Can society still exist if no one had emotions?

Can society still exist if no one had emotions?

Emotion as in expressed emotion, or expressed emotion plus a total lack of empathy? Because you can still empathize with someone without expressing emotion or seeing them express emotion. If we still have empathy when we watch people die or get raped and have to deal with objectively bad consequences, we could still have society.
With total lack of empathy, we wouldn't have society.

A society of sociopaths would still be a society, although it would seem fairly alien to us. If you consider the notion that nation states behave like sociopaths, you can get some idea of how an empathy-less society could function along the bases of "balance of powers" and "mutual benefit".

no that stuff doesn't work on the fundamental level of a society. all animal societies work on cooperation. wolves fight for and enforce power but they still have empathy.

Emotion wise, i suppose schools of fish don't have emotion, just common reflexes. Now at a certain point of intelligence those accumulated common reflexes cannot help but be perceived as an emotion, and beyond that no society cannot exist without emotion.

Psychopaths are perfectly capable of organizing, look at for example criminal gangs, especially prison gangs. It's safe to say none of us would like living in a society of psychopaths, but it would probably be stable enough.

Emotionless people would certainly organize, since with nothing to go by but reason they will settle on a kind of primitive communism and pacifism by default. They'd probably have quite a good society, in terms of its functioning, but they'd be unlikely to ever advance beyond the hunter-gatherer stage.

>for example criminal gangs
Over time, even these groups care very deeply for each other. In this one documentary about an FBI agent who had infiltrated the hells angels, the guys had all hugged him and said 'we're sorry about your mamma' when his mom passed.

Each member has moral blindness in some areas, but its no different than us not giving a shit about killing a squirrel that is eating our tomatoes. There are 1 or two un-empathy-able in the organization using it for their net gain as they try to become the ring leader, but never could a whole group of non-selfishness incapable people form. By default, members of such a group would have nothing to offer each other because they only keep and there would be nothing to offer as incentive for joining the group. I don't know how lobatomy patients correspond to these ring-leaders in context of the thread's prompt.

Psychopaths DO have something in common: they're all self-interested. This means they're capable of cooperation, even long-term cooperation.

Criminal gangs typically don't consist of pure psychopaths though. It's usually the antisocial ones leading and taking advantage of minions who are poor and desperate, that slowly get trained to become desensitized and follow orders. Thats why they have initiations instead of just giving people the gang uniform as soon as they show up.

My point is that yes, everyone is self interested, but psychos/ sociopaths even more so, to the point where they cannot justify holding off taking a benefit for future reward. They can sit idol and wait for the next benefit, but if any situation is a mild loss for them they will sense it and position themselves to win. There need to be some members in each group who give (even if against their will).

Brain science suggests that it probably wouldn't because you can't make decisions without emotions.

If no one had emotion no one would want anything and no one would do anything

Every person would have to think cold and logically on everything, so any reason not to just stop eating and stop moving has to go through a vigorous axiomatic process of the net gain involved in staying alive.

I'm guessing the parts of the brain associated with social activity and emotion are replaced by just more thinking and processing areas, so they might have a higher degree of intelligence. If they do anything with it.

No, it wouldn't. Empathy is the foundation of modern society. Without it wouldn't be capable of organizing into larger, sustainable structures.

Sociopaths have both a lack of empathy and egomania, so I don't think it's correct to think a society without emotions would be the same as a society of sociopaths.

Do you think Walmart is held together by love?

You don't seem to get how far reaching our ability for empathy is. If you literally do not care about anyone else and not even really that much for yourself, then you usually won't make sustainable decisions. Most of our advances as a society, even technologically, is driven emotionally. Whether it is to impress other people, make other people proud, to help other people, for the nation etc. You can pretend to be some edgy "rational" fedora all you want, but ultimately you do care what other people do and so do by far most people and it is determining most of your actions. You may not like it, but it's true.

Not defending what he said about empathy, but love and empathy are not the only emotions. Greed is an emotional response, not a rational one like economists have tried to convince us for so long. Reason is a slave to the passions.

Yes. A love for money and a love by corporate members to see their coworkers and their families in positions of success, which largely outweighs their love for the customer and competitor. But even then, they don't go full sociopath and let the others die, they just value their own growth primarily.

Just because the love isn't on the largest scale it could be doesn't mean it's not there.

If you want a quick answer to this

Absolutely not

Societies need purpose in order to function and that purpose is inherently intertwined within nature.. you need reward which in and of itself is a complex emotional desire with many different components

>like economists have tried to convince us for so long

this is the 3rd or 4th call to this that i've seen in the sci/boardg today. Glad there is a counter movement growing because people have been repeating this bullshit for too long. A child does not have to be forced to share (maybe taught which technique to hone in on) because when they have food they usually offer you some even if they have very little.

If everyone's emotions magically disappeared then yeah probably, I don't see why not.

But I doubt a species could become advanced enough to develop civilization without emotion. Keep in mind, nature gave us emotions because they benefit our survival. Emotions are very logical in the context of survival.

no joke, crazy frog made me realize i was gay. i rewatched all of the crazy frog videos again and again pausing whenever there was a good shot of his floppy donger. i noticed i was getting hard during one viewing, so i starting jerking off to the frog monsters little weeny. probably the best orgasm of my life, and i've been chasing that feeling ever since.

Moderarators please

do african tribes count

ask ants and bees

>Whether it is to impress other people, make other people proud, to help other people, for the nation etc.

I don't know man. A lot of the extremely productive people I've met are doing the autism thing of being passionately focused on something for its own sake; not as a goal to impress other people. Archimedes was so obsessed with his math he didn't try to save himself or anybody else when Romans invaded; just kept working until he was stabbed.