Even if the chords are not presented in the context of a music piece, they are heard in the (more backgrounded) context of music one has heard. Our associations with those pieces of music prime us to hear major versus minor chords in particular ways.

There is also a physical reason for finding major chords to be more settled or stable than minor chords: the wavelengths of a major third match the overtones of the root of a chord more closely than do the wavelengths of a minor third . When we hear a C, for example, it is already producing secondary wavelengths that are those of an E (at a higher octave); the addition of a nearby E thus seems to fit in without added strain.

I worry that framing the question this way begs the question -- you seem to assume that any 'choice' comes from or out of 'desire', but isn't that precisely what's at issue? I think we'd need to get a lot clearer on what a 'desire' is before we could answer the question in a satisfactory way ... For example, you seem to consider 'desire' a kind of 'emotion', but philosophers of mind typically would distinguish the two in various ways -- perhaps desires share a kind of 'qualitative character' or 'qualia' with emotions, but desires are typically characterized by having an object or content, one often expressible in words, in a way emotions are typically characterized as 'raw feelings' that may or may not have a specific object or content -- Once you separate desires from emotions, you then need to define desire in such a way as to make it clear that every choice comes from some desire ..... (Charles mentions Spock -- consider this thought. Suppose you could program a computer to do all sorts of complex tasks, including navigating its environment successfully. Maybe it's a robot that's programmed to explore the surface of Mars and send back data. That robot seems to have to make all sorts of 'choices' -- as it navigates its terrain, taking samples of some things, not others -- but do you want to say it has any desires? If not, why must all human choices come from desire?)

AP

Are you studying under Spock from Star Trek? You are on to what sometimes is called the paradox of desire. If one seeks to be rid of desire, one seems to be in the paradoxical position of desiring to be without desires, which is as hopeless as deliberately trying to go to sleep. Still, like going to sleep, it seems we can indirectly achieve this through relaxing and, arguably, someone may endeavor to be rid of desire by going into a state of what the stoics called apotheos (from which we get the English term apathy) a process of shedding desire rather than a state of desiring to be rid of desire. Richard Sorabji has a terrific book on the Stoics' project of taming and then either eradicating or simply moderating desire. If one is working with a general understanding of desire which would include wants and appetites it seems very hard to imagine a complete eradication of desire (can one really give up on the desire to breathe?)

Generally, feeling that something is true is a reason to believe that it is true (since our feelings are frequently based on true observations and ideas), but it is not a sufficient reason (since our feelings may arises from wishes rather than observations, and since there are many observations and ideas that are not reflected in our feelings).

Insofar as you want to arrive at a warranted belief, rather than trying to analyze your feeling (which is extremely difficult to do honestly, and well), you should consider a wider range of feelings, and observations, and ideas in relation to each other. This is not something that can be done in a moment, and it cannot be done according to a rule; but it is the only way to be fully reasonable about your beliefs.

It is certainly possible for feelings to reveal profound truths -- even if their truth cannot be established or confirmed by feeling alone. A feeling of horror, for example, may reveal the deep immorality of certain treatments of animals -- treatments that have plausible intellectual justifications. Establishing the immorality of such treatments, though, will depend on collecting and articulating relevant observations and concerns, and comparing them to competing considerations.

Saying just what emotional suffering amounts to wouldn't be easy, but there may be no need. Even if we find it hard to spell out what it is, all of us know emotional suffering from the inside. Some emotional suffering may be internally generated -- endogenous, as it's sometimes put -- but whether or not we understand the mechanisms, it's clear that things in the outer world can cause emotional pain. When you think about it, this isn't really so strange. Our emotional states are deeply dependent on the states of our brains, and our brains, after all, are physical things, in interaction with other physical things. We simply accept this for perception: our perceptual experiences are caused by the interaction between things in the outer world and our perceptual systems, including (not least!) our brains.

The details of how all this works are best left to the scientific experts, but for example, if I see someone I care about being hurt, and if I can do nothing about it, feeling distressed would seem the most natural thing in the world. That's a garden-variety example of things in the outer world causing emotional suffering. It would be odd in a case like this to say that you are the cause of your own suffering.

All the same, it's plausible that sometimes we do have some control over our suffering. Most of us tend to tell ourselves stories about what's happening to us, and sometimes those stories are not really very plausible. We may, for example, tell ourselves that a friend who didn't say "Hello" must have stopped liking us. In fact, our friend may simply have been preoccupied. To some extent, we can learn to notice when we are over-interpreting and reacting out of bad cognitive habits. This sort of pausing -- stepping back -- can sometimes lower our level of distress. Cognitive behavioral therapy calls such unproductive reactions "automatic thoughts," and seems to be able to help people by helping them learn to recognize when they are reacting that way. Buddhist approaches to emotional suffering have something of the same flavor.

So in short -- the fact that outer events can cause emotional distress isn't really any more puzzling than the more general fact that the mental is intimately related to the physical. Sometimes some of our emotional distress arises from the ways we react to things, and we sometimes have some degree of control over those reactions. However, this hardly means that we can simply "cure" all our emotional pain by ourselves, and worrying about whether we are "responsible" for our suffering may well not be very productive.

