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. — StreetlightX

"Conceptual information about emotion can be thought of as “top-down” and core affect “bottom-up” constraints on the emerging experience of emotion. — Feldman Barrett - Solving the Emotion Paradox

While I concur that emotions are often formed at a conscious level of their manifestation via retroactive application of emotion-concepts to that which is perceived via interoception (what Barrett terms "core affect"), I find this to be a partial, and likely derivative, truth: it is accordant to some of what is, but not all.

For clarity, some working definitions:

• Concept: a generalized idea – commonly understood to be abstracted as such from multiple concrete instantiations.
• Emotion: that which produces or influences movement within the psyche, i.e. cognitive action – often resulting in bodily movements, i.e. behaviors – but which can manifest in the absence of correspondent behaviors. For example, a pang of jealousy can be sensed by the conscious self while being shunned by the conscious self as wrong or inappropriate to act out on – this judgement being a cognitive action rather than a behavior – thereby here being an emotion that is experienced to influence without resulting in corresponding behaviors.
• Experience: awareness of that which is lived through
• Empirical: addressing awareness that is gained via sensory receptors

If “to be aware of” is “to experience” then not all experiences are empirical. As one example, I can enactively experience my decisions (illusory or not) at the instant they are made by me, for I hold awareness of them, but will not gain this awareness via sensory receptors. My awareness of the decision I make – here strictly addressing the decision itself, rather than the alternatives I was aware of – is not obtained via interpretations of what is gained via interoception or exteroception. The same non-empirical awareness may be claimed for many things introspected: thoughts, reasoning, beliefs, and so forth.

While some emotions are commonly understood to be correlated to interoceptive stimuli – e.g. disgust with some degree of bodily nausea – other emotions hold no such correspondence whatsoever. Envy I think is a fairly common emotion – and is one such example of an emotion that is not gained via interoception. Unlike anger or sorrow, there is no set of bodily stimuli obtained via interoception that corresponds to envy. The same may be said for other emotions such as longing. Then there are more atypical and more complex emotions that likewise are not correlated to any set of particular interoceptive instantiations: “sweet sorrow” as one example.

This is to say that not all emotions are associated with interoceptive feeling, i.e. core affect. Some are in no way empirical but, instead, strictly manifest within cognition via non-empirical awareness – same way we hold non-empirical awareness of the reasoning we engage in. We nevertheless metaphorically speak of “feeling” oneself to be envious. But in this case “feeling” is strictly metaphorical; as is the case with “seeing” what something means, or something “chiming” true, or a “hunger” for knowledge and a “thirst” for life.

Since not all emotions are (or are conceptual interpretations of) interoceptive feelings – again, what Barrett terms “core affect” – this to me then indicates that there is something more primary to emotions as a class than what constructivist views of emotion such as that of Barrett maintain. And there are other modern schools of thought as pertains to emotions.

In short, that all emotions are conceptual interpretations of literal feelings obtained via interoception is imv a false premise – in part falsified by emotions such as that of envy. This is not to deny the interplay between conceptual understandings of emotions and the emotions which we enactively experience – via interoception of otherwise – and which we convey to each other as holding. But it does address a need to reappraise what the class of givens we term emotions are – rather than accept the aforementioned premise as addressing a fundamental truth.

Isn't it strange how I could, possibly say something now that would spark such emotions severely; like good art?

What could this emotion be called? If not some spout of proudness, happiness or sadness.

Do these terms not correctly associate with a noticable behaviour?

Am I or am I not smart for using these terms?

Perhaps sadness is wrong, but it isn't so and so mallicious.

I'm right for thinking, 'proud and happy', as a round about association, but obviously a more visual representation is the greater judgement, as a mile-stone.

Good point. I can't help thinking how inextricably interlinked the mind and body are, however.

