Emotion vs Reason

[The Flying Dutchman]

I think most people would agree wit me that reaon should trump emotion. But are we capable of completely making our emotions ineffectual to our reason ?

I don't believe that reason constitutes an infallible course to the truth. I believe that our emotions act as axioms for us to construct our reality.The huge difference in the American political landscape comes to mind. Are liberals really smarter than conservatives?

The point of this debate is "Is Reason Infallible ?".

[Yag Rannavach]

Originally Posted by The Flying Dutchman

I think most people would agree wit me that reaon should trump emotion. But are we capable of completely making our emotions ineffectual to our reason ?

I don't believe that reason constitutes an infallible course to the truth. I believe that our emotions act as axioms for us to construct our reality.The huge difference in the American political landscape comes to mind. Are liberals really smarter than conservatives?

The point of this debate is "Is Reason Infallible ?".

Let's say you were out shopping late at night and someone rushed into the store and took a hostage. Not you, just some random person. Though this would be very strange, let's further suppose that they then ask you to decide whether or not the hostage lives. Not by giving them anything, not by you doing anything but saying "hostage lives" or "hostage dies".

What would reason alone tell you to say?

[Quiddity Glomfuster]

One of my favourite topics. People have been doing studies on this:

"Our study provides neurobiological evidence that an amygdala-based emotional system underpins this biasing of human decisions. Moreover, we found that people are rational, or irrational, to widely differing amounts. Interestingly, the amygdala was active across all participants, regardless of whether they behaved rationally or irrationally, suggesting that everyone experiences an emotional reaction when faced with such choices. However, we found that more rational individuals had greater activation in their orbitofrontal cortex (a region of prefrontal cortex) suggesting that rational individuals are able to better manage or perhaps override their emotional responses."

http://biosingularity.wordpress.com/...n-by-emotions/

It would be reasonable to ask whether all brains — not just partisan ones — respond to political information emotionally. Westen says the answer is clearly no, that research does demonstrate that centrists or independents are more able to process rational and non-emotional political information.

But Westen's MRIs show that is clearly not the case with political contradictions processed by a partisan brain. That process is almost entirely emotional, heating up regions of the brain that govern things like forgiveness, relief and pleasure. The reasoning zones stayed ice cold.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/...in584753.shtml
and more on that study from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6356637/

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Originally Posted by Yag Rannavach

Let's say you were out shopping late at night and someone rushed into the store and took a hostage. Not you, just some random person. Though this would be very strange, let's further suppose that they then ask you to decide whether or not the hostage lives. Not by giving them anything, not by you doing anything but saying "hostage lives" or "hostage dies".

What would reason alone tell you to say?

Reason alone tells me that murder destabalizes society and causes emotional pain. Reason alone is enough to conclude that allowing a murder is a destructive decision.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Originally Posted by The Flying Dutchman

Are liberals really smarter than conservatives?

Which political side do you think is the emotional one? I think the answer to your question is (by and large) yes but I also think that's largely because conservatives tend to be ruled by base and immature emotion rather than reason and common sense.

[Larry Borgia]

Of course reason isn't infallible. If it was there wouldn't be any disagreements.

In a purely logical sense, no scientific theory is true. Theories are simply more and more well confirmed. Of course in a practical sense some theories are so well confirmed that they're close enough to absolute truth. But even heliocentrism is still open to falsifying evidence, should any present itself.

I'm all for emotions, they make life worth living. I often let emotion trump reason in my day to day life. I'm sentimental about my cats, though I have no problems eating a steak. But policy decisions and scientific theories should be based on reason.

[Redfrost]

Never let the facts get in the way of the truth.

[smiling bandit]

Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic

Reason alone tells me that murder destabalizes society and causes emotional pain. Reason alone is enough to conclude that allowing a murder is a destructive decision.

No, it does not. Reason is incapable of assigning value, a step which you have left out. You are assigning value to society and then making an choice based on that. But the value assigned to society is itself irrational. Even if it benefits you, reason cannot tell you that valuing yourself or your interests is what you ought to do. Whether you realize it or not, you have taken the emotional or instinctual reaction as your default starting position. Have you examined whether this is or is not reasonable?

