Do we really have choice?

[ElvenKing]

You lack the neuroscience expertise to know that you are wrong, but let me assure you, the experience of pain is something which can be programmed into any turing-complete system (the brain included).

Aside from that: if the experience of pain is a nonphysical thing, then what causes it? It supposes humans to be somehow greater than the sum of its parts, for it can create something (the experience) out of nothing.

It isn't a question of neuroscience. It is one of epistemology and ontology.

How do you know that? What proof would you have that it actually causes pain? You could know that you programmed it to cause pain, but how would you know it actually did? Your experience is not that of the programmed turing-complete system which you made. You could not actually verify that there was a feeling of pain produced at all. If you are going to argue that it produced a feeling of pain, you have to assume that you the turing-complete system you programmed simply produces pain.

It simply exists in itself. Or, if we are taking that a process in the physical world caused the feeling, it is simply the case that the given process causes the feeling.

I think what he's saying though is that you could program a system to simulate the pain response, but they're wouldn't some sentience actually feeling pain.

He kinda has a point in that if you observe the phsyical process of pain, in that you see the pain receptors sending messages to the brain etc. Nowhere is the actual feeling of pain observed.

For example if an alien who didn't understand what pain was watched the process, he would see the pain receptors sending messages to the brain, but at no point would he infer that there is conciousness experiencing an unpleasant sensation, that aspect isn't accessible via simply watching the physical process.

I think that's what he's trying to say. It's certainly not a question of neuroscience. It would be a question of neuroscience if he was actually contesting the nature of the physical process involved, but that isn't what he's doing.

Your first paragraph is slightly wrong. The point is not that there couldn't be a feeling of pain produced from such programming, but rather one cannot empirically verify the presence of the feeling of pain itself. If one is to program to make the feeling of pain, then they must assume that their programming with produce a feeling of pain, and, in doing so, they take that it is simply true that a feeling of pain will result from their programming(they haven't given any further information on how their programming will cause pain other than it is just what it does).

Otherwise, you are correct.

 

[GofG]

If you could program a system to simulate the pain response, but without a sentience to feel the pain, how did the brain get programmed with a sentience to feel the pain?

The fact that the brain has accomplished this proves its possible.

Ah... And if we assume that the actual experience of the pain cannot be programmed insofar as the reaction and other aspects of it can be, that is dualism.

 

[Vermanubis]

If you could program a system to simulate the pain response, but without a sentience to feel the pain, how did the brain get programmed with a sentience to feel the pain?

The fact that the brain has accomplished this proves its possible.

Ah... And if we assume that the actual experience of the pain cannot be programmed insofar as the reaction and other aspects of it can be, that is dualism.

I'm just stepping in here to say that I've noticed you MO is that everything is inexorably physical or reducible to neuroscientific explanation, and that you reason circularly from there. Since physicalism is not definitively proven, and to my knowledge, no such axiom has been agreed upon, predicating something's truth on how it reflects physicalism is fallacious.

 

[ElvenKing]

If you could program a system to simulate the pain response, but without a sentience to feel the pain, how did the brain get programmed with a sentience to feel the pain?

The fact that the brain has accomplished this proves its possible.

Ah... And if we assume that the actual experience of the pain cannot be programmed insofar as the reaction and other aspects of it can be, that is dualism.

Such a notion is absurd. Pain is feeling. If there is pain there is by definition awareness of that pain. The challenge was you verifying that you had programmed pain as you intended(i.e. you are not simply thinking you have programmed pain when you actually haven't. That your programming actually produces a feeling of pain as you consider it to).

No, it doesn't. Indeed, that it does falls to the same sword that the programming does. To make the conclusion that pain comes from the brain first requires the assumption that the pain you feel corresponds to particular observations of the empirical world. Most certainly it doesn't make sense to say otherwise and whole sections of life become meaningless if we do, but it is still the case that an ultimate, complete is proof is lacking: at some point you have taken an axiom about how the feeling of pain relates to the empirically observable world.

I never said such a thing. I have, in fact, outlined that such a world is meaningless to how we experience(free will can't even be under such a circumstance, for will could not cause the physical body to move unless feelings and empirically observable were connected). I even directly addressed this in my response to Dre: the point is not that such programming is impossible, it is about the capacity of us to verify that and what this logically means for the nature of the empirical observable and our feelings.

