What is the difference between cognitive beliefs and feelings?

Dear Peter,

Many thanks for your suggestions! I am not working on Philosophy of Mind properly, but on the Philosophy of Neuroscience. The issue above was raised in a discussion of neuroscience and ethics.

I read "On Certainty" by another author (Wittgenstein) many years ago - are W. and Burton on the same track or do they have opposite views on certainty?

From your reply I can infer that you reject options A and C. Do you accept B or do you have fourth position?

Peter Howie

Yes I get the difference. Burton developed his idea on certainty being a sensation (feeling?) into his next book and expanding the notion of sensations - he's somewhere in a similar area to you.

Proposition A) Well I couldn't reject it until I understood it more - what is meant by cognition for instance? I think I understand what you are getting at though and I am not simply being difficult, but if the question uses terms that are fuzzy it allows for a wide variety of fuzzy answers. Also, some psychologists content that all feeling arises from cognition - where do we go from there? Certainly we may be able to use logic to craft relevant propositions that are neither cognition-related nor feeling-related that perhaps fit the idea of being purely rational but then we perhaps don't need the distinction.

Proposition B) There is an element of this proposition that I 'believe' is true - feeling influences our rationality to prefer one idea over another - but this is often only in places where such ideas are un-grounded (empirically difficult) and the belief or proof of one over another does not effect us personally/directly. Religions fall into this category as do some scientific ideas. Einsteins belief in a unified field theory, for instance.

Proposition C) I also think this has a lot going for it but it is perhaps the wrong way around (f0r me) - as feelings or beliefs or feelings of knowing - provoke the search for the justification - which may in fact come. The feeling of knowing or the roughly equivalent sensation of certainty (Burton's idea) may exist independently from being able to prove something (again religion comes to mind).

Have you mucked around much with conation? It is an area of description of human functioning that has evaded much use since the 1930's. Educationalists roughly translate it to mean motivation - but conation includes motivation. Your third proposition/choice reminds me of the need to have a conative focus included when we discuss cognition and feelings. I've attached a couple of recent articles. Its such a neglected area of this discussion I figure we are limping along without it.

Hope this is useful

Peter

Dear Peter,

It was very useful. I am learning!

Good to know about Burton. I will look for his book ASAP.

In proposition A the assumption is that cognition can occur without feeling, and that emotional feelings are like noise for cognition. When I formulated it I was thinking of traditional approaches to the philosophy of science - e.g. Hans Reichenbach´s separation of contexts of discovery and justification. I was not really making justice to the good old logical empiricists, but drawing a caricature as you noted.

On proposition C my intention was to indicate the view you attributed to Burton - a kind of dogmatism as found in religions. I think this is how most people operate - for each scientist of philosopher, you will find dozens of religious people in the population of any country!

I knew Spinoza´s Conatus, but have associated it with feelings. In the papers you posted, the authors understand it as being different - it is more related to will and action. Interesting, thank you! It leads to a reformulation of C or to the formulation of a D option.

Maybe some readings by other people related to feelings:

Sarah Amed's The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004) and her The Promise of Happiness (2010).

Melissa Gregg and Gregory Seigworth, The Affect Theory Reader (2010).

Ahmed's books and the essays on the Affect reader share one concern: feelings (affect) are always culturally situated, respond to a politics of emotion and may change through time in concept and material expression.

Different periods of time have had "feelings of choice". From the Middle Ages to the Baroque it was melancholia (Duarte de San Juan, Richard Burton), from Neoclassicism and the Enlightenment it was sympathy and enthusiasm (Diderot, Kant, Mckenzie), in the 19th-century, we went back to melancholia. Then came Freud and the Lacan. Freud was mired in the Victorian era (a great author to study the feelings during this time is Peter Gay), and according to Lacan, feelings are based on the structure of the psyche, which varies from person to person. Maybe the predominant feeling in our time is the battle between hate and solidarity. Which may mean that the predominant feeling of our age is indecision.

Feelings are "environmental", we learn how to express them, etc. Their gestures change with time, as well as the words we use to express them. Science by itself is not capable to explain, describe or understand "feelings".

Best regards, Lilliana

Dear Lilliana,

Thanks for calling our attention to cultural aspects of feeling. Scientific knowledge also has a cultural dimension - is it less influenced by culture than feelings? Or should we collapse knowledge and feeling (and conation) into the concept of human consciousness?

Bors Sand

Yes I agree Alfredo consciousness itself needs to be understood before we can even touch the subjects of knowledge and feelings (emotions). I recommend a book written by Evan Harris Walker " The physics of consciousness." Mr. Walker actually gives a very good definition of consciousness regarding the neuroscience of mind. Knowledge is certainly a construct of consciousness as is emotion.

Dear Bors, I am probably walking in a circle because I have defined consciousness as cognition with feeling!

For this definition to make sense:

a) Feeling should be different from cognition; while cognition is the generation of representations, images, maps and symbolic constructs, feelings are lived experiences, or states of the conscious Self;

b) Cognition should be possible without feeling (as in the case of computation).

If one of these requirements fail, the definition will not work.

If cognition already contains feelings (for instance, if cognitive beliefs are feelings), the definition is redundant.

Alfredo,

When utter a statement (in a language) about an aspect of the world, it is our belief in proportion to our feeling that that it is so. They are many opinions that we are not so sure about them, they are feeling wise weak beliefs. There are a few domains where the feeling are weak because not necessary were our belief are very strong to the point were we do not use the word belief but replace it by ''truth'', I am refering to mathematical statement. I so firmly belief that 1+1=2 , it is simply a convention and not really a statement about the world , it is a knowledge of a convention. But when we speak about aspect of the world such as politic in the middle of an election where the issues may seriously affect our life then the emotions behind our opinions become high. But someone having a philosophical mind can distinguish in between emotions and knows by experience which emotion are motivated by a research of truth and which emotion are simply selfish short terms interest and can choose and this choose, or selection of being guided by emotions related with search of truth will be lead to opinions that are near the truth and we can even assess the level of certainty of that opinion. So feelings are used to search opinion and are used also to assess their level of certainty.

So the more a domain about which an opinion is express is simple and the less guidance from feelings the person need and the opinion is almost generated through language almost automatically without much effort and feeling. But the more the domain about which the opinion is seeked is complex and fuzzy but at the same time matter for the person to make an opinion about it and the more that person will have to be guided by her emotions in the seeking of the truth, in the generation of the expression and in the aesthetic assesment of that expression afterward.

Dear Alfredo, thank you for upvoting my earlier comment but I mistakenly posted what was draft or a longer answer. I am sorry. This is my full answer, which is better fleshed out:

I do not quite understand what you mean by "cognitive belief". For me cognition and belief pertain to different spheres of human thought. Feelings, on the other hand, can be re-cognized and may guide a better understanding of the though process. Bur there are some caveats, to this and maybe some readings by other people related to feelings would be useful:

Sarah Amed's The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004) and her The Promise of Happiness (2010).

Melissa Gregg and Gregory Seigworth, The Affect Theory Reader (2010).

Ahmed's books and the essays on the Affect reader share one concern: feelings (affect) are always culturally situated, respond to an epochal and locational politics of emotion and may change throughout time/place in concept and material expression.

Different periods of time have had "feelings of choice". From the Middle Ages to the Baroque it was melancholia (e.g., Duarte de San Juan's Examen de Ingenios, Richard Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy), for Neoclassicism and the Enlightenment it was sympathy + enthusiasm (Diderot's essay on Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, Kant's The Contest of the Faculties, Mckenzie's The Man of Feeling), in the 19th-century, we went back to melancholia, fear, terror, as witnessed by the Romantic sadness and narrative terror from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Bram Stocker's Dracula, despite Charles Fourier's interest in the politics of love.

