religion is about thinking about the basics of their lives and what they want to achieve – it is a more simple form of therapy where the focus is to improve and focus on life in general. If someone has a specific problem that is related to their brains psychological
make-up then therapy might be the answer, however if they are simply trying to think about or improve their life in a more simple fashion then religious or spiritual thinking could help enhance their ’human’ emotions.
What is necessary in order to enhance human emotions? I would think that in early history there were grand tales told of the deities in order to inspire awe and admiration. In modern times, such tales wouldn’t create as much awe because modern technology is what inspires the awe – not deities that have ’magical’ powers. God is still viewed in a similar fashion to after early civilization developed after Jesus. There wasn’t much technology back then – however there was still considerably more than when there were just tribes and no civilization.
Inspiring awe and admiration in the population must have served to change their emotions – the stories were enough to motivate them to think and change – because the significant factor of the time was that humanity was just beginning and humans had power and were like the divine. By the time of Jesus more was needed to motivate people – so Jesus – who was a very motivational personality – helped to motivate the population and was much more realistic than stories told about multiple deities who did magical things.
Some symbols or stories are told of Jesus – and this helps to motivate some Christians. The early deities were just ways of thinking about creation and how powerful humans were – at the stories were enough to inspire people and change the way they think and feel.
The History of Religions
So stories can influence someones ideas and motivations. The history of someones religion could be comparable to being the history of their own family – their were only a few Hebrews that made it out of Egypt so they could all be seen as being a single family – and stories of Abraham and Isaac and the other Hebrews could relate what their culture and human history was.
The Old Testament is also included in the beginning Bibles – with the new testament only coming after – but every religious text is really just a different way of explaining sets of values and ideas about God and what he does for the world. The ’story of god’ is complicated and can be told in many different ways. It can be interpreted what the correct thing to do is many different ways also – does God teach the correct thing or does interacting with Him teach the correct thing to do? God doesn’t necessarily communicate directly to people so interacting with what god does on earth and learning from what he did in the past is the only way to interpret what life was like – and what life should be like.
Truth and Reality
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What is truth? Does it come from our senses and the external world around us or can we trust our internal senses?
Intelligence is subjective and truth is subjective, truth is really just discovering what the most accurate emotional reality is – and measuring emotion is extremely subjective.
All the words the people use are really subjective then – anything complex that isn’t scientific would be subjective – or could be considered to be subjective. there are different emotional concepts that are tied to different words – if Jung found out that everything in life was a mental construct or an archetype I don’t know how he would react. There aren’t just a few words that are significant that
are archetypes – but practically every word that is psychologically significant or a mental construct is significant in some way.
When someone says the word ‘god’ that is significant as an exclamative or declarative word – they are making a statement or trying to convey emotion or distress. So the word ‘god’ is probably the best example for a word that is used to convey emotion because people say it when they are emotional – similar to using a swear word only swear words are more vulgar. So the word ‘god’ is used in a similar fashion to using swear words only it is less vulgar and possibly more emotional.
So when someone says the word ‘god’ what are they being subjective about? they are simply being emotional – it could be subjective to decide if they are emotional, however it might be obvious because of their facial expression or tone which could help convey if they are being emotional or what their feelings are.
So how emotional people are or how much they are feeling might not be so subjective because humans can see facial expression and tone of voice, etc. The more complex subjective feelings and ideas that people have might be harder to understand or prove, however.
How could all of reality be perceived? It would be perceiving everything all at once – in previous articles I mentioned that there was unconscious and conscious and emotional and cognitive perception. If someone views something emotionally then they are just looking at their emotions and how they look at it unconsciously – but if someone is perceiving something consciously it is a more
conscious and deliberative attempt to view the world.
However, how is everything then perceived? What is the ‘minds eye’ so to speak? People don’t just see the visual world but they perceive everything emotionally and cognitively. How could someone understand what they are taking in from the world around them?