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

Anger can be very precisely defined in physical terms. A low level of dopamine causes irritability. A low level of serotonin causes a distinct resiliency to change. When these conditions present themselves during an adrenaline spike, the result is what humans have labeled 'anger'. But 'anger' is just a placeholder word which refers to these chemical processes. As such, you cannot touch 'anger' because it does not exist, not because it exists extraphysically. There is nothing extraphysical (read: supernatural) going on here. We say 'angry' because it's easier than saying 'having low dopamine, low serotonin, and high adrenaline'. I fail to see how our inability to touch anger means that the brain (and therefore all thought and cognition) is not an entirely physical (and therefore determined) process.

If you believe that physics does not entirely control what we think, then explain how we make a choice at the synapse level. You will be unable to do this because it is inherently impossible.

Could you cite the related stud(ies) for me documenting this?

 

[Dre89]

I'm just stepping in here to say that I've noticed you MO is that everything is inexorably physical or reducible to neuroscientific explanation, and that you reason circularly from there. Since physicalism is not definitively proven, and to my knowledge, no such axiom has been agreed upon, predicating something's truth on how it reflects physicalism is fallacious.

Took the words from my mouth, or fingers.....

Basically saying 'the fact the brain exists is proof of it' is assuming that the brain is entirely physical without any non-physical component, which is assuming the conclusion in the argument for the conclusion.

Aleggory- It's well known that anger is caused by serotonin and dopamine levels during adrenaline spikes. There's no denying that our emotions are explained by physical processes.

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

I'd like to note that my knowledge of neuroscience is minimal. However I do believe very few people can boast about having a detailed knowledge of the field, given the field itself is still under much progress and revision since the idea of neurotransmitters in the central nervous system didn't become a popular idea until the late 1960s.

If I'm not mistaken, there are no standardized levels for a given number of neurotransmitters in the brain. For instance, the amount of neurotransmitters in the central nervous system of different humans is not at a regular or fixed constant. Therefore stating that someone suffers from a low amount of serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine or what have you remains relative.

Taking this a step further, it seems like neuroscience in many case studies seems to speculative post-facto. For instance, patients with depression as a symptom are consequently tested and are discovered to have low serotonin levels. Therefore a conclusion can be raised that depression and low serotonin are linked. However, this conclusion is not entirely sound. Even if depressed patients have a tendency to have a low serotonin count this does not necessitate that individuals with low serotonin must have depression.

Arguing that actions can be slated down to the central nervous system alone is also a huge stretch, even if you are speaking on the behalf of neuroscience. I'm sure you are more than aware of other systems that play a part in the brain's daily activities such as the endocrine system and even the digestive system when it comes to metabolizing compounds such as glucose that can have a significant impact on having an emotional response such as anger.

 

[Dre89]

But it doesn't matter what the specific process is, all that matters is that physical processes are responsible for emotions such as anger. That's all that is relevant for the free will debate. It's just then a matter of determining whether this removes the necessity of a non-physical component or not.

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

Defining all physical processes is of importance when weighing how much bearing it plays in decision making. Especially when it comes down to someone arguing that it has complete influence over what decisions are made. In the cases of certain decisions such as fight or flight response, one would probably be able to make a more convincing argument for physical determinism than say the aesthetic decision of choosing which shirt to wear on a hot sunny day.

 

[#HBC | Acrostic]

But yeah, if you want to generalize you need a brain in order to make decisions or feel emotions. So you don't have a choice in making any decision, much less have any hope for living without having an intact brain. Therefore "physics physiology" must be the end all and be all.

 

[GwJ]

Just out of curiosity, do we have any evidence that there are non-physical aspects of the brain that cannot be measured? And by that, I don't mean "You can't measure happiness" or "We don't know how to measure X yet" I mean specific functions of the brain that cannot be physically measured.

 

[ElvenKing]

Just out of curiosity, do we have any evidence that there are non-physical aspects of the brain that cannot be measured? And by that, I don't mean "You can't measure happiness" or "We don't know how to measure X yet" I mean specific functions of the brain that cannot be physically measured.

An incoherent question. Since the brain is an object of the empirically observable world, any function of it, for which there is evidence, will by definition be measured(that is what the evidence is).

 

[GwJ]

I realize it's an incoherent question. Some people suggest there's non-physical aspects to our brain and they assert that without being able to back it up.

