Motivations and Emotions
Innate Motivations
A person needs an input of energy in other to carry out internal body functions such as: growth, excretion, movement, body functions, keeping body temperature constant and so on… Therefore a person cannot live without a consistent food intake because he will not have the energy to perform the processes that will allow him to continue existing. Human beings, experience something labeled as hunger or desire to eat. This motivation is innate since a newly born child will seem to desire feeding without knowing what it is. A newly born child will breathe; hence, the motivation (need or urge) to breathe is also innate. A newly born child will excrete; hence, the motivation to excrete is also innate. In essence every internal body function that is vital for the survival of the organism is innate; this is true since if it were not the case, this would mean that every organism would die if it did not develop a consciousness.
Notwithstanding, people can learn to prevent certain actions from taking place. For example, a person can retain the urine when one has the urge to urinate, a person can decide to restrain from breathing and one can also abstain from consuming food and or water for a given period of time. Nevertheless, it is also the observation that whilst a person is not obeying these urges; the urges, in turn, become stronger as the need for the body of a certain action to take place increases. Consequently to abstain from carrying out any one of these actions will be felt as an effort and with increased time the perceived effort will exponentially increase until the person seems to be forced to carry out the actions to remain alive.
Hence one can see that, human beings have innate urges that demand them to carry out an action and that human beings can consciously decide whether to obey these urges or needs. Moreover, every normal person seems to evince the same urges; hence, it can be concluded that every innate urge is universal to every human being. This can be verified to be true since they would not be alive if this was not the case. (One must remember that the isolation principle states that no two individuals could ever feel the same urge in exactly the same way or with the same intensity).
These observations on motivation give rise to the following questions; if a normal person has these innate urges and the function of these urges is to maintain the person alive then would not this indicate that a person has an innate desire to live? To solve this question one must fully understand what emotions are and how they work at a fundamental level.
Emotions
Emotions are numerous and incredibly difficult to define since they diverge greatly in how they are experienced and so each emotion can only really be understood when each individual emotion is defined by itself. Examples of emotions are: anger, guilt, fear, sadness, boredom, happiness and a great number of other ones which differ in meaning and context in which they are used. Furthermore the intensity with which they are felt can change the meaning of the emotion, for example, being very happy would be described as jubilation. Before one is able to understand what emotions are, it is imperative for one to have an understanding of the motivation principle.
The motivation principle states that for a person to perform an action there must be a motivation to trigger it; hence, no action can be undertaken without a motivation. Nonetheless, a child might not like going to school yet he still goes to school, why is this? This is because his parents oblige him to attend to school and the child obeys, since he fears what the parents might do to him. Ergo, it can be seen that an emotion does not only trigger an action but it also makes a person abstain from carrying out an action. (Some emotions such as guilt defy this assertion; this contradiction will be addressed later on.)
Emotions seem to be triggered by a circumstance or an event. For example, a close relative of a person dies, the person in turn feels depressed or mournful. Nevertheless, let us say that the close relative of the person dies and the person does not know that this has happened, will the person feel suffering? The answer, based on empirical observation, is that this is not the case. Therefore it can be concluded that emotions are not triggered by an event but by the knowledge that the event has taken place. Consequently if the person believes, for any reason, that the close relative has died, even when this is not true, the person can still feel the emotion. Thus, it can be seen that the knowledge or believe that an event takes place is what triggers the emotional response. However, every person seems to possess emotions; hence, the emotional response upon the knowledge of an action must be innate.
So is this true? Let us assume that a person accidently kills his brother and that person feels depressed and guilty. Now let us assume that the person joins the military and enters a war where he kills over 200 soldiers from the opposing front and the person feels happy and content. Same action, produce the death of another human being, two completely different emotional response. Hence, it can be seen that it is not the action nor the knowledge that the action has taken place what produces the emotional response, it is what the action represents that triggers it. However, can it be said that people have an innate caring for their close relatives? It seems to be true; however, what if the person is dismissed by his parents at birth and then he is adopted at a very young age and raised by people that told him that they are his parents? The result will be that the person will assume that this is true and treat the adoptive parents as his real parents and their children as his brothers. From this example, it can be seen that the emotional response has nothing to do with who is your family nor with the action that it is performed but with what is believed. Hence, it can be concluded that emotions are not innate and that they are learned.
