How do you know you feel what others feel?

[thinkandmull]

I this thread I want to address the question of aesthetics, especially music and movies. Star Wars is on tv tonight, and I have always got a special feeling from it (one that feels good), but it is a feeling that is very far from the much more Christian feeling of the Lord of the Rings. But how do I know the feeling I get from a movie is the same that someone else gets? Is there anything objective here? If not, how can I judge what movies are good and which are bad? Some parents among Catholics thought that the Harry Potter movies were bad, and that the Disney channel is not appropriate. But are these parents wrong to say everyone gets the same impression from these that they do? Do old movies have the same effect on all children? Can any kind of music, as well, be said to be objectively and forever immoral in its feel?

(I want to exclude from this conversation pornographic lyrics or movie scenes)

 

[Rhubarb]

You can’t. Not really. You can’t peer into someone’s box and look at their beetle. I assume your happiness is the same feeling as mine. We seem to act the same way when we’re happy. But really, I have no idea what it feels like to you.

 

[GEddie]

You don’t. Full stop.

Other than bodily perception, there is no objectivity in “feelings.” One might see eternal beauty in a Mondrian painting whilst another sees only lines and quadrilaterals.

ICXC NIKA

 

[fisherman_carl]

Objectively, as long as you know that they are human and have a human sensory system you can reasonably assume they are capable of feeling the same kinds of emotions like sadness, happiness, etc. Just like if you bought a pair of speakers you could assume they would work the same as other speakers, even if there are small differences in manufacturing, etc. People are often great at reading the emotions of others and connecting on an emotional level with each other precisely because we are so similar in our emotions.

 

[fisherman_carl]

This question raises the question just what are emotions? What is their essence? Are they physical sensory? Any spiritual component? An article from psychology today says that the term emotion is relatively recent. The term passion was used. However, the article says not to confuse emotions with feelings. To quote :

Emotion’ is a relatively recent term and there are languages that do not carry an equivalent. Historically, people spoke not of emotions but of passions. The passions encompass, or encompassed, not only the emotions, but also pleasure, pain, and desire.

‘Passion’, like ‘passivity’, derives from the Latin patere, ‘to suffer’. It has often seemed that the passive passions are not within our control, and today the term has come to refer to a powerful or compelling feeling or desire (especially love or lust), while also retaining the more restricted mediaeval meaning of the suffering of Christ on the Cross and the martyrdom of the saints.

The notion of passivity is retained in ‘emotion’, which derives from the Latin emovere, ‘to move out, remove, agitate’. To suffer an emotion is to be acted upon, to be disturbed, and to be afflicted. A long line of thinkers have opposed the ‘animal’ passions to calm and God-like reason, with various authorities from the Stoics to Spinoza going so far as to advocate apatheia, that is, the suppression of feeling, emotion, and concern. Unfortunately, this historical privileging of reason has led not so much to the suppression of feeling as to its near complete disregard. Today, the emotions are so neglected that most people are oblivious to the deep currents that move them, hold them back, and lead them astray.

If I say, “I am grateful”, I could mean one of three things: that I am currently feeling grateful for something, that I am generally grateful for that thing, or that I am a grateful kind of person. Similarly, if I say, “I am proud”, I could mean that I am currently feeling proud about something, that I am generally proud about that thing, or that I am a proud kind of person. Let us call the first instance (currently feeling proud about something) an emotional experience, the second instance (being generally proud about that thing) an emotion or sentiment, and the third instance (being a proud kind of person), a trait.

It is very common to confuse or amalgamate these three instances, especially the first and the second. But whereas an emotional experience is brief and episodic, an emotion—which may or may not result from accreted emotional experiences—can endure for many years, and, in that time, predispose to a variety of emotional experiences, as well as thoughts, beliefs, desires, and actions. For instance, love can give rise not only to amorous feelings, but also to joy, grief, rage, longing, and jealousy, among others.