Which political side do you think is the emotional one? I think the answer to your question is (by and large) yes but I also think that's largely because conservatives tend to be ruled by base and immature emotion rather than reason and common sense.

I have noted that this statement is often tossed out by leftists more willing to slander than debate. Pot calling the kettle black?

[furt]

Originally Posted by The Flying Dutchman

I think most people would agree wit me that reaon should trump emotion.

For what purpose?

Picking a date? Painting a landscape? Playing with children? Looking at a sunset? Making love? Arranging flowers? Listening to a contrabasson solo? Having your feet rubbed?


I submit that most of the things that truly make life worth living have more to do with emotions than logic.

[magellan01]

Originally Posted by furt

For what purpose?

Picking a date? Painting a landscape? Playing with children? Looking at a sunset? Making love? Arranging flowers? Listening to a contrabasson solo? Having your feet rubbed?

I submit that most of the things that truly make life worth living have more to do with emotions than logic.

Although we often disagree, I couldn't have expressed this better myself. Nicely said.

[enigm4tic]

I think the premise of the debate is flawed. Or at least, I personally would quibble with the semantics, changing it to, perhaps, "Emotion vs. Dispassionate Logic". That is, is an optimal solution always found by removing the emotional element from the equation. Robotically, yes, it's probably true. But the fact of the matter is that a large part of the human experience is emotional, and thus any successful solution to a complex human problem must assume the emotional side of the issue.

On the flip side, I would argue that one should never pursue emotion against the pull of logic, because logic usually has a pretty good grasp on the foregone conclusions that emotions are unwilling to accept. Myself, I try to stick to objectivity as much as possible, and to analyze things logically, not emotionally. Of course it's not infallible; everybody has to find a balance that works for them when solving problems.

[Anomalous Reading]

I think what many miss is all the emotion that underpins our reasoning. Nothing has value at all without that crucial step.

This is not reason vs. emotion, imo, it's reason vs. unchecked emotion...

We all, again... imo, operate on a set of moral and emotive axioms that happen so quickly we don't even see them - most of the time. Then, as we reflect on our actions, we pass our action through some filter that tells us how rational we were, how logical... when really... it's emotion driving much of everything with a region or two of the brain acting as a check.

If you are truly curious, I recommend Decartes Error by Antonio Damasio... it really explores this topic - and does so from a scientific and not philosophical position. It was... a pivotal book for me.

[Zoe]

Anomalous Reading: ...it really explores this topic - and does so from a scientific and not philosophical position.

Your recommendation sounds interesting. But why would it limit itself to only the scientific position? That seems a little ironic. Do you know of anyone who explores the same topic from the philosophical position? What a head-rush combining the two would be in a college course!

[I Love Me, Vol. I]

It can be completely rational to consider human emotions in any "decision equation". Human behavior--wherever it lies on a rational/emotional continuum--is just another datum that needs to be considered when making a rational decision.

For instance, if Grandmaster chess player Alfred notices that his emotional bearing is provoking a certain nervous reaction in his opponent, Grandmaster Bubba, resulting in Bubba altering his style of play, then Alfred can make a purely rational move-decision based (in part) on the emotions of both players.

Rationality and emotion need not always be mutually exclusive.

[Anomalous Reading]

Originally Posted by Zoe

Your recommendation sounds interesting. But why would it limit itself to only the scientific position? That seems a little ironic. Do you know of anyone who explores the same topic from the philosophical position? What a head-rush combining the two would be in a college course!

I prefer to take as much philosophy (study of wisdom, wisdom=knowledge of who we work, imo) from science and let philosophy stand in the gaps until science fills them. Philosophy may lead the way, in fact, but... I prefer fact to speculation.

I think philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, and other disciplines are slowly converging on a point... and it's rather fun to watch...

[I Love Me, Vol. I]

Originally Posted by Anomalous Reading

I think philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, and other disciplines are slowly converging on a point... and it's rather fun to watch...

Perhaps religion, too? Or maybe the eventual disappearance of religion? (you said slow, right??)

[Anomalous Reading]

Originally Posted by I Love Me, Vol. I

Perhaps religion, too? Or maybe the eventual disappearance of religion? (you said slow, right??)