One of the most interesting books on the subject is Charles Darwin The Expression of the Emotions on Man and Animals (1870) where he explores the gestures of diverse emotions in several cultures around the world. He distinguishes between spontaneous expresion of emotions and those that become "second nature" once learned. His chapter on the "blush" is simply extraordinary. Emily Dickinson, after Darwin, called the blush "the tint divine".

Then came Freud and then Lacan. Freud was mired in the Victorian era (a great author to study feelings during this time is Peter Gay, who does a close), and according to Lacan, feelings are based on the structure of the psyche, which varies from person to person. Maybe the predominant feeling in our time is the battle between hate and solidarity. Which may mean that the predominant feeling of our age is indecision.

Feelings are "environmental" and also passed on by our forebears: we learn or are taught the proper and improper ways to express them, though new expressions are devised all the time. Body or facial language change with time and place, as well as the words we use to express feelings. Science by itself is not capable to explain, describe or understand "feelings" exhaustively because, apparently, there are no universal expressions of feelings and it seems that expression is essential to know a feeling is "being felt".

I do not believe mathematical equations help us deal with feelings or emotions. Cognition is ampler than mathematics. I just refer here to the diverse and maybe unexpected knowledge we can derive from emotions/affect/feelings. Mathematics is a necessarily reductionist pursuit, which makes it extremely valuable. Felling is an excess, usually unquantifiable. Mi better example: Kant on the mathematical sublime, Critique of Judgment.

Best regards, Lilliana

Dear Lilliana, I hope you do not disapprove my upvoting of two posted versions of your message. There is a third that I did not upvote because it seems to be a repetition.

I will just clarify what is meant by "cognitive belief". It is a belief in a proposition or state of affairs. It is the subjective state we have when we think we have some knowledge. The question is if this subjective state is a feeling, if it belongs to the same class of subjective states as feeling sad or happy, or if it is in a different class.

What you say is very interesting. For me it has been very hard to classify "belief". It might be a "feeling". I had not thought of that ever. Very tempting to put "belief" among the human emotions. I will think about it. Very interesting!

I am having problems with posting comments. On another thread I found one that was repeated 26 times! I have no idea of why this is happening. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Best regards, Lilliana

Alfredo,

Don't you think that the expression ''cognitive belief'' is redundant. Could a belief be otherwise than cognitive?''' To think a belief or express a belief is by definition a cognitive act. So why say ''cognitive belief''? What not say simply ''belief''?

I believe that belief and knowledge are irremediably apart. You either believe or you do not, or you know. Otherwise, Plato would not have said that, in order to become knowledge, a belief must be "justified". In which case a belief ai maybe one degree up from a "hunch". That would explain why religious beliefs are never questioned as we question knowledge. Beliefs are like a "secular faith", something that, if questioned become either a "secular faith" or are justified and, then, they are knowledge. As in faith, beliefs seem like feelings: you feel God's presence, or you feel the hunch at the threshold of belief.

Best regards, Lilliana

Tarcisio Zandonade

Elucidation of these two concepts can be found in Bertrans Russell’s The Analysis of Mind. Currently I have access only to the Italian edition of this book (L'analisi della Mente), but a Brazilian edition can be bought at Estante Virtual .

Dear Louis, the issue is complex, because beliefs can be cognitive and non-cognitive.

Cognitive beliefs: to believe that you know something

Non-Cognitive beliefs: to believe in something you do not know

Alfredo,

Could you give me an example of ''to believe in something you do not know'' that is not cognitive.

Dear Louis, it is called faith. Lilliana already mentioned unjustified beliefs. They are abundant in human life, not only in religion.

Alfredo,

I would say that 99% of our beliefs and even a majority of those we consider justified are not really justified. A justified belief something we are justified to call certain knowledge or a belief that cannot be doubt is almost impossible to find. Descartes found one: ''I think'' . Mathematicians know a lot and call them ''theorems'' but they are limited to the formal world of mathematics. But here we speak like scientists. As humans in our normal life we do not doubt a lot of things and we call all these evidences or facts of life although on some of them we differ from people of other cultures. Could you draw a boundary between justified versus unjustified beliefs, not in the limited scientific contexts but in our life? Another request: could you characterize the place of ''Faith'' in human life? What is a ''Faith'' attitude? Is it necessarily naive? Is it contradictory to a philosophical attitude or to a scientific attitude? I do not wan to bring you far from the question of the thread. I ask because I think that it is the key to connect reason and feelings.

Michael Polanyi considered that we cannot escape the responsibility to holding and defend our scientific beliefs and that to pretend that they are not beliefs is to be irresponsible:

''Science can never be more than an affirmation of certain things we believe in. These beliefs must be adopted responsibly, with due consideration of the evidence and with a view to universal validity. But eventually they are ultimate commitments, issued under the seal of our personal judgment. At some point we shall find ourselves with no other answer to queries than to say “because I believe so.” That is what no set of rules, or any model of science based on a system of rules, can do; it cannot say “because I believe so.” Only a person can believe something, and only I myself can hold my own beliefs. For the holding of these I must bear the ultimate responsibility; it is futile, and I think also ignoble, to hunt for systems and machines which will take that burden from me. And we, as a community, must also face the fact that there is no system of necessary rules which will relieve us from the responsibility of holding the constitutive beliefs of our group or of teaching them to the next generation and defending their continued profession against those who would suppress them.''

Michael Polanyi, Scientific Beliefs, Ethics, 61 (1)Oct. 1950, 27-37.

Wilfried Musterle

Alfredo,

you said: "Cognitive beliefs: to believe that you know something" and "Non-Cognitive beliefs: to believe in something you do not know".

I woder about this distinction. Our knwoledge is very cloudy and seems to be a fuzzy set of beliefs with more or less certainty. The only certainty is that we exist (Descartes). Even Sokrates found the knowledge of authorities is very weak and knowledge does not exist.

I also do not understand the expression of "non-cognitivity" in this context. A belief is also a cognitive construction like facts of knowledge. The elements of a belief are elements of fantasy (elements like ghosts or gods, hell, paradiese, Styx, Yeti, UFOs a.s.o.). All these elements of fantasy are also cognitive constructs like a car, a human, a house which all can be recognized sensually.

What category would be the elephant in the medieval paintings (Brixner Doms, Fresko Detail, 3. Arkade (14. Jh.)

http://www.schule-bw.de/unterricht/faecher/geschichte/unterricht/unterrichtsekII/mittelalter/abulabaz/bilder.pdf

The artists never saw an elephant. Are these paintings non-cognitive beliefs?

Dear Wilfried, a painting is a painting, not a mental state.

Every mental operation that involves information processing/computing is cognitive.

Mental operations that involve feeling are affective.

Our mental conscious states/processes have both components, because feeling requires a message to be felt (the message being the result of the cognitive processing), and cognition requires feeling to be conscious.

Beliefs may be based on explicit (conscious) cognitive reasonings; in this case they are called "cognitive beliefs". They may also be based on explicit (conscious) feelings without an explicit reasoning: in this case, they are called ""non-cognitive".

Therefore, the difference between the two kinds of belief is not absolute, but lies in cognitive beliefs being based on explicit cognitions, while non-cognitive beliefs include only implicit (unconscious) cognitive proceses.

Dear Louis, you wrote:

"Could you draw a boundary between justified versus unjustified beliefs, not in the limited scientific contexts but in our life? Another request: could you characterize the place of ''Faith'' in human life? What is a ''Faith'' attitude? Is it necessarily naive? Is it contradictory to a philosophical attitude or to a scientific attitude?""

Alfredo: Justified means supported by an explicit, logically sound and pragmatically effective argument. Faith is essential to human life, because our capacity of justification is limited, but faith is not an argument to be used against rational argumentation. My view is that faith is to be exercised only when there is no rational approach to a problem; otherwise, dogmatic ways of acting that lead to war and human suffering will dominate our lives.