Similarly, it is very common to confuse emotions and feelings. An emotional experience, by virtue of being a conscious experience, is necessarily a feeling, as are physical sensations such as hunger or pain (although not all conscious experiences are also feelings, not, for example, believing or seeing, presumably because they lack a somatic or bodily dimension). By contrast, an emotion, being in some sense latent, can only ever be felt, sensu stricto, through the emotional experiences that it gives rise to, even though it might also be discovered through its associated thoughts, beliefs, desires, and actions. Despite these conscious and unconscious manifestations, emotions need not themselves be conscious, and some emotions, such as hating one’s mother or being in love with one’s best friend, might only be uncovered, let alone admitted, after several years in psychotherapy.

psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201601/what-is-emotion

 

[ynotzap]

I this thread I want to address the question of aesthetics, especially music and movies. Star Wars is on tv tonight, and I have always got a special feeling from it (one that feels good), but it is a feeling that is very far from the much more Christian feeling of the Lord of the Rings. But how do I know the feeling I get from a movie is the same that someone else gets? Is there anything objective here? If not, how can I judge what movies are good and which are bad? Some parents among Catholics thought that the Harry Potter movies were bad, and that the Disney channel is not appropriate. But are these parents wrong to say everyone gets the same impression from these that they do? Do old movies have the same effect on all children? Can any kind of music, as well, be said to be objectively and forever immoral in its feel?

(I want to exclude from this conversation pornographic lyrics or movie scenes)

feeling are neither good or bad morally, feeling do not make for evil or sin. The giving in to feelings when they are conducive to immorality are wrong and sinful. The rightness and wrongness is governed by what is conducive to the spiritual and physical well being of the individual, or to society collectively One has to evaluate the contents of a movie as to its moral value. Harry Potter movies for example deals with a lot of superstitious fiction which can lead to false beliefs in magic, and Satan can use this to affect the minds of children, lead to sins against religion, against the first commandment. I would assume many people are not aware of this. There is a lot of this in the media now, people with mythical powers, or god like powers, a lot of science fiction. If a person is mature enough to evaluate these movies, etc, and treat them accordingly, I see no danger, except he can do better things. But exposing children to these things can be harmful, especially with heavy doses of the same

 

[fisherman_carl]

The Catechism talks about the passions. To quote :

1762 The human person is ordered to beatitude by his deliberate acts: the passions or feelings he experiences can dispose him to it and contribute to it.

I. PASSIONS

1763 The term “passions” belongs to the Christian patrimony. Feelings or passions are emotions or movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to act in regard to something felt or imagined to be good or evil.

1764 The passions are natural components of the human psyche; they form the passageway and ensure the connection between the life of the senses and the life of the mind. Our Lord called man’s heart the source from which the passions spring.40

1765 There are many passions. The most fundamental passion is love, aroused by the attraction of the good. Love causes a desire for the absent good and the hope of obtaining it; this movement finds completion in the pleasure and joy of the good possessed. The apprehension of evil causes hatred, aversion, and fear of the impending evil; this movement ends in sadness at some present evil, or in the anger that resists it.

1766 "To love is to will the good of another."41 All other affections have their source in this first movement of the human heart toward the good. Only the good can be loved.42 Passions “are evil if love is evil and good if it is good.”.

PASSIONS AND MORAL LIFE

1767 In themselves passions are neither good nor evil. They are morally qualified only to the extent that they effectively engage reason and will. Passions are said to be voluntary, "either because they are commanded by the will or because the will does not place obstacles in their way."44 It belongs to the perfection of the moral or human good that the passions be governed by reason.45

1768 Strong feelings are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons; they are simply the inexhaustible reservoir of images and affections in which the moral life is expressed. Passions are morally good when they contribute to a good action, evil in the opposite case. The upright will orders the movements of the senses it appropriates to the good and to beatitude; an evil will succumbs to disordered passions and exacerbates them. Emotions and feelings can be taken up into the virtues or perverted by the vices.

