| | RE: Emotions Answer 12/1/08 8:57 AM as a reply to Chris Marti. sorry, lm913, i didnt put much work into my last reply. i'll try to describe these things again:
what i've called, above, the substrate of feeling, is like a feeling of being, or existence, or presence. it's light, kinda transparent, and doesn't attract my attention or inspire much reflection, thought sometimes it's obvious and easy to notice. sometimes it seems localised somewhere in the body, sometimes it doesn't. it's not the mental self-image or a notion that 'this is me', and actually, i think it becomes more obvious when that stuff isn't happening. i don't really know much more to say about it.
a proto-emotion, as i named it, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, is like when something happens and i'm affected and feel a certain way, but what happened doesn't seem that important or relevant to how i feel. it colours and gives a certain character to the substrate of feeling, that is more than just kinda 'being there'. it is felt quite viscerally, and isn't sustained by a story (mental concoction), and if it were given rise to by a story, then a very brief and simple story. sometimes it really does seem to just spike by itself, like out-of-nowhere, from the substrate of feeling.
by the way, what joriki wrote rings a bell for me, but i'm not sure we're talking about exactly the same thing or at least, differentiating at the same points (a rising 'wave' of 'emotion' i would be more likely to call a 'proto-emotion' than a 'substrate of feeling'). also, i can see how with proto-emotions there isn't a kind of reaction happening that is there in situations where what i call an emotion is there (mental bundling of a story, self-image in the story, etc). and how the situation (that may have caused it) doesn't seem relevant when experiencing the proto-emotion seems relevant too.
hope that helps some. |