There are different ways of understanding concepts and experiences intellectually – emotionally how life is experienced in rather simple because everything could just be described in emotional groupings – this event evoked this this and that feeling, etc.
However the intellectual is much more complicated – animals could just experience emotions and feelings however if you think about an experience you could frame it in very different ways. Different experiences might evoke similar emotions – because there are only a few basic emotions, however someone could think about the experience in rather different ways.
What does that mean – to think about something in a different way? Someone could think about something with a different emotional perspective – for instance think angrily or pessimistically (sad); however that would just be thinking with the different emotional groupings that I already mentioned someone can feel with.
Any idea could tilt how someone views something intellectually. There might only be a few basic ideas just like there are a few basic emotions; however there are probably a lot more basic ideas than basic emotions because when someone thinks about something it is very different than from when then feel something. An idea could be tied to an emotion or feeling – that is why feelings and emotions differ – because their associated ideas also differ.
Thoughts and Feelings in the Mind
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There are emotions and thoughts and feelings and they interact. I don’t think it really matters what the difference is between an emotion and a feeling. It doesn’t really matter – that is just picking hairs. Emotions are basically feelings, so it doesn’t matter if it is an emotion or if it is a feeling. In a previous article I stated that feelings are more direct and are clear and you can feel them in a more simple manner – similar to when you touch something you get a feeling that is simple (and tactile). But if you can feel both of them it doesn’t really matter as long as you can feel it.
It doesn’t really matter because of life is feeling – life is full of feeling. There are also thoughts in life that impose and structure feelings. Thoughts are significant – and they impose order. Thoughts impose order over feelings, that is why they are significant. Feelings are wild and natural, while thoughts are calm and controlled.
There are automatic thoughts, which are not so controlled. However automatic thoughts come from feelings, from the unconscious mind in combination with the conscious mind. However automatic thoughts don’t come often, many thoughts might be assisted by the unconscious mind that people aren’t aware of as semi-automatic in any way, however they could be described as being that way.
Feelings are important because they make people feel things. Do thoughts make people feel things – or is it the feeling? The feeling associated with the thought could be causing the feeling or it might possibly come more from verbal sentences and thoughts – but then thoughts are really just triggers for feelings. Everything results in a feeling, thoughts are just points of information in a world of feelings (the unconscious).
That is why there are feelings, because there are things like thoughts. Thoughts cause feelings, and feelings can motivate someone to think a thought or two. That is it, that is all there is to life – feeling feelings and emotions and thoughts. But why would a thought be significant also? I said feeling ‘feelings’ – and that is obvious because feelings are obvious; however thoughts are also important
components of the mind.
Thoughts could be considered to be the intellectual aspect of the mind – however why would someone need to have a thought at all if they can just feel things? What is a thought then – a thought would just be something that imposes order and gives logical direction, and isn’t necessary for feeling. Perhaps that is why animals are also significant.
So thoughts impose order, give logical ideas and that is it – they don’t serve and function in terms of biological feeling. That is interesting; however it is not obvious to see how that functions in life.
Deliberate and Intelligent Consciousness
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Decisions can be instinctual or deliberate – they can be something that the person thinks about a lot (making it deliberate), or something that is immediate and instinctual. So that means that thought and intellect can be immediate and instinctual or a type of thought that using more processing power or is simply more intelligent.
Could someone have a thought that is intelligent that is more immediate and instinctual, however? It would probably have to be very learned – but wouldn’t that make all adults learned then since they have been using the same words in the same contexts for years and years?
That is definition of experience – to use a word or do something in a similar context – or to learn from different dissimilar contexts. However it doesn’t have to be how people use words – it is the nature of changing experience, it doesn’t have to be just verbal.
When i describe how it works verbally it becomes more clear – however, and also if I use words or sentences about emotional development as examples it could make it more clear how people develop other types of competency also. For instance if someone says ‘walk slowly if the path is cluttered so you don’t trip’ then the persons competence of walking could increase because they learned from the verbal statement.