Nevertheless, this poses a severe observational problem, since everyone seems to have emotions, they display anger, fear and happiness; how can it be that such a universal phenomena be a learned behavior? Moreover, if it is learned should not it be able for a person to control his emotions at will, trigger happiness without moving or seeing anything? To solve these problems it is necessary to understand how emotions are learned. However, before one is able to understand how emotions are learned one must first understand what an emotion represents.
Performers and preventers
To understand what an emotion represents one must look at what an emotion is being associated with; however, since emotions are so numerous and vast one must first be able to reduce all this emotions to their simplest form before discussing them. Considering that emotions have already been coined to being agents that drive human actions and that they can either make a person perform or abstain them from performing an action, then one can assert that at a fundamental level there are two sets of emotions: performers and preventers. Performers are the emotions that make a person perform an action, for example; anger, pleasure, love etc. Preventers, in the other hand, are the emotions that prevent a person from performing an action such as fear and shame. To understand where emotions stem from one must now look at an example of a preventer, fear.
Fear derives from the innate ability that humans have to perceive pain. For example; the fear of heights, is being related with the fear of the possibility of the individual falling, and when he falls he will hurt himself, maybe die; thus, to a more fundamental level the person fears hurting himself. The fear of an animal, a lion, is based on the association between a lion and the possibility that the creature might attack the person and thus, hurt him. Fear of darkness is based not on the darkness itself but on what might be present in the darkness that he cannot see. This entity or object is feared because it might hurt or kill the person. Therefore fear is the individual´s association of an object or situation to death or being hurt. In essence fear is the action of avoiding pain; however, it could also be the case that someone might avoid other feelings like certain flavors, and so pain could be referred to as discomfort. Conversely if an object or situation is not feared it can be said that a person does not associate the object or situation with being hurt or being killed.
To understand performers one must understand where the emotion desire stems from. Desire, stems from the innate ability of a person to feel pleasure or satisfaction; for example, hunger, the desire for food, is an association that is made between food and the pleasure of eating it. Hence, fundamentally desire stems from the pleasure experienced from an action that has been made.
The following questions then arise; can a person find pleasure in pain? Can a person develop a desire for a painful activity? Furthermore does a person fear death or pain, or does he fear both? To answer these questions one must understand the more complex emotions.
Primary and Secondary Emotions
Both desire and fear are very primitive emotions that can be observed in basically every animal that moves and learns. They all experience desires and might experience fear as well. However, human display far more complex emotions or motivations; for example, desire for a car, or new apartment. These desires cannot be traced to an innate feeling of the human body. Thus, it can be appreciated that another subdivision must be added in order to differentiate between the two sets of emotions; they shall be named primary and secondary emotions. Where primary emotions are the ones that stem from an innate feeling or perception and secondary are the more complex emotions or motivations that have no immediate link to an innate feeling or perception. If one is to fully understand emotions it is imperative to understand where the secondary emotions stem from.
Secondary emotions are vast and numerous since they are all dependant on the environment; for example, a person cannot want a car if he does not know what a car is nor seen one. Therefore secondary emotions are based on knowledge; however, secondary emotions are subconscious feelings. For example, if a person is hit he might feel anger and to not hit the person back might be felt as a great effort. He does not consciously decide to get angry and yet he does get angry. (Anger is learned; different people can get angry under different circumstances and thus, the emotion of anger is not innate).
Nevertheless, if one is to understand where these secondary emotions stem from one must first solve the following enigma.