While some emotions are commonly understood to be correlated to interoceptive stimuli – e.g. disgust with some degree of bodily nausea – other emotions hold no such correspondence whatsoever. Envy I think is a fairly common emotion – and is one such example of an emotion that is not gained via interoception. Unlike anger or sorrow, there is no set of bodily stimuli obtained via interoception that corresponds to envy. — javra

I could produce the bodily stimuli associated with anger using just my imagination and no external stimuli. I could do the same with envy. What's the difference?

I could produce the bodily stimuli associated with anger using just my imagination and no external stimuli. I could do the same with envy. What's the difference? — praxis

In respect to imagination (here broadly understood to not literally regard only images), I'd say very little if any. One can become thirsty (an interoception) by imagining oneself to so be just as one can become curious (not an interoception) by imagining oneself to so be.

I can't help thinking how inextricably interlinked the mind and body are, however. — praxis

I'm not denying the interlinked nature of mind and body, but am disagreeing with the physicalist-like notion - or predisposition of interpretation - that all cognition emerges from bodily states of being ... this expressed in my notion of simpleton talk. More correctly expressed: brain, more accurately the CNS, is a bodily organ [edit: in case this needs to be said, that depends on the workings of the total body for its functioning]; but the brain's states of being don't uniformly all emerge from the brain's interaction with the rest of the body's states of being - here taking into consideration that all awareness obtained via sensory receptors are of the latter relation. I don't want to overly-repeat the examples I previously gave, but examples can include our awareness of decisions, of the reasoning we engage in, and of certain emotions.

In respect to imagination (here broadly understood to not literally regard only images), I'd say very little if any. One can become thirsty (an interoception) by imagining oneself to so be just as one can become curious (not an interoception) by imagining oneself to so be. — javra

I should have been clearer in trying to point out that in using just imagination to become angry or envious the corresponding bodily stimuli are produced in the body. I imaging that curiosity, for example, corresponds to a bodily state of higher arousal. Whether that means a slightly higher heart rate or whatever I don't know, but there is an altered interoception.

I'm not denying the interlinked nature of mind and body, but am disagreeing with the physicalist-like notion - or predisposition of interpretation - that all cognition emerges from bodily states of being — javra

I don't believe that the theory of constructed emotion makes that claim or relies on such a notion.

I should have been clearer in trying to point out that in using just imagination to become angry or envious the corresponding bodily stimuli are produced in the body. I imaging that curiosity, for example, corresponds to a bodily state of higher arousal. Whether that means a slightly higher heart rate or whatever I don't know, but there is an altered interoception. — praxis

No denying that. This is a good example of what I'd frame as top-down effects upon bodily states emerging from cognitive states.

I don't believe that the theory of constructed emotion makes that claim or relies on such a notion. — praxis

Haven't read a lot of various constructivist views, only summations of them. Still, in my reading on this thread of Barrett's take, I've interpreted her position to necessarily make use of a) emotion-concepts that are applied to b) core affects of which we become aware, i.e. to interoception. If I'm wrong in so interpreting, I'll do an ol' SNL skit remark of "never mind". Still, what I've been upholding is that some emotions take place in the absence of core affects ("feelings" thus interpreted as interoceptive) being interpreted via emotion-concepts. Some emotions emerge simply from cognition; the example of imagining oneself to be emotion-X resulting in oneself so being then serving as one example of this. And, if this is so, then emotions are not necessarily a conflux of the (a) and, more importantly here, (b) aforementioned; i.e. they don't necessarily emerge from our awareness of our own body's states of being.

Otherwise, you're right. I probably over-generalized.

what I've been upholding is that some emotions take place in the absence of core affects ("feelings" thus interpreted as interoceptive) being interpreted via emotion-concepts. — javra

How would you know?

How would you know? — Isaac

I gave one example of envy. What set of core affects correlate to the cognitive state of envy? If any and all, then my conclusion is there is no necessary set of core affects.

Curious to find out what core affect you'd claim cannot accompany envy.

