If the human race had their emotions taken away

First off, yes, this is truly dorky, and if you find it boring, I completely understand.

In some science fiction shows there are races with no emotions. There are Vulcans in Star Trek and the Cybermen in Doctor who for example.

I’ve been wondering something. Let’s say somebody, whether a human or alien, takes away all our emotion and we have to live on logic. What things, if any, would be needed to be programmed into us in order to keep humanity alive and functioning as a society?

For example, although I have nothing to back this up, I think that our will to live, if not emotional, is connected to emotions. I mean, take away emotion, and no-one is afraid to die, love life, or have any emotional bonds. So I can’t think of any purely logical reasons why I, or anybody, should live.

What else would we have to have programmed into us?

Edit: Maybe this would be better in IMHO. I’m not sure.

I think we’d have to be programmed with something that would so closely resemble emotion as to be the same thing. Emotions help us want things that are beyond the immediate. We would have no reason to act unless we want whatever is happening next.

I was thinking maybe we’d need a sense of curiosity programmed into us.

People with brain injuries to the part of the brain that cause emotions are unable to function properly after their emotions have gone. They can’t prioritize a task, so if you ask them to sort a pile of files, they can’t figure out how to sort the files. Should they be sorted by color? Size? First word? Most of the decisions that we make in life involve emotion, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. Therefore, I think if such a condition were to develop, our society would completely collapse.

Here is a book with case studies and explanations.

I just wanted to say that I misread the thread title as “**If the human race had their emoticons taken away” **and I was going to say I was all for it.

That is an excellent point. And thanks for the link.

However, my question is in the realm of sci-fi, so if emotions could be taken away, but whoever did it could “program” us for such things as self preservation, or prioritization, could we be sufficiently programmed to live an orderly life, where we still have jobs, feed, cloth, and bathe ourselves, and so on? Or would we need so much programming that in the end, like Mangetout said, we would be operating on something like emotions?

:eek: :confused: :mad:

:stuck_out_tongue:

**If the human race had their emotions taken away ** nobody would care.

Kinda like Switzerland.

:confused: Sorry, I don’t get it.

Just wanted to point out, not to sound too geeky, but Vulcans weren’t emotionless, they just suppressed them to an extreme…

Right. So for all intents and purposes they were emotionless.

I guess my point was is they could easily use any part of their emotions that are deemed necessary, i.e. self preservation, so I would assume if all emotions were completely taken away…yes, we would all die. Some would even tie emotion in with pain, hunger and definitely sexuality, so not only would we all be toast in about 4 or 5 days from dehydration, but even if we managed to get past that, lack of procreation would end the species eventually anyway, which was not the case for the Vulcans.

Well, if you’re gonna invoke Star Trek, you’d have to assume everyone would be like Data who (during most of the show) had no emotions whatsoever, or the Borg. In other words, without emotions we’d have to be “programmed” to survive or interact with the world. I suppose some would argue that you could program curiosity, but I think that is itself an emotion. Perhaps a more interesting question would be, if we could remove emotions, which emotions would humans be better off without?

Lust - Required (or at least helpful) for procreation.
Anger - Acts as a motivator.
Fear - Creates a sense of self-preservation.
Greed - Possibly creates a desire to collect resources… but maybe best done away with.
Envy - Motivator to advance… but maybe could do without.
Pride - Motivator to acomplish.
Joy - Pleasant state of being we strive to be in.
Sadness - State of being to avoid. If there was no saddness, could you be happy?
Trust - Allows cooperation
Disgust - Negative renforcement of how not to act in order to be a part of a group.
Surprise - ? If there was no surprise, there is no pleasure/fear anticipation.
Anticipation - Our ability to imagine a existance that does not yet exist.

I remember a movie called Equilibrium with Christian Bale. I think if i remember correctly everyone had to take a drug daily to combat emotions. Some people wouldn’t take their meds and would be sentenced to immediate death if they indulged on senses, such as smell and other things. Good movie by the way.

For the most part, beings in sci-fi shows who are supposed to be emotionless actually do show signs of emotions.

Data did several things that showed that he had emotions, even if they were very mild. Like shooting at the guy who kidnapped him, and then lying about it being a transporter malfunction. Hell, his desire to be human could only exist due to emotions.
Although the Borg generally show no emotion, the Borg queen :rolleyes: seems to have emotion.
In Doctor Who the Daleks show emotion from time to time, and in the original run ('63-'89) the Cybermen would sometimes show emotion.

So from what I’ve seen, there has been virtually no beings represented that are truly emotionless.

So anyway, getting back to the question, I was thinking that programming in things like self preservation, curiosity, procreation, importance of routine (I.E. get up, get dressed, go to work, etc.), and maybe two or three more minor things could keep the human race in relatively good shape. But from what you guys are saying, it’s not that simple.

I’m kind of surprised about kimera’s post saying that simple things like prioritizing may not be possible without emotion. There are logical solutions, but if you have more than one logical solution, then I guess emotion would help you make a tie breaker.

:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

You can take my emoticons, but you can never take… MY FREEDOOOMMMM!

It would not be logical to let yourself die from dehydration (or hunger). OTOH you could stick to your diet. I wonder how hard it would be to quit smoking or drinking.

Love is an emotion, but lust…? We would still have sexual desires, just no shame or fear.

I wonder if we would develop a way to kill ourselves if we were past childbearing age and felt we weren’t contributing anything to society.

Yeah, Vulcans repressing their emotions is, like, the biggest show of emotions there is. Emotions are SO TERRIFYING that from now on we will suppress everything from mild annoyance to murderous rage, because obviously there is no other way to solve our problems. When I was a kid and saw “Amok Time” I wondered why Spock’s Vulcan bride was a cute young thing with elaborate jewelry and a babydoll dress.

Along with the other things mentioned already, you’d need some kind a “frustration simulator”. The previously mentioned emotionless people tend to get caught in loops where they dither between options; a normal person just says “oh well, I’ll just do X”, while the emotionless just go round and round weighing options endlessly.

I’ve read that; an interesting book.

Yes it would be; without a survival drive or something equally non-logical like hunger and thirst you wouldn’t bother eating & drinking. And you wouldn’t have any logical reason to try to stay alive without some goal that required your survival, and all such goals are not based in logic.

Without emotions, no cognition. You can’t draw any conclusions inductively (which is 99.99999999% of all conclusions you ever draw in real life) without reliance upon emotional processes.

Pattern recognition is an intuitive, rather than a linear procedural exercise. As with an artist creating art, the person recognizing patterns relies upon emotional cognitions.

And YES, emotions are cognitive functions. I’ll even go extreme here: you can’t THINK without emotions. All you can do is mechanically draw conclusions based on prior formulaic programming plus input data. That isn’t thinking.