rationalskepticism.org

Fallible wrote:Well I don't insist that cognition gives rise to emotions, which is why I said 'if you want to go with...'. It's a theory that is widespread, and the basis of the current favourite psychotherapeutic model. It's taught that the first sign that one has of these thoughts is the emotion they elicit. I'm not sure why it's daft that the cognition comes first...but then I never got how babies thinking before they can speak was a contentious idea either. Surely it makes sense that a thought process of some kind has to occur before you know how to feel about the event. Or do emotions just arise spontaneously, and if so, how is this explained? The thought isn't 'ah, I see a nice pair of boobies there'. It's instantanious and can be gone without being consciously registered.

Yes, the cognition includes perceiving the triggering event. It isn't a rational thought process, no - as I said, it's based on core beliefs which can owe little to reason and evidence. I don't really see how you can claim no thought process is going on, and then use a synonym (perception) to describe what is going on. I only included the part about false beliefs as an extra, it's not important here.

I see where you are coming from, I think it's in definitions that we differ. I'm going with the way an argument I had with a psychologist over this went, not good to argue with someone in the area of his expertise, but why let that stop me? To me, and the way the shrink was arguing, 'cognition' would mean, or at least take on the connotation of, a conscious thought process where you had enough time to at least minimally consider options and then make a decision, like 'this makes me angry' or sad, etc. If this were what lies behind how we feel, react, to situations, triggers, etc, then we should have control over our emotions to a significant degree, and we just don't, not in many many situations. Looking at it this way is at odds with saying "Surely it makes sense that a thought process of some kind has to occur before you know how to feel about the event." I just can't grasp this is what happens, not to me I can say. We can all struggle to control our emotions, if we are "deciding" how to feel, why would we ever struggle?

With your infant example, surely a baby has hunger before it can have rational thought processes? Emotions are thought processes of some kind, but they're not a rational thought process as in one that employed reasoning before making some kind of decision. Emotions are evolution's solution for how to drive a critter to do what needs to be done. Isn't that a fairly well accepted idea? I think of our conscious minds as a kind of restricted subset of our minds, and not generally the part in control. It isn't that conscious, rational thought processes can't change how we feel, though that is far from the norm, and usually requires a considerable effort. In the 7th grade when I started lusting after the boys and not the girls, I surely didn't think about that, it's what happened to me, that's how it felt. Emotions aren't something you do, they are something that happens.

I don't see how babies thinking before they talk could be contentious either. I tend to go with Chomsky who posits language could very well have come long before anyone ever tried to communicate with anyone else. The advantages of having an internal language are vast, e.g., memory aid, categorizing/organizing aid, etc. Who do we 'converse' with by far the most? It's ourselves. The species may have gone for a long period before they managed to develop an external mechanism, a language, allowing for the added huge benefit of communication. Babies thinking before they speak makes perfect sense to me. I'm really curious to hear what you think of Chomsky's idea.