Are thoughts responsible for feelings?

Usually we can produce feelings simply by bringing up thoughts from the past or future. Good or bad, it seems as if thoughts are around when feelings are. Then I got thinking about a baby, a baby has feelings because we can see the way it behaves and projects itself through the body. Does a baby have thoughts? If so what kind of thoughts could it have without learning from this world?

Do feelings always come from thoughts or something else?

Its a 2 way street my friend.....thought invokes remembered emotion....not actual emotion.

Example: Your dog dies.......you find he hung himself in his closet with a suicide note that says I just can't bark anymore. You feel sad, this invokes actual thought after the feeling manifests.

You see a dog years later.......looks like poor scrappy that hung himself. You get all choked up cause you remember how his death and, funny enough, his life made you feel. You had to think about how he made you feel to have that emotion experience.

2 types, same principal....actual emotion, and residual emotion from a past experience to further recall the dogs memory.

Most people don't think about this aspect to emotion. Our brain creates an emotion out of survival response. It is merely motivation to act on our thoughts really.....that's what emotion is.

It depends really on how you view life, it is true that sometimes how we think effects our emotions, but in another way sometimes chemical reactions in the brain and instinct (a little bit of both) take over instead. For example when we say man I feel bad, about a said situation. We are making ourselves feel that way not necessarily the situation making us feel that way. Another example would be say anger, that can have several causes including thought, instinct, medical condition, and all of the above. It isn't really cut and dry on that example. One last example I would give is say love (not passion). Sometimes that is triggered by a chemical in the brain called adrenaline, dopamine, and serotonin. This complex mix of things can trigger lust, followed by Oxytocin which causes you to attach to a person,

As for instinct it is thought that human beings need three things to survive, shelter, food and water, and air. So when these things are threatened it can trigger the body including the brain into it's instinctive self. Making the person react a certain way cause of their basic needs being threatened. There is more to it then that and I won't go into the chemical reactions of instinct, but there you have it.

So even though feelings can be triggered by a multitude in the end it is really a mixture depending on Situation, Condition, and down right chemical reactions in the brain.

Let's say that two people both have their father die. One person had great relations with her father, therefore she was distraught and heartbroken. The other person had been beaten and abused by their father all her life, therefore she was happy and relieved.

In both of these cases, it's thought that guides emotion. For every emotion we feel regarding a particular event, it can be traced back to a thought about how that event was either in our interest or not in our interest, and the emotion is experienced accordingly.

One might say that emotions precede thought because emotions can be triggered by chemical processes in the brain. For example, as another member stated, someone who's basic needs are threatened may feel a rush of adrenaline or some chemicals that trigger desperate emotions. But really, if you don't think that your basic needs are threatened, then that chemical process would not happen. Experiences don't trigger emotion, the experience triggers thought, and the thought triggers emotion.

Without emotion, there would still be thought. Without thought, there would be no emotion.

Thoughts are electrical reactions that cause specific neurons to fire.

Emotions are chemical reactions that lead towards types of neural thought patterns.

Emotions derive from our survival instinct. They are meant to force you to take specific actions in order to remedy the problem you are facing that is detrimental to your survival instinct.

Of course there are 'irrational' emotions as well. Such as getting mad over someone putting mustard on your burger when you specifically said not to. It is correct to seek remedy for the altercation, however it is 'irrational' to turn it into a hateful emotional event.

Once you become aware of why you have emotions, you can begin to temper them. You can weed out the irrational feelings that are archaic remnants of our primordial stages, and on the other hand you can facilitate those emotions which will lead you to a better survival (and survival of the species).

I do not mean to 'downplay the significance of emotions' by these comments. I am actually trying to scientifically support their usefulness and purpose through describing their purpose within living organisms.

reply to post by muzzleflash


HEY! Putting mustard on my burger is a serious crime against humanity, it's yellow and smelly for god's sakes..... that being said well said sir.

reply to post by Ralphy


Yes, and if we can control our thinking, then to a very large degree, we can control our entire state of being of which the emotional is perhaps the highest state of "thought" that is possible since it envelopes the entire mind/body spectrum and individual human experience.

