At stake in this is the status of emotion: is it an 'origin' - a brute biological given that is simply 'activated' in certain circumstances - or is it instead a 'result' - a bio-social 'production' that helps orient one's actions and is the outcome of an evaluative process? — StreetlightX

As is obvious, all emotions are reactions, reactions to something i.e. emotions, to the extent that I'm aware, are always caused. — TheMadFool

"As an animal’s integrated physiological state changes constantly throughout the day, its immediate past determines the aspects of the sensory world that concern the animal in the present, which in turn influences what its niche will contain in the immediate future. This observation prompts an important insight: neurons do not lie dormant until stimulated by the outside world, denoted as stimulus->response. Ample evidence shows that ongoing brain activity influences how the brain processes incoming sensory information and that neurons fire intrinsically within large networks without any need for external stimuli. The implications of these insights are profound: namely, it is very unlikely that perception, cognition, and emotion are localized in dedicated brain systems, with perception triggering emotions that battle with cognition to control behavior. This means classical accounts of emotion, which rely on this S->R narrative, are highly doubtful" (Barrett, "The Theory of Constructed Emotion", my bolding). — StreetlightX

I believe we are "programmed " with emotions , to survive and thrive . The fact that we learn how to use these emotions in different ways as we mature , even twist emotions , to get what we want , still comes down to the same thing . To Survive and thrive . Emotions is a way that the subconscious mind controls . I do not believe we actually have much "Free will" . The battle between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind in our evolution , past , present and in particular the future is a very curios thing .We create laws and punishment to punish the selfish and aggressive , the thief's and greedy . But just about all criminal actions are based on the "Human Programme" we are all Build with , there subconscious mind is merely doing what it has always done , we are very selfish when the going gets tough . Yet our conscious mind says this is wrong and we must fight it . So what is going on ? Battle of the minds , conscious vs subconscious ? Emotions being the front line . Is this were we get the concept of good and evil ? I am really interested to see what evolution has in store for us , the more we learn and understand , the more we will evolve — Colin Cooper

(1) - Emotion is action-oriented. To be 'angry' is to have made an assessment - not entirely conscious, but not entirely non-conscious either - that anger is the appropriate/most-useful way to address a particular situation: yelling and displaying aggression might be useful as a response to a bully. — StreetlightX

(2) The second interesting consequence - the one I'm most interested in here - is that emotions (qua concepts) are differential. Anger may be invoked (or evoked, rather) in a range of different situations, none of which may have anything in common. The concept - and emotion - 'anger' does not possess an 'essence' which is simply expressed univocally, but is instead a varied set of behaviours that can be 'used' for various purposes. In Barrett's words: Packets of conceptual knowledge about anger will vary within a person over instances as context and situated action demand. No single situated conceptualisation for anger need give a complete account of the category anger. There is not one script for anger, but many". One should hear in this Wittgenstein's idea that what defines any one thing is simply a set of 'family resemblances'. — StreetlightX

I’d like to see a quote from Feldman Barrett that directly supports your reference to emotion as ‘action-oriented’, because this description seems different to my understanding of her theory on constructed emotions. — Possibility

There are specific facial expressions and positionings, breathing patterns, postural changes, gestures associated with the different emotions. — Coben

As a matter of conceptual evaluation, emotions are not simply reactions to stimuli, but involve a degree of intentionality which cannot be reduced to causality. This is why emotions are a skill - a matter of learning. — StreetlightX

How early does she think that emotions are constructed? Is it something that is learned very young and then is relatively fixed, or in her view, is it something that we continually construct as we encounter new situations and compare it to what we have seen, causing rough patterns around emotional response? — schopenhauer1

"A category of knowledge, like anger, develops as sensory, motor, and somatovisceral features are integrated across instances and settings where instances of the category are identified and anger labeled. Sensory information about the object that is in the focus of attention (e.g., visual information about the person you are interacting with, auditory information about his or her voice, as well as that person’s relation to you in this instance), somatovisceral information about your core affective state (i.e., your current homeostatic state), motor programs for interacting with that person, and for regulating your own core affective behavior, associated with unpleasant, high-arousal states (e.g., facial movements, body movements, loudness of the voice), as well as the label anger (provided by yourself or others), and so on, bind together (via conjunctive neurons) to form an instance of anger.

