This is my own Reality Research (RR) analyze of the post “The construction of feelings” with author Mike Smith. For more information, visit his blog.
First, I read the author’s post in detail and in depth. This is a well structured and clear text that includes individual thoughts of the author.
The main idea I extracted from the post is: Feelings are reflexive signals in the brain, when it decides which should be allowed and which inhibited.
I found that if the main idea is true, the following causes and effects must also be true:
- Close cause: Feelings depend only on the environment in which we live.
- Distant causes: The environment has created the feelings we have. Good and bad feeling were with equal evolutionary importance. Every human experience has been predetermined by the environment.
- Close effect: People will never have total control over feeling when they change their environment.
- Distant effects: People will never be happy everywhere. Happiness is something external and you cannot find it in yourself. When people feel depressed and sad, they can change that condition easily when they go to another place, with another people.
Checking out how the scheme “Distant causes – Close cause – Main idea – Close effect – Distant effects” fits in reality and Equilibrium Theory:
- Correlation with reality: I have many thoughts about the idea that everything is predetermined in my post The Laws of Destiny. There I analyze how our actions and thoughts are predetermined. If feelings are the same as thoughts – dilution of neuronal potentials, depending on the environment, so feelings are also predetermined. But is it the nature of life, the nature of reality – no free will and no free feel? It is quite possible. On the other hand, some people who suffer from depression or mania cannot change their feelings as they change the environment. They carry their feeling everywhere they go. It is evidence that in these cases feelings don’t depend on the environment, but something in their brain – for example the amount of dopamine in the brain. Can we talk about reflexive signals here? I doubt that. We also cannot exclude it as an option. Maybe in these cases the brain system which decided which signal should be allowed and which inhibited, is “broken”.
- Correlation with Equilibrium Theory: The evolution of feeling is result of tending to equilibrium with the environment. When something from the environment affects us constructively then we feel good, and when affect us degradingly – feel bad. In this sense, feelings help us to keep our equilibrium with the environment. Thus the mankind has survived.
After my RR analyze, I come to the conclusion that the main idea seems to be incomplete, because it is not fully confirmed by the correlation with reality. It seems that feelings are reflexive signals in the brain, when it decides which should be allowed and which inhibited, but there is something missing.
