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What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

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Re: What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

#41

Post by coldtea »

david_ar wrote: post #22
coldtea wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's illogical about it? In fact being a psychopath is the most logical thing (promoting your interests with cold logic with care or mercy for others). All other behaviors need either a faith in some God or man-given morality, ethics, or emotions like love, mercy etc (which, as emotions, are not logical). Of course one can logically come to the conclusion that behaving moraly instead of like a psychopath is better…

Not really, Nash equilibria aren't necessarily the best outcome for any individual (cf the prisoner's dilemma). Cooperation is usually better than every-man-for-himself for everyone involved, hence why social animals evolve altruistic traits. Of course, selfishness works at the expense of an altruistic majority, but that's why people don't like to associate with psychopaths

That's in game theory. Not many people are ever offered a bona fide "prisoner's dilemma".

In most actual real life situations you can get far ahead by behaving as a sociopath.

>Of course, selfishness works at the expense of an altruistic majority, but that's why people don't like to associate with psychopaths

The thing is that as a sociopath you don't even have to show that you are that to people. You can still pretend to be altruistic (to your advantage) and still push your personal agenda whenever possible covertly.

Re: What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

#42

Post by coldtea »

jameshart wrote: post #25
coldtea wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's illogical about it? In fact being a psychopath is the most logical thing (promoting your interests with cold logic with care or mercy for others). All other behaviors need either a faith in some God or man-given morality, ethics, or emotions like love, mercy etc (which, as emotions, are not logical). Of course one can logically come to the conclusion that behaving moraly instead of like a psychopath is better…

I believe the traditional 'logical' argument is that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"...

There's no logic (as in hard rational calculation about getting your maximum advantage) involved that argument -- it's a value judgement promoting sacrificing personal enjoyment, needs, interests etc. for others.

Re: What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

#43

Post by WhitneyLand »

kirsebaer wrote: post #6

I wonder how people with alexithymia respond to MDMA (ecstasy)? I've heard people say that the first time they really experienced emotions was on MDMA.

The hypothesis makes perfect sense and is very intriguing, however it doesn't seem to pan out.

There are narcissists and sociopaths who have tried it as a therapy. Unfortunately the only result seems to be increased love for themselves, or feelings of God like superiority over others.

Re: What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

#44

Post by jerf »

mikeash wrote: post #28
dingaling wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of those examples have a rational basis and the non-emotional person could probably make better decisions than the rest of us e.g. choosing a job offer on the basis of benefits and prospects rather than because the office looked cool. Such a person would make an astounding diplomat. The reward mechanism would probably be in maximizing physical comfort in return for minimal physical effort.

Without emotions, what would cause a person to prefer physical comfort over physical discomfort?

This is one of those times that I'd remind everybody that words are labels that have no power on their own. "No emotions" does not necessarily mean "never experiences anything that could possibly be covered by any of the senses of the English word 'emotion'". When it really gets down to it, we don't have a great ability to distinguish between "comfort", "happiness", "satisfaction", or any of a dozen other related concepts in our own mental lives, let alone start getting really precise about analyzing somebody else's, let alone doing so to someone whose mental qualia appear to be substantially different than ours.

Re: What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

#45

Post by norea-armozel »

pessimizer wrote: post #19

This is all self-reported, and people who don't have emotions don't reach out to support groups or express their feelings about not having feelings on message boards. Also, there has never been a thing called an emotion detected in or on the body of a human. I think the leading theory is that 'emotion' is a rationalization of the current state of one's sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. It's a self-appli…

And yet there's physical evidence from MRIs of people that report an absence or deadening of emotion. How do you account for the physical evidence?

Re: What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

#46

Post by jerf »

icebraining wrote: post #23
coldtea wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's illogical about it? In fact being a psychopath is the most logical thing (promoting your interests with cold logic with care or mercy for others). All other behaviors need either a faith in some God or man-given morality, ethics, or emotions like love, mercy etc (which, as emotions, are not logical). Of course one can logically come to the conclusion that behaving moraly instead of like a psychopath is better…

Why would caring for yourself be "more logical" than for others? I don't think the concept even applies. Logic concerns itself with the validity of reasoning: Given X and Y, you can validly infer Z - it doesn't concern itself with the goals. So, unless there's an underlying axiom that supports the assertion that you should promote your interests above others', it's not "more logical" to do so than to dedicate your li…

If you wish to understand Spock the character, and the Vulcans in general, at least to the extent that a species written by dozens of writers has a philosophy, it's important to understand that they don't follow lower-case "logic", but upper-case "Logic". It is, itself, essentially a religion (or philosophy if you want to be perhaps a bit more kind) that does in fact carry some base assumptions at its core.

In the particular case of Vulcans, you can definitely have huge, raging arguments about what exactly those base assumptions are, again, given that they were written by dozens of writers, many of whom really weren't trying.

Today you can see the real-life equivalent in the Rationalist movement, which while it certainly permits a certain amount of variance in the base assumptions, does tend to come with a basic set of axioms at the bottom as well.

It would go beyond the scope of what fits in an HN message to actually explain those. (Plus I have some serious philosophical criticisms, which would make it even longer, and also means perhaps I'm not the best person to even try.) My point is merely that when discussing this sort of "logic" it is very important to separate strict mathematical "logic" from the vague set of quasi-religion/philosophical "Logics" that do in fact come with enough base presuppositions to make it possible to debate things like whether enlightened self-interest is or is not "better" than, say, some degree of deliberately self-negating altruism. Upper-case Logic and mathematical lower-case logic are two different words. (And Logic is a family, too, not one well-defined thing.)

Re: What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

#47

Post by valarauca1 »

coldtea wrote: post #42
jameshart wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the traditional 'logical' argument is that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"...

There's no logic (as in hard rational calculation about getting your maximum advantage) involved that argument -- it's a value judgement promoting sacrificing personal enjoyment, needs, interests etc. for others.

Desiring personal enjoyment is illogical according to:

Buddhism, Stoicism, Cyncism, Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Neopythagoreanism.

All schools of thought that actively advocate against self desire and state that it is something that you must first purge yourself of before you can achieve happiness.

A lot of pure logical schools advocate that want and desire is the root of all suffering. The difference between these schools and say Randianism is they reject one can suffer of the soul.

You do not desire an end of suffering, but you desire an end of desire.

Re: What is it like to have never felt an emotion?

#49

Post by pessimizer »

norea-armozel wrote: post #45
pessimizer wrote: post #19

This is all self-reported, and people who don't have emotions don't reach out to support groups or express their feelings about not having feelings on message boards. Also, there has never been a thing called an emotion detected in or on the body of a human. I think the leading theory is that 'emotion' is a rationalization of the current state of one's sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. It's a self-appli…

And yet there's physical evidence from MRIs of people that report an absence or deadening of emotion. How do you account for the physical evidence?

There is evidence from fMRI for every single thing that a researcher wanted to see.

https://blogs.plos.org/neuro/2015/01/28/fmri-under-the-micro...

http://scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/2008/06/27/must-read-pa...

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