Howzit Dan?

I is gud!

Strawman?

Do you even have a clue what the term refers to?

No one is even arguing with you. You seem to be arguing with yourself.

You hadn't even given your 'grounds' to be argued with. All you appeared to be doing was making an assertion and telling people to 'think about it' when they asked for an explanation.

I read your entire post and all I can say is that nothing you said in that post made any sense to me. So I'm still at a loss at what you're trying to say.

We all change are moods, emotions and perspectives all the time. It's called free will.



I have thought about this and I can think of many reasons. In fact, I've learned to control my state of mind quite well thank you.

Young human's as they are growing up tend to be easily affected by their environment and the actions of other people around them.

You might even say that this would be an 'automatic response' to external stimuli that affects their 'state of mind'.

But as we mature we learn not to allow things to affect our state of mind, and we learn to use our own will to choose our state of mind rather than just allowing it to be affected automatically by our surroundings.

Maybe you aren't at that stage yet and therefore you have no direct experience with this? That's all I can figure based on what you've been saying.

I don't know what else to conclude. But most mature adults have learned how to control their state of mind by using their own free will.

And you say this makes no sense whatsoever?

I guess we just can't communicate then. I'll just have to give up and confess that you make absolutely no sense at all to me either.

That's all there is to that.

It's obvious to me that I am in control of my state of mind. And hopefully, barring some horrible disease like Alzheimer's, I will retain this ability until the day I die.

Why you would suggest that this makes absolutely no sense is totally beyond me.

But you sure do seem to be determined to hold your view out as though it should be obvious to others and undeniable at that.

If it makes sense to you more power to you.

But nothing you've said made any sense to me. Sorry.

It's still crystal clear to me that I'm in charge of my own state of mind. At least whilst I'm healthy anyway.

To anyone:

If you make assertions and blanket statements without any grounds for them and you have no point to make, I will just consider that what you state is your opinion. You certainly have a right to that, but I see no point in mentioning it if you don't care to discuss it or your reasons, proof, logic or grounds for it. Its pointless.

And if you can't carry on an intelligent conversation, and if all you are doing is disrupting the thread then you are simply "trolling" and looking for an argument.

Truly.

A forum member demands that there should be a forum rule that no 'groundless thoughts' be permitted in the philosophy forums. So people are now attempting to elabortate on why they hold the views they hold, and then thier elaborations are being dismissed as invalid by that same member without just cause.

It's getting totally out of hand at this point.

Hmmmph...

That is quite an interesting set of responses.



What is?

I think you understood perfectly. Are you looking for another argument? Look somewhere else. You have yet to state your premise or your grounds for your previous assertions, so there is no "real argument."

We all have opinions. We have heard yours. Yet we have not heard your grounds or your premise.

Common sense.

What comes first... an emotional state or thinking about that state?

Well, that all depends on how you approach it doesn't it.

You can psyche yourself up into an emotional state.

In that case thinking about an emotinal state definitely came first.

Or you can allow your surroundings to affect your emotional state via how you chose to react to sensory input.

Or you can allow random thoughts to affect your emotional state.

In that case you're not really 'thinking' about the emotional state itself in an analyical sense, but rather you're just reacting to random thoughts that induce your emotional state. Therefore it was your thoughts that produced your emotional state. If you want to analyize that emotional state after the fact that would be your choice. Maybe you'd get lucky and realize that you got yourself in that emotional state by simply passing attention to random thoughts.

Or you can meditate yourself into a state that's completely devoid of any emotion. Unless pure thoughtless bliss can be thought of as an 'emotion'. That would be an argument of semantics I suppose.

So from my own personal "common sense", for me the question can be answered in a myriad of ways depending on how you chose to be.

We have the choice of how to be.

That's my view.

Therefore I would say that the answer to your question is entirely dependent upon your choice of how you want to be.

For different individuals, different answers may apply.

Random thoughts...

There are no random thoughts if one is in control of all of them.

One cannot be in control of their own state of mind and/or thoughts, as has been claimed, and have random thoughts at the same time, or at any time for that matter.

Randomness is not controlled, therefore if one allows for random thougts to exist, they must also give way to being in complete control.

To me, the last four posts (from 11:47 to 1:32) make for a very refreshing change in conversation. Reading this is a pleasure.

In my personal experience, all emotional states exist/occur before I engage in 'thinking' (in the language/symbolic sense of thinking) about the state. And such thinking then usually influences subsequent emotional states.

I don't think that anyone is in "complete" control.

I think most thoughts are part of internal programing and response to stimuli, but it is the power of the will that can direct the thoughts and the attention to a desired place. If one wants to 'control' their programed or random thoughts, they must do so consciously with the use of the will.

Most 'emotions' are automatic and are the result of internal programing. Many people will accuse someone else of "making them angry." Anger is not the fault of other people. It is your internal reaction and emotions that will usually react first .. before the mind in cases of sudden anger.