Quite the gift, if only such notions and ideas were not confined solely to "new age" and the human potential movements, popularized by Napoleon Hill or Abraham Hicks, and the book and movie "The Secret".

It's the most astounding power and freedom of expression available to the human being in the universe, the ability to have control over the domain of our own thoughts and feelings.

Oh to be more consciously aware, this is my prayer for the human race, that we might awaken, and get off "automatic pilot".

Great question OP.
The answer is yes/no.
I'll try to answer as briefly as possible.

Thoughts can be thought of "events" in a brain. You may or may not be aware of them.
So you can think, "the sky is blue." or "My dog is dead" and have different feelings about them, even "incorrect" feelings about them. (We can have "wrong ideas" and/or "faulty wiring.")
But the point is, thoughts are "required" for feelings, because the brain processes all.

However, thoughts are not wholly responsible for feellings, because we also need input from our senses. If you were to strip all your senses, (look up "floating man experiment,") would you still feel? Emote? The answer is yes, but only if you were already chock full of "experiences" by way of being alive for some time.

I propose, if you had a "floating baby experiment," where no input was possible, (presuming the child would survive total sensory deprivation,) I'm sure it would exhibit marked emotional problems when "revealed" to the "real world."

In the real world, we are all programmed by our paradigms. Some of us feel things, without knowing even why. These are often emotions brought into our minds by way of social engineering. This is the power of thought and proof that we can act and know not why.
In a way, thoughts are wholly responsible for everything.
(Thought alone is life and as such life is infinite.)

Feeling, requires input and thought. In memory, it is able to work from thought alone. (And even fake the sensation by firing the same neurons.) But still, no input, so feeling.

So far...

Funny that we need to be feeling creatures in order to be thinking creatures, yet also, the other way around.

Scary that soon, we won't.
When we can be completely unfeeling, we will be a better species of being, but we will no longer be human.

Good question. I like what muzzleflash said, it seems correct, but I would add my own understanding, one that does not rely on pop-science understandings and terms but rather that of an introspective realization gained through meditation.

It seems without the mind there is no emotions. However, this does not mean the mind creates emotions, rather it only conceptually grasps them, reacts to them, and many times exaggerates them due to previous conditioning and current environmental stimuli. Many of our feelings/emotions are exaggerated by the mind and thus, yes, thoughts are responsible for feelings in some sense but in another sense these subtle feelings/emotions are independent from the mind as they arise from an instinctual drive to survive. Master the mind and you master your emotions, master your emotions and you begin to master the mind.

Basically, emotions are a slow moving waveform that are picked-up across the entire nervous system, thoughts refine these waveforms into specific structures and patterns. To that extent, to think excessivley, is to convert a greater amount of emotions into thought. Instinct must also be recognised, as instinct is the source-point of both emotions and thoughts.

In that sense, a forward emotion is produced from the instincts, a reverse emotion occurs as the brain processes the emotion, converts it into thought, and then re-converts thought into emotion.

I.e. Instinct to attack: Forward emotion = Aggression, Reverse Emotion = Guilt.
Instint to submit: Forward emotion = Suffering, Reverse Emotion = Hope
Instinct to reproduce: Forward emotion = Fear, Reverse Emotion = Death

To produce a positive emotion from your thoughts, you must re-convert a reverse emotion:

Contemplated Guilt = Forgiveness
Contemplated Hope = Desire
Contemplated Death = Love

At this point, it should be noted that these are the emotions that we can understand in a linear system or an isolated emotional reaction, the flow of emotions between connected individuals is a synthesis of these basic emotions, that give rise to the more complex and conflicting emotional states.

Others feelings are responsible for your feelings.

In a different state of mind others feelings aren't responsible for your feelings.

Feelings of other people are responsible for your thoughts. I think not. I am solely the feeling.