> Emotional states can very obviously cause physical changes - it’s why people blush for just one example. Or why people get sick to their stomach when they’re

> Emotional states can very obviously cause physical changes - it’s why people blush for just one example. Or why people get sick to their stomach when they’re in anxious. It might seem obvious, but it's not obvious that the causation doesn't go the other way instead - the physical changes cause the emotional states. This is the James-Lange theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James%E2%80%93Lange_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James%E2%80%93Lange_theory "while most would think the order of emotional experience would be that a person sees a bear, becomes afraid, and runs away, James thought that first the person has a physiological response to the bear, such as trembling, and then becomes afraid and runs. According to James, the physiological response comes first, and it is perceived as an emotion and followed by a reaction." If we fancy some strong emotion, and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its characteristic bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no "mind-stuff" out of which the emotion can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception is all that remains. ...What kind of an emotion of fear would be left, if the feelings neither of quickened heart-beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of goose-flesh nor of visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite impossible to think. Can one fancy the state of rage and picture no ebullition of it in the chest, no flushing of the face, no dilatation of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm breathing, and a placid face? The present writer, for one, certainly cannot. The rage is as completely evaporated as the sensation of its so-called manifestations. - William James, What is an Emotion?, 1884 https://emotion.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1353/2020/11/James_1884_What_is_an_Emotion.pdf https://emotion.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1353/2020/...