"Slow" may be a qualitative assessment and subject to... debate.

But given the distance they have to traverse.... it seems slow and methodical to me. Besides the fact that it all seems rather complicated to do a proper analysis of any aspect of this.

As for religion... I sometimes wonder if we won't, finally, realize that it's doing something for us. Just... also tearing us apart. (I am a weak atheist in case you wonder)

I've no wish to hijack, though...

It just seems to me that we see emotions as the enemy, when in reality... I think it's the strong emotions that lead to poor decisions - or... worse... marriage

[Voyager]

Methinks someone has been watching old Star Treks.

The fact is, we are naturally emotional, so we need to take that into account, and recognize that even rational decisions will be steered by emotion in some way. Being who we are, they must work together.

Second, the value that smiling bandit mentions is a weighting function to allow us to distinguish between options. I suppose we could conduct a poll before each decision, but emotion is a good way of tentatively assigning these weights. Emotion is more likely to be incorrect, or get you into trouble, as anyone having a fight with a spouse can testify to.

[Yag Rannavach]

Originally Posted by smiling bandit

No, it does not. Reason is incapable of assigning value, a step which you have left out. You are assigning value to society and then making an choice based on that. But the value assigned to society is itself irrational. Even if it benefits you, reason cannot tell you that valuing yourself or your interests is what you ought to do. Whether you realize it or not, you have taken the emotional or instinctual reaction as your default starting position. Have you examined whether this is or is not reasonable?

Bah, here I was all set to respond to Dio, and then I see that you made my point for me. Ah well, I'll just add an echo; maybe I should be more direct in the future, so I don't need to simply echo others.

[Apos]

I think by and large there is a serious straw man issue here, which is the idea the caricature of reason as cold and dispassionate and so on. Reason is just a tool for making sure your ideas and arguments match up with your premises. Sometimes those premises ARE values, in which case the job of reason is explicitly to figure out emotional and moral issues based on those premises. The fact that we are emotional, and have all sorts of feelings and desires and so forth are not unreasonable, and it is reason that helps us work through those things better than anything else.

A lot of the time, reason can help us realize that the emotions we have about things are irrational, i.e. not that emotion itself is irrational, but rather the reasons we feel some way about something aren't justified by our actual values, or are based on false or unjustified beliefs that we've failed to really address.

[Odesio]

Is it right because it feels good? Or does it feel good because it's right?



Marc

[RaftPeople]

Originally Posted by Voyager

The fact is, we are naturally emotional, so we need to take that into account, and recognize that even rational decisions will be steered by emotion in some way. Being who we are, they must work together.

Second, the value that smiling bandit mentions is a weighting function to allow us to distinguish between options. I suppose we could conduct a poll before each decision, but emotion is a good way of tentatively assigning these weights. Emotion is more likely to be incorrect, or get you into trouble, as anyone having a fight with a spouse can testify to.

Emotion is more than just assigning weights. Emotion is the embodiment of a goal. Viewed from the perspective of animals (humans) trying to survive in the wild, it provides some of the information that makes reason valuable.

It may have limited value in a fight with your spouse, but that's only related to the modern world, not the world where the tools were developed.

If we eliminated emotion, how would we properly encode the rules related to basic survival?

I think most people would agree wit me that reaon should trump emotion

I would disagree because it all depends on context.
Do you mean for an animal to survive in the wild reason should trump emotion? No.
Do you mean for survival in the modern world for humans? I would disagree again because I can think of exceptions. Do I save my child or my neighbors child? I save my child, purely due to emotion. etc. etc.

[bouv]

Re: Dio's hostage situation:

Reason tells me that, should this man kill this woman, there will be a large criminal investigation, possibly leading to a trial, perhaps conviction. All of these things take time and money. If he were to not kill her, then the investigation, trial, and possible subsequent incarceration would take less time and money. Therefore, it is perfectly logical to ask the man to not kill the woman.

However, I would never say anything as one-sided as "reason always trumps emotion" or "emotion always trumps reason." Take this scenario:

In a hospital, we have a man dying from heart failure who needs a transplant, a woman dying from liver failure needing a transplant, and a small boy needing a kidney. You walk in for some kind of routine test, and in the process, they find out that you are a match for all three people. The hospital then kills you, takes your organs, and puts them in the three people so they can live. After all, sacrificing one life for three is a good deal, you come out two ahead.