1769 In the Christian life, the Holy Spirit himself accomplishes his work by mobilizing the whole being, with all its sorrows, fears and sadness, as is visible in the Lord’s agony and passion. In Christ human feelings are able to reach their consummation in charity and divine beatitude.

1770 Moral perfection consists in man’s being moved to the good not by his will alone, but also by his sensitive appetite, as in the words of the psalm: "My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God."46

 

[thinkandmull]

People do have different brain chemistry and genes. To say that one person feels one thing from an orgasm and another person feels something totally different in their orgasm seems to take this too far though. Emotions seem to me to be somewhat different however. Two people can feel happy together and communicate well, but who knows if they are feeling the same thing, right? Is there are argument to counter this??

 

[fisherman_carl]

As far as discerning whether a movie is good or bad should not be judged by feelings alone. For example, a movie that is appealing to a lower base passion like lust could not be classified as good even if it stirs feelings that may make one feel good. The closer we get to God the more we are changed. The more our passions are changed as well. What gave us pleasure before no longer does.

 

[fisherman_carl]

People do have different brain chemistry and genes. To say that one person feels one thing from an orgasm and another person feels something totally different in their orgasm seems to take this too far though. Emotions seem to me to be somewhat different however. Two people can feel happy together and communicate well, but who knows if they are feeling the same thing, right? Is there are argument to counter this??

I tend to think we are more alike than we are different. If were so different than we couldn’t even consider ourselves to be the same species. The fact that we can observe that people feel sad when something bad happens, or happy when something good happens says that we are alike. Now, there may some variation within that, but its not so much that we are aliens to one another.

God made woman so man should not be alone, not just so he could have a partner, but to create a family. We all come from the same species. So we are going to be similar in many ways with some variation to make things interesting.

If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?". - (Act III, scene I).

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

 

[e_c]

Sounds like a Kantian approach to aesthetics even to ask the question at all.

I’ve not studied Kant’s aesthetics really, I’m just extrapolating. Realists and generally A-T philosophers are not going to ask this kind of question.

 

[mikekle]

This reminds me of something a co worker was talking about recently, they wondered if we all saw colors the same way, (Ive heard this theory before and never heard an explanation for it either way)…

Example would be, maybe the color blue I see, someone else that may their green, or red, yellow, etc.

Maybe feelings are the same way?

I do not think there would be any way to reach a conclusion about any of this.

 

[STT]

This reminds me of something a co worker was talking about recently, they wondered if we all saw colors the same way, (Ive heard this theory before and never heard an explanation for it either way)…

Example would be, maybe the color blue I see, someone else that may their green, or red, yellow, etc.

Maybe feelings are the same way?

I do not think there would be any way to reach a conclusion about any of this.

A color, your feeling, etc. appear to us in the same way because they are simply conscious states and any particular conscious state is the result of a very specific physical process in brain.

 

[fisherman_carl]

A color, your feeling, etc. appear to us in the same way because they are simply conscious states and any particular conscious state is the result of a very specific physical process in brain.

That is the big materialists assumption that any consciousness is the result of physical processes only.

 

[STT]

That is the big materialists assumption that any consciousness is the result of physical processes only.

No process no consciousness. This is a fact.

 

[thinkandmull]

Sounds like a Kantian approach to aesthetics even to ask the question at all.

I’ve not studied Kant’s aesthetics really, I’m just extrapolating. Realists and generally A-T philosophers are not going to ask this kind of question.

This has nothing to do with not knowing the “thing in itself”. Just because Aquinas didn’t raise this question as far as I know, it doesn’t mean that it is not a valid question. I think we all feel very similar physical sensations (and sight of colors), but I am not sure about whether we all have the same feelings in our emotions. So far there hasn’t been any arguments on here for or against. My sensation of happiness might ontologically be the same for me as yours is for you without them feeling the same