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Emotion feeling (a) derives from evolution and neurobiological development, (b) is the key psychological component of emotions and consciousness, and (c) is more often inherently adaptive than maladaptive. Emotions play a central role in the evolution of consciousness, influence the emergence of higher levels of awareness during ontogeny, and largely determine the contents and focus of consciousness throughout the life span. Emotions are motivational and informational, primarily by virtue of their experiential or feeling component. Emotion feelings constitute the primary motivational component of mental operations and overt behavior. Basic emotion feelings help organize and motivate rapid (and often more-or-less automatic though malleable) actions that are critical for adaptive responses to immediate challenges to survival or wellbeing. In emotion schemas, the neural systems and mental processes involved in emotion feelings, perception, and cognition interact continually and dynamically in generating and monitoring thought and action. These dynamic interactions (which range from momentary processes to traits or trait-like phenomena) can generate innumerable emotion-specific experiences (e.g., anger schemas) that have the same core feeling state but different perceptual tendencies (biases), thoughts, and action plans. Emotion utilization, typically dependent on effective emotion-cognition interactions, is adaptive thought or action that stems, in part, directly from the experience of emotion feeling/motivation and in part from learned cognitive, social, and behavioral skills. Emotion schemas become maladaptive and may lead to psychopathology when learning results in the development of connections among emotion feelings and maladaptive cognition and action. The emotion of interest is continually present in the normal mind under normal conditions, and it is the central motivation for engagement in creative and constructive endeavors and for the sense of well-being. Interest and its interaction with other emotions account for selective attention, which in turn influences all other mental processes. Elaboration and empirical support for principles 1–6 can be found in the following sources and their reference lists (Ackerman et al. 1998; Izard 2002, 2007a; Izard et al. 2008a,b,c; Silvia 2006). Principles 1–3 apply to all emotions, and 4–6 primarily concern emotion schemas. Principle 7 consists of propositions about the most ubiquitous of all human emotions—interest-excitement. Specific empirical support does not exist for the hypothesis of continual interest in the normal mind. In this article, I discuss the issues of defining the term “emotion” and types of emotion, emotion-cognition interactions, emotions and consciousness, relations among types of emotions and types of consciousness, and note some remarkable gains and losses from the evolution of emotions and multiple levels consciousness. This article addresses a critical need for clear distinctions between basic positive and basic negative emotions and particularly between brief basic emotion episodes and emotion schemas. Unlike basic negative emotions that occur in brief episodes and involve very little cognition beyond minimal perceptual processes, emotion schemas involve emotion and cognition (frequently higher-order cognition) in dynamic interactions (Izard 1977, 1984; cf. emotional interpretation, Lewis 2005). This article also contrasts phenomenal (primary) and access (reflective) consciousness, considers the construct of levels of consciousness, and questions the integrity of current conceptualizations of the unconscious mind. Typically, psychologists ignore the concepts of phenomenal consciousness and levels of consciousness and do not distinguish these constructs from the unconscious. I conclude by identifying some unanswered questions and briefly comment on a few emerging topics—continuous emotion-cognition interactions, memes and emotions, and the mirror neuron system and empathy—that seem destined to become more prominent in psychological science in the coming years. Go to: ON THE ORIGINS AND NATURE OF EMOTIONS None of the many efforts to make a widely acceptable definition of emotion has proved successful (Izard 2006, Panksepp 2003a). Yet, I dare once again to raise the 124-year-old storied question asked by James (1884): What is emotion? It happens that the answer James gave to his own question has a rather popular reprieve in the annals of contemporary neuroscience. Like James, Damasio (1999) argued that brain responses constitute emotion or the body expression of emotion and that emotion feeling is a consequence of the neurobiological (body) expression. In contrast, I propose that emotion feeling should be viewed as a phase (not a consequence) of the neurobiological activity or body expression of emotion (cf. Langer 1967/1982). The Origins