Alfredo,

What you define as cognitive belief is traditionally called knowledge , i.e. a belief one can provided a justification that is felt as convincing.

In your question, you presented a, b, c as alternatives while I see the three of them as simultaneously true. Do you see then as mutually exclusive or do you agree with me that they are simultaneously true and do not exclude each other.

a) To separate cognition and feeling; if knowledge is influenced by emotional feelings, it is not well justified (justification has to be purely rational)

Feelings are evatluation of beliefs and so are telling us how much we can rely on them. Knowledge is a belief that has been justified to a level that our feeling tell us as sufficient and so we do not need a lot of feeling guidance once a belief is ranked at the level of knowledge.

b) To claim that cognition and feeling cooperate in the construction of knowledge; feelings can motivate us to find rational justification

Feeling is the guiding hand of the transformation of belief towards the direction of certainty and feelings tell us when we have reached it. When we reach it we may not yet have a justification and again feelings are used to find this justification. This justification is often motivated by the need to convince other. Personal certainty does not necessarily need justification but convincing other of it , requires justification. So this justification is mostly motivated by the desire to convince others.

You defined in a previous post cognitive belief as justified belief. This is not consistent with the first sentence above. The feeling of knowing is as I said above is often present without us having a justification. When we want to convince other , the best method is to provide them with a justification, an explicit narrative starting with well accepted premices which lead to the belief. But there are many other methods to convince others without providing them cognitive justification is to raise their feeling level through all kind of rhetorical methods so they become convince without knowing why. THis is the art of politic and for this art to be effective a high reverence for the speaker has to exist.

Valentine John Belfiglio

Alfredo,

Three things govern ordinary human behavior, reason, sentiment and habit. I vote for option b, given the choices you offer.Cognition and sentiment cooperate in the construction of knowledge. It is difficult to write well without a passion or compelling interest in a topic. Two things are necessary to acquire knowledge.First,temporarily set aside your cognitive beliefs and apply inductive reasoning to a given project. This would require an empirical method based on numbers. Second, temporarily suspend rationalization for reason. This would attempt to overcome cognitive dissidence. These steps would be impossible for the average human being, but doable among the members of our group, but only with great difficulty.

Mehmet Emin Ceylan

Alfredo,

I think that Feelings, beliefs and cognition, all these ones are forms of knowledge. Most primitive form of knowledge is feeling and most sophisticated form of it is cognition. So cognitive belief is placed between most sophisticated and more less sophisticated knowledge. And also there must be an emotive belief between belief and feeling ones. So cognitive belief is two step above across feeling in terms of the form of knowledge.

H.G. Callaway

Mainz, Germany

Dear all,

Perhaps I can help this question along a bit. I though to comment on Brassard's opening claims.

---End quotation

The definition or description of belief, or of what it is have a belief has been subject to differences and debate; and, partly because of that, my sense of the matter is that the phrase "cognitive belief" is not redundant. Let me try to sketch the grounds for this.

The classical pragmatic conception of belief, e.g., is that a belief is something one is willing to act on. This is often thought to allow for the possibility of degrees of belief or conviction. But if one claims a belief which, in appropriate circumstances one is unwilling to act on, then ascription of the belief begins to be undermined. If a belief is something that we are willing to act on in appropriate circumstances, then this makes it obvious that there is a connection between ascription of belief, including self-ascription, and various sorts of evidence or indications of a person's holding the belief in question. Moreover, if the connection between belief and action is rejected, then we may come to wonder just what is meant by holding a belief.

The English "belief" contrasts with "faith," because, in part, it is often held that matters of faith, or central matters of faith at least are incapable of rational justification. Nonetheless, a strongly held belief may be termed a conviction--whether a matter of faith or not. There is some interesting contrast, I think, between the English "belief" and the German "Glaube," with which belief is often translated. The first meaning of "Glaube" in my translating dictionary is "faith," followed by "conviction" and "opinion." "Glaube" is first of all a binding and felt faith in something, though it is also used to cover the territory of the English "conviction" and "opinion." An alternative translation of "belief" into German would be by use of "Überzeugung" --more like the English "conviction."

But notice that someone's "faith" though it may be deep, heartfelt and even integrated into action and everyday life, can also be a rather more conventional matter of lingering allegiance to background and upbringing to which a person may confess when questioned and otherwise largely ignore. One is perhaps reminded of the phenomenon of "going along" with what is said, or what is proclaimed by authority, perhaps, "in order to get along." People will very rarely be directly challenged if they claim some matter of faith, but on the other hand that is not to say it never makes sense to ask if someone actually believes what they say or believe what they claim to believe.

So, in general, then, I think the phrase "cognitive belief" is helpful in distinguishing ascribed belief which is more integrated psychologically (whether stronger or weaker in degree), from ascribed belief (whether self-ascribed or otherwise) which represents something less integrated and/or merely conventional in the sense that challenges are felt to be socially out of place or perhaps beside the point. Sometimes, we see clear evidence of self-delusion, but have no good reason to interrupt the dreamer. Collective "dreaming" of this sort is also possible, and considerably more dangerous. Not all expression, or confession of belief is reasonably treated as "a cognitive act."

Cognition may be properly cool, but never completely cold.

H.G. Callaway

Mainz, Germany

Dear Pereira,

I thought to comment on your question more directly. In particular I thought the following statement problematic:

"cognitive beliefs are not emotional, while feelings are."

The plausibility of this sort of statement seems to be closely related to the phenomenon of putting aside one's feeling on some question or claim in order to look at it more objectively. I think there can be little doubt that this is sometimes needed. But what seems to be neglected is the prospect of the cultivation of emotion or feelings in relation to a given subject matter.

Consider, for instance some policy decision, which if enacted would negatively effect us personally, the inner circles, for instance or the family, neighbors and local community. The plan is to build a new road, say, and the immediate response is "Can't this road be built somewhere else?" It may be, in similar cases, that relevant interests and local sympathies are very strong and very narrowly focused.

The advocates of the plan may ask that a wider public be given something like the same consideration. We are asked to extend ourselves emotionally, and not simply to consider another and a wider set of facts. Sometimes, the problem is not simply that people do not understand the wider facts, but more basically, they may have a strong disinclination to consider or sympathize with others, the outsiders, at all. Surely, the historical problems related to European nationalisms and the tragedies they have produced, arose from something similar. It was not merely that the people of one country did not understand their neighbors well enough to effectively deal with them peacefully, they didn't want to understand their neighbors.They felt distaste, perhaps.

In similar cases, it seems to me, the extension and development of the cognitive competence to deal with wider problems involves also a cultivation of feeling --and at the least the ability to overcome nationalistic prejudices and shortsightedness. Effective will (or, say effective political resolution) as needed to act effectively is not merely a matter of cold understanding. Effective will is a unification of thought and feeling, though, of course, not just any feeling. That some feelings need to be overcome means that other feelings need to come into play.

H.G. Callaway

Dear H.G, and All:

I have to complete research reports this month, and for this reason cannot dedicate myself to cultivate this rich discussion. It is so rich that later I intend to make another research project on this issue! I already have suggestions of two books to read, and now H.G. made very good comments, including a reply to Louis. Those contributions were better than I myself could make now!

Alfredo,

This paper might have relevance for your concerns because it discuss the social expectation of bonobos and their public display of emotions relative to fair or unfair treatment by others.

Bonobos Publicly Protest Unfair and Unexpected Treatment

These emotional great apes have expectations about how they should be treated.

Posted Feb 19, 2016

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201602/bonobos-publicly-protest-unfair-and-unexpected-treatment

Geng Ouyang

Dear Dr. Alfredo Pereira Junior, thank you for a good topic.

Frankly speaking, I think “human knowledge” is a general term for the fruits of all kinds of our cognitive activities--------feeling, thinking, experimenting, calculating, discussing, …; so, culture, religion, science, … are all human knowledge.