Said more simply, properties that are pointed out by parents (or other speakers) or those that are functionally relevant in everyday activities will bind to core affect to represent anger in that instance. As instances of anger accumulate, and information is integrated across instances, a simulator for anger develops, and conceptual knowledge about anger accrues. The resulting conceptual system is a distributed collection of modality- specific memories captured across all instances of a category. These establish the conceptual content for the basic-level category anger and can be retrieved for later simulations of anger. — Feldman Barrett, 'Solving

This one interests me as well. I have found the illustration of emotional concepts as amorphous relational structures of value differentials or ‘family resemblances’ to be relevant not just to emotions, but to many other concepts. That we construct, predict and test the majority of our concepts from infancy in relation to interoception of affect (consciously or subconsciously) also suggests the significance of perceived value and potential to our experience of reality, backed up by neuroscience. — Possibility

"Knowledge for anger is established via a distributed collection of context-specific memories captured across all instances of anger. From the perspective being developed here, this means that knowledge for anger is established by capturing context-specific memories for instances when core affect has been labeled as anger (such as when the category is being learned). A given emotion label (such as anger) is used to refer to a variety of instances. Core affect can be categorized as anger on the highway (when a person might speed up, yell, or shake a fist), in a boardroom (when a person might sit quietly), or on the playground (where a child might make a scowling face, stomp, or throw a toy). In each case, the situational context (both the physical and the relational context) will, in part, determine what behaviors will be performed, such that the context is an intrinsic element of any anger episode.

...On any given occasion, the content of a situated conceptualization for anger will be constructed to contain mainly those properties of anger that are contextually relevant, and it therefore contains only a small subset of the knowledge available in long-term memory about the category anger. The situation, then, will largely determine which representation of anger will be constructed to conceptualize a state of core affect, with the result that the experience of anger (or of any emotion) will be sculpted by the situation.... The meaning of a situation to a particular person at a particular point in time is related to the emotion that is experienced." — FB

The classical view of emotion holds that emotions are natural states which we simply 'feel' and then subsequently 'express': one feels, viscerally, anger, which one then expresses by stomping a foot, clenching a fist, or having a yell. This is a view of emotion which has begun to be challenged by recent studies, which instead posit that emotions - or at least specific emotions, like anger, shame, happiness, and sadness - are conceptual reterojections which we attribute or impute to bodily states which are not 'in-themselves', sad, happy, angry or whathaveyou.

(To paraphrase William James somewhat: we don't stop our feet because we are angry - we are angry because we stomp our feet: although it's a bit more complex than that).

At stake in this is the status of emotion: is it an 'origin' - a brute biological given that is simply 'activated' in certain circumstances - or is it instead a 'result' - a bio-social 'production' that helps orient one's actions and is the outcome of an evaluative process? It's this latter view which I want to outline and discuss here.

The basic idea behind this second view of emotion is that emotion is two-pronged, as it were. At the 'base', biological level, what is 'immediately' felt is a kind of generic, non-specific 'affect', which simply indicates both intensity (heightened or dull feeling - 'urgency' of affect) and valence ('good' or 'bad' feeling, something threatening or rewarding). The second step in the 'production' of emotion however, is an evaluative one - a matter of categorising this initial affect (as sadness, as anger, as joy...), a categorisation which takes place on the basis of a range of bio-cultural considerations. To quote Lisa Felman Barrett - on whose work this thread is based - on this:

"Conceptual information about emotion can be thought of as “top-down” and core affect “bottom-up” constraints on the emerging experience of emotion. The idea is that conceptual and affective processing proceed in parallel, with the processing in each limiting, shaping, and constraining the way in which the brain achieves a single coherent “solution”—an instance of experienced emotion that is organized into a coherent interpretation and action plan that suits the particular goals of the individual and constraints of the context. All this occurs in the blink of an eye. The result is an emotional episode that people experience more or less as a gestalt."
— Feldman Barrett - Solving the Emotion Paradox

There are heaps of interesting consequences that follow from this, but I just want to start with discussing two: (1) - Emotion is action-oriented. To be 'angry' is to have made an assessment - not entirely conscious, but not entirely non-conscious either - that anger is the appropriate/most-useful way to address a particular situation: yelling and displaying aggression might be useful as a response to a bully.