Clearly reason can be taken too far, just as emotion can.

[Yag Rannavach]

Originally Posted by bouv

Re: Dio's hostage situation:

Reason tells me that, should this man kill this woman, there will be a large criminal investigation, possibly leading to a trial, perhaps conviction. All of these things take time and money. If he were to not kill her, then the investigation, trial, and possible subsequent incarceration would take less time and money. Therefore, it is perfectly logical to ask the man to not kill the woman.

Dio's situation?

Anyway, you still need to ask yourself why you want to avoid spending time and money. Can you come up with an entirely reason-based argument?

My point is that you can't, as others have said, reason alone can not give you motivation for doing anything, and thus it can't give you a reason to decide one way or another.


Oh, and an aside...where did the idea that the hostage taker was a man, and the hostage was a woman come into this?

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by RaftPeople

Emotion is more than just assigning weights. Emotion is the embodiment of a goal. Viewed from the perspective of animals (humans) trying to survive in the wild, it provides some of the information that makes reason valuable.

I'm not sure satisfying the urge to eat, drink, and mate can be classified as either reason or emotion. They're a bit more primitive than that. Do animals work through emotions? I think not, and they manage this quite well.

Emotion can be an evolutionary answer to actions which may not correlate to our primitive desires. If it is advantageous to be mostly monogamous, love can keep us from chasing any person of the opposite sex. Love of our children re-enforces the need to nurture them. Even hate can re-enforce our need to challenge others.
Which goals does emotion embody by itself?

If we eliminated emotion, how would we properly encode the rules related to basic survival?

We could do it with reason - but as I said, we don't have a choice, since emotion is engrained in us, and isn't something we can choose to ignore.

[enigm4tic]

Originally Posted by Yag Rannavach

Dio's situation?

Anyway, you still need to ask yourself why you want to avoid spending time and money. Can you come up with an entirely reason-based argument?

My point is that you can't, as others have said, reason alone can not give you motivation for doing anything, and thus it can't give you a reason to decide one way or another.

Sure it can. Arguably the values here are given, and in fact, arguably, the necessity for food, water, and shelter aren't "emotion" based at all. Thus, in a society where time allows one to do work earning money, and where money is necessary (more or less) to purchase food water and shelter, a course of action which frees up more of these resources is prudent to getting the basic necessities, which require no emotion to need.

on preview

Originally Posted by Voyager

I'm not sure satisfying the urge to eat, drink, and mate can be classified as either reason or emotion. They're a bit more primitive than that. Do animals work through emotions? I think not, and they manage this quite well.

arguably "logic" dictates that one pursue the necessary items to keep one alive, and since "logic/reason" has been pitted against "emotion" then IMO it's acceptable to frame it the way I did above (for the sake of the debate)

[Blaster Master]

Originally Posted by The Flying Dutchman

I think most people would agree wit me that reaon should trump emotion. But are we capable of completely making our emotions ineffectual to our reason?

As it seems to which others have alluded, in general reason does not trump emotion, nor does emotion trump reason. For some situations one has greater values than the other, but it is unfair and IMO inhuman to treat one as more important. Instead--pardon the overly abstract imagery--I view the human experience as a large, multi-dimensional space in which reason and emotion are only two of the many orthogonal concepts used to map a particular vector.

To answer the question in one word: no. However, I do think we can get darn close in many circumstances. For instance, one writing a technical paper has a high degree of reason; but whenever a preference enters into the equation, there's just the smallest hint of emotion present. Similarly, even in the most emotional situations, without reason to draw together and make sense of the emotional impulses, who knows what would happen.

In fact, I'm not sure these concepts can even be compared at all. In my mind, emotion isn't a decision process, but merely an irrational, non-deterministic, gut reaction... whatever, kind input or response to a given situation. That is, I view it almost as a sixth sense, in as much as one can describe a situation by how it looks, sounds, and smells, one can also describe another dimension of the situation with feelings, intuition, whim. I think what makes it different from reason, is that a logical individual will interpret the emotion, assign some kind of weight to its importance, and make a decision accordingly.