Feelings can be one of cognitive activities (cognitive beliefs).

But, science is only a small potion of human knowledge which is different from culture, religion,…

Best regards,

Geng

Jane Gallamaso

The word belief is a bit problematic. One way of viewing belief is that it's not yet the truth and thus, the mind goes through a reasoning process in order to verify the truth or falsity of the belief. But there are also beliefs that are more or less permanent in our cognition as they have been habitually chosen and have become a conviction. Going back to back to issue, some say that there is a dualism between cognition and emotions(feelings). Thus, the two are separate. Cognition is often held as superior to feelings for the latter cannot see things in their true light as compared to the former. But there is also another school of thought that says that you cannot separate your cognitive faculty with your feelings. For instance, judgments of conscience are cognitive judgments such as guilt, remorse, fear, delight but these are also basically feelings.

Anne Lindyberg

I think it would be important to separate conscious and subconscious or unconscious beliefs, as well as to give some credence to when the beliefs were formed.

For example, a child who is reared in an unpredictable, invalidating environment spends much of their time in fear, and thus comes to believe their world is unsafe. As they grow, if this conditioning has not been corrected, they will continue to anticipate that the situations in which they find themself will be unsafe. Thus they will anticipate being fearful, which will very often cause those around them to be fearful (particularly peers, possessing a similar level of life experience, although the quality of the majority of their experience might be quite different) and thus produce experiences that highlight fear, resulting in actions and behaviors that are in response to the fear, whether there is true need to be afraid or not. Even small mishaps, in even a benign situation made up of many fearful individuals, might be responded to as large crises, due to the presence of the emotion fear in so many individuals. The fear in the individual then becomes self-reinforcing, as it creates danger by causing others to react with fear, almost as though they were catching a virus.

It is my thought that emotions arise naturally from our subconscious beliefs and then frequently feed our conscious beliefs, particularly when we have no framework for working with our emotions. This could explain why people who have a phobia and have accepted, cognitively, that the thing they fear presents no danger, but they continue to feel fear and experience an inability to exert control over their behavior.

I would love to see more research on this.

Dear Anne, In your example the unconscious belief (trauma) and the conscious feeling of fear reinforce each other. While beliefs may be unconscious, feelings are always conscious. Your post brings this interesting concept of "self-reinforcing" of unconscious beliefs and conscious feelings. This phenomenon suggests that the unconscious and the conscious dimensions are complementary.

Alfredo . No! Feelings are unconscious. Emotions are always conscious!

"For instance, judgments of conscience are cognitive judgments such as guilt, remorse, fear, delight but these are also basically sic{conscious} feelings."

"While beliefs may be unconscious, feelings are always conscious."

If all feelings were conscious then psychiatry would not be needed. The feelings deep in our unconscious manifest into conscious content as qualia whether positive or negative.These manifestations are the basis of the Hard problem of consciousness!

Roman, There are many unconscious emotions, and this is one of the reasons why Freud is important for Psychology! However, feelings cannot be unconscious, because when can feel them only when we are conscious. For instance, pain exist only if it is consciously experienced; if a pain is not conscious, then it does not exist for the person; if it is felt, then it is conscious. If a person is feeling pain, then she is conscious. If she is not feeling pain, then she is not conscious. The same applies to all feelings.

Anne Lindyberg

Alfredo Pereira Junior I like the clarity of your reasoning, particularly in your second reply. What to call the limbic-brain experiences that reverberate throughout our bodies and minds is still a bit wooly and needs to be operationalized in order to be properly discussed or researched. I also agree with R. R. Poznanski "if all feelings were conscious then psychiatry (I'm going to take the liberty of adding psychology) would not be needed." I might say "fully conscious." The gradations of unconscious and subconscious have me interested as well. As a clinician I've observed and experienced psychodynamic healing as a process for clients. And with interventions like EMDR, full consciousness of a feeling is not always necessary for healing to take place.

The unconscious belief I spoke of in my original post isn't synonymous with trauma, however. It would be a false belief, such as "I am worthless" or "I don't deserve to exist" conditioned by the original trauma, often in infancy or childhood. Psychodynamic therapy and EMDR can provide the safety needed for the individual to allow themselves the awareness of the false belief. In the pressure to function daily since the unresolved trauma and its resulting false belief, the survivor seeks to hide the belief so that it does not interfere with the necessary adaptive social functioning required to meet one's ongoing needs. Appropriate treatment modalities also redirect the client's awareness to the more adaptive aspects of the experience so that they can reframe it, thereby relieving their often physical traumatic stress symptoms.

Vahid Rakhshan

Dear Poznanski: "Alfredo . No! Feelings are unconscious. Emotions are always conscious!

"For instance, judgments of conscience are cognitive judgments such as guilt, remorse, fear, delight but these are also basically sic{conscious} feelings."

"While beliefs may be unconscious, feelings are always conscious."

If all feelings were conscious then psychiatry would not be needed. The feelings deep in our unconscious manifest into conscious feelings whether positive or negative.These manifestations are the basis of the Hard problem of consciousness!"

Your mistakes:

1. There are both conscious and unconscious emotions. The unconscious ones being for example those suppressed or repressed by the person into the unconscious mind.

2. There are both conscious and unconscious feelings (perceptions). Subliminal feelings / perceptions are unconscious, while all other feelings are conscious.

3. Now you as a mathematician have also become a psychiatrist? What does "Feelings deep in unconscious" even mean? Feelings (perceptions) are not emotions to be suppressed or repressed or manifested.

Plus, not all disorders are caused by repressed things stored in the unconscious mind. In disorders like OCD and OCPD and PTSD, the patient suffers actually from too much Conscious information. So actually if all emotions come to the light of consciousness, the person would become sick and ill by too much (annoying and sometimes even traumatizing and re-traumatizing) information, the way OCD or PTSD people are.

Moreover, modern psychiatry is gradually retiring psychoanalytical hypotheses.

4. This interesting statement of yours clearly shows you have no idea what the hard problem even is: "These manifestations are the basis of the Hard problem of consciousness!".

Belief is a thought based on experience, cognition, but certainly a function that requires frontal lobe processing that could lead to action. Feelings are either spontaneously generated by limbic system structures or activated by thoughts and beliefs, rationally or irrationally, by cognitive events. One, of course, can influence the other after roughly the age of about two. They are clearly not the same. Beliefs when strongly held can significantly influence infliuence feelings and the presence of feelings or autonomic over-reactivity looks for thought or belief, as we humans are continually searching for meaning and explanation, albeit oftentimes an incorrect one.

Jackson Cionek

"WANT" means to have the desire or intention of something. Thus, pleasure is presented in neural processes that activate behaviors of "WANT" and the object of our desire becomes a predominant stimulus among other stimuli. Do you know that “thought” that we can't get out of our head and involuntarily comes up? This behavior depends mainly on the activation of dopamine neurohormones in the limbic system

https://www.brainlatam.com/blog/what-is-the-difference-between-liking-and-wanting-in-our-brain-846

The behavior of "LIKE" is different and independent of that of "WANT" [4]. It is possible to "WANT" without "LIKE" and this is exactly the case with addiction behavior [2]. Research in humans and animals indicates that liking and wanting are mediated by different brain circuits [5].

Somewhat surprising is the absence of a description of Schacter and Singer's "Two-Factor theory" from this discussion. They had indictaed in the 1960s that emotional states are definable on two basic factors: "physiological arousal" and "cognitive label". When one "feels" an emotion, one feels physiological arousal and then the individual searches in his or her external environment to search for cues to label that physiological arousal. As a result, one not infrequently misinterprets (the cognitive piece) emotions based on one's body's physiological state. Our frontal lobes do not know why it "feels" an emotion (because it does not "feel" the emotion). The frontal lobes depend on external stimuli for cues to label an emotion.