Usually, when philosophers identify certain emotions as negative emotions, they are referring to emotions that include or result from a negative judgment -- such as the judgment that something is bad, or unjust, or harmful. Since there are many things that are bad, or unjust, or harmful, there is nothing wrong about making such judgments or having such emotions. Indeed, it would be worrisome if people never made negative judgments and never felt negative emotions.

It is widely assumed that a happy life is preferable to an unhappy life; certainly most people, given the choice, would choose a happy life over an unhappy life. But negative feelings can actually contribute to our overall happiness insofar as they are a sign of meaningful connections to one's surroundings (the cheery but deluded life is not as happy as a wise but sometimes sad life).

Happiness may not be as important as we think it is, though. A recent book by Barbara Ehrenreich, entitled Bright-Sided, makes several good points against the prevalent preoccupations with happiness.

A mathematician might find his feelings engaged by certain questions. Sir Andrew Wiles was passionate about Fermat's Last Theorem from the age of about ten, I believe. (Say, by contrast, that he took little interest in statistics. Perhaps statistics even disgusts him.) Does any of this "corrupt the purity of the logic" of his (rather long) answer to the question how to prove Fermat's Theorem? No, it just powered his interest in mathematics. Besides, why isn't it possible to be inspired and motivated by a thought or an ideal? The ten-year old Wiles had the thought, 'I will prove the Theorem', and this motivated him and engaged his feelings - and the grown-up Wiles did prove the Theorem. The purity of his logic was perhaps even assisted by his passion.

Hume's famous "motivation argument" does make the claim that reason -- at least on the traditional conception of this faculty, where its job is limited to making logical or causal inferences -- cannot motivate us to act. It would follow from this, as you rightly point out, that the panelists on this site must be motivated by passions when they choose which questions to answer. But it does not follow, however, that this must "corrupt the purity" of their answers. Let us distinguish between two roles that the emotions can have: (a) they can prompt us to answer a question, and (b) they can bias our answers. Hume does think that the emotions are capable of distorting our reasoning. Consider his famous claim about the development of our natural belief in gods and spirits. His argument is that our primitive ancestors would have arrived at this belief in order to satiate their fear and anxiety about their uncertain fates. This is a case of what philosophers refer to as "motivated irrationality". They came to believe in supernatural beings, not on the basis of arguments or evidence, but merely because they hoped that they could control the forces that determine their futures. But emotions need not, of course, always bias our beliefs in this way. Philosophers like to say that they are motivated by a passion for truth. But such a desire need not distort their reasoning. In any case, your post serves as a useful reminder that each of us ought to aspire to carry out our inquiries (and decide which questions to answer) during our calm, reflective moments.

In writing this answer I am motivated by the desire to help non-professional philosophers with their philosophical questions. That desire does not influence the answer that I give, it just motivates me to give some answer or another.

Or: in writing this answer I am motivated by the desire to point out that emotions should not be thought of as ipso facto "irrational" or "unreasonable." That desire is connected with the answer I give, but may or may not have influenced it.

Or: in writing this answer I am motivated by the desire to appear on this website. Again, that desire does not influence the answer that I give.

Or: in writing this answer I am motivated by the desire to attack the philosophy of David Hume. That desire is connected with the answer I give, but may or may not have influenced it.

I am not sure why you use quotation marks around the word "emotional". Certainly there are cases where one person is more emotional than another -- in a given situation, or in general -- so there is nothing suspect about the word. Perhaps you are marking the fact that "emotional" can be used as a term of disparagement, and you do not want to accept this usage. Or perhaps you are thinking of the difference between having emotions and showing emotions, realizing that those who show their emotions are often considered more emotional, whether or not this is true.

Your question, in any case, concerns a possible difference between the amount or intensity of emotions in the lives of (most) women lives versus the lives of (most) men. It is hard to design a study that would settle your question since it is not clear how best to measure the presence of an emotion (self-report? bodily changes? facial expression?) and because it is not easy to create situations that have the same significance for many different people (what is worrisome to one person may be merely curious to another, or what is amusing to one person may tedious to another). Nonetheless, I think there are several reasons to think that women do, in fact, tend to be more emotional than men:

1. All humans have a tendency to mirror the emotional states that they notice in others, and women (in response to both biological and social factors) tend to be more attentive to the mental states of others.

2. Emotion serves to sustain inclinations across periods of time in which it is not possible to act on that inclination, and most societies restrict the actions of women more than those of men.

3. Scientific and technological training (for surgery, for example) often requires people to disengage from their emotions, and women are less likely to undergo such training.

These reasons do not imply that being more emotional is a bad thing, or a good thing -- in general. For there are some situations in which greater attentiveness to the mental states of others is considerate or useful, and other situations in which such attentiveness is intrusive or distracting. There are some situations in which suspending or delaying action gives one the chance to act more effectively, and other situations in which it means that one loses the chance to act at all. And some sorts of scientific and technological training have been very beneficial to humans, while other sorts have been very harmful.