ABSTRACT
Emotion refers to chemical and neural patterns, triggered automatically by innate brain mechanisms, without the intervention of consciousness. 'Feeling,' on the other hand, is the 'private, mental experience of an emotion'. Feeling is the construct that brings emotion to the mind; when feelings arise, we tell ourselves: 'I am afraid' or 'I am excited.' A competing, albeit minority, view on the nature of emotion minimises the role played by consciousness and emphasises instead the operation of those strata of the brain which lie deep below the 'thinking cap' of the neo-cortex. Emotion is seen as a primary, sub-cortical response which – if it needs to be generated at will, as in acting – is best engendered by physical means that echo biological triggers for fear, anger, lust and so forth, encountered 'in the wild.' The brain integrates 'vertically' and uses all its resources to generate cognitive/emotional responses.