(2) The second interesting consequence - the one I'm most interested in here - is that emotions (qua concepts) are differential. Anger may be invoked (or evoked, rather) in a range of different situations, none of which may have anything in common. The concept - and emotion - 'anger' does not possess an 'essence' which is simply expressed univocally, but is instead a varied set of behaviours that can be 'used' for various purposes. In Barrett's words: Packets of conceptual knowledge about anger will vary within a person over instances as context and situated action demand. No single situated conceptualisation for anger need give a complete account of the category anger. There is not one script for anger, but many".

Importantly, emotions, as differential, require that emotions are learned: they are a skill, which we learn to employ in one way or another, sometimes well, sometimes badly, sometimes to no effect. To end with another quote: ""conceptual knowledge about emotion constitutes expertise about how to deal with your own internal state—experienced as “an emotion”—and the situation or event that you believe caused that emotion in the first place. In this sense, emotion categorization is functional."

Anyway, I could go on and on with other implications, but I'll stop here for space and see how, if at all, discussion develops. — StreetlightX

"In a sense, a situated conceptualization, because it is designed for action, provides you with a script to guide your future behavior in a specific context or situation. For example, across varied situations, different situated conceptualizations of anger will be computed. Sometimes it works to yell, sometimes to pound your fist, sometimes to cry or walk away, sometimes to hit. During a given act of conceptualizing core affect, the simulation can shape a person’s behavior in line with what has been experienced before in that sort of situation (or one very much like it). As a result, situated conceptualizations deliver highly specific inferences tailored to particular situations regarding what actions to take" (from "Solving the Paradox"). — StreetlightX

But it certainly does happen that people can think they are sad when they are angry - some women have this pattern, especially if they are in traditional subcultures. But here what happens is there is a conversion. The anger arises, it is suppressed and then in reaction to that process (which is habitual, rapid and nearly unconscious) the person feels sad. And can also get some relief from the suppression of emotion by expressing sadness. So in a sense they are not wrong, though they haven't really expressed or notice their initial emotional reaction.

That all said, I just don't buy the hypothesis yet. — Coben

Maybe it's cold, maybe it's scary. I really don't know. I do know he wasn't taught to cry and he never learned to cry. I also think there must be a moment in everyone's life when they experience a new emotion they hadn't previously felt. There is the feeling of love, of heartbreak, of loss, of disappointment that occur in our lives as new. When were they learned? — Hanover

"Apropos neurology, Changeux's theory of learning reflects what LeDoux characterizes as the “use it or lose it” doctrine of neural “selectionism.” According to this doctrine, the initial “exuberance” of an infant‟s neural networks—there are more synaptic connections present in early stages of development than will be needed later by the more mature organism—is pruned down through “subtraction,” through the exchanges between organism and environment determining which connections will be used (and, hence, will be kept) and which ones won‟t be used (and, hence, will be allowed to wither away). Changeux describes this selectionist process as “the epigenetic stabilization of common neural networks”" — Adrian Johnson - Affects Are Signifiers

"I try to imagine how my daughter, Sophia, might have learned emotion concepts when she was an infant, guided by the emotion words that my husband and I spoke to her intentionally. In our culture, one goal in “Anger” is to overcome an obstacle that someone blameworthy has put in your path... If my hypothesis is correct, she learned statistically to associate these diverse body patterns and contexts with the sounds “an-gry,” just like associating a squeaking toy with the sound “wug.” Eventually, the word “angry” invited my daughter to search for a way in which these instances were the same, even if on the surface they looked and felt different. In effect, Sophia formed a rudimentary concept whose instances were characterized by a common goal: overcoming an obstacle. And most importantly, Sophia learned which actions and feelings most effectively achieved this goal in each situation.

