Emotion: A Soul-Based Theory of Its Origins and Mechanisms

by Ashish Dalela

The topic of emotion is of deep interest to many people, but its relation to reason and cognition, when emotion controls reason, and why emotion can be controlled by reason, are not well understood. Similarly, when situations change our emotions, should we attribute the emotion to the situation, or to the person, because another person could have reacted in a different way in the same situation? These questions lie at the heart of any study on emotions, and this book presents a model comprising of three parts—relation, cognition, and emotion—based on the Vedic theory of the soul comprising sat , chit , and ananda to discuss the problem of emotion. The crux of the theory is that while reason, cognition, and emotion are three separate features of the soul, they must always combine in order to create an experience. Hence, no experience is without an emotion. Similarly, when they combine, either of the three can be dominant or subordinate. Thus, sometimes emotion rules over cognition and relation, at other times cognition rules over relation and emotion.This model is extremely simple and yet extremely powerful, and most of the book is dedicated to illustrating its power, because the simplicity is quite apparent. That means, applying the model of the soul to solve diverse problems from the nature of atomic reality to the structure of the human body. The scope of this book is vast as it covers topics from philosophical materialism, to personality theories, to the interaction of body and mind, to symbolic expression, social organization, human relationships, and religion. Each of these is a singular and disparate area of inquiry at present. But all of these are different aspects of human experience. In that sense, what transcends individual experiences—the soul—can be used to unify the understanding of many experiences. Once the soul is understood, everything else is demystified. Chapter Summaries Chapter 1 - Emotion and Materialism This chapter discusses the problem of atomic theory in which reason only tells how the world exists as a possibility, but to create a reality we must make a choice. Chapter 2 - Theories on Emotion This chapter discusses several modern-day theories of emotion, and their shortcomings. Chapter 3 - Emotion and Personality This chapter develops a theory of personality based on the understanding of the soul. It discusses the relation and differences from current approaches to personality—e.g. the “Big Five” and “Multiple Intelligence” theories. Chapter 4 - Emotion and Biology This chapter focuses on the physical, chemical, and biological aspects of emotion, and describes how the human body can be described in three ways—parts, functions, and purposes. Chapter 5 - The Emotional Basis of Society This chapter discusses the Vedic theory of emotions, which classifies emotions along two dimensions—(1) six basic types, and (2) the cause of these emotions into three distinct modes. Chapter 6 - Emotions and Relationships This chapter discusses different social relations associated with emotions, and illustrates how these relations fall into a hierarchy—from a greater mental ‘distance’ to greater mental ‘proximity’. Chapter 7 - The Symbols of Emotion This chapter explores the expression of emotion across diverse symbolic domains from literature, music, art, economy, and politics, to even science and mathematics. Chapter 8 - Emotion and Religion This chapter discusses the role of emotion in religion, highlighting the traditional conflict between personalist and impersonalist viewpoints.

304 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 7, 2018

About the author

The idea that everything in our experience can be explained based on physical properties is a thesis whose time has passed. There are now problems in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, computing, neuroscience and artificial intelligence, where physical properties are known to be inadequate. But are these problems separate, individual concerns for their respective fields, or are they somehow interlinked in ways we don’t yet fully see or appreciate?

I believe that in every field of science forward movement can happen only by incorporating meaning as a foundational principle. Through my writing I explore the connection between meaning and science.

The problem of meaning has historically been equated with the study of the mind, which is quite unnecessary because meanings can also be seen in books, pictures, music and art. The latter are material objects too, although they cannot be described in current science. In what way are symbolic objects different from meaningless objects? What changes to science must be made in order to describe symbolic objects scientifically?

The need to incorporate meaning into nature requires a conceptual overhaul in science. Unlike modern science which treats meaning as an epiphenomenon of matter, the new view would require matter to be treated as an epiphenomenon of meanings. Meanings can exist independent of matter, but matter cannot exist independent of meaning. To create material objects, some meaning must exist prior.

The foundational principles of this semantic view are found in Vedic philosophy, which describes matter as symbols of information. Mind in this view, is prior to matter and creates material objects by objectifying meanings. Upon objectification, the material objects become symbols of meaning. If these symbols are described as objects, the description of nature would be incomplete. To complete science, nature has to be described as symbols rather than objects.

I write about two broad themes: (1) the problems of indeterminism, incompleteness, uncertainty and inconsistency in different fields of science (mathematics, physics, computing, linguistics and biology) and their relation to meaning, and (2) the manner in which meaning and matter are integrated in Vedic philosophy entailing a different view of matter.

I welcome your comments and suggestions, in case you find these ideas interesting.