According to the theory of motivation an emotion is an agent or feeling that makes a person perform or prevent an action from taking place. Nonetheless, there are some secondary emotions that defy this theory; for example, guilt can be felt after an action has taken place e.g. accidently killing a close relative; nevertheless, it does not make a person undertake an action other than feeling bad. This assertion is a clear contradiction to the isolation principle, since the emotion of guilt is learned and the isolation principle does not allow for a feeling to “pass” to another person. So why can people feel guilt? To understand why a person can feel guilt one must look at another example of a secondary emotion, specifically anger.
Anger can vary on how it is felt depending, not on an action that has taken place but on the circumstances that these actions have taken place in. For example, a person is punched by a random person during a boxing match; and the person is punched by a random person in a Disco. The action is the same, being punched, yet there are two different emotional responses. The reasons why a person can get angry are vast and different people might react differently under the examples shown; nonetheless, there is one thing that all forms of anger have in common, the actions that have been done can either be right or wrong. In other words, although both actions are the same, being punched, the circumstance that they take place in can either make an action, right (socially acceptable) or wrong (socially unacceptable). For instance, the person does not get angry on the boxer that hits him (not necessarily) because it is acceptable by societal standards, to be hit during the practice of the sport. Furthermore a person that exercises this sport is already aware that he is probably going to be punched. Thus, the person might conclude that the punches are impersonal.
Hence the question arises, when a person gets angry what does he want to do? When a person displays anger, he then might hit the aggressor back, it could also be the case that a person might shoot the person that hit him or decide to hurt a person that is close or important for the aggressor. In essence, when a person is experiencing anger the person wants to take revenge on the aggressor or punish him for the wrong thing that he has done. Thus, anger stems from the desire of a person to punish the aggressor that has done something considered wrong. The punishment does not have to be physical since the person might decide to punish the aggressor by taking his money or any other action that will inflict either physical or emotional pain on the subject that a person is angry at.
However, let us assume that the aggressor is now a parent and that the person is one of his children. The parent punishes one of his children for doing something which is considered wrong. The child then does not hit the parent back; the child might not even feel anger against the parent and the child might very well accept his punishment since he realizes that what he has done is wrong. In other words the child is feeling guilt for his actions and accepts the punishment since it is the correct thing to do. In other words he “deserved” the punishment. Hence, it can be seen that when a person perceives the feeling guilt the person believes that he can be or has to be punished for his action. So is this true? Can a person feel guilt and not accept punishment? The person might oppose to a more severe punishment than his/her actions account for; for example, cutting ones hands off for stealing. (In contemporary society this punishment might be regarded as a too cruel for this action). Nonetheless, the person might believe that he does deserve some kind of punishment. Ergo, a person who is feeling guilt is trying to punish himself for something that he has done that is regarded as wrong (socially unacceptable).
Not all secondary emotions are based on punishment, for instance: happiness. Happiness, like guilt, is something that is felt after an action is performed, e.g. winning a baseball tournament or winning a lottery ticket, and like guilt there is no apparent action that can be related to happiness. Nonetheless, there is one thing that is common in all form of happiness; it is only experienced when something has been achieved successfully. Hence, happiness is based on achievement, the greater the achievement the more happy a person will be. However, what does a person do when he is happy? After something has been achieved a person will always celebrate it, normally within the parameters established by society. These celebrations are numerous and are different to everyone; nevertheless, there is one thing that they all have in common, they are all ways of rewarding oneself for a good work. For example, a happy person will: go out with his friends, buy a new product or simply stay home or read a book; nonetheless, the action will always be regarded by the happy person as a pleasing action.
Ergo, fundamentally secondary emotions are based on the knowledge of what is wrong (socially unacceptable), and right (socially acceptable). These then stem from punishment and reward, which are triggered by something that has been done wrong or by something that has been achieved or done right.
Secondary emotions, one has concluded, are based on the knowledge of right and wrong and there is either a reward or punishment associated to them. Considering that the consciousness principle does not allow a person to have any knowledge without him making a perception, it can be concluded that emotions are modifications of behavior acquired through punishment and reward (achievement). To understand what is being said let us look at an example of a person. At first the actions of the child will be very erratic. However, every time a person does something which is considered wrong he will be punished and when he does something right he will be rewarded. This will make the person make an association between something wrong and punishment and will make a person relate something good to being rewarded. With repetition, assuming that the person is always punished when he does something wrong and rewarded when he does something good or right, the person will become familiarized with this association to the point that he will no longer perceive that an association is being made. It can, thus, be said that emotions are learned by operant conditioning.