I don't believe that reason constitutes an infallible course to the truth. I believe that our emotions act as axioms for us to construct our reality.The huge difference in the American political landscape comes to mind. Are liberals really smarter than conservatives?

I'm a bit confused by the juxtaposition of this question to these statements. What is "smarter"? Is one who is better able to reason necessarily smarter than one who cannot? For instance, one thing at which computers excel is reason; yet one would be hard-pressed to call a computer smarter than a human being of average reasoning ability. That said, especially in the light of QG's cite, it is unfair to call either modern day liberals or conservatives smarter than the other precisely because of the polarizing effect of assigning too high of a weight to emotion when making what should be highly rational decisions. IMO, law is a completely rational exercise; thus, any weight assigned to emotion when discussing politics, other than a negligible one, seems a violation of the very premise.

The point of this debate is "Is Reason Infallible ?".

In a word: yes. To qualify, it is infallible if, and only if, all inputs are evaluated with the appropriate weights, under all criteria with the appropriate weights, over all options. As humans, some of these inputs and criteria will necessarily be much closer to an emotional nature than a practical, rational, and reasoned one.

Originally Posted by bouv

In a hospital, we have a man dying from heart failure who needs a transplant, a woman dying from liver failure needing a transplant, and a small boy needing a kidney. You walk in for some kind of routine test, and in the process, they find out that you are a match for all three people. The hospital then kills you, takes your organs, and puts them in the three people so they can live. After all, sacrificing one life for three is a good deal, you come out two ahead.

Clearly reason can be taken too far, just as emotion can.

Who says sacrificing one life to save three is a good deal? Who says sacrificing one life to save a thousand is a good deal? I think this value judgment of a human life is based at some level on an emotionally driven decision in that a value has been assigned to a human life. From a rational perspective, I cannot imagine any way to assign a value to a human life, outside of one's own, without at least SOME degree of emotional input. That is, it is only rational to decide saving three lives is better, provided that human lives are a good thing; but who decided that, and how? Three is clearly not always better than one; would you rather have one broken bone or three (ie, 3x > x, iff x>0).

Even if we grant an axiom tha human lives must necessarily have a positive value, must they all be weighted equally? Beyond that, what about individuals who cause a net destruction of life; does his value then become negative and wouldn't that in turn invalidate the axiom that human lives must have a positive value? Assuming lives can have different and potentially negative values, what if those three people needing transplants were Hitler, Stalin, and Osama but the one who would be sacrificed was your favorite historical figure or, even yourself.

Originally Posted by Yag Rannavach

Oh, and an aside...where did the idea that the hostage taker was a man, and the hostage was a woman come into this?

Probably an emotional impulse, or a merely a rational stereotype?

[rhettro]

I think Science likes to break down the way we think into these nice abstractions like "rational" and "emotional" when in reality, the process is much more complex and intertwined. Then we keep deluding ourselves that the abstractions are real processes.

[Yag Rannavach]

Originally Posted by enigm4tic

Sure it can. Arguably the values here are given, and in fact, arguably, the necessity for food, water, and shelter aren't "emotion" based at all. Thus, in a society where time allows one to do work earning money, and where money is necessary (more or less) to purchase food water and shelter, a course of action which frees up more of these resources is prudent to getting the basic necessities, which require no emotion to need.

on preview
arguably "logic" dictates that one pursue the necessary items to keep one alive, and since "logic/reason" has been pitted against "emotion" then IMO it's acceptable to frame it the way I did above (for the sake of the debate)

Food and shelter can very well be emotion based. If you don't want to live, then you have no reason to seek out food, shelter, or anything else. If you want to live, then that desire is based on emotion, and therefore your need for food/water/etc is based in emotion.

Or, if we accept that desires for food are not emotionally grounded, then it still doesn't follow that the particular path of "obtaining food by working for money to buy it" is the one you want to take. You can also obtain food by getting convicted of a crime and sent to jail, or by living in homeless shelters, or even by looking for someone rich to marry.

[RaftPeople]

Originally Posted by Voyager

I'm not sure satisfying the urge to eat, drink, and mate can be classified as either reason or emotion. They're a bit more primitive than that. Do animals work through emotions? I think not, and they manage this quite well.

