Simple Human Emotions

So i was watching a discovery channel special on sex and it said that people like people who are fit because that shows that they are fertile so that got me thinking, if attraction is simply a function in the human brain for reproduction, benefitting the survival of mankind then what about the other emotions? Appetite- we need it for a desire for food so we wont starve, Pain- so we can tell if something is wrong with out body, Sadness- a negative response to a situation by the human brain, Happyniess- positive response of a situation, Love - an emotion indicating similar brain personalities therefore gaining man a partner so he would survive easier, after all, 2 is better than one. is everything we feel just strategicly made into the human brain for human survival? is thats true then what would be the meaning of everything we feel? perhaps we are better off being like the "vulcans" from star trek who learned how to supress their emotions.

Suppressing emotions is one of the worst things for a person to attempt because the repercussions can be very unnatural and devastating long term. However, being able to separate your thoughts from your emotions can be very beneficial. Emotions can often cloud logical judgment.

People who can feel an emotion fully, while at the same time have a clear thought process can achieve a sense of equilibrium/peace within themselves much quicker than those who struggle to balance the two.

Happy people live longer statistically. If you are truly at peace with yourself, you should find it easier to be more happy, more often. So, this is another survival method. And probably why we gravitate toward people who seem happy to us.

*avoiding emotional "lows" is more linked to a longer life then actual happiness is, but I think my statements are still valid.

Before we can hope to solve this very real but by no means insoluble problem, a brief preamble on the methods of science are in order. I am aware that this a vexed question, wont to draw more heat than light; I am aware, moreover, that the whole debate might be predicated on a logical and metaphysical impropriety; and I would not demur if one were to assert that science (to reify not unduly) continues no matter how we decide the question: a point that should afford us a salutary lesson, to wit, that to assay science (or indeed any practice) from the outside results in theories necessarily piecemeal and partial. My ambition, then, will be correspondingly small. I merely hope to clarify the problem of scientific knowledge. I will take a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach: that is to say, I will aver, and then proceed to show, that there are deep-lying continuities between our ordinary and our scientific knowledge; that they are different in degree and not kind; and that the whole question of divining the essence of science is thereby waived, since the method by which we formulate our theory is consonant with itself.

The epistemology which most scientists would venture, if asked to justify their field, would undoubdtedly be of a Baconian, inductivist sort. This view is implicit in the writings of Dawkins, for example. Certain regularities are observed: an event of type B always follows an event of type A. It was Hume who laid waste to the notion that it is possible espy any necessary connection, and therefore any claims to universality, between these events. For that reason, no predicition can rise above the level of hypothesis. This equates to the claim that phenomena, as they present themselves to the senses, are incorrigibly contingent.

Of course, the foregoing begs a fair few seminal questions, not the least of which is: how do scientists decide between rival hypotheses? Well, whilst not wanting to go as far as the anarchic relativism of Kuhn or Feyerabend, I would suggest that there is room for accommodation amongst competing theories. This is because, both in science and our daily dealings, reason proceeds abductively. We perceive a set of events and explain them by recourse to the most expedient theory we can summon up. The word "expedient" is deliberately vague, for a theory is valued for many things: plausibility, comprehensiveness, simplicity. Clearly, theories may intersect without being wholly commensurate, may disagree without refutation: and it is an open question whether "truth" in the traditional sense is correspondingly imperilled.

But we must move beyond the abductive model. To recount, inductive reasoning is inadequate because it is blind to its own limitations. It postulates universal causal laws professing to exhaustively explain phenomena to which such certitudes do not, and cannot, apply. Abductive reasoning surrenders any hubristic claims to completeness; its weakness, however, is not empirical, but logical. It operates by a kind of counterfeit logic, affirming the conclusion of an argument as way of vitiating the antecedent. As such, it is formally equivalent to the fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc.

We must return to fimer ground. A theory is a model which figures forth simplifcations of reality, framed in terms of certain presuppositions and cashed out, as it were, in terms of the logic at hand. This formulation avoids the pitfalls of inducitivism and abductivism alike. For whilst it does not purport to get to grips the whole of reality at once, neither does it legislate for the irreconcilable plurality of theories entailed by abduction. My resolution of the problem is not particularly revolutionary. In fact it can be tallied fairly easily, and without the need of Procrustean mutilation, to what is called the hypothetico-deductive model. Put simply, this is the view that science assumes certain propositions to be true and builds an overarching theory on the back of them. A set of phenoemna are picked out: event B follows event A. But B and A are categories imposed by the mind of the observer - categories, we might even say, which are necessarily value-laden. The hypothetico-deduuctive model decrees that science must deal with the logic internal to these categories, avowing that this logic, which underwrites the phenomena in question, is complete unto itself; that it forms, to put it figuratively, a closed concave; and that it offers a perspective on the world, tinctured by subjectivity, warped by perspective, and fortified, moreover, by an objectivity of which it can only intimate.

So to address the real question at hand: the assertions of Evolutionary Biology comprise a perspective by which to view the world. That they are deduced from a very small number of axioms, in a way familiar to the a priori procedures of mathematics, lends it a certain beauty and picturesqueness. But nevertheless it is a perspective still, with all the limitations this implies. A theory is either more general, and so less specific, or more specific, and so less general. In his monumental work, The Selfish Gene, Dawkins makes it clear from the outset that he presenting what calls "the gene-eyed view". From this perspective, incorporating an ordering and a telos of its own, genes are replicators which nest in the DNA of organisms for the strategic purpose of propagating themselves. To say that this (admittedly rather truncated) theory answers all the most important questions about the cosmos is simply ludicrous, and, I might say, an abuse of science as much as anything else. Evolution explains how the complex arose form the simple; how life was instantiated by inert matter; how man derives from amoeba; and it does so by reference only to causal processes. But I am not convinced that God has been thereby exiled. Nor am I sure that it makes sense to say that love, inter alia, is nothing but the mainifestation of a blind primodiral will, a view which, at any rate, has more in common with the metaphysics of Schopenahauer than Evoltuionary Biology.

Emotions are mostly tied to chemical responses in the brain, the release of endorphins. This can be a response to fear, or other stimuli, and serves a dual purpose. First, it can effect pain receptors in the brain, as in the case of fear or anger, which can be very beneficial when a threat is perceived, especially if you are already injured. Adrenalin can be released to aid us in out "fight or flight" as well. Emotions also serve as a means of communication, which can also be beneficial. It helps to have indicators that another might perceive you as a threat, and therefore, in turn, represent a threat to you.

Positive emotions and their opposites ("happy" and "sad" ) probably evolved to enhance social interactions as well, but do not necessarily relate to combat and immediate survival. They relate to familial and tribal interactions. If we are "sad" when we are alone, and "happy" when we are around others, this encourages social interaction, and since there is safety in numbers, it makes sense that we we would see an evolutionary advantage from developing these emotions, which are also tied to chemical reactions in our brains. Outward indications of these reactions can serve to communicate how we are feeling. Endorphins that trigger pleasure serve to reinforce behaviors associated with that pleasure, so if an action is beneficial and gives the species a better chance to survive, evolution would naturally favor individuals who derived pleasure from participating in those actions. This doesn't just apply to sex, but any aspect of our lives.