 

[GofG]

Could you cite the related stud(ies) for me documenting this?

WIREs Cogn Sci 2012, 3:65–74. doi: 10.1002/wcs.154

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcs.154/pdf

(did not learn from this paper but found relevant details in it. i am looking at a diagram in my copy of the M. F. Bear Neuroscience textbook which pretty much depicts anger as being low dopamine, low serotonin, high adrenaline.)

 

[Orboknown]

Sigh... you have done precisely what I predicted. That doesn't answer the question at all.

It is not a question of the brain(the brain, being an empirical object, is not the focus of the question). It is a question of the feelings that we associated with observations of the brain. We don't observe, for example, the feeling of pain in a direct empirical sense. Sure we can observe when certain areas of the brain light up, when there is a feeling of pain present, and that there a certain chemical present when this occurs, but pain itself is never observed. To draw the conclusion of the origin of pain from we must simply assume that all the observations we see relate to the presence of the pain(there is nothing wrong with this, but it does mean that the feeling of pain itself is not observed as an empirical object) rather than the pain being of some other origin and simply occurring concurrently with our observations of the empirical world in this instance.

The thing is, the body does feel a sensation. The brain interprets the feelings received from said neural impulse and registers it as the feeling of pain. you still do feel a sensation, it is just a matter of what you interpret that sensation as.

Furthermore, even if all those observations are accurate, one can still ask why that system produces that feeling. For example, why does the system produce a feeling of pain rather than any other feeling or no feeling at all? And the only answer that can be given is: "It simply does. That is they way things are."

and that is the question I don't know the answer too.

EDIT- then i realized there was a second page that i haven't read and it probably answered this already.

 

[Dre89]

Gw- Saying they don't back it up is a stretch. It's not as if they don't make any arguments for it at all.

 

[GwJ]

Yeah, I cringed a bit after using that language when I posted that. I meant to say something like reliable evidence that suggests with some sense of confidence to be true.

 

[ElvenKing]

The thing is, the body does feel a sensation. The brain interprets the feelings received from said neural impulse and registers it as the feeling of pain. you still do feel a sensation, it is just a matter of what you interpret that sensation as.


and that is the question I don't know the answer too.

EDIT- then i realized there was a second page that i haven't read and it probably answered this already.

No, it doesn't. No where, in that situation, does the body, that is to say the object we observe, actually FEEL anything at all(well, you could argue that the hand has its own consciousness I suppose, but that is not what your argument is). When a hand hits the table, we do not observe it feeling pain at all. All we see is a hand striking a table. That feeling is a present is a conclusion we make by associating our own experience of when our hand hits something with that a feeling of pain was apparent when it occurred. One can, of course, make the argument that this sensation is a product of the systems of the body, but the sensation isn't part of the observed object of the body. It is a part of conscious experience. A feeling that is simply apparent.

There isn't any extra explanation possible. Whatever explanation you give, there will always be a wall when you cannot explain it any further and have say: "this is simply what is so." You can keep refining your explanations as much as you want, but whatever you do, one can always ask: "Why is that X explanation is accurate rather than anything else?" and the only answer that will make your position coherent, the only justification of why it must the way you say, is to explain: "That is simply how things are."

 

[GofG]

Why do you think there is no way of verifying that you have correctly programmed pain? I can think of at least two ways immediately.

Create an ai, do not give it access to human information or to its own source code. ask it to do something which you programmed to make it feel pain (and specifically not a reaction to pain), ask it how it feels. if it independently deduces pain, the bayesian slider moves a little towards the experience of pain being a physical phenomenon.



If the experience of pain is not a physical thing, what is it?

 

[Dre89]

I don't get your argument, are you trying to work out whether it can feel pain or not? If you are, you can't say 'ask it do something which you programmed to make it feel pain' because that's already assuming it has the ability to feel pain. That's circular reasoning again.

You could obviously program a robot to have electronic pain receptors which alert the brain to take aversive action, but pain in the sense that Elvenking is talking about is conciousness experiencing the sensation of pain, so you're already assuming robots can have conciousnesses too.

 

[GofG]

we already argued at great length as to whether or not robots can have consciousness. i am of the opinion that they can, as you know, Dre. If a human can exist in the physical world with consciousness, then anything with a similarly complex computational algorithm can have consciousness, regardless of whether it was designed by evolution or by intelligence.

