Hi Marc,

Since we are aware of our emotions then emotions are part of our consciousness.  

Hi Louis,

Thank you for your response.

I agree that emotions are conscious by definition (i.e., "we are aware of our emotions"),

Now, the question is whether it is possible to be conscious without any emotion.

You seem to disagree with that as you say that emotions are part of consciousness and thus cannot be separated from it.

Marc,

Can we be conscious without emotions?

I do not think so although they are periods of experience where the emotions are very weak.  All emotions vary in intensity and consequently we can suspect that when the intensity is very weak that they do not exist for these periods.  I would say that these periods of very weak emotion are also period of very week consciousness, and also periods that have a lot of difficulty remembering ; we do not register a lot these periods as if we were almost automatons in these period like when driving a car exhausted on the auto-pilot in a half-sleep state.  Intense emotional period are intensely conscious and intensely transforming/learning and well remembered and sometime traumatic.

The above is a phenomenal description and from it is not clear wether period of weak emotion are period of no emotion or only weak emotion.  

Our conscious mind accept both positive & negative element of our life .In this case it is not possible for emotion without conscious .It is thru our conscious mind all the positive & negative direction of our life working to carry out our action of our life.

Emotion is very good element in men s' life as it is due to the very basic nature we remain more loving,sentimental ,kindness,& more caring nature of our life so that our relation with our family even in working environment & also in our social fabrics ,we can play important move thru our nature .

This is my personal opinion 

Louis,

"I do not think so although they are periods of experience where the emotions are very weak".

I find interesting to focus on these states during which the emotional context seems nearly absent.

For example you cite a very good example like the state when driving a car exhausted on the auto-pilot in a half-sleep state. I agree that such a state is close to a semi-conscious state and thus it seems logical that the emotional context is not crucial although to maintain its vigilance sufficiently it could be useful to think of the possibilty of an accident with the corresponding strong feeling of fear! 

Could you give other types of states during which the emotional context seems nearly absent but the presence of consciousness rather strong?

Marc,

If I sit and try to relax, let my concerns go, breath  slowly, then the emotions quite down although there are some bodily relaxing feelings which are a certain form of emotion of quietness and security. This bring me into a meditative mode,  a mode of non-action, non thinking, no concerns and my awareness is on my breathing .  This is  a weak emotional state with a good consciousness of what is happening when I do almost nothing.  But the ideas are prone to coming back, solution of multiple problems, old concerns, stressfull mood and the associate emotions are rising again.  

Marc,

People with Alexithymia may  have weak emotions.

Alexithymia is defined by:

difficulty identifying feelings and distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal

difficulty describing feelings to other people

constricted imaginal processes, as evidenced by a scarcity of fantasies

a stimulus-bound, externally oriented cognitive style.

i would argue that development (emergence) of consciousness requires a reward-system as primary driver to provide the required postive/negative feedback mechanisms. Such stimuli may not necessarily be defined/regarded as emotions. As we seem to agree that emotions are only possible through conscious perception, one could postulate a sub- or non-conscious level for the reward/feedback mechanisms. Then we may not truly talk about emotions anymore.

Apparently, this question also has high relevance for "Artifical Intellegence" as it is easy to provide reward/feedback systems that are unemotional. And thus the question quickly represents itself, i.e. whether any AI (or living being) can be conscious without emotion. In other words, is emotion the essence of life?

Marc,

I dimly recall a pathological condition (anhedonia?) in which the patient appears to be incapable of any emotional response. If this is the case, then it is clearly possible to be conscious without emotions. Damage to an essential part of the limbic system?

Marc,

Since emotions are closely associated with the functioning of the limbic system, which is a primitive part of the central nervous system then this is an indication that emotions are very fundamental and so always present and thus evolved at an early stage of animal life. Emotion are necessary for the animal to be motivated to act.  In all the examples I gave where the emotion were weakly felt were cases where actions were either extremely undemanding on consciousness.

Louis,

"People with Alexithymia may have weak emotions".

Thank you for drawing our attention on subjects with alexithymia.