What set of core affects correlate to the cognitive state of envy? — javra

Here. An number of regions are identified.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053811916303792

What I'm interested in is how you came to your conclusion. Obviously if you feel envy (or imagine yourself feeling envy) you don't have an fMRI scanner wired up to you, so what was your line of thinking that lead you to conclude there were no core affects?

Here. An number of regions are identified.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053811916303792 — Isaac

I hope I don't need to link to definitions of "interoception" given how long this thread is and the term's repeated use, nor need to make a distinction between first hand experience and the fMRI readings of what's going on in a brain.

To state the obvious: regions in a CNS associated with envy do not address what first hand experience of core affect can and cannot be interpreted via emotion-concepts to result in envy.

What I'm interested in is how you came to your conclusion. Obviously if you feel envy (or imagine yourself feeling envy) you don't have an fMRI scanner wired up to you, so what was your line of thinking that lead you to conclude there were no core affects? — Isaac

This is a bit staggering. Do you need fMRI results to be aware of what you are looking at, what you hear, or what you sense as emotion? I and many others don't.

BTW, the "how" carries the term of introspection - fallible thought it is.

You have still not addressed what interoceptive core affect you'd claim cannot accompany envy. (But if you're going to talk about need for fMRI results to do so ... I will not be replying, for reasons that I find obvious.)

I was looking for a discussion, not an argument.

Then my bad for having misinterpreted the emotive tone.

Lets try some lateral thinking to ease the discussion . We put names to things and label them in a attempt to understand them , using our conscious mind , the notion of types of emotions is something we create in our conscious mind . What if there are only core emotions , merely a different way of understanding and the perception of these emotions by our conscious mind and our unconscious mind .
Her fear was triggered by her unconscious mind , but enjoyed by her conscious mind , once it was aware there was no risk . Taking the example of the girl and the bear . The conscious mind as a way to perceive things . Our conscious mind has the skill to twist and warp "emotions" to get what we want , because we are conscious of "emotions" , driven by the need of the subconscious mind , which I personally think is one sneaky sly fellow , for sure . Remember , lateral thinking so don't laugh at me to hard

To throw in another tangent: The emotions I'd initially be most interested in in the context of this model would be pride and shame, which are the most salient in terms of social hierarchies. You're a winner and proud of it; I'm a loser and ashamed of it, and vice versa, with on the micro-level that dynamic determining not just the practical aspects of our relationship, but also, obviously, its subjective feel. And on the macro-level, society requiring both micro- and macro-aspects of the dynamic to feed its reproduction (the process of becoming a "winner" and being motivated in that direction by the pride/shame carrot/stick being the process of moving from a mere cog in the social machine to an operator of one of its many subroutines, which operations are critical for continued functioning). Viewing emotions through the constructionist lens, the production of these emotions in the individual (and their sociopolitical results) has something of an emperor's-new-clothes feel to it. What determines these self-categorisations and why? To what degree are the core effects even physiologically opposed? Is it possible that basic needs taken care of, the quality of experience of being a "winner" and a "loser" can only be distinguished to the degree a certain social narrative is consciously/subconsciously accepted and so on. Interesting political ramifications there.

Ought to be going, but wanted to say you bring up a good point, if I interpret you correctly. Fear, aggression, and fun are three conceptually distinct emotions that can all result from bodily sensations of immanent peril. So it’s said, by “fun” in here thinking of activities like rock-climbing or roller-coaster rides. There’s the body’s production of adrenaline, this being the core affect in response to sub/unconsciously perceived peril. How one reacts to this core affect cognitively - here trying to keep things as simple as possible - then results in fear of, aggression toward, or a sense of fun. Notwithstanding my previous posts, this to me is one example of how cognition can at times interact with bodily sensations to produce specific emotions. Myself, as per Dewey and contra James’ thesis, I yet take the resulting emotion to temporally precede and be a causal factor to the behaviors that then unfold: e.g., fear resulting in flight, aggression in attack, and fun in bodily states of pleasure.

