• Question: Why do we have feelings?

    Asked by bluebutterfly97 to timcraggs, Mark, Jo, Donna, Stuart on 23 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by iqra786, xxtinkerbellxx, biologybrain, potatbread.
    • Photo: Donna MacCallum

      Donna MacCallum answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Hi Blue – what a fabulous question!

      Feelings and the ability to act on our feelings is apparently something that differentiates us from other animals (although I have my doubts about that, having watched a cow mooing pitifully over and over as she tried to wake her dead calf !!).

      Some would say that our feelings are determined by biochemical reactions in our bodies – probably true!

    • Photo: Joanna Buckley

      Joanna Buckley answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      Hiya bluebutterfly97. Good chat eariler… I liked your questions 🙂

      We have feelings because of all the things that we experience. And life would be pretty awful without them. Imagine the last really funny thing you saw? The last thing that gave you a proper belly laugh? Well without emotions we wouldn’t do that. Life wouldn’t be worth living and you’d go through life having experiences but not being able to enjoy them with others.

      I don’t know how they evolved but even animals have emotions and they’re thought of as not as intellegent as us (although I have met people who don’t fit that category!).

      In my opinion, they make life fun. 🙂

    • Photo: Mark Lancaster

      Mark Lancaster answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Tricky one – this covers neuroscience, evolutionary biology, psychology, geography and philosophy – all of which I know very little about ! The fact that it’s covered by many disciplines suggests to me there isn’t a definite answer – this blog as some interesting summaries

      http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-literary-mind/200911/the-four-moral-emotions

    • Photo: Tim Craggs

      Tim Craggs answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      Another great question! I think from an evolutionary perspective feelings are useful because they help us to reproduce but also to live in large groups. So feelings of attraction are obviously useful, so are feelings of love, and honour and duty and loyalty. I am afraid that I don’t much about the molecular mechanism of emotions. Some experiments have been done which seem to show which parts of the brain are activated when a person feels a certain way.

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