Feelings and Emotions

Speaking about language... I was asked whether or not I see a difference between feelings and emotions, and if so, precisely how. Well, I do see a difference, but let me say right here and now that I do not expect that many debates around this will be solved through any one piece of writing, including my own writing of today. I do however believe that it is very helpful and valuable for communication purposes to understand how different people see these things differently. So let me try and share my personal perspective through use of the written word, in spite of its apparent limitations.

One way of looking at my understanding of the difference between feelings and emotions, is that feelings can be seen as our individual experience of emotions. From this angle, emotions basically come before feelings. Before even the emotion though, there must be a cognition that consciously or unconsciously triggers it. Where an emotion then is a cluster of subjective sensations that are triggered by a cognition, feelings are the noticeable experience of one or more of these sensations. Feelings however can also be remembered and recalled, which in that case does not require a preceding emotion at that particular time any more.

Where emotions clearly have both cognitive and physiological elements, after all the whole goal of an emotion seems to be activating the body to allow a response to a perceived event in the organism's environment, this is less obvious for feelings. Furthermore, next to these feelings related to emotions, we of course often also talk about feelings in the strict sense of physical sensations, or when we mean intuitions. Therefore the feelings like we can have them for someone, the feelings we can have in or on our body because of for example high temperatures, and the feelings we can have about what the weather or so is going to do, usually mean three very different things, although none of these are generally considered to be emotions.

How does reading this make you feel? Did it trigger any emotions?