Is there another reason to exist other than our own feelings? — existentialcrisis

Yes, I agree, emotions are what really matters. — Pop

I really think emotions do not play such a crucial part in the big picture of things.

Consider an Earth without animals. Only the physical phenomena of the ecosystem and floral life (forests, trees, plants). In this senario there is definitely life going on.There is life and death, reproduction, evolution, etc. Every part has a role in this global life. On the other hand there are no emotions.( one can extend the definition of "emotion" and argue that plants can have emotion too, but I assume you are referring to animal-like emotions)
edit: When we add animal life we are just creating a larger circle of global life in which again every part has a role. Emotions are just a regulatory and optimization mechanism of some parts.

The Philosophical Zombie argument tells us that without emotions, there would be no consciousness, and without consciousness there would be no life. — Pop

The same logic can be applied here. Plants and cells : they are alive so ,according to the above, they must have consciousness and emotions. Do you agree with this ? Again, we are pushing the boundaries of the definitions, which is very interesting, but I'll stop here because the post is about human emotions.

I would like to add to your view the question " why are emotions tuned the way they are ? ".

There is a taxonomy to emotions. Some of them are deep rooted and served survival purposes(cooperation instincts, fear of failure,...) and some of them are tuned by experiences of our life(childhood traumas,hopeful dreams about our future,..).

I think every emotion has a reason for existing. So, human "emotional anatomy" suggests a purpose, a meaning.

["Emotional anatomy" to all its complexity ] and [ purpose to all its complexity ] are opposite sides of a coin...

I think the big picture is that homo sapiens acquired a trait that had exponential returns. That trait is language ( or something prior to it like abstract thought, it's a continuum of traits anyway).

But, according to wikipedia, language exists 50.000-150.000 years, which seems a very small margin for evolution to manifest something so deep and powerfull again.

It seems that while intraspecies population (of humans to be specific) indicates that intelligence is a desirable trait to develop in the game of survival, interspecies population tells an entirely different story. — TheMadFool

So, I think the above is wrong because you are making a statistical conclusion whithout allowing enough steps for nature to play, after knowing that nature achieved the level to play that card (the card of language). The exponential growth of technology creates the illusion that nature had time to manifest language again but it didn't.

I would like to see whether we all agree on to what objects we consider conscious.(here "is conscious" is a true or false variable instead of consciousness.)

Here is a hopefully controversial list :

• a human
• a dog
• a bee
• a unicellular organism
• a tree
• a forest (as one living unit )
• a beehive ( as one living unit )
• Earth's ecosystem ( as one living unit containing plants and animals and environmental activities )
• a city
• humanity ( as one abstract living unit containing human created knowledge and art )

Comments:

1. The "is conscious" term is applied onto the set of objects. So we would have to first agree on that set. I think the fact that trees appear seperated is not a reason to not consider a forest an object (for example there is evidence that trees far apart can communicate through underground pathways.. so there is evidence that trees are physically connected). The same applies for the ecosystem, the city, the beehive and even for everything because atoms as is commonly known are seperated. So hopefully I made my point here that visual compactness is not a good measure for "objectness".

2. Maybe before defining the "is conscious" term on the above list, we should first define the "is living" term. Do you think that "is living" and "is conscious" are the same or different? ( of course everything being conscious is also a living object, so the opposite is of interest)

3.My personal position (in order to touch the actual post made by Edmund in the beginning) is that consciousness arose as a survival mechanism. So, I see consciousness as a biological concept and I am not so open to accept that it goes as far as quantum phenomena. I think that consciousness is as shallow as the combination of our senses, our recognition of importance to that data (creation of meaning) and then memory. All these create the sensation of one connected self that changes or not through time.

4.Maybe quantum phenomena are related to the question of free will. Do you think free will and consciousness are seperated ?