This assertion, however, can only explain primary emotions such as fear and sexual desire; it does not explain why a person gets angry or why a person can love. Moreover, it does not explain why a person can want something that he has never had and, thus, has not experienced any benefit from. To answer these questions one must first understand how reality affects the body of a person and to do this one must understand pain and pleasure.
Reality driven emotions (the sixth sense)
The theory above assumes that both pain and pleasure are universal perceptions and that they are, thus, innate feelings. Nonetheless, a person might have sex with his/her sexual partner; the person is then likely to feel pleasure. Now let us assume that this person is raped by an unknown person. The action is the same, having intercourse; however, there are two completely different emotional responses. This is because a person that is raped is likely to view the action as repulsive to the point that the action will not give pleasure but the complete opposite, pain. Another example is a boxer; he will practice a sport that every time he enters the ring he is likely to be punched and, thus, should experience pain. However, it is possible that a person might enjoy practicing boxing and going into the ring. Logically, being punched should be a painful activity and a person that is hit would not perform the action again since he will associate pain with boxing: nonetheless, it is the observation that a person can actually want to enter a ring and fight. Hence, it can be concluded that pain is relative to the person and, thus, not universal.
Nevertheless, this conclusion poses not only an observational problem but a logical problem since pain serves as an indicator to the body that something is damaging it. If pain were not innate then a person could be cut with a knife and he would not perceive it and this would also indicate that pain is learned. However, a new born child will cry and or react to being hit (pain): thus, pain must be an innate function of the human being. So if pain is innate, why can a person be hit and still be willing to continue practicing the sport? This is the result of the sixth sense (reality) of the boxer that does not view being punched as a painful action or wrong but as necessary tool used in the sport. In essence the brain of the person has interpreted the pain in a way that makes the pain acceptable. It is still conceivable that a boxer does feel pain during and after practicing the sport; however, as the raping example evinced, the reaction produced can turn to its complete opposite by his reality.
Hence the answer to the previous questions; can a person find pleasure in pain? Can a person develop a desire for a painful activity? The answer is: yes, a person can find pleasure in pain and a person can, thus, desire to perform a painful activity. Ergo, what are pain and pleasure? Pain and pleasure are innate reflexes and are present in every (normal) person; nonetheless, their interpretation, what pain means, is a function of the sixth sense (reality). This sense can then interpret the pain in such a way that it can become desirable and therefore pain can be perceived as rewarding.
This conclusion has other logical extrapolations. Reality can determine what pleasure and pain is what should be liked and what should not be liked. Thus, in theory, a person can actually learn to like something that does not trigger an innate pleasure reflex. To understand this concept first let us define an innate pleasure reflex. An innate pleasure reflex is an action that is universally satisfying to the every human being, for example: eating, drinking. However, a person can experience pleasure in a learned action, for example, when a person is told, “Well done, excellent job.” The person might find this satisfying enough to seek the pleasure again. However, a person that has no knowledge of the English language will not understand what has been said and the words will, thus, not trigger pleasure. (This can also apply to pain since a person might find a verbal reprimand painful.)
Now, it is evident that reality does not only tell a person how to behave but that it can actually trigger an emotional and even physical reaction in the body. Reality is, arguably, the most important factor when one is going to understand emotions. Now a person does not perceive the mental process that is being done when he gets mad; hence the part of the brain that carries out the mental processes is the subconscious. Nonetheless, if one is to understand how subconscious learning influences people’s emotions one must understand how these three learning principles work in context. Let us assume that a child is born and is raised in a family which has rules and have views of what is right and what is wrong and punishment and reward are used to respond to the individuals actions. When a person does something wrong he is punished, through repetition the person will become familiarized with this association and will feel as though the association is second nature to the person.
