Ph.D. Prof. Gross defines emotion and emotion generation. It is the one thing, above all, that makes our species unique. If we didn't, and if we only ruled ourselves rationally, we would be acting as high-tech robots, rather than human beings. While intelligence makes things logical, emotion make them meaningful.
Emotions are a complex and unknown field.
While most of us have an idea of what emotions are and can identify several examples of them, we are more able to study the effects of emotion than what the emotion actually is. How psychologists interpret this has varied over human history. This position is a functionalist one, since it gives emotions a use, rather than approaching them as useless, uncontrollable forces that are always fighting against rational thinking. The latter was the position of Plato, who influenced the thinking of several philosophers, such as Descartes, Locke, Hume and James. According to Plato, the mind constantly bears the fight between reason and emotion, and the goal of civilization should be the absolute subordination of emotion under reason.