Schachter & Singer tested how environmental clues are used to explain physiological changes. The noted that (a) If an individual experiences a state of arousal, for which they have no immediate explanation, they will label this state and describe their feelings on the basis of the cognitions available to them at the time. (b) If an individual experiences arousal for which they do have an appropriate explanation (e.g. "I feel this way because I have just received an injection of adrenaline"), then they will be less prone to label their feelings in terms of the alternative cognitions available. (c) If one is put in a situation in which in the past that would have "felt" an emotion, they would experience emotions only if they were physiologically aroused.

Dear Gerry, This approach (like High Order Thought theory) seems to assume that arousal states have a subjective quality only when they are cognitively represented. Alternatively, we can conceive feelings as presentational states with an intrinsic quality, which can be cognitively represented a posteriori with different explanations/interpretations.

Alfredo Pereira Junior

"My approach is based on calcium waves and binding of ions with water, instantiating quantum-like states that I have called "recoherent". What is superposed and entangled in these states is the diagonals of a spatially distributed ensemble of macro-states generated in the living tissue of plants and animals. These macro-states are bound temporally by means of synchronous oscillations, and interference patterns generated in the domain of their interaction."

It is not the macro-states that oscillate but their phase differences!

Wow! Not a word about the brain and nervous system as if we live in a world of incorporeal models. We have a limbic system, largely responsible for emotions, and behaviours largely limited to anger/agression, feeding, drinking, sex, and the like. We have all of that at birth & it is uncontrolled. Somewhere over the 1st two years of life, control mechanisms from the neocortex develop our ability to turn that system on or off. That is cognition. Thought is a part of cognition that includes sensation/perception, declarative working & other aspects of memory, language, motor and other sorts of planning that allow us to develop automated networks to optimize responses of approach and avoidance or escape. The interplay between cognition & feelings is how we dynamically adjust to life. The alterntive to an adequately functioning system is psychopathy or the results of lobotomy/leucotomy (Klüver-Bucy syndrome).

Gerry Leisman This question is about psychological concepts, if you want to discuss basic neuroscience please make your question.

Mônica Erichsen Nassif

Beliefs are ways of behaving in the face of situations, as if they were a pattern formed as responses to childhood situations and other more traumatic or decisive ones in life. Feelings are personal behaviors related to social situations as responses to them. To see these differences, it is good to check the studies by Antònio Damásio.

Mônica Erichsen Nassif Neither beliefs nor feelings are ways of behaving or behaviors, except in radical versions of Behaviorism. Damasio is not a Behaviorist.

Dear Alfredo,

''The cognitive belief is the belief in a proposition. Is it different from the feeling of knowingthe proposition?''

Beleiving a proposition is not a logical binary type of cognitive action. It is an cognitive action which is associated with emotions or emotional feeling. The feeling of certitude is more or less weak or strong and the same for the feeling of falsehood. So they are similar to a probabilistic assessment while the proposition itself is entirely different from this assessesment but is a certain claim about the world. The emotions are not limited to this certitude or likehood assessesment of a proposition, they also point out particular aspect of the proposition as beeing weak either as being confused or ambiguous. The feelings are like a compass, it allow us to decompose the proposition into its strong and weak aspects. They do more than that, the feelings that a proposition generate have a special character which guide our memory to reveal some of our past reflections which had a similar character and so permit seeing links between vastly different ideas linked emotionally which allow our cognition to dig out their common genius, their commonalities. When I listen to music , I experience emotions and it is these emotions which often allow me to distinguish style or see that a certain passage in one song is the same as one in another song I heard 20 years ago. If the emotion is very strong, I can go back to memories of my childhood. The title of a book and the first page and the last page of a book are generally enough for providing an emotional signature of the content and the author and I know from there if it is worthed or not for me to read further. This emotional character is like the smell of food, very quick assessesment if you want to eat it. Notice that uses my emotion as the highest of my senses in probing the world; they are part of my senses, as my cognition; most people tends to distance themself from their emotions, not letting them influence their cognitive assessment, biais it while I do the very opposite, consciously let myself guide by them but not in a blind way were I am not in control like a person in a rage or a person in a panic or a person that would self-censure themself by fear of offending other. But many failed to realize that they are our best guide but there is one important a priori condition for this to be the case : one has to make the full unrestricted commitment to truth and the common good of society and only then our emotions guide us for this otherwise we are blown by the wind of uncontroled emotions and greeds.

Regards,

- Louis

Great answer, Louis Brassard !

Should I conclude that they are two ways of referring to the same psychological phenomenon?

Otto Jesus Hernandez Fustes

Dear Alberto,

In scientific report or scientific papers, we speak at the third person and it would be perceived as extremly unprofessional to report on our emotions relative to we had in the process of our research or have with respect to our propositions. We simulate in our language a person which is without emotion, that report the facts and the finding as they are. The reviewers also in their reponses simulate a person who has no emotions and is purely rational. We all know it is not the cases and that we are excited about certain aspects of our research and hope the reviewers will also been excited but none of that will be reported in our official scientific writing or reviewing, that would be unprofessional. I am not criticizing the current practices but simply stating them. So our complex psychology , most complex in its emotional sides is almost never reported as if it was not important or too much children like. We play at the game of pretending to be rational robots. This is being a serious scientist. But since we never report our process of discovery and its emotional side, then this by never being communicated remain hidden, everybody thinking to be unique, and this most important aspect of science remain mysterious and hidden.

Regards,

- Louis

b. The three options are well-founded, but I think that answer "b" completes the fact that in addition to being rational beings, we are emotional beings and we cannot separate them.

Physiological feelings are emotion -related.

Physical feelings are consciously experienced (phenomenology).

From the perspective of foundations they are apples and oranges. From a non-phenomenlogical perspective physical feelings are construed in the preconscious in accordance with Freudian metapsychology.

R. R. Poznanski

This issue is very complex, you will not be able to account for it with your ontological categories. For a good start, try reading: Article Physiological Feelings

Alfredo Pereira Junior

don't point your finger at nonsense. grasping at straws because of your phenomenology bias will get you nowhere.

physical feelings are not hydro ionic waves but teleological phenomena

R. R. Poznanski What you say is nonsense to me.

Physiological feelings in the sense of the cited paper are psycho-physical, not physical only. The hydro-ionic wave is also claimed to be psycho-physical.

Your distinction between "physical" and "teleological" is not clear.

Alfredo Pereira Junior

Gustav Theodor Fechner work on psycho-physics circa 1835 not even MD qualified is a laughable joke. Just like biological cybernetics or even deep learning gimmicks are not based on how the brain works. You cannot claim psycho-physics as it is unfathomable . You need to insert mechanisms and there is not even a single mechanism correlated between Stimuli with the hydro ionic wave that you claim to be psycho-physical. Even if it is instrinsic and It just pops out of interstitial ions colliding in the fluid you need to prove that this correlated with the stimuli.Hopeless and without conviction it must pass as wishful thinking.

R. R. Poznanski I am working on this complex issue with good results to appear soon.

Fechner´s approach to psychophysics has historical value, but was restricted to perception.

The psychophysiological approach I use is far broader, see for instance Hughdal´s classical book and current views on psycho-neuro-endochrine-immune-physiology: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674005617&content=toc

The roots of psychophysiology are J.M. Baldwin´s extension of Darwin´s theory of emotions, and Cannon´s early work on homeostasis and emotion.

In the paper I indicated for your theoretical initiation the current state of art is reviewed.

I will give you a clue for free here, although I do not hope you will use it. Teleonomy is a concept compromised with Vitalism. The adequate terminology to refer to the control of homeostasis reaching a stable far from equilibrium psychophysiological state is allostasis and/or dynamic adaptive homeostasis.

Alfredo Pereira Junior

We covered all the bases and discarded "teleonomy" as an emergent process.