It is both a verbal, cognitive sentence and an experience in real life. In that way words and other types of cognitive intellect are tied in with real experience.
Maybe all of life has a verbal or cognitive aspect that is reflected with the persons intellect. Or maybe there is also a physical or sensory quality to life that can be reflected with a persons intellect – not just an experiential one.
That’s how people think -they use their unconscious mind and their physical power – which helps to power their will, and they use their conscious intellect, sometimes less conscious and sometimes more instinctual and unconscious, and they reach conclusions and do stuff.
The Mind’s Comprehension
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There are mental models and mental associations, and there are thought association chains that are usually what a mental model is like. Does that describe all of the significant features of how the mind functions, however? I already pointed out in previous articles that thoughts and feelings can interact – but certainly it is more complicated than that.
The unconscious mind has a different power than the conscious mind, and the unconscious mind understands the world differently. The unconscious mind is the world that is absorbed by our senses while the conscious mind is the world that we understand. The unconscious doesn’t really ‘understand’ anything the same way that the conscious mind does – it mostly stores information and
feelings, while the conscious mind mostly does the intellectual work.
That relates to Descartes famous quote “I think therefore I am” which i stated in a previous article that the thought and intellectual component over someones entire life helps to determine the persons emotional development also. Emotional development is deliberative – or who the person is is deliberative – so that means that they are determining with their thoughts who they are and their development – or is that not the case so much?
Maybe someones emotions determine who they are more so, and it isn’t really a conscious endeavor. This is what the will and the spirit is about – who someone is and how they respond to the world. The way a person responds to the world could be considered to be emotional and unconscious or intellectual and conscious. They respond both ways obviously, It could be compared to my analysis of how emotion works with intellect – emotion takes a long time and can have many points, while thoughts or intellect are just singular thoughts and intellect is driven by the will – so it takes power and direction. The unconscious mind does not take much deliberative conscious direction or willpower (the ‘will’).
Or maybe there is an action-sense and it isn’t either intellectual or emotional – it is both combined in an action sense. That would be tying in the physical factor or perhaps the sensory quality of the unconscious – making experience largely unconscious because there is a sensory quality. Or is that more how animals experience the world (animal senses are considerably greater than human
senses).
Conscious Attention
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What is conscious attention and how could that term be defined? Is that just simply consciousness that you are focusing on? What would that be – if someone is conscious then they are paying attention, and if they are less conscious then they are paying less attention – so saying ‘conscious attention’ would just be implying that the person is paying close attention – so it would be like saying
‘attentively paying attention’ instead of saying ‘consciously paying attention’.
If someone is paying attention to something then what other mental processes are going to interfere with their attention process? Their mind could be trying to pay attention to other things unconsciously. That makes sense that attention is multifaceted – if someone is trying to pay attention to something it could be difficult or easy – their thoughts and feelings could be assisting them – or certain thoughts and feelings could be assisting them or hindering them.
What might cause someone to pay less or more attention to something other than the obvious factors such as how interested they are in the object or whatever they are paying attention and how hard they are working to pay attention to it.
People can pay attention to something and have their unconscious assist their mind or they could have their consciousness assist their mind. If their unconscious is assisting their mind then they might pay attention more efficiently because they are naturally paying attention – their feelings and drives and unconscious thoughts are all assisting their attentional process. However, if someone is paying conscious attention they they aren’t necessarily using all of their minds power to focus.
Someone can try to focus on something but that doesn’t mean that they are necessarily focusing as much as they can. This is probably a large issue with sports players that want to perform well – many cannot perform perfectly because their performance varies – it is because their biology limits them from focusing and paying attention as much as they would need – if they try to pay better attention then it could increase their physical performance – however it is also a conscious and unconscious battle and in that case also related to a third factor – their physical endurance or ability.
