RE: ART vs. DRAMA

["Nelson Zagalo" <ntz@ca.ua.pt>]

>Are all feelings emotions?

It depends on what theoretical approach you choose to follow, a
cognitiviste, evolutionary, neurobiological, etc. There are no
definitive scientific answers at the moment for that.
 
The division upon feelings and emotions was brought by neuroscience. And
what it proclaims is that emotions are biological representations, where
feelings are more of mental representations of the emotions.
So you could be correct, all emotions are feelings. However, the feeling
only exists based in the emotional biological image, so if you're unable
to emulate a determined function in your body, you'll never know what
kind of feeling does it generate. And so, all feelings must be emotions.


>If I feel your hand upon mine (and I don't want it there :-)

You feel the physical touch, and that's enough to help your body
emotionally respond. You don't need feelings to react. Neuroscience
says, that we have a direct connection between the Amygdale (emotional
human centre) and the motor functions, what permits the exact moment
you've described, no need to call the brain in the mix. Calling the
brain to reason at that moment, would slow down your reaction time and
so putting you in danger. That's why emotions are seen as our survival
gear.

>Fear and anger are definitely what I'd call emotions.

These are two of the called basic or universal emotions. You have plus 4
- surprise, disgust, happiness and sadness -. All the others are for the
moment not seen as universal in humans, and so secondary or of
background.

> But what % is emotional, and what % is analytical? ...to what extent
do we >impose value judgements, and to what extent are we content to
avoid making >value judgements?  

There's no answer for that :). We use emotions to help us judging.
Knowing how much we use of each is just impossible, because they are
intrinsic and impossible to disconnect. They can't be separated as
Descartes wanted.

Nelson