You are welcome to write about physiological feelings via affective neuroscience, but this is certainly not about physical feelings that remain undiscovered.

R. R. Poznanski Good luck for your theories, they are different from mine, because I do not believe in purely physical feelings, at least not until the science of Physics is able of covering conscious experience in the first-person perspective.

Jesus Gilberto Concepcion

Alfredo Pereira Junior Frank van den Bovenkamp

1. You are welcome to write about physiological feelings via affective neuroscience, but this is certainly not about physical feelings that remain undiscovered.

2. Physical feelings are not hydro ionic waves but teleological phenomena

3. From a non-phenomenological perspective physical feelings are construed in the preconscious in accordance with Freudian metapsychology.

4. Physiological feelings entails love, hate and other cognitive attributes, but these are not physical feelings but emotions.

5. Physical feelings entail energy processing in the light of Robert Pepperell leading to intrinsic information that is information in the subconscious.

6. Conscious experience and subjectivity are top down processes involving cognition.

Everything is a linear combination of your Power (KNOWLEDGE), persistence, patience and Passion.

Frank van den Bovenkamp

R. R. Poznanski

I basically agree point by point. Note that preconscious + feelings sounds a bit controversial, but I get the point. The use of energy or earlier, thermodynamics also seems a bit confusing, but if the latter also includes neg-entropy, there is no problem.

Energy has no metaphysical meaning beyond normal physics. The attributional process consists of entropy, neg-entropy and energy. The action must be uniquely and exclusively ascertained for each attribute, which is currently not done in physics. This would in principle identify the unattributed state as pure, trifarious action, and this is then also the "physical feeling" of PanMat.

In his later work Louis de Broglie gave a very distinct hint at the (quantized) action involved in negentropy. On the subatomic level this is most clear, but biologically trivial. The same must be identified on or transitioned to the level of more complex biochemistry.

An approach not discussed yet is the obligatory, balanced and highly functional presence of all the macrocosmic factors or matter phases (e.g. as per Gibbs) to form an open, autopoietic system with "physical feeling" . Consider the metabolic cycle as its attributional form. The trifarious action maintains the equilibrium, constitutes the formal normative cause and controlling nucleus and self-localization (Kastrup, Sarkar).

This would also account for the more visceral aspect of consciousness. It is a long held misconception that consciousness is some sort of transcendental, ephemeral, uninvolved substance. This idea was even formalized by the Sankhyan scholars, notoriously Kapilla, who invented a "Janya Purusa" as a sort of catalyst to make an overly materialistic philosophy more relatable. It was shown by Sarkar that consciousness itself is the material (as well as efficient) cause. It's just that there is a distinction between a pro-matter action (Gibbs phases) and a pro-mind action, which only together evidence the existence of the underlying, noumenal state.

Certainly this is the end of cognitivism, computationalism and ghost in the machine hanky panky.

Frank van den Bovenkamp

I like the poetic aspect of your answer.

"Note that preconscious + feelings sounds a bit controversial, but I get the point."

The idea that "feelings" are phenomenological is blatantly misguided. This phenomenology has 100 years of unscientific metaphysical jargon used in philosophy originating from Husserl. Panexperiential Materialism has finally dispensed with this dogma and pointed to feelings as information-based action occurring in the preconscious where phenomenology does not exist.

R. R. Poznanski Since Spinoza, the concepts of Affect, Feeling, Conatus, etc. have been used to refer to BOTH the capacity of having conscious experiences (belonging to the unconscious or preconscious domain) and to features of the experience (conscious sensations, emotional feelings, social emotions, the feeling of knowing or beliefs, desires, etc., all described in phenomenological studies). This double meaning is still present in contemporary authors, as in Jaak Panksepp´s book "Affective Neuroscience", in which he identifies operational systems that both generate and instantiate affects.

Alfredo Pereira Junior

Capacity of having conscious experiences=/= physical feelings.

I appreciate your viewpoint based on Spinoza -a Portuguese philosopher, but panexperiential materialism is not based on this concept of proto-consciousness or the notion of feelings as phenomenological in nature. Affective neuroscience deals with physiological feelings based on force-based action governed by cognitive neural networks and not physical feelings based on information-based action that is governed by energy processing. See the paper by Robert Pepperell for an introduction to energy processing in understanding consciousness.

Frank van den Bovenkamp

"Certainly this is the end of cognitivism, computationalism and ghost in the machine hanky panky."

If we rely on cognitive neural network computation as a marker of feelings we have by-passed the intrinsicness problem and treat the brain including consciousness as a computer (aka, integrated information theory). The intrinsicness problem is discussed in full in Panexperiential materialism.

By the way, the so-called hard problem of Chalmers is construed as a phenomenological problem and should be discarded as philosophical jargon.

R. R. Poznanski What a crazy comment you posted here! Who, where, when wrote that cognitive computation is a marker of feelings? From me you can find only the opposite claim.

What interests me about the philosophical/theoretical arguments in this forum is the splitting of the emotional, and cognitive, and physical and and & and... components. Chimps don't have these arguments and I assure you that they are conscious. Try hanging out in a neurocritical care unit or in a palliative care unit oh yes and record the electrophysiological activity of those in distress and you might find that the bits and pieces of brain tissue actually link with each other or not depending upon how awake and aware a patient is. Ah, but you say those are material rather than energy or spiritual questions. Right! We are biological organisms whose nervous systems are built to be plastic, capable of learning, and of course, behaving in a functionally connected way. Mess with that idea and you will, depending upon what area is not talking to what, be seeing autism, language deficits, executive functions deficits, emotional disturbance etc. Philosophers are not going to fix disorders of consciousness but they will continue to talk about it for an additional 2,000 years. I guess it will keep humanistic academics employed (these days by Zoom) and we'll just have to figure out how to find ways to return their comatose relatives back to a functioning life.

Gerry Leisman Of course, it is not necessary to elaborate on different cognitive representations (about the components of consciousness) to be conscious, in the same way that it is not necessary for birds to study aerodynamics in order to fly.

You wrote that the level of consciousness (if the person is awake) is not relevant for brain functional connectivity and conscious experience. This claim may be apparent for the clinician in the neucritical care unit, but is not corroborated by neuroscientific research. If the person is not conscious the auditory system may register the sounds from the environment, but the person will not hear. Physiologically, there will be no meaningful correlation betwen the activation of the auditory cortex and other parts of the brain. When the person is awake, there are mechanisms that involve modulatory networks (the astroglial network being the "master hub" for the systemic effect) that allows correlations between what happens locally and globally.

In the philosophy of neuroscience and theory of consciousness we acknowledge these neuroscientific findings and look for the critical "switch" between unconscious and concious processes. The existence of a "switch" does not mean that unconscious and conscious processes are not complementary, but implies that conscious processes are different from unconscious ones - different theories propose different ways of distinguishing them.

Alfredo Pereira Junior I agree.

Volume transmission for dysfunctionality has been around for decades mainly from the work of Paul Bach-y-Rita. When synapses have been damaged in comatose relatives volume transmission takes over to bring back to a functioning life. Of course , for rehabilitation to work it depends on the extent of the damage.

These issues are irrelevant and seem to be hubris.

Perhaps because engineers are hooked on the word "mechanism" that I have used instead of "process" See this book review

Article Book Review: The Relativistic Brain by R. Cicurel and M.L. Nicolelis

Len Leonid Mizrah

Cognitive beliefs, it's a set of habitual pattern recognitions that one is used to; whereas feelings, especially strong feelings, are much less recognizable, and may lead to quite unexpected outcomes.

Len Leonid Mizrah

Physical feelings rely on information-based action unlike physiological feelings and emotions that use force-based action. Unexpected outcomes can result from many scenarios that can by-pass the intrinsicness problem. We know that computationalism is not intrinsic but defined by silly rules like Hebb rule etc. We also know that phenomenology is a "ghost in the machine" , for example monism as brilliantly articulated by humanist Arthur Koestler in the 1970s.

