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What are thoughts and emotions and how do they come into being? Are thoughts imaginary or do they truly exist? If thoughts do exist, how do they correlate to the physical actions of the human body? Do thoughts causally affect internal matter/ biology or are they a side effect of chemical interaction? If they are causal and do impact the body's activities, why can they only affect the body and not other forms of matter - or can they in some way?

11Novelist 5 Mar 20
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I don't know.

skado Level 9 Mar 20, 2018
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Wow, that’s a pretty deep, or complicated, way of looking at something rather simple if you break it down. Your thoughts and emotions are ‘real’ and exist but only unto yourself. How you choose to ‘react’ to your thoughts can effect yourself and others. You lost me on the rest of your thought process. I didn’t understand it, sorry. Hope you find your answers.

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The brain is everything. Chemical reactions not only process input from all our senses, including others' actions to us, but also evaluates them and forms what our reactions should be. Then those same chemical reactions store that experience for future use.

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Oh, the mind....the most powerful force of all 1!!!!

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your minds your hard drive for everything else in your body and protect you as everything strives to live. we have more than six senses like when you feel danger or the mood in a room. they affect other forms of life by how you carry yourself and act and of course talk to other people.

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I like the question

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The answers to this could be fascinating. I wish I had a modicum of an idea as to how this all works. But I don't. Instead I have another question - do you think animals experience thoughts and emotions on a similar level as we do?

I don't know but they definitely have way better extra senses than humans and the more I see the more I see how amazing creatures are. for instance, earwigs live in family groups with reletives helping out etc.

I think they do but it varies based on the complexity of the overall organism. Most would say that dogs, dolphins and primates all show observable evidence of emotion and thought but it would be difficult to differentiate the difference between thought and instinct in say a bee, amoeba, or hummingbirds. Some suggest that there may be species that think and feel only as a group rather than individuals. This type of consciousness would be difficult for humans to fathom entirely and who's to know what other forms of consciousness might exist as well.

I have often wondered this regarding ALL living things, animals and plants, for if it is alive then it MUST have some ability to communicate, however, not with us. I think many times of a can of peas, and how they have somehow gotten to be in THAT can together, and how they must communicate as a group through time and space until the can is opened, I wonder,, as they sense the can being opened, are they excited, or are they saying "oh shit" !!!!!

They absolutely do. This guy picked up on people's emotions and thought it was his job to cheer them up. Otherwise, he mainly kept to himself.

@LeighShelton that is oddly fascinating

Scientist do not have a means for explaining consciousness or where it comes from. They believe they are making Scientistsheadway. Some reports came out in a Scientific Journal about 10 months ago, discussing the breakthrough Neurologist discovered on what creates consciousness and or where it comes from. Neuroplasticity/Consciousness good research terms.

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I think if the answers to those questions can be found, it would require some philosophical imagination combined with sciences related to the brain and psychology, and perhaps biology as well.

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Have you been studying philosophy, Rene Descartes I think therefore I am?

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Just because it's imaginary, doesn't mean it's not real.
Eg if you imagine that shadow in the bush is an embittered grizzly, in reality you die from heart failure and it was only a stoned koala. 🙂
Dr. Bruce Perrys 'Boy who was raised as a dog ...' good book may help

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Animals think but are not as complexed as humans we are separate entities . Our survival depends on them for many chosen reasons all selfish.We have domesticated some of them vicariously.

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We have and exist merly to survive we are complex oraniisms . Our brain is just a defence mechinism to help us survive.Self presevation is our nimber 1 instinct.We program our selves to only preserve our own lives.Co existance and reproduction contribute to our survival or so we are taught.

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