An interesting task

Lets say that you came across someone that has never experienced a certain emotion before. (disregarding it being possible or not)

How would you explain that emotion to them to where they would understand it? Could you explain to them in full detail what this emotion means?

Think of this as trying to explain how something works. say a cd to someone who has never seen or heard of one. A cd player spins the disc around as a laser reads information imbedded onto it. It reads this information and transmits a signal to either play back or display some sort of media. And I could go on to explain all the practical uses of such a device.

Could you do that with say happiness? or sadness?


Give me some thoughts, and I'll try to give an example to show where I'd like to see this thread go.

i once saw a movie about a deformed guy. i forgot what it was called but he had a blind girlfriend. the way he taught her colors was by handing her hot rocks and saying that was red, ice blue...etc.... i imagine it would you could use similar techniques to describe anger and sorrow. maybe..

On first thinking about this I think most people will say you cant do it. On further thinking I believe you can.

Its one of the reasons we have empathy. To understand feelings we have never felt. I have never been raped or tortured, but I can empathise with a person who has. I can have an understanding of what it might be like because of my ability to recall experiences (extreme pain, not being able to get away, feeling violated, feeling helpless etc) to give me an idea of what it is like.

To take this one step further, if I wanted to describe happiness to somebody- and assuming they had all their other emotions and had lived a full normal life- I would use similar feelings to happiness that conjure up the idea of happiness to me.

Being in the warm sun after a cold morning; feeling the rays on your skin just warming you up so you feel good inside. Feeling elated or proud of achieving something; a cross country run, or winning an award for excellence. Sexual intercourse; the intense pleasurable physical feeling you get when you engage in bonding with another.

None of those feelings are happiness themselves- but they can either lead to the feeling of happiness, or give you similar enough feelings of happiness to be useful in describing the emotion itself.

Using these examples is the way I would begin trying to describe hapinness to somebody who has never experienced it. And through trial and error I would continue along those lines.

Wether or not they can understand what I feel is impossible to say. We can never know exactly how any other human feels. But we can talk about our experiences and come to the conclusion that we are experiencing similar feelings.

By this means, I think you could actually give somebody a good idea of an emotion they haven't had before.

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i once saw a movie about a deformed guy. i forgot what it was called but he had a blind girlfriend. the way he taught her colors was by handing her hot rocks and saying that was red, ice blue...etc.... i imagine it would you could use similar techniques to describe anger and sorrow. maybe..

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Doom I really like this idea!! The more I thought about this the more I thought that emotions could be explained through certain actions, whether it be physically or mentally.

Yelling, making your face tun red, hurtful words could describe anger
Laughing, eyes watering could describe happiness
Deep looking into another's eyes, embracing, affection could describe love
crying, frowning, exclusion could describe sadness
Jumping up and down, talking faster, smiling could describe excitement


I know this seems like any normal characteristics of an emotion, but I think it's how you go about showing it to a person can a person truly understand what it means.

If you punch someone in the face, they're going to know you're angry.

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Its one of the reasons we have empathy. To understand feelings we have never felt. I have never been raped or tortured, but I can empathise with a person who has. I can have an understanding of what it might be like because of my ability to recall experiences (extreme pain, not being able to get away, feeling violated, feeling helpless etc) to give me an idea of what it is like.

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Chained I really like your response. I believe we can empathize with everyone to obtain a general understanding of what emotions are, even if we haven't felt them. But I think if there are emotions, I think there must be a, how would you say, a base or epitome of emotion and everyone can somehow feel it equally.

The more I think about it, the more I think it's not likely, because of each person's mental capacity is different and physical response to stimuli is different. If we were all identical clones, however, then I think it would be considerably more likely to understand each other better.

I fear to believe that we may be so distant from each other mentally and physically, that it could be impossible for all of us to adopt a way of thinking and feeling that would eliminate barriers of that sort of communication. unless, that is, we start the process over completely.

a heavy weight on your chest while sinking in the ocean.
cant breath. lights fading. cant think straight. growing weaker.
scared. alone. still sinking. darker. no air. clawing ripping tearing to get loose, but stuck. tears lost in the water. breath gone in bubbles rising to the surface, so far away. like falling asleep, do you stay awake or give up? but all you want to do is sleep and sleep. theres no point in waking up.

depression