Why are we talking about physical feelings as if they are in contradistinction to some other kind of feelings? Feelings are machinery and they are physical and manipulatable on the basis of mechanistic processes to wit, Phinneas Gage, Klüver-Bucy, Cannon-Bard etc.. If you can't measure it or at least operationally define it, or see what it relates to statistically, physically, mathematically or otherwise, it isn't! Stick an .."ism" on it and you have an ideology. Where's the science? If we are talking about theory, then I invite the correspondents to a bunch of really stiff drinks and camaraderie on the shores of the Mediterainian here when we have physically innoculated the physical Sars-Covid-2 issue. inoculated

“…Cognitive beliefs, it's a set of habitual pattern recognitions that one is used to; whereas feelings, especially strong feelings, are much less recognizable, and may lead to quite unexpected outcomes…”

- that is only secondary difference, which follows from/ is determined by the principal functional difference between what and how “cognitively believes” and what and how “feels”.

To understand that it turns out to be necessary before to define scientifically the utmost fundamental for humans phenomena/notions “Matter” and “Consciousness”, which, in the mainstream philosophy and science, including neuroscience, fundamentally are transcendent/uncertain/ irrational,

- and so, say, the series of 70 posts here, which [the posts] are written by people, who consider this thread problem in framework of the mainstream/official science, doesn’t clarify the problem event on some minimal level; and, if the consideration will continue in the mainstream framework, the discussion will be endless, and endlessly on the same level.

“Matter” and “Consciousness” can be, and are scientifically defined only in framework of the Shevchenko-Tokarevsky’s “The Information as Absolute” conception https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260930711_the_Information_as_Absolute DOI 10.5281/zenodo.268904, where it is rigorously proven that there exist for sure nothing else than some informational patterns/systems of the patterns, which are elements of the absolutely fundamental and absolutely infinite “Information” Set;

- including Matter and any Consciousness, including the unique known now Consciousness version “consciousness on Earth”, including this consciousness’s version “homo sapiens sapiens consciousness”, are some informational systems – elements of the Set.

So Matter and any Consciousness, including on Earth one, “are made” from the same stuff “Information”, and so are organized, exist, and evolve/operate, basing on some sets of basic laws/links/constants only in accordance with the same “Logos” set [that determines what is Information see the link above], including, say, in accordance with the “Logos” set element “Logical Rules”.

However, any concrete system of elements can exist just a concrete system only if in this system all its elements exist, exchange by information, and react/behave, besides the common for everything “Logos” set, also in accordance with concrete specific basic laws/links/constants,

- where every element singles out itself, i.e. is “self-aware”, in the system; if it is impacted by some other systems element, i.e. obtains some information, this element “feels” that it obtained information, which [the information] is in accordance with the system’s basic set above, processes this information in accordance with this set, and react/behave in accordance with the obtained information and with the basic set above;

- and so concrete systems can be different if have different specific basic laws/links/constants.

Matter and a Consciousness are fundamentally different systems, because of their specific sets of basic laws/links/constants are fundamentally different.

Matter [more see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342600304_The_informational_physical_model_some_fundamental_problems_in_physics DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.12325.73445/2] is a closed in the Set system, which exists and constantly changes/evolves basing on simple binary reversible logics, where material objects interact at exchanging exclusively true information.

So every material object is completely “self-aware” in Matter; say, every electron completely for sure knows that it is an electron and just this electron; it completely truly “feels” that obtained some message, if is impacted by something else, completely truly analyses obtained information in accordance with its completely sufficient “cognitive base”, i.e. the basic set of laws/links/constants, and behaves in complete accordance with the obtained information.

All the above, again, happens in any concrete system of some elements, in other case some system simply cannot exist;

- and the specifics of Matter is the above – in it all/everything is rigorously determined, and so Matter exists and evolves “automatically” – everything in Matter is self-aware, etc., “automatically”, and anything in Matter fundamentally cannot change anything in its “self-awareness”, “feeling”, “processing of information”, etc.

The post is rather long already, so more about the thread question in a next one.

More see the papers that are linked above.

Cheers

Al-Baraa ABDULRAHMAN Al-Mekhlafi

So let’s continue. In the SS post above it is pointed, that any system of some patterns, i.e. something, where more than one element are, can exist as a system only if in it every element singles itself by someway as concrete element in this system, i.e. is “self-aware”, and if in the system some – at least partially – known for its elements, basic laws/links/constants act, in accordance with which the elements obtain information from other elements, decode it, and behave,

- i.e. every system is some “computer +program”, with “hardware” – elements, and “program” – the set of basic laws, etc. above; and every element in a system “uses” this set as its “cognitive basic information”, in truth of which it should believe to be a system’s element.

In the specific logically closed in the “Information” Set informational system “Matter” every element has complete “self-awareness”, and “cognitive beliefs” set, and so all/everything in Matter happens/proceeds with completely rigorous accordance with Matter’s laws/links/constants. All that the above results in that al/every material objects, and Matter as a whole, are extremely stable in the Set, and didn’t changed in time more 10 billions of years.

The informational systems “Consciousnesses”, including the tribal “consciousness on Earth” one, fundamentally differ from Matter in that they are open in the Set systems, and so are, in principle, able to interact, i.e. to exchange by information, with any element of the Set. And so, say, when Matter exists and evolves in its absolute [5]4D Euclidian spacetime [what are “Space”, “Time”, and “spacetime”; and why Matter’s spacetime is as it is – see the 2-nd paper linked in the last SS post above] with 4 space dimensions and one time dimension,

- consciousnesses, including humans’ ones, exist and operate in own specific spacetimes with arbitrary numbers of, in principle, arbitrary, space dimensions [and in one time dimension, which is absolutely universal and common for all dynamical elements in the Set], which only partially intersect with Matter’s spacetime above.

The next fundamental difference of Matter and a Consciousness is in that any consciousness has limited abilities at obtaining and processing obtained information, and so the results of the processing are always, at least partially, principally uncertain/irrational; in many cases are simply illusory, etc. Including, say, many people have rather illusory self-awareness, etc. in the Set - now mostly interacting with the Set’s elements “Matter”, and “living beings communities” on “Earth”.

Since existence in/interactions with, in principle arbitrary environment with arbitrary impacts in the Set, can be destructive, the informational system “consciousness on Earth”, independently on - either she say existed before Matter creation, or was developed by some Creator,

- a few billions of years made for herself a stable residence – practically material bodies, starting from simplest biochemical molecules; and further multicellular organisms.

This trend had, and has till now, really quite evident direction – the Life on Earth development was such, that next living beings had more and more abilities to obtain and to process adequately to the reality information about environment – and about the beings themselves as well, i.e. the direction “more and more out Matter/farther and farther in the Set ”.

The highest version is the “homo-two sapiens” living being’s consciousness, which, unlike other living beings, in which the “cognitive beliefs” practically completely are formed as some internal reflexes on some internal information, and again reflexes, which are formed as typical reactions on typical repeated .situations in environment,

- is able to obtain information using not only 5 practically material sensors of practically material body, but also using instruments that allow to obtain information far outside possibilities of the sensors, and, besides,

- is able to process information in the “mind mode”, i.e. the mode of “abstract” processing, i.e. processing of arbitrary information by using/applications arbitrary methods, approaches, etc., including with primary preliminary decoding obtained information as rather arbitrary “feelings”, and this processing in the mined mode is principally outside Matter.

Including in this case “feeling”, i.e. obtaining, decoding the source, and primary processing of obtained by some sensors “physical” signals, becomes be differ from other living beings feelings, which [other beings] use practically the same sensors; including, say, humans expose bad and good feelings looking at some art production, nice and ugly mathematical solutions, etc.