While this is purely guessing on my part, I assume some animals have emotions (e.g. fear, love, etc.). I assume there is a continuum, but it would seem strange that humans are the only ones with emotions.

Emotion can be an evolutionary answer to actions which may not correlate to our primitive desires. If it is advantageous to be mostly monogamous, love can keep us from chasing any person of the opposite sex. Love of our children re-enforces the need to nurture them. Even hate can re-enforce our need to challenge others.
Which goals does emotion embody by itself?

Maybe embodiment is the wrong term, possibly "vehicle to achieve" is a better phrase for the relationship between a goal and emotions. But the ones you listed were the type of examples I had in mind.

I think emotions allow for optimization of key survival behaviors in a way that reason would have a difficult time duplicating.

If we eliminated emotions and used reason alone, then we would have lost millions of years of accumulated information regarding survival. At decision time, an individual would not have accumulated enough experience within his/her lifetime to make up for all of that information.

[Charger]

Originally Posted by bouv

In a hospital, we have a man dying from heart failure who needs a transplant, a woman dying from liver failure needing a transplant, and a small boy needing a kidney. You walk in for some kind of routine test, and in the process, they find out that you are a match for all three people. The hospital then kills you, takes your organs, and puts them in the three people so they can live. After all, sacrificing one life for three is a good deal, you come out two ahead.

On the contrary, the more logical choice would be to kill the boy. His organs could save the other two, and society wouldn't have to invest any resources into raising and educating a child who has proven himself to be of poor health at an early age.

What about monogamy?

Logic: If everyone suddenly applied the notion of one-partner-for-life to their sex life, all STDs would die out in a single generation.

Emotion: The notion of one-partner-for-life is romantic.

So which side is it, emotional or logical?

[Yag Rannavach]

Originally Posted by Charger

Logic: If everyone suddenly applied the notion of one-partner-for-life to their sex life, all STDs would die out in a single generation.

Except not everyone wants all STDs to die out. Some people want to spread them, though I suspect that number is quite a bit lower than the people who want them to die out.

[AHunter3]

Originally Posted by The Flying Dutchman

I think most people would agree wit me that reaon should trump emotion.

It should not. They should not be perceived as being in competition with each other. Emotions properly processed, mulled over, and "cooked" are the best cognitive input that exists. Emotions distrusted and ignored and stoppered up tend to spill out willy-nilly and to lead people to make very bad choices and engage in destructive behaviors. The latter patterns give emotions a bad name, but they aren't the result of emotions, they are the result of not taking your own emotions seriously and caring to find out what the fuck they're telling you.

But are we capable of completely making our emotions ineffectual to our reason ?

If you could not feel, you could not reason, period. Rational thought is not something that occurs apart from emotions, it's a superset of the cognitive processes that in their simpler form we know as emotions and sensations. The sensations are sensory input, aka DATA, and the emotions are cognitions, interpretations, the imputation of meanings (albeit not on a verbal-intellectual level yet). When we go the next step and encode those understandings in verbal terms, it enables us to treat complex thoughts as nouns and stick those nouns into a larger sentence as subject or object and thusly consider how some hugely complicated concept like "the way my need for freedom makes me unhappy about my spouse's reaction to it as a consequence of feeling unloved or rejected" affects or is affected by some other equally complicated concept like "the extent to which my job gives me some feelings of independence even as it also makes me feel subordinated to my boss whom I do not like". Still lots of feelings, and moreover feelings about feelings, going on in there, but now it's housed in sprawling structures of intellectual interpretation. That's what we do when we think.

I believe that our emotions act as axioms for us to construct our reality.

[/quote]

I'll go along with that.

[lekatt]

I can not imagine life without emotion or life without reason.
Would we be logic machines or impulse driven. We need both to survive. Of the two there is no "better."

[Meatros]

Originally Posted by lekatt

I can not imagine life without emotion or life without reason.
Would we be logic machines or impulse driven. We need both to survive. Of the two there is no "better."

:::Nod:::

Hello Lekatt, it's been a while.

[lekatt]

Thanks, I will see how it goes.