I should have been clearer in trying to point out that in using just imagination to become angry or envious the corresponding bodily stimuli are produced in the body. I imaging that curiosity, for example, corresponds to a bodily state of higher arousal. Whether that means a slightly higher heart rate or whatever I don't know, but there is an altered interoception.
— praxis

No denying that. This is a good example of what I'd frame as top-down effects upon bodily states emerging from cognitive states. — javra

Not sure what you may be implying by mentioning bodily states emerging from cognitive states. Imagined envy is basically a simulation that can produce the same emotional response as an exteroceptive experience, going back to that example. The theory doesn't hold that an emotion like envy is gained via interoception alone. I don't recall the specifics, I learned about the theory a couple of years ago, but it involves subconscious prediction, an aspect that you may not be fully appreciating at this point.

Can you elucidate a bit more on that? — 3017amen

It's an age old problem for moral philosophy which Socrates demonstrated quite well in arguments against the sophists. We cannot say that virtue and morality are a type of knowledge, because people demonstrate over and over again, that despite knowing that they know it is wrong, they choose to do what they know is wrong. This means that the intellect cannot determine the will.

Not sure what you may be implying by mentioning bodily states emerging from cognitive states. — praxis

I didn’t intend the term “emerge” as in philosophical understanding of emergence but as in “coming out from.” At the time it seemed more appropriate than to say “caused by” (thinking it minimized the metaphysical implications). My use of the term was not optimal.

What I said has a lot to do with my understandings of top-down and bottom-up process of mind. I recognize this is not mainstream, and I don’t intend to here argue for them. I only want to offer a more meaningful reply.

I take it for granted that we’ve been addressing voluntary imagination. The example of envy to me is in this situation farfetched. Why would someone imagine themselves envious in order to so become? It’s an unpleasant emotion to experience. But to imagine oneself calm when one is turbulent and vice versa is common practice in some meditation schools of thought I’ve read. (It is even claimed that those experienced in such practices can, to varying degrees, alter their metabolic rates at will.) Calming one’s body when feeling anxious, this by voluntarily imagining oneself to be calm, would be something willed by the conscious self. Hence, in short, if successful it would be an effect consisting of bodily states caused by the intentions of the conscious self - this then being a top-down process of mind.

However, this is not to say that the conscious self is not resultant of subconscious process from which it emerges (here in the philosophical sense of emergence) - these being bottom-up processes of mind.

Again, though, if possible I’d like to currently abstain from debating how mind can be simultaneously composed of both bottom-up and top-down processes.

it involves subconscious prediction — praxis

To be honest, I find it hard to fathom how a mind could possibly work without these.

If “to be aware of” is “to experience” then not all experiences are empirical. As one example, I can enactively experience my decisions (illusory or not) at the instant they are made by me, for I hold awareness of them, but will not gain this awareness via sensory receptors. — javra

I actually agree with this in full. In fact, perhaps the thing that most powerfully interests me in Barrett's account of emotion is that it leaves open this very possibility. Barrett indeed makes some moves in this direction when she notes that A:

"A simulation of anger could allow a person to go beyond the information given to fill in aspects of a core affective response that are not present at a given perceptual instance. In such a case, the simulation essentially produces an illusory correlation between response outputs" — Solving...

(my bolding)

And that B:

"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 Theory...

.

Taken together, what's at stake is the ability of conceptual evaluation to become 'runaway processes', that is, processes that becomes 'exapted' from their original purpose and attain a certain degree of autonomy. The fact that conceptual evalution (qua conscious emotional registration) takes place on a 'second-level' as it were, is what enables an account of disjunctions betwen affect and emotion such that you get emotional 'misfirings', or even, in some of the cases you're talking about, the development of complex emotion-concepts which are ascribed to core affects without being strictly warranted by them.

In other words, the 'mapping' from affect to emotion is not unidirectional or guaranteed, which indeed why a the same affective state can give rise to different emotions, depending on top-down 'constraints' (language is the example that Barrett often given as such a constraint, but so too can be one's entire environmental situation). This is what is in the background between the discussion between @fdrake and myself about the question of emotional 'in/felicity' which @Issac was inquiring about: it's a question emotions 'running away' from their sensory bases and attaining a degree of quasi-autonomy from them.

