What is a feeling, except for an observation? “I feel warm” means that my heat sensors are saying “warm” which indicates that my body has a higher temperature than normal. Internal feelings (“I feel angry”) are simply observations about oneself, which are tied to a self-model. (You need a model to direct and make sense of your observations, and your observations then go on to change or reinforce your model. Your idea-of-your-current-internal-state is your emotional self-model.)
Maybe you can split this phenomenon into two parts and consider each on their own, but as I see it, observation and cognition are fundamentally connected. To treat the observation as independent of cognition is too much reductionism. (Or at least too much of a wrong form of reductionism.)
What is a feeling, except for an observation? “I feel warm” means that my heat sensors are saying “warm” which indicates that my body has a higher temperature than normal. Internal feelings (“I feel angry”) are simply observations about oneself, which are tied to a self-model. (You need a model to direct and make sense of your observations, and your observations then go on to change or reinforce your model. Your idea-of-your-current-internal-state is your emotional self-model.)
Maybe you can split this phenomenon into two parts and consider each on their own, but as I see it, observation and cognition are fundamentally connected. To treat the observation as independent of cognition is too much reductionism. (Or at least too much of a wrong form of reductionism.)