• Question: what are emotions? can we live without them? are they necessary?

    Asked by abichohan to Davie, Gemma, James P, James V, Nuala on 29 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: James Verdon

      James Verdon answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      Hi abichohan

      Wow, that’s a really deep question. I don’t really know how to answer that. I guess they are feelings generated by our brain, but that’s not really a good explanation I know.

      Some people do lose some emotions. Usually its because of some accident or genetic problem which means the part of a brain responsible for a certain emotion doesn’t function properly. This can be very dangerous for many reasons: a person who doesn’t have a fear emotion might rush into all sorts of risky situations and get them killed.

      More importantly, some people lack the emotions to be able to love and care for people. This means that they can behave in an immoral way – they think it’s ok to hurt people, and they don’t have the emotions to tell them that is wrong. We call extreme cases of this psychopathy – it’s why some people behave as nastily as they do.

    • Photo: James Pope

      James Pope answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      Hi abichohan,

      Emotions are all to do with the way our bodies respond to certain situations with hormones that we are released by our bodies. They can affect how we react to situations and are one of the ways that a species survives, as James V says, fear is an important emotion for making sure we don’t get ourselves killed in a silly way.

    • Photo: Nuala Carson

      Nuala Carson answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      Hey abichohan,

      This is a great question. I have never really thought about what emotions are. I don’t know is anyone actually knows why we ‘feel’ things and if other species ‘feel’ to the same degree as us. I think love is a big emotion and we really cant describe it let alone know what causes it.

      I think we could live with out them, some people do. Psychopaths are generally thought of as serial killers and maniacs but there are lots of people who are classed as psychopaths who never commit a serious crime. They don’t have any empathy, which means they don’t understand how other people feel. This makes them very good at business as they don’t feel bad standing on someone to get to the top.

      Sow e could live without emotions but the world would b a very different place, i cant even really imagine what it would be like if we didn’t feel guilt, or love, or have a conscience.

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