The last thing I'll add here is that this is so powerful because it account, in a thoroughly naturalist way - for the richness of emotion. On the 'classical account' there would always need to be some kind of one-to-one correspondence between affect and emotion (if indeed the distinciton is acknowledged as all): there would be a distinct CNS state for envy, one for longing, for schadenfreude, for nostalgia, for every possible conceivable emotion, all hard-wired and then merely 'expressed'.

(Recall, in this connection, Socrates' unease when Parmenides confronts him with the question of whether or not there are Ideas - perfect Forms - of dirt, mud, and filth: Socrates totally fudges the question, precisely because these essentialist accounts are totally unable to confront the emergence of novelty).

On this account however, novel emotions ('niche' emotions?) come about precisely on account of the formation of new, 'non-empirical' concepts that are brought to bear on affects that are tailored to bring to attention novel features of one's behavioural/environmental state. It is precisely because of the complexity that can be built-in at the level of concepts which means that it is unnecessary that there be an affect for every conceivable emotion. It's only by acknowledging the 'autonomy' of the conceptual that you open the door to a rich emotional life that is not bound to a limited number of 'affective pre-sets', as it were.

If “to be aware of” is “to experience” then not all experiences are empirical. As one example, I can enactively experience my decisions (illusory or not) at the instant they are made by me, for I hold awareness of them, but will not gain this awareness via sensory receptors. My awareness of the decision I make – here strictly addressing the decision itself, rather than the alternatives I was aware of – is not obtained via interpretations of what is gained via interoception or exteroception. The same non-empirical awareness may be claimed for many things introspected: thoughts, reasoning, beliefs, and so forth. — javra

‘To be aware of’ is not the same as ‘to experience’. Often what we experience, we are aware of only as sensory events - even though we integrate the information at the level of experience - that is, as a relation of value or potential to act. Technically, we have the capacity to distinguish between the sensory event and the experience, but in many cases we have not developed this capacity for awareness in emotion, remembering, reasoning or thinking, etc.

In Barrett’s theory, the internal sensory event of a difference in core affect contributes to the complex experience of emotion, as well as external sensory events, such as where we are, who we’re with and what we’re listening to. The way I see it, other complex experiences such thoughts, memories and beliefs are also the result of evaluative interaction between internal and external sensory events - not all of which we are able to distinguish from awareness of the experience itself, let alone consciously evaluate for accuracy and relevance.

I like to think of it this way: a sensory event, whether internal or external, is temporally located. An experience, on the other hand, refers to an atemporal relativity of value and potential.

While some emotions are commonly understood to be correlated to interoceptive stimuli – e.g. disgust with some degree of bodily nausea – other emotions hold no such correspondence whatsoever. Envy I think is a fairly common emotion – and is one such example of an emotion that is not gained via interoception. Unlike anger or sorrow, there is no set of bodily stimuli obtained via interoception that corresponds to envy. The same may be said for other emotions such as longing. Then there are more atypical and more complex emotions that likewise are not correlated to any set of particular interoceptive instantiations: “sweet sorrow” as one example. — javra

‘Envy’ in relation to core affect has an unpleasant valence and is distinguished from ‘jealousy’ by a relatively low arousal. It is distinguished from other interoceptive instantiations of unpleasant, low arousal affect by a relative sense of loss or lack, and from other emotions such as ‘longing’ by a directional relation.

‘Sweet sorrow’, on the other hand, seems to recognise a distinction between simultaneous and conflicting interoceptive instantiations - this is a complexity to the theory that Barrett has not developed much (as far as I can recall) but I think the theory still holds. What she refers to as ‘core affect’ is in itself a reduction of more complex information regarding the state of the organism.