At that, though, the “mind mode” occupies seems only near 1% of the consciousness operation, whereas 99% of the processing proceeds in unconscious - “sub-conscious” – modes, as, say that happens in computers, when on monitor only results of invisible data processing appear.

From the above

- i.e. the principal uncertainty of obtaining and processing in mind mode information, and, besides, from that any new information consciousnesses obtain only empirically, whereas any experimental result principally cannot prove anything [though it is enough to have only one experiment, where the result isn’t in accordance with some human’s inference, theory, etc., to conclude that the inference, theory, etc. is wrong or, at least, can be true only limitedly,

- the basic set of known laws/links/constants that determine behavior of a informational systems “humans’ consciousnesses” is principally only a set of beliefs; unlike the sets of the laws… of every material object, which “don’t believe in anything since know everything completely and completely truly”.

Including, say, when a consciousness obtains some information about which there is no any hints in existent the set, she marks this information as “I don’t know”, and further, obligatorily formulating some initial “beliefs”, usually attempts to answer on corresponding question – what is that?; whereas in language of material objects there is no word “unknown”, and material objects don’t interact with other the Set’s elements because of simply don’t understand – what are these informational patterns/systems without any questions, and corresponding problems in the Set.

To above it seems as worthwhile to add, that the humans’ “cognitive beliefs”, i.e. the basic sets above, now are stored not only in humans’ “hard disks”, i.e. the brains, but in books, electronic storage devices, etc.

More concretely about what is “Consciousness on Earth” see the Shevchenko-Tokarevsky’s first approximation functional consciousness model in https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329539892_The_Information_as_Absolute_conception_the_consciousness DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.26091.18720.

Cheers

Interesting question Dear Alfredo Pereira Junior

Feelings are the evaluation of beliefs and so are telling us how much we can rely on them.

Dear Alfredo,

Feeling are at a much deeper level than our thoughts and actions. They necessarily precededes our thoughts and are the underlying motivations our thoughts and actions are trying to fullfill but rarely with much succeess. How much success is also reflects by our feelings. So our deeper self is speaking to us emotionally. By self I mean your life or your interaction with the world and others and so your deeper self is this deeper layers of this relation and is always about how to transform it. It is not purely personal as the word ''self'' wrongly suddest. If we are all relation, nothing purely personal exist and it never sharply begin with your body nor finish with it.

The feeling of knowing is always temporary. It will precede any of your sentence and reward your success in expression but will soon dissipate once you have to move on towards more elevated or deeper truth. Someone who would have a constant feeling of knowing relative to a fixed belief would be stuck there.

Regards,

- Louis

“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

Louis Brassard This issue was addressed in our experiments: Article The Calcium Wave Model of the Perception-Action Cycle: Evide...

Available in https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00252/full

Dear Alfredo,

I will have a look at your paper.

I do not know if it is of interest to your reasearch but I recently learned about the research of Jacques Benveniste. If you look up in Wikipedia, you will see that his research on water memory is so far totally discredit by the mainstream. But Benveniste is not a theorist as such but an experimental scientists that follow the empirical evidences , even though we can'nt understand much of the physical theory that will make sense of it all. More recently Luc Montagnier and collaborators in various labs have replicated many of his experiments. The one that blow my mind because it is pointting towards a major paradigm ship in bio chemistry, medecine and comprehension of life is the experiment were it demonstrated that the active effect of DNA in water can be done without DNA just by magnetizing the water with the electromagnetic signal of the DNA in water. Virus and cells can probably communicate DNA information throw electromagnetic signal in water which are memorized in water. This also open the possibility to understand cell cell communication and so most cognitive process throw these kinds of electro-magnetic signals.

See:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8VyUsVOic0

Water Memory (2014 Documentary about Nobel Prize laureate Luc Montagnier)

Christer Johansson

I thought feelings were about what matters to us.

Cognitive beliefs are beliefs about knowledge, ultimately what is true or false, in this world or in some hypothetical world (e.g. beliefs about what other people know or believe).

There are many things that are true that I do not care about. There are many things that I believe are true that I do not care about. Likewise, for false things and caring about them. All combinations are possible.

Feeling gives us direction. Feelings and beliefs may align and pull towards truth, but not always. We might call that "harmony". All truths are not unchangeable (time independent), and all truths are not desirable, but some are.

Francisco Javier Gala

Cognitive Beliefs are from the rational / intellectual sphere of our psychological structure, while Feelings are from the affective / emotional sphere.

“…Cognitive Beliefs are from the rational / intellectual sphere of our psychological structure, while Feelings are from the affective / emotional sphere.…..”

- really that essentially isn’t correct. “Feelings” are, first of all, specifically coded purely material signals from the 5 main bodies’ sensors, and are rather common for all developed enough [rather common for multicellular living beings, and, say, practically the same for mammals] living beings, i.e. transformed by specific practically – but essentially non-material - material functional modules of the fundamentally non-material information system “consciousness on Earth” versions,

- so that the material signals, when downloaded in the non-material functional modules have specific codes – “feelings” - “that is touched and is “hard”, “soft”, “spike”, “black”, “yellow”, etc.,

- and about internal state of practically material body, say, “pain” [in some organ], “hungry”, etc.; which, in principle could have some other codes, but such coded information turns out to be structured enough for the consciousness could analyze the environment and the body state,

- for humans – that is, including, at human’s consciousness operation in completely non-material “mind mode operation”, though in most cases the sensors’ signals are processed by 1-st neurosystem and on “sub-conscious” , i.e. “sub-mind modes” consciousness operation, when a living being, say breathes because of some sensors in lungs detect too much CO2 concentration, and neurons decode primitively such signals to force body muscles to make next breath, etc.

The “cognitive beliefs” and “emotional sphere” are practically purely products of the “mind mode operation”, where

- “cognitive beliefs” are fundamentally inevitable beliefs in some “truths”, since any consciousness, including human’s one, has principally limited abilities at obtaining and analysis of information, and so fundamentally cannot to prove anything [besides two cases – mathematics and the Shevchenko-Tokarevsky’s “The Information as Absolute” conception https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260930711_the_Information_as_Absolute] and, though sometimes the beliefs are accompanied by some emotions, they are, nonetheless, mostly essentially indifferent,

- whereas “emotions” are again only some also “sub-conscious” codes that correspond to some states of consciousness, first of all at differentiation between “good” and “bad”; and so are applied in very diverse cases – from, say, emption “this food is delicious/yuck” up to “this proof of a theorem is beautiful/ that is zero emotion routine”, etc.

More see the Shevchenko-Tokarevsky’s first approximation functional consciousness model in https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329539892_The_Information_as_Absolute_conception_the_consciousnessDOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.26091.18720; though it would be useful to read at least first dozen of pages, including section “What is Life” in https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355361749_The_informational_physical_model_and_fundamental_problems_in_physics , doi: 10.20944/preprints202110.0453.v1.

Recent SS post in https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_illusion_of_knowledge2, and SS comment to the “Information as Absolute” paper / to L Kurt Engelhart comment in https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260930711_the_Information_as_Absolute/commentsisare relevant to this thread question.

Generally speaking recent SS post in https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can-science-prove-the-existence-of-God#view=609150b191491957fa613b35is relevant as well. Pointed threads aren’t spammed.

Cheers

Sergey Shevchenko Feelings, when experienced, are not the information pattern of the stimulus, but the reaction of the organism to the presence of the stimulus. This reaction can be objectively described, in science, as another information pattern ("code"), but from the first-person perspective it is a lived experience that does not depend on any description or encoding.

Alfredo Pereira Junior good

Physical feelings are yet to be felt or experienced and emotional/physiological 'feelings" are experienced in cognition.

Physical feelings rely on information-based action, unlike physiological feelings and emotions that use force-based action.