How could feelings be just about survival and nothing else?

[UnbornTao]

3 hours ago, Salvijus said:

Probably all the data that comes through the senses about the plant can be called a feeling. 

That sounds like painting with broad strokes. Identifying the plant as a "chrysanthemum" isn't a feeling; it may be a thought, or something else. Perceiving an object isn't feeling the object. 

Maybe we should drop the analogy and focus not on what feeling something in particular is but on what the activity of feeling is. 

Edited April 18 by UnbornTao

[Sugarcoat]

Feeling can be tied to concepts. Like if someone gets conditioned to value their heritage, that is a concept, a country is an idea, then they can have feelings associated with the concept of their heritage. There’s not much of a limit to how complicated of ideas can trigger feelings. It’s not all survival, one can cry at the view of something beautiful for example a waterfall

[Eskilon]

 

[UnbornTao]

On 4/18/2025 at 0:46 PM, Sugarcoat said:

Feeling can be tied to concepts. Like if someone gets conditioned to value their heritage, that is a concept, a country is an idea, then they can have feelings associated with the concept of their heritage. There’s not much of a limit to how complicated of ideas can trigger feelings. It’s not all survival, one can cry at the view of something beautiful for example a waterfall

What if feeling itself is sourced by concept, as is thinking? 

Try to stop thinking for a couple minutes, then do the same with feeling. 

I think we tend to think of survival as something bad or negative; let's just call it "life." 

Edited Monday at 06:55 AM by UnbornTao

[Sugarcoat]

3 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

What if feeling itself is sourced by concept, as is thinking? 

Try to stop thinking for a couple minutes, then do the same with feeling. 

I think we tend to think of survival as something bad or negative; let's just call it "life." 

I don’t get what u mean by “sourced by”

[UnbornTao]

4 hours ago, Sugarcoat said:

I don’t get what u mean by “sourced by”

That it gives rise to both feeling and thinking; that concept is the "place" where they originate.

Edited Monday at 02:31 PM by UnbornTao

[Sugarcoat]

2 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

That it gives rise to both feeling and thinking; that concept is the "place" where they originate.

Thoughts are concepts right? And feelings are triggered by concepts

[UnbornTao]

56 minutes ago, Sugarcoat said:

Thoughts are concepts right? And feelings are triggered by concepts

It seems as though thought and feeling are both forms of concept. What we usually take a “concept” to be is just an inconsequential thought that arises in our internal dialogue, an add-on that is independent to what objectively exists. For example, we may look at a tree and think of it as tall and beautiful. We might take those latter qualities to be conceptual, but not “the tree” itself. At the same time, we might object to this claim, since thought often appears “dry,” whereas feeling is more “charged.”

Good questions, you tell me.

Edited Monday at 03:34 PM by UnbornTao

[Sugarcoat]

1 hour ago, UnbornTao said:

It seems as though thought and feeling are both forms of concept. What we usually take a “concept” to be is just an inconsequential thought that arises in our internal dialogue, an add-on that is independent to what objectively exists. For example, we may look at a tree and think of it as tall and beautiful. We might take those latter qualities to be conceptual, but not “the tree” itself. At the same time, we might object to this claim, since thought often appears “dry,” whereas feeling is more “charged.”

Good questions, you tell me.

I mean the word thought and the word feelings are concepts, but to me the experience of a feeling is not a concept, and thoughts can be of images so again not only concepts. But then how much our mind is involved in conceptualizing our experiences/senses might not always be apparent, so some of it could be conceptual too .