Is it possible that basic needs taken care of, the quality of experience of being a "winner" and a "loser" can only be distinguished to the degree a certain social narrative is consciously/subconsciously accepted and so on. — Baden

Yeah, one of the things that follows very clearly from this account is what might be called the socaility of emotion. If emotion is a matter of bodily, predictive, conceptual evaluation, and if this evaluation does not always proceed bottom-up but also top-down, then it follows that the exact individuation of affect (as this emotion rather than that one, or indeed as a strong emotion at all), can be (and is) profoundly socially modulated. And just as Barrett talks of 'anger scripts' which are variously employed, one can quite as easily talk of 'pride scripts' or 'shame scripts', which, like all 'scripts' always imply a degree of impersonality to them (to 'follow a script' or 'act in accordance with a script', is, in someways, a delegation of agency, or better, an exercise of agency through 'third party' means).

So there's absolutely a social element - an irreducible social element - to the production of shame and pride (why shame in these circumstances? Why these objects of pride?). I mean, even the terms you used - winner and loser - are immediately socially differentiated terms (loser compared to who? Winner among which population? And on whose terms?). And this is one of the really cool things about Barrett's account - the mutual implication of the bio-social in ways that implicate the social right at the level of biology. I mean, consider the ways in which scripts are 'represented':

"When applied to representing knowledge about emotion, the idea is that the human brain captures every instance of core affect that is labeled as anger. Information is captured as it occurs in perception represented in sensory cortices), action (represented in motor cortex), and interoception (represented a
somatovisceral information in insular cortex). The word occurs is used here to refer to instances where affective behaviors or events are labeled as anger when the category anger is first being learned. Later, these modality-specific states are available to be reactivated to represent knowledge about anger. When retrieving information about anger, sensory, motor, and interoceptive states are partially reinstated in the relevant aspects of cortex, simulating an instance of anger".

- One can't distinguish, except for analytic purposes, between the social and the biological: the biological is directly sculpted, in it's plasticity, by the social. There's a whole ethics and politics of our biology here that is super interesting and worth investigating.

@baden, @javra

Some elaboration, via the philosopher John Protvei, on the stakes of thinking about emotion as an impersonal, social entity:

To appreciate the full radicality of this notion of emotion as an “interindividual process,” we must add that those neural changes have to be thought in relation to the modifications to the emergent functional unit of the couple or group in which the component individuals are interacting. The neural bases of this interindividual process are found in each person’s brain, but the unit we are analyzing is nonsubjective but relational, that is, interindividual

...We should also note at the outset that this emergent neuro-somatic-social emotional process need not only be equilibrium seeking; too often, any mention of group processes is seen as equilibrium seeking (negative feedback) as in “functionalist” sociology. Rather, we are all familiar with interpersonal emotions that spin out of control in positive feedback loops (a mob rage, of course, but on the positive side of the ledger, falling in love cannot really be seen as equilibrium seeking, even if a stable, loving couple results, for that stability can be a mutually reinforcing dynamic process of empowerment that never settles down to anything we can describe as an equilibrium). ... Adult structures, that is, adult patterns of interaction, are themselves individuations of a distributed and differential social field — John Protevi Life, War, Earth

(Protevi was writing this is a totally different context - in fact in response to a reading of the work of the neuropsyhcologist Bruce Wexler - but it applies mutatis mutandis to Barrett's own theory of emotions).

Thanks. I've had a look at the IEP and re-read the exchange in that light. It now makes a bit more sense, I think. You're saying that certain emotional responses resulting from the model might betray some higher goal even though they're the correct output from the model - so infelicitous, not "wrong"? That there could be a situation where we confuse the accurate function of the model for an accurate output? Like presuming that if a car is running really well it must be taking us where we want to go? — Isaac

That's about where I was going, aye.

I think "infelicity" is a good touchstone to describe what the "prediction errors" of active inference, in terms of emotion, might be. They're still "optimal predictions" (in some sense) given their constraints and priors, but that does not mean the priors reflect the relational dynamics of the body and its environment, and their potential developments given the interventions I propose.