The reason a person would want something that they have never had or would be afraid of doing something that they never have done is due to the ability of a person to make complex associations. For example, a person might be punished for braking cups of water and the person is then told that this is wrong; this punishment will then deter the person from breaking more cups. The person is then told that braking plates is also wrong or braking the windows and so there will be a general association between wrong and punishment. Subsequently the person will make an association between wrong, punishment and braking cups, plates or windows. This will then deter the person from braking windows although he has never been punished for breaking a window. Therefore, although a person has never broken a window there will be a general association between certain actions and either a reward or punishment which would then trigger an emotional response based on the reality of the given person.
One more thing that one must recognize is that both right and wrong have a “real” meaning to them and thus, they are both going to be regarded as real. Hence, stealing will be universally wrong and thus real; the same could be said about killing and so on… This reality aspect to emotions is the reason why things like beauty have absolute real values when in fact beauty has no technical definition since it can be different to different people. Nonetheless, emotions can become very complex and since they are determined by the environment they could theoretically make people act and behave in different ways. Furthermore, emotions do not necessarily follow the usual logical pattern, for example, lying could be seen as wrong; however, lying in some circumstances will be regarded as “right”. This contradiction will be regarded as the person as accepted since their reality accepts it. (Not necessarily the case due to the ability of a person to innovate; reality reformation). For this reason emotions are incredibly complex and the only way of understanding them would require the person to have an understanding of the individual`s culture (environment).
Emotions (Definition)
In retrospect, fundamentally what are emotions? Emotions are modifications of behavior that are attained through the familiarization of the associations between right and reward, wrong and punishment and a subsequent action that is imitated. Hence, secondary emotions are just more complex primary emotions that arise due to the interaction of consciousness (associations made between sensorial stimuli, language) and operant condition. Since reality could be anything, seeing that for a person to posses conscious knowledge there must be a perception, no emotion, primary or secondary is universal (present in every human being). Hence the question; does a person fear pain or death? The person has an innate aversion to pain, there is a pain reflex at birth; however, since the interpretation of both pain and death are determined by the sixth sense a person can want to feel pain and can want to die.
Identity
There is one question that has not been answered; the imitation principle states that a person will imitate everything that is seen and that the more a person sees an action taking place the more likely it will be that the person will imitate it. Hence the question is; why does not a female imitate the actions of a male and vice versa? This theory suggests that if a woman is raised near men she will behave like a man; nonetheless, it can be observed that women often behave very alike even those who do not have female parents. (The same could be said for men). However, the explanation is very simple; it is wrong for a man to behave like a woman and for a woman to behave a like a man. Therefore, a man will be punished when he behaves like a woman and vice versa; hence, an emotion is present that determines how a person should and must behave like. Nonetheless, it can be observed that some men will never evince any female behavior during their lives. However this theory does not allow this scenario to take place since a child has to at some point during their lives imitate an action that has been seen from a female. So why is this? To respond to this question one must first understand the concept of identity.
Identity is the knowledge of one’s own being. In essence it is the knowledge of who you are and consequently all the expectations and behaviors that accompany this identity. Reality determines who you are and reality will also determine which attributes of your own being are indicators of your own identity. For example, a man sees he has a penis, thus he thinks, “I must be man.” Now, what a penis is, is learned and what having a penis means is also learned. Since these two things are determined by the individual’s reality, it can be concluded that reality determines what the person’s identity is. This believes will with time and repetition become familiarized to the person and will become second nature and thus, subconsciously embedded into the individuals psyche. Hence, why do not men behave like woman more often and why can some men never develop any feminine traits to their behavior? First of all a male person will observe female behaviors such as: walking, choosing clothes, ways of talking, body language and so on… but these actions are all very complex behaviors and so it is likely that a person will not develop these behaviors until an advanced age. By this time the person would have had developed a consciousness and thus, a deeply embedded sense of identity that will determine what behavior the person will have to imitate since it will be the right behavior. This mental process will be subconscious and the person will not perceive that the mental process has taken place (not necessarily). Hence, a person is deciding who to imitate but the person is not consciously deciding who he/she has to imitate.