 

[Dre89]

Again you're assuming physicalism as part of your conclusion, which is itself physicalism.

The inference that robots can have conciousness from the fact that humans have it is assuming the human conscience has no non physical aspect. That's circular reasoning.

Similarily, your experiment doesn't prove robots are capable of pain and conciousness, it needs to assume they're possible for the experiment to work.

It's like a Christian saying 'well God exists, therefore evil and God must be compatible' when the existence of evils questions the possibility of God existing in the first place.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

How are there five whole pages of a topic that has already been made.

How.

 

[GofG]

Again you're assuming physicalism as part of your conclusion, which is itself physicalism.

The inference that robots can have conciousness from the fact that humans have it is assuming the human conscience has no non physical aspect. That's circular reasoning.

Similarily, your experiment doesn't prove robots are capable of pain and conciousness, it needs to assume they're possible for the experiment to work.

It's like a Christian saying 'well God exists, therefore evil and God must be compatible' when the existence of evils questions the possibility of God existing in the first place.

(if i may politely correct your spelling of 'consciousness', your repeated misspelling of it has attributed to the total level of frustration i feel when replying to your comments and has probably had a non-zero negative effect on our conversations)

I am not interested in arguing with people who reject physicalism. Dualism is, by definition, not scientifically testable. The only things which can have an effect on the physical reality must necessarily be a part of that physical reality. If there is a soul which observes a series of chemical reactions in your brain, decides by some mechanism that it does not like the choice you are about to make, and changes the path of some potassium ions in your synapses so that you make a different choice instead, that is a physical process and we could perform scientific experiments which then verify the existence of the soul. We could learn about how the soul operates, what sort of effect the soul can have, eventually learn about the inner mechanisms and form of the soul, which makes the soul part of the physical reality and therefore physicalism is true.

If the soul, on the other hand, has no effect on the brain, then i have no interest in arguing about its existence since it doesn't matter anyway.

If the experience of pain is a necessary part of the pain process such that without actually experiencing pain, a human would behave differently, then the experiencing of the pain must take place in the brain or in the physical soul, and therefore it is a physical process. It could therefore be mapped onto any physical medium (neurons+soul, computer+soul, stardust+soul, or any of those three without a soul, or any****ingthing ever.)

This is the unpriviledged substrate theory, that is, that there isn't anything special about neurons which allow it to carry consciousness; any physical system capable of performing similar calculations as neurons is capable of 'experiencing pain'. Of course, perhaps the priviledged substrate is soul-material. Soul-material might be special in some way which gives it the properties of being able to experience sensations in a way somehow that the brain cannot. If so, this soul-material is definitely a physical thing which we can learn about, and if evolution was somehow able to tie together soul-material to neurons, then intelligent agents like humans will be able to tie together soul-material to electronic transistors.

 

[Dre89]

I never said pain wasn't a physical process or that there's a soul. I simply said there's a non physical component.

If a person who didn't know what pain was observed the physical process of the pain receptors sending signals etc. they wouldn't observe an unpeasant sensation. They wouldn't know that occurs because that isn't evident from simply observing the physical process.

In fact the only reason why we believe the sensation accompanies the process is because we experience it ourselves, not because we observed it.

Free will doesn't necessarily mean the existence of a soul or the rejection of neuroscience as you seem to think it does.

 

[GofG]

The experience of pain is a physical process. Saying that you can't tell if a being is experiencing pain by looking at the being's brain is like saying you can't tell that a computer is running world of warcraft from looking at the computer's CPU and RAM: you actually can determine it, its just really hard to do.

 

[ElvenKing]

The experience of pain is a physical process. Saying that you can't tell if a being is experiencing pain by looking at the being's brain is like saying you can't tell that a computer is running world of warcraft from looking at the computer's CPU and RAM: you actually can determine it, its just really hard to do.

No, they are fundamentally different. You see a computer working in the empirical observation. You see that it is behaving how it is supposed to, how it was programmed to.

This is not the case with our feelings. You do not ever observe the actual experience of feeling. You have to make assumptions that the observations of the empirical world relate to what causes a change in feelings. Certainly, it makes sense that , given that those feelings only appear, at least as far as we know, when certain events which are empirically observed, to conclude that the presence of feeling is related to the empirical world, but it is not the degree of direct support there is for the working of a computer. Feelings are never empirically visible in themselves.