So paying attention is then mostly an unconscious and conscious battle – with possibly a third factor that would be dependent on what the activity is – what the person is trying to pay attention to. So paying attention also relates to mental associations because these could influence the persons unconscious mind and their performance. The idea would be for the person to become as unconsciously performing as possible so that their ability is enhanced by their unconscious mind. The conscious mind is limited compared to the power of the unconscious because more feelings and thoughts can be triggered if the person isn’t trying to
trigger them.
Mental Abstraction and Associations
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I wrote in previous articles that mental representations and thoughts are tied in and associated with each other – and that the feeling of one thought could interact with the feeling of another thought. However, how exactly does that work? It is obviously an association structure of some sort. Those can be called a ‘mental model’ or a ‘mental architecture’ – so is the mental model for the entire brain just a simple association chain?
If some drives are more powerful then it is likely to bring up an association that is most highly related – that seems rather obvious, however what if someone is thinking something that they want to be associated with another thought or related representation? An association could be tied in from previous emotional development. There ‘emotional’ development could mean long term emotional
development or something that was learned at one time in an experience or interaction.
So does one emotional drive or motivation have a set of related or associated images or feelings? What if an emotional drive has multiple feelings – or conflicting feelings? That could be related to secondary emotions – a secondary emotion is when someone tries to mask their primary emotion with the emotion they want to feel (for example, if someone is embarrassed because of a shy
emotion and they want to be more masculine they could try to replace it with a tough, masculine emotion but the real emotion was something shy (masculinity being the secondary emotion).
So what would the mental model or association chain be with that secondary emotion? Is this just a detailed way of looking at simple emotional interactions? I could label all of the ideas associated with the primary emotion and see what their associations and triggers are and what is going on with them, and then think about the secondary emotion and figure out what is going on with that – if the person is actual masculine and tough then maybe they could replace the primary shy emotion with a secondary emotion – or maybe not.
So an artist could have an association chain that could bring up something completely different from what an expected association would be. There could be ‘feeling-thoughts’ and direct and guide certain feelings or thoughts to be related to other feelings and thoughts in the mind. These could be called guided feelings or thoughts..
A complex mental model or association chain could be referred to as mental abstraction because the person is being abstract – however people could be abstract with all of their thoughts all of the time – why does one thought pull up another? Why does one feeling pull up another thought? They are usually associated or tied in with feelings that formed and developed them – or maybe the feeling was unconscious and the association or model cannot be figured out.
Ideas, Emotional Speculation, and Reality
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What does an idea consist of? An idea is a thought – and a thought is usually a sentence. An idea could be about any topic – but that is obvious.
So it is obvious that an idea can be about anything, but are all ideas obvious? People often don’t understand other peoples ideas so it isn’t necessarily that all ideas are obvious.
Which ideas are hard to comprehend then? Subjective ideas that are personal opinions or that involve emotional speculation could be more difficult for some people to comprehend. There is also an emotional bias that makes it hard to understand some seemingly simple concepts.
An example of such a bias would be not understanding human motivation – if someone doesn’t understand the desires and needs and motivations of people then they cannot reach the conclusion of what they are likely to do – this is a common subjective evaluation that people make with frequent decisions.
If someone didn’t understand that another person wants to do something, like manage a store or keep customers satisfied then they would not be capable of functioning well in society. Many of these ideas may seem like obvious things to understand – however – most people take these ideas completely for granted.
So assessing any type of motivation that someone may have in life could be completely subjective because it involves an emotional analysis and emotion and feeling is difficult to assess sometimes.
Emotional and Intellectual Preferences
Life is more than thoughts and emotions – humans perceive life in different ways. They perceive individual objects differently and therefore they perceive everything differently as a whole.
It seems obvious when I say it that way – each person is different and is going to perceive life differently and experience emotions differently. What is behind that difference, however?
Is it that people emotionally develop in different ways or is it that they were born that way? Perhaps a certain perception could be achieved in the persons 20s that is more academic or intelligent than the perception that the person achieved in youth. This difference in perception would be different from how teenagers or young children view the world.