However, this implies that an incredible amount of information can be processed without a person ever noticing that a thinking process has been performed. This assertion can be very counter intuitive since such advanced level of reasoning might not be expected from a subconscious mental process. Nonetheless, the subconscious mental processes can be very accurate, fast and display a great amount of cognitive reasoning. For example, let us assume that a person is a very good English reader, and he is reading a sentence such as, “The big cat white.” It is possible that the person will “feel” as though the sentence is not right or correct and there is something wrong with it far faster than the person identifies what is wrong with it. Although it is conceivable that a person would isolate the error immediately upon reading the sentence because the error is “obvious” (obvious here refers to: a statement that is evident due to the way in which contemporary society is taught and learns) it could be expected that the person would feel that the sentence is wrong faster than he realizes that the sentence has an error. It could even be the case that a person might never know what is wrong with the sentence. This example highlights how remarkable the subconscious reasoning can be as it can process information far faster that the conscious reasoning of a person can.
Emotion driven thoughts
The motivation principle states that in order to perform an action or decision the person must have a motivation. Motivations are either innate reflexes such as the pain and learned associations such as emotions. However, what is an action? An action shall be defined as: something that is performed with an effort. Given this definition it could be said that thinking is an action itself since it consumes time and energy. Thus, a person needs a motivation in order to think. If this assertion is to be regarded as correct this would mean that everything that is consciously thought and consequently everything that is consciously perceived is determined by the subconscious and the conscious subconscious. Assuming this is true, it could be the case that a person will “forget” (forget here means; no longer consciously remember) something that has been perceived which is painful. In the same way a person will perceive and think only what he wants to perceive and think about for their will be an emotion that triggers and prevents thinking from taking place. Therefore if thinking about something is boring, bad or painful it will be avoided and the person will not think about it. Hence it can be concluded that a person thinks only what his subconscious and conscious subconscious (emotions) allows him to think about. Thus, a person’s consciousness is determined by his subconscious.
Paradoxically, the conscious subconscious which is merely the familiarization of a conscious association determines what is consciously perceived. How it is possible that something that develops from the consciousness determines consciousness itself? The paradox increases if one considers the following scenario: person (a) insults and performs an action on person (b) that can be considered as socially unacceptable and thus, wrong. Person (b) then experiences anger against person (a). Since the conscious subconscious determines what is consciously perceived it should be expected that a person would not have any control over the urge of anger and consequently person (a) would get inevitably punished by person (b). Nonetheless, this is not what can be perceived since a person can actually stop, decide not to punish, the person that has done the wrong thing. The paradox arises because the decision of not following the emotion of anger is consciously perceived and since it has been established that the conscious subconscious (sixth sense) determines what is consciously perceived, this scenario, in theory, should not be able to occur.
However, to solve this problem it is not necessary to change the motivation principle, since this anomaly arises because there is a motivation, an emotion, which demands the person to stop. In essence when a person is experiencing anger and wants to punish someone the person has an emotion that demands that the person stops performing the action that he is doing as a result of his anger. In other words there is an emotion that triggers anger and there is an emotion that wants to suppress anger. Why? This is because anger and the subsequent actions that are taken as a cause of it are considered wrong. The question then arises, if anger was not considered wrong and it was, thus, socially accepted to seek punishment on the person that has performed the wrong act would a person stop feeling anger? The answer, according to this theory is: no, it is impossible for a person to stop feeling anger if there is not an emotion that triggers a conscious thought that stops the person from following his emotional urge.
This conclusion, although logical, poses a severe problem; if this assertion where true and everything that is consciously perceived is determined by the subconscious this suggests that a person first develops emotions and then develops conscious thoughts. This can be appreciated to be true since a child will evince first pleasure, pain and even fear before the child is able to evince signs of conscious reasoning. Hence, it can be logically extrapolated that human beings are not born with a consciousness, they develop one.