 

[GwJ]

Does anybody feel any part of the mind is non physical in the sense that a specific "thing" cannot be physically detected or measured?

 

[GofG]

i.e. dualism?

 

[GofG]

No, they are fundamentally different. You see a computer working in the empirical observation. You see that it is behaving how it is supposed to, how it was programmed to.

This is not the case with our feelings. You do not ever observe the actual experience of feeling. You have to make assumptions that the observations of the empirical world relate to what causes a change in feelings. Certainly, it makes sense that , given that those feelings only appear, at least as far as we know, when certain events which are empirically observed, to conclude that the presence of feeling is related to the empirical world, but it is not the degree of direct support there is for the working of a computer. Feelings are never empirically visible in themselves.

You say this as if it's true. To your grandmother, 'world of warcraft' is never empirically visible in the computer's CPU registries and RAM. But to a technically proficient computer scientist, it is.

To you, 'anger' is never empirically visible in your brain's neural network. But to a technically proficient neuroscientist, it is.

Do you have any specific reasons for believing that emotion is abstract? Why do you believe what you believe?

 

[ElvenKing]

You say this as if it's true. To your grandmother, 'world of warcraft' is never empirically visible in the computer's CPU registries and RAM. But to a technically proficient computer scientist, it is.

To you, 'anger' is never empirically visible in your brain's neural network. But to a technically proficient neuroscientist, it is.

Do you have any specific reasons for believing that emotion is abstract? Why do you believe what you believe?

Correct.


No, it isn't. Anger is never seen itself. This is the difference. With the computer, when it is working, it is empirically visible in itself(we see the computer working). This is not the case with anger. When anger is "observed" in the brain, there is an association made that the elements of the brain that are observed must relate to the feelings of a person, rather than the presence anger being observed within itself(as a computer working is). The neuroscientist has not actually ever directly seen anger itself, even when viewing a brains's neural network. Does this make what they see irreverent? No. Once the assumption that feelings felt relate to the brain is taken, then it becomes evidence for the origin of feelings(as we see that certain feelings are present when certain processes are occurring in the brain). However, this does not change that the feelings themselves have not been directly observed.

Oh, I didn't say that they were of abstract origin. Indeed, I think that our feelings are created by the physical processes of our bodies. The point here is the nature of how things are apparent to us and recognising this correctly; that not everything can be seen empirically. Why is this so? By the nature of seeing empirically: that there has to be an object of evidence for what we are referring to. This is never the case for feelings. We never actually see them in the manner.

 

[GwJ]

ElvenKing, what you're saying contradicts what my Psychology professor just told me last week in regards to not being able to see anger. I forget which specific parts it was, but he said that when certain parts of the brain (it was 3 specific areas he noted) were actively producing horomones, that produces the behavior we call anger.

Obviously I can't back up what I just said, but all I'm saying is what you're saying is contradicting what professionals say.

 

[ElvenKing]

ElvenKing, what you're saying contradicts what my Psychology professor just told me last week in regards to not being able to see anger. I forget which specific parts it was, but he said that when certain parts of the brain (it was 3 specific areas he noted) were actively producing horomones, that produces the behavior we call anger.

Obviously I can't back up what I just said, but all I'm saying is what you're saying is contradicting what professionals say.

No, it doesn't.

I said that anger is not directly observed in itself. That the actually feeling of anger does not have an empirical presence that we see, not that anger could not result from the brain and that those such process could not be empirically seen.

 

[GofG]

You are proposing, then, that there is something extraphysical about 'feeling' an emotion. This is dualism.

I would ask you, if emotions are something that cannot in any way be observed directly, where do they exist? What are they?

I say that there is nothing other than the chemical reactions going on. Anger is a spike of adrenaline in a state of low dopamine low serotonin, rather than simply being caused by a spike of adrenaline in a state of low dopamine low serotonin. If anger is not that, then what is it? Where is it? How does it work?

edit:

I have given more thought to your proposition, and I believe it is analogous to the Zombie argument. From wikipedia:

A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.[1] When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain though it behaves exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say "ouch" and recoil from the stimulus, or tell us that it is in intense pain).

Just as there is no way to empirically verify if an agent is conscious, as it might simply be programmed with a table of possible responses to possible stimuli which exactly replicates what a human's (supposedly conscious) behavior-deciding algorithm would do, you say there is no way to empirically verify if an agent actually experiences emotion rather than simply responding to stimuli exactly as if it experienced emotion.