From Wikipedia "Alexithymia" I found this citation:

“A common misconception about alexithymia is that affected individuals are totally unable to express emotions verbally and that they may even fail to acknowledge that they experience emotions. Even before coining the term, Sifneos (1967) noted patients often mentioned things like anxiety or depression. The distinguishing factor was their inability to elaborate beyond a few limited adjectives such as "happy" or "unhappy" when describing these feelings.[23] The core issue is that alexithymics have poorly differentiated emotions limiting their ability to distinguish and describe them to others.[4] This contributes to the sense of emotional detachment from themselves and difficulty connecting with others, making alexithymia negatively associated with life satisfaction even when depression and other confounding factors are controlled for. [24]”. 

Can't we say that alexithymics show an emotional disorder leading to a consciousness disorder resulting in an ill-adapted behaviour towards others?

The same for schizophrenic patients (with or without anhedonia, i.e., the decrease or cessation of all feelings of pleasure which thus affects enjoyment, happiness, fun, interest, and satisfaction).

Hi Marc

Interesting question. You seem to confine the context to human consciousness. Given that human beings are emotional beings, emotions will be present 24/7, i.e. all the time. This would, generally speaking, include dreams and those events, when consciousness maybe involved in waking up because of some noise, light effect, smell etc.

Nevertheless consciousness involves perception of emotions. This could be an example where consciousness would not involve emotions. So if we would be able to set up an experiment that would clarify if the occurence of an emotion and its subsequent perception would be possible without any emotion overlaying or influencing this perception, we might possibly find an answer.

Such experiments generally suffer in some way though. Experimental setups do not reflect situations in life. 

So given that emotions are constantly present (including those that are unconscious and those that accompany thought processes that are unconscious, there will always be emotions while we consciously experience. This may not affect our objectivity though. We will most certainly be able to read a sentence 100% correctly, even though emotions are present. 

Cheers

Hans

The development of robotic life forms allows the bypassing of those aspects of the development of intelligence which are not beneficial to the final result.  It is necessary to have rapid response processes for robotic life, but there is no reason why a priority driving process such as emotions is either necessary or valuable.  When I think about the meaning of 2+2, I am certainly conscious, but I do not find any emotional driver to be necessary for this conscious activity.  Therefore I think that consciousness does not require emotions.

Dear M. Woolf,

You claim that "consciousness does not require emotions".

Well, regarding the distinction between “feelings”, “emotions” and “perceptions” Damasio says, “There are two main types of action programmes: ‘drives’ and ‘emotions’ (of note, some authors refer to all action programmes as emotions. Drives are aimed at satisfying basic instinctual needs and include hunger, thirst, libido, exploration and play, care of progeny and attachment to mates. In the case of thirst, the interoceptive detection and neural mapping of high blood osmolarity triggers a set of physiological actions that result in dryness of the mouth and an increase in urine concentration.

Emotions include disgust, fear, anger, sadness, joy, shame, contempt, pride, compassion and admiration, and they are mostly triggered by the perception or recall of exteroceptive stimuli (although there are exceptions: for example, fear caused by interoceptive stimuli such as cardiac pain or air hunger) … The changes in body state resulting from an action programme are in turn sensed by the interoceptive system and mapped in the CNS. Body state changes mapped in interoceptive neural maps may remain non-conscious or may be experienced consciously as ‘feelings’.

Feelings are mental experiences that accompany a change in body state. External changes displayed in the exteroceptive maps of vision or hearing are perceived but largely not felt directly in the sense of feeling we adopt in this text. However, they may lead to feelings indirectly by triggering an action programme that causes a change in body state and is subsequently felt.

This definition also excludes the use of ‘feeling’ in the sense of ‘thinking’ or ‘intuiting’.

Note that an action programme and the respective feeling are often referred to by the same name, although they are distinct phenomena. Thus ‘fear’ can refer to either an emotion (the set of programmed physiological actions triggered by a fear-inducing stimulus) or a feeling (the conscious experience of fear)”.

The author adds, “A crucial characteristic of feelings is their intrinsic valence — the direction, positive or negative, and the intensity of the homeostatic deviations proxied by feelings — which helps to explain why the organism follows the orientation provided by a feeling. Interestingly, exteroceptive processes that in all likelihood evolved later (for example, vision and hearing) do not contain intrinsic valence, although they are commonly labelled with valences generated from body states”.

Thus, according to Damasio’s definition of “feelings”, perceptions (for example in the exteroceptive maps of vision or hearing) are not felt (at least directly).

Hence, this author seems to consider that exteroceptive conscious processes such as vision and hearing can be independent of any feeling, at least directly, as you do.