In the back of my mind I was contrasting classification error in a machine learning model (does a model trained to recognize bridges in pictures recognize a bridge in this picture? When there is no bridge? When there is a bridge?) to one where the "success criteria" are more complicated; do I succeed in this goal, more or less? Is it the right goal? Am I operating in a fruitful cognitive frame for this task? Does "getting angry" help here? What about being remorseful?

If so do you not think that the infelicitous output would simply constitue a prediction error of some higher model? Tom Fitzgerald has done some work with Karl Friston on active inference and habit formation which covers some of that ground. I might PM you with it though, I suspect the online equivalent of a series of blank looks if we start discussing it here!

I guess that would depend on the higher model considered. I tried to suggest what I mean above (but would like to see the paper if you have it on hand).

It's an age old problem for moral philosophy which Socrates demonstrated quite well in arguments against the sophists. We cannot say that virtue and morality are a type of knowledge, because people demonstrate over and over again, that despite knowing that they know it is wrong, they choose to do what they know is wrong. This means that the intellect cannot determine the will. — Metaphysician Undercover

Thanks MU!

That reminds me of the Christian metaphor (in Scripture) as paraphrased: My mind will's one thing; my flesh another.

(I believe emotion is will; it is not a intellectual concept. Our emotional needs cannot be learned from intellectual concepts.)

I don't think anyone really understands will, it's just one of those things. There's many different ways to approach it, but you get side tracked before you get there, as if there's a forcefield which surrounds it and deflects you off this way or that way, depending on your approach.

Can we infer then, that emotions are not understood through the prism of logic?

I look at it slightly different , we have fun as a reward , a rock climber enjoys the actively because he is preparing , physically and emotionally for perceived dangers he may face , one of the reasons we have evolved to what we are today , the ability to imagine and prepare for danger . To me it seems one the biggest drives for people enjoying sports . We have "fun" for a reason .
As in the case of the rollercoaster or the person watching a horror movie , there conscious mind allows you to have "fun" , it is conscious of the emotion and wants more , driven by the need of the subconscious to have "fun" . In short I believe we are cheating the system to get our dosage . We watch a feel good film , we feel good . yet we are not in a good situation , we cheat the system . This we are able to do because of a conscious mind , but always driven by the sneaky subconscious . :)

To go of on a one . Does a tree feel happy when it bathes in a summer sun ? in a primal sense I believe it does , it is driven to the sun . By what ? I believe the drive or will of a thing is "emotions" . Our problem is we are conscious of this "feeling" we question it , we label it , we are arrogant with it . A tree simply reacts to this "emotion" . Do remember I am just thinking in a lateral sense

If “to be aware of” is “to experience” then not all experiences are empirical. As one example, I can enactively experience my decisions (illusory or not) at the instant they are made by me, for I hold awareness of them, but will not gain this awareness via sensory receptors. My awareness of the decision I make – here strictly addressing the decision itself, rather than the alternatives I was aware of – is not obtained via interpretations of what is gained via interoception or exteroception. The same non-empirical awareness may be claimed for many things introspected: thoughts, reasoning, beliefs, and so forth. — javra

I'm not sure what this means. I find it hard to conceive of any decisions we make (or, for that matter, thought, reasoning, beliefs) that aren't related to what is taking place, or has taken place, during our lives, and our lives consist of our interactions with the rest of the world. Are these decisions, thoughts, beliefs you refer to then something that we become aware of in some manner sua sponte (of its/their/our own accord) as it were? What is "non-empirical awareness"?

it involves subconscious prediction
— praxis

To be honest, I find it hard to fathom how a mind could possibly work without these. — javra

One way might be like the computers we are now using, though of course they aren't minds and may never develop into being minds.

To stray from the topic a bit, The Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence developed by Jeff Hawkins (Numenta) applies the principles (hierarchical auto-associative memory and prediction algorithms) of real intelligence to AI. Imagine training machines instead of trying to program them.