Even anger that seethes and comes later after brooding over it was simply repressed at the time of the response. It simply surfaces later.

The emotions always reacts before the mind. That is why people who get angry suddenly and fly off the handle will later say.. "I didn't think it through," or "I did not have time to think." That is the "knee jerk" reaction which is an automatic and programed emotional response.

There WAS thought involved, and certainly the BRAIN was involved, but it was unconscious automatic "thinking" that is more a programed response. Many times it is a defensive reaction.

I wonder what is meant by 'programming'?

Emotions, according to my understanding at least, reflect how actuality is being filtered through one's perceptual faculty. Perception is directly affected by the application of personal meaning to current experience. Meaning is born from what is believed about perceived correlation. A state of mind automatically comes from unconscious belief regarding the perceived correlations of a current experience. Recognition of one's state of mind is contingent upon understanding one's own emotion in comparison to what is or has been believed about an experience. The successful application of meaning necessitates that one accurately assess the situation at hand with regard to their own emotional state of mind.

I understand what you are saying. The "programing" for the most part, is your basic belief system, which originally was self programed over time through experience. These self programs were created by how you perceived an experience at the time and how you chose to react to it. Then, when similar experiences come up they activate these belief systems that are already in place and reaction is somewhat "automatic."

I believe a change in belief system, and a change in attitude will change these reactions. As Anthony Robbins teaches people to "reframe" the situation and see it differently.

A person with an attitude that everyone hates him might perceive a situation a lot differently and might have a negative emotional reaction to a situation and a person who believes that he is God's gift to women and they all love him, might react completely different to the same situation.

Attitude and belief have a huge baring on 'programing' of emotional responses.

I also find that sometime people don't really know how they 'should' feel about a situation and they tend to watch other people's reaction before they 'decide' how they are going to feel or pretend to feel.

Many people's 'reactions' are simply going through the motions and are not really true feelings, but more of a performance. But true emotional reactions arise from belief and attitude, and not much thinking in advance was done.

There is so much valuable information in that post JB. I do not want to seem to be disagreeing simply for argument's sake, but there is one conclusion contained within the post that directly contradicts evidence throughout human history.

I would like to clarify my thoughts on this statement...



While I would completely agree with the importance of one's belief system, the knowledge base is actually beyond our control. One has no choice in what they are taught during childhood. Those teachings constitute the original foundation of one's belief system.

Anthony Robbins teaches one how to overcome things contained within belief which hold one back from happiness.

I admire that man's ability to positively communicate.

I think that is not always the case as I was sent to Sunday school as a child and "taught" the stories of the Bible and told that they were true and even as a child barely at preschool age I questioned my 'teachers.' who seemed not to have the answers I sought. On my own, I very soon, as a very young child, rejected this programing... and refused to go to church.

Even at that age I found it illogical and inconsistent.

I see what you mean, however, could it be that there were prior elements of your belief system which contradicted those teachings?

In other words, perhaps the foundation was already being built(in part at least) prior to the religious teachings which contradicted something else already accepted as certain, and therefore the doubt arose.

If that is the case, and it certainly seems likely, then the religious teachings do not constitute what I was referring to, the prior belief(s) which contradicted the religious teachings would constitite that knowledge base, or original belief system.

Belief does not need religion.

It is hard to remember, but I was not old enough to have had much indoctrination in anything else. It was not a question of believing in "God." It was the logic with which I formulated the stories I was being told that just did not ring true. And yet I was being told that it was "true."

I doubted it.

I did not openly reject what they were saying, I simply questioned it. The answers and the manner in which they were answered further clued me in that these people did not know themselves what they were talking about and perhaps did not even believe it themselves. So why should I?

I mean, how difficult do you think it would be to convince a small child of something? I cannot say that I even 'believed' in God, but I was not about to question the authority of every adult I met.

If they say there is a God, then who was I to dispute that? I am just a small child. But I was the type of child who needed to actually see God to believe in such a thing. It did not take much at all for me doubt them, and in doubting them, I rejected the programming. If God was good, I did not believe he would be ordering the slaughter of an entire city, or telling a man to sacrifice his son. I did not like that God at all. The stories must be false.


Perhaps they were just terrible story tellers and they grossly underestimated the reasoning powers of a child.

Humans tend to fill in where necessary.

There are many things I have forgotten but there are some things I do remember when I was a child with crystal clarity. Moments of clarity, where I saw the world differently and disagreed with the ultimate authority. We, even as children, have the power to discriminate and choose what to believe. Don't judge other people by your own experience. We are all different individuals. We are not just machines that can be easily programmed with beliefs. We choose what to believe. I may have not had enough pressure put upon me to believe something like some people have. I am grateful for that. My parents let me walk my own path. I am grateful for that too.