In this way, Sophia’s brain would have bootstrapped the concept “Anger” into its neural architecture. When we first used the word “angry” with Sophia, we constructed her experiences of anger with her. We focused her attention, guiding her brain to store each instance in all its sensory detail. The word helped her to create commonalities with all the other instances of “Anger” already in her brain. Her brain also captured what preceded and followed those experiences. All of this became her concept of “Anger."... If I am correct, then, as children continue to develop their concept of “Anger,” they learn that not all instances of “Anger” are constructed for the same goal in every situation. “Anger” can also be for protecting oneself against an offense, dealing with someone who acted unfairly, desiring aggression toward another person, wanting to win a competition or to enhance performance in some way, or wishing to appear powerful — FB - How Emotions Are Made

tell us more expert. — chustavo

The internal affect is not the emotion: the conceptualisation is the emotion, which can just as easily be ‘evoked’ as such from actions and facial expressions as from interoception of affect. You’re not ‘feeling’ fear, you’re conceptualising fear as an emotion. The hypothesis is not that any body state can be freely interpreted - it’s that emotional concepts are not universally inherent or instinctual, but rather constructed from cultural experiences. — Possibility

The classical view of emotion holds that emotions are natural states which we simply 'feel' and then subsequently 'express': one feels, viscerally, anger, which one then expresses by stomping a foot, clenching a fist, or having a yell. This is a view of emotion which has begun to be challenged by recent studies, which instead posit that emotions - or at least specific emotions, like anger, shame, happiness, and sadness - are conceptual reterojections which we attribute or impute to bodily states which are not 'in-themselves', sad, happy, angry or whathaveyou. — StreetlightX

alright brother i admit my defeat, but blaming without knowing the cause will not help you.

but why i enter into this arguement ? since i dont wish to enter into the arguement. ( expert ) — chustavo

Widen eyes, breath shallowly but rapidly, tilt the neck back and you will feel fear. (note I have taken the training but my memory is not at all perfect). And the details of the breathing — Coben

I had to reread How Emotions Are Made about three times in order to wrap my head around this new view. — praxis

How early does she think that emotions are constructed? Is it something that is learned very young and then is relatively fixed, or in her view, is it something that we continually construct as we encounter new situations and compare it to what we have seen, causing rough patterns around emotional response? — schopenhauer1

For example, the visual system represents a straight line as a pattern of neurons firing in a primary visual cortex. Suppose that a second group of neurons fires to repent a second line at a ninety degree angle to the first line. A third group of neurons could summarise this statistical relationship between the two lines efficiently as a simple concept of ‘Angle’. The infant brain might encounter a hundred different pairs of intersecting line segments of varying lengths, thickness, and colour, but conceptually they are all instances of ‘Angle’, each of which gets efficiently summarised by some smaller group of neurons. These summaries eliminate redundancy. In this manner, the brain separates statistical similarities from sensory differences.
In the same manner, the instances of the concept ‘Angle’ are themselves part of other concepts. For example, an infant receives visual input about her mother’s face from many different vantage points: while nursing, while sitting face to face, in the morning and the evening. Her concept of ‘Angle’ will be part of her concept ‘Eye’ that summarises the continuously changing lines and contours of her mother’s eyes seen at different angles and in different luminance. Different groups of neurons fire to represent the various instances of the concept ‘Eye’, allowing the infant to recognise those eyes as her mother’s eyes each time, regardless of the sensory differences.
As we go from the very specific to increasingly general concepts (in this example, from line to angle to eye), the brain creates similarities that are progressively more efficient summaries of the information. For example, ‘Angle’ is an efficient summary with respect to lines but is a sensory detail with respect to eyes. the same logic works for the concepts ‘nose’ and ‘Ear’ and so on. Together, these concepts are part of the concept ‘Face’, whose instances are yet more efficient summaries of the sensory regularities in facial features. Eventually, the infant’s brain forms summary representations for enough visual concepts that she can see one stable object, despite incredible variation in low-level sensory details. Think about it: each of your eyes transmits millions of tiny pieces of information to your brain in a moment, and you simply see ‘a book’. — Lisa Feldman Barrett, “How Emotions Are Made”

The only this I would alter somewhere with respect to what you've said is that yeah - one conceptualized fear as an emotion and then subsequently, one really does feel fear as a result. The conceptualization and the feeling are inseparably bound. — StreetlightX