of Emotions Russell (2003) proposed that core affect is continuous in the brain and provides information on the pleasure/displeasure and arousal value of stimuli. In contrast, I have maintained that a discrete emotion or pattern of interacting emotions are always present (though not necessarily labeled or articulated) in the conscious brain (Izard 1977, ch. 6; Izard 2007a,b). Barrett (2006) suggested that discrete emotions arise as a result of a conceptual act on core affect or as a function of “conceptual structure that is afforded by language” (Barrett et al. 2007, p. 304). In contrast, we have proposed that discrete emotion feelings cannot be created, taught, or learned via cognitive processes (Izard & Malatesta 1987; Izard 2007a,b). As Edelman & Tononi (2000) observed, “… emotions are fundamental both to the origins of and the appetite for conscious thought” (p. 218, cf. Izard 1977, ch. 6). So, perceptual and conceptual processes and consciousness itself are more like effects of emotions than sources of their origin. Discrete emotion experiences emerge in ontogeny well before children acquire language or the conceptual structures that adequately frame the qualia we know as discrete emotion feelings. Moreover, acquiring language does not guarantee that emotion experiences can always be identified and communicated verbally. Even adults have great difficulty articulating a precise description of their emotion feelings (cf. Langer 1967/1982). Thus, emotion feelings can be activated and influenced by perceptual, appraisal, conceptual, and noncognitive processes (Izard 1993), but cannot be created by them. In describing the origins of qualia—conscious experiences that include emotion feelings—Edelman & Tononi (2000) wrote, “We can analyze them and give prescription for how they emerge, but obviously we cannot give rise to them without first giving rise to appropriate brain structures and their dynamics within the body of an individual organism” (p. 15). They maintained that such structures arise as a result of brain changes due to “developmental selection” (p. 79), an aspect of neural Darwinism. Eschewing the cognitive-constructivist approach advocated by Barrett (2006), Edelman & Tononi (2000) concluded that “the development of the earliest qualia occurs largely on the basis of multimodal, bodycentered discriminations carried out by proprioceptive, kinesthetic, and autonomic systems that are present in the embryo and infant’s brain, particularly in the brainstem” (p. 157). Emotion Feeling as Neurobiological Activity Apparently consistent with the position of Edelman (2006), Langer (1967/1982), and Panksepp (2003a,b), I propose that emotion feeling is a phase of neurobiological activity that is sensed by the organism. It is sensed and expressed even in children without a cerebral cortex (Merker 2007). This component of emotion is always experienced or felt, though not necessarily labeled or articulated or present in access consciousness. Emotion feeling, like any other neurobiological activity, varies from low to high levels of intensity. The autonomic nervous system may modulate the emotion feeling but does not change its quality or valence (cf. Tomkins 1962, 1963). Neither a moderate nor a high level of autonomic nervous system activity is necessary for the emergence of emotion feelings. The conscious mind is capable of detecting and discriminating among slight changes in neurobiological activity and among the resultant qualia (Edelman 2006) that include emotion feelings. [Contrary to earlier formulations (Izard 1971, Tomkins 1962), neural processes in observable facial expressions may or may not be a part of the critical neurobiological activity involved in emotion feeling.] Emotion feelings arise from the integration of concurrent activity in brain structures and circuits that may involve the brain stem, amygdale, insula, anterior cingulate, and orbitofrontal cortices (cf. Damasio 2003; Lane et al. 1997; Panksepp 2003a,b). Levels of emotion feelings, like other neurobiological activities, range from low and subtle to high and extreme. Current theory and evidence suggest that the feeling component of emotions contributed to the evolution of consciousness and to the affective, cognitive, and action processes involved in goal-oriented behavior. Defining emotion feeling as a phase of a neurobiological process circumvents the argument that feeling is nonphysical and hence cannot be causal. A counterargument, though, is that at best, feelings are only the qualia of neurobiological processes and not neurobiological activity per se. However, even if this were true, Edelman (2006) maintains that qualia could still be described as causal because they are true representations of core thalamo-cortical activity. Thus, whether or not one accepts the present proposal that feelings are a phase of neurobiological activity, they can still be conceived as causal processes.