However, how could i describe the difference in development as children age and as young people in their 20’s age? I have described that it is basically the same emotional preferences only a maturation – the emotional ‘orientation’ getting more advanced and developed, possibly changing a slight to moderate amount depending on the type of emotional interest.
So humans all have various emotional interests – that is what makes them human – wait, animals also have emotional interests – they simply aren’t as intelligent as human interests. What makes an emotional interest intelligent, however? Humans have a more complex reaction that shows that they are capable of much more advanced thought, however that could be hard to describe what that difference is exactly.
I twice saw my dog have a basic reaction to a painting – however in retrospect I realize that the reaction was a simple reaction – the painting was very simple and emotional. Dogs probably wouldn’t have a reaction to paintings that have complex scenery or involve complex ideas. I also noticed my dog responding to a basketball player on television making a slam dunk – which is a dramatic
emotional experience if you think about it.
So animals clearly have basic emotions and basic intellect – but the basic intellect is basically just tied into the basic emotions. Which ideas and types of intellect are more considered to be human then? I said that ‘advanced’ intellect is human – but how could that be described? Just saying ‘concepts or topics that require further thought’ isn’t really describing it perfectly.
That is basically all it is, however. Thinking provides humans with a more advanced way of viewing the world – the compare, contrast, analyze, etc. Some of these categories of advanced thinking involve human motivation, some involve human emotional preferences (which is related to motivation, but doesn’t involve the motivation drives as much), and human intellectual preferences (which is basically their emotional preferences only they could be described as a more mature type of pursuit).
Concept, Mind, and Reality
How do our concepts influence our conclusions? That was a question posed by Kant, however with a deeper understanding of the mind that question can be looked at further.
For instance, there are emotional drives that influence what our thoughts are, however concepts in that sense refers to all the persons ideas that they have formed since birth.
That is another interesting question – I don’t think that Kant asked the question “which idea or concept exactly influences which conclusion” – i would have to describe various concepts and how they influence differing other concepts, assessments and understandings.
Different concepts can change based upon the persons emotional development over time, and you could view a concept that a person has about life based upon different stages in their emotional development.
For instance if the stage of development is ‘identity recognition’ in the persons youth then the concepts that the person has is going to be influenced by their struggle for an identity (whether it is a question of masculinity or other personality traits that determine who the person is).
This articles relates to some of my other ‘truth and reality’ articles because i discussed in other articles how thought is related to feeling and how the unconscious mind influences the conscious mind through feelings, drives and unconscious thoughts influencing and driving conscious thoughts.
So feelings are part of who a person is and a part of how they perceive reality. However, how does something like an interpersonal feeling change how someone perceives reality? How the universe is structured has to do with feelings and how a person views the world. What then is the relationship between how reality is formed and how the mind views reality?
Some objects and structures in reality are concrete, but all are perceived emotionally and cognitively by the mind. What would a structure in reality be that is concrete other than a literal physical building or other physical structure? There is the physical world and the mental world, and these two worlds interact all of the time.
So is that just someones experience of the physical world influencing their feelings? Or is it just describing feelings and thoughts as being physical or elated?
Perhaps thoughts and feelings ‘feel’ supernatural and they can be then described as being weird or surreal. It is interesting that feelings can take on so many forms – like trying to describe a feeling as a physical object.
That would basically equate to describing a feeling as being very real, or perhaps it would be describing how a feeling is tied in with certain thoughts making it either a surreal intellectual experience, a surreal emotional and intellectual experience or an ordinary experience.
It would seem that simple feelings are just described in more simple terms than advanced feelings and that is all that is going on. If you think about simple animal like feelings that do not have any advanced components, and therefore all advanced components to life could be considered to be surreal or spiritual.
Notes
- See CNX download link.
- Consciousness, Attention and Conscious Attention. (2015) Montemayor and Maladjian. The MIT Press.
- The Mentalizing Folk. Alvin Goldman. (2000) In Dan SPerber (Ed.) Metarepresenations. Oxford University Press.
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