Do you concur that there are similarities between these two arguments?

 

[ElvenKing]

You are proposing, then, that there is something extraphysical about 'feeling' an emotion. This is dualism.

I would ask you, if emotions are something that cannot in any way be observed directly, where do they exist? What are they?

I say that there is nothing other than the chemical reactions going on. Anger is a spike of adrenaline in a state of low dopamine low serotonin, rather than simply being caused by a spike of adrenaline in a state of low dopamine low serotonin. If anger is not that, then what is it? Where is it? How does it work?

edit:

I have given more thought to your proposition, and I believe it is analogous to the Zombie argument. From wikipedia:



Just as there is no way to empirically verify if an agent is conscious, as it might simply be programmed with a table of possible responses to possible stimuli which exactly replicates what a human's (supposedly conscious) behavior-deciding algorithm would do, you say there is no way to empirically verify if an agent actually experiences emotion rather than simply responding to stimuli exactly as if it experienced emotion.

Do you concur that there are similarities between these two arguments?

Not necessarily, at least in the manner you are thinking; it is quite possible that feelings do indeed result from nothing but chemical reactions. Indeed, I agree with such a position. My point is to do with how feelings appear to us. That they are felt rather than seen as any empirical object.

They exist as feeling, which is simply apparent to us. When you feel happy, you don't see what makes you feel happy, you just are. Of course, you can then look at the brain, and through assuming that state of feeling relate to what is going on in the brain, posit a suggestion of where happiness springs from, which might be be completely accurate, but you will still never of seen feeling itself. Your conclusion is reached by associating the presence of a particular feeling to the presence of a certain function in the brain, not by actually seeing the feeling as an empirical object.

This might seem a pointless objection to you. If feelings to spring from the physical world, then what is the point in considering them anything other? The point is to accurately identify how we know something and what its nature is. This point about feelings becomes incredibly important in some arguments, such as those about math or ethics.


There are similarities: the zombie argument is using the point I am referring to, that conscious experience is not observed directly as an empirical object, to cast doubt on whether we known, and by extension, whether there actually is, consciousness to the empirical objects that we associate it with. However, there is also a vast difference between my argument and the zombie one: I am not doubting the existence of consciousness or the connection between consciousness and empirical objects.

 

[GwJ]

Question. Do you disagree with the notion that 'feeling' is empirical?

 

[Dre89]

The chemical process of anger and the experience of the sensation of anger aren't the same thing because they don't have identical properties. For example the process can be visually observed, but you can't visually observe the sensation in the sense that observing the process in another body doesn't make you feel that person's anger yourself. You may both be able to observe the process in the body, but only one of you will experience the sensation.

They could also hypothetically be separated. For example with hypothetical technology you could imagine stimulating the process in a dead body, but the dead person does not experience anger because they are dead.

They are obviously heavily related, and one leads to the other, but they are not identical.

 

[GwJ]

When we have a certain emotion, certain hormones are created and whatnot and these hormones directly cause our body to feel a certain way. Now that I think about it, I fail to see any kind of importance in finding, what makes us 'feel'. Feeling an emotion is just how our body's causal reaction to the hormones. This seems similar to asking something like: "We know what makes dogs move their legs, but what makes them walk?"

 

[ElvenKing]

When we have a certain emotion, certain hormones are created and whatnot and these hormones directly cause our body to feel a certain way. Now that I think about it, I fail to see any kind of importance in finding, what makes us 'feel'. Feeling an emotion is just how our body's causal reaction to the hormones. This seems similar to asking something like: "We know what makes dogs move their legs, but what makes them walk?"

Aside from actually accurately explaining what we see, as it is not true that feelings are seen as empirical objects, that there exist more than truth in empirical objects is highly important when you discuss math or ethics.

 

[Dre89]

When we have a certain emotion, certain hormones are created and whatnot and these hormones directly cause our body to feel a certain way. Now that I think about it, I fail to see any kind of importance in finding, what makes us 'feel'. Feeling an emotion is just how our body's causal reaction to the hormones. This seems similar to asking something like: "We know what makes dogs move their legs, but what makes them walk?"

The point is that one aspect of anger (the experience) is non physical because it is distinct from the physical process and is not itself physically observable. You don't need to invoke souls and the like when you speak of the non-physical.