Feelin' good (was Re: questions about emotions and the will)

[From Rick Marken (2003.03.28.2340)]

Tom Hancock (2003.03.28.2015)

You are perhaps a person who has self-control more than most! Do you ever feel just flat or bored but soon are found happier when in a jacuzzi or doing chores? One explanation might be found with the associated control systems. But I wonder if an alternative here is more parsimonious. Anyway Rick, when I think emotions, I include feelings, as you describe above, but also desires and affections. Of course, they come in varying quantities together. However, thinking structurally, it is the desire and affection aspects of emotions that seem to take us for rides at times. You, too? I have found that they can cloud reasoned thinking and be traced forward to regrettable actions. (However, I'm not sure the life of the Stoic is particularly fitting for most!) I guess it is those parts of our humanity that just don't sit well with me in a PCT structure.

Maybe what you're noticing is that we often seem to be controlling for feelin' good (as in the old Ry Cooder song -- Feelin' good, feelin' good, all the money in the world spent on feelin' good). Emotional feelings are perceptions and I agree that people (me, anyway) do sometimes seem to control for having certain emotional perceptions. For example, I control for what I experience as pleasurable emotions by listening to music. Some people control for pleasurable emotions by drinking alcohol or taking drugs. I think people also control for other emotions that are not obviously pleasurable, like controlling for fear by going on thrill rides. I think control of these kinds of emotional perceptions is an important aspect of control of perception that may be ignored in discussions of PCT because we don't know that much about it (other than what we
know from our own experience). But control of perceptions that contain an emotional component -- such as a Bach fugue, in my case -- is something that can obviously be readily understood in terms of PCT.

Does this seem like what you're getting at?

Best regards

Rick

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Richard S. Marken
MindReadings.com
marken@mindreadings.com
310 474-0313

[From Tom Hancock (2003.03.30.0740)]
Rick Marken (2003.03.28.2340)

Rick:
Maybe what you're noticing is that we often seem to be controlling for feelin' good ...

... Does this seem like what you're getting at?

Tom:
Yes, Rick, that is saying it! Your explanation and examples make good sense to me.