Are strong feelings ever a justification for one’s actions or demands?
Example 1: A parent becomes very frustrated and angry with his defiant child, and beats the child, causing slight bruising. The parent attempts to justify his actions with his emotional state: “If you were as mad as I was, you would’ve done the same thing. You can’t judge me if you’ve never been in the same situation.”
Example 2: (inspired by yosemitebabe’s arguments in this thread) An artist draws a picture and claims that he deserves control over who can use it (the image itself, not the physical painting), how and when they can use it, and for what purposes. He even demands, let’s say, the right to decide who can publish a review of his painting[sup]*[/sup]. He attempts to justify his demands with his emotional attachment to art: “You don’t understand what it feels like to be an artist. If you were me, you’d understand why I need so much control over it - but you aren’t. You don’t understand how I’m feeling and therefore, you have no right to tell me what I can and can’t tell other people to do with the painting.”
Is the appeal to emotion appropriate in either case? Is it really true that if someone feels strongly enough about a subject, then his opinion on that subject must be correct, and only other people who’ve felt equally strongly can tell him otherwise?
I say no. If you’re really correct, then you should be able to prove it with logic. Strong feelings don’t make you any more correct, and a lack of strong feelings doesn’t make your opponent any less qualified to criticize your position.
Detail added to differentiate the artist’s demands from copyright law. This is not a copyright debate; arguments about copyright should be directed elsewhere, perhaps to the thread I linked above. The question here is whether this emotional tactic is valid reasoning in a debate.
You’re wrong. Emotions exist. In fact, humans are more emotional than they are “logical”. Thus, appeals to emotion are more important than appeals to logic.
I’ll repeat what I wrote there (and in previous threads).
Should a photo lab be able to publish the photos you brought in to be developed? Should they be able to pick out a picture of yours that they like, and do whatever they want to with them, without asking you for your permission? Mr2001 thinks so.
Should someone who visits house (perhaps an electrician), and sees a poem that you wrote up on the refrigerator, be able to publish your poem on the Internet, or to share with everyone you know at work? Mr2001 thinks so.
What if you tell the photo lab that they are your own photos (of your dog, of the Grand Canyon, whatever) and that it upsets you or offends you that your photos are being published for everyone to see? What if you tell your visitor that you feel that the poem you wrote was just for your family and friends, and not for the public at large?
Doesn’t matter. Your feelings about your photos or your poem are meaningless. Because that’s just emotion, after all.
:shrug:
Whatever, dude.
I’m going to be interested to see how this thread goes.
I started a thread on a similar concept a week or two back:
The Lakota people were upset because their religious practices were being used by white companies that sold the “experience” and ceremonies to tourists and the like, including sacred tools like copies of their peace pipes. Their argument was that this was akin to raping their culture, and one of the few things that they retained after the loss of their land, lives, and about everything else.
The Dopers pounced on this like a cougar, stating that religion is not owned by anyone, can be practiced freely, etc etc, and that the Lakota had no right to try to restrict their customs.
While I view that assessment as logically sound, I can’t help but listen to the emotional appeal of the Lakota. I am quite torn on the issue. I certainly am no fan of the perversion and rape of religion as a tourist attraction, but I can’t deny the argument that they don’t have any right to control over it - as, I suppose the artist in the second example doesn’t have any right to control criticisms of his artwork. In the end, I am torn on the issue, and while I will respect the Lakota’s wishes, I don’t know how this can be enforced on other people without restricting their right to freely practice religion.
However, understanding the emotional aspect is a cornerstone to human existence and empathy. I view the people who stomp all over the heart of the Lakota ritual as cruel, money-grubbing whores without respect for their fellow humans; the emotional aspect is not without importance. In fact, it is at least as important as the logical arguments.
A society based entirely on “logical” laws is going to be a quite dysfunctional society, in the end. At least, I wouldn’t want to live there.
[QUOTE=Mr2001]
Are strong feelings ever a justification for one’s actions or demands…I say no. If you’re really correct, then you should be able to prove it with logic. Strong feelings don’t make you any more correct, and a lack of strong feelings doesn’t make your opponent any less qualified to criticize your position.
Strong emotional outbursts miught not prove right from wrong, but you cannto prove everything wth logic, dude. If this were true, we wouldn’t need courtrooms, would we? …Besides, isn’t algebra locigal? Doesn’t algebra show us how a problem can have a solution set of multiple possibilities?
I’m sure I’ll have more to add later. As posted, we’ll see where this thread goes.
Example 1: A person’s inability to control their emotions is a flaw, but can be a valid excuse for doing something. That doesn’t always make the action correct, but sometimes it does. A person becomes upset and starts crying. An observer asks, “Why are you crying?” and the person says, “If you were as upset as I am, you would be crying, too!”
Is that not a valid argument?
Example 2: If a person’s emotional attachment is the cause of something, then it is perfectly logical to cite it as the cause. Art is all about emotional attachments (though, in fairness to potentially offended artists, they can be motivated by the intellectual stimulation), and if someone wants one’s art to be handled a certain way because of one’s emotional attachments, then that is as valid as anything else in art. Granted, it might be a rather unusual emotional attachment, and would require some explanation. But citing it would not be invalid.
Hell, why not get rid of art altogether? We can’t defend it with pure reason, can we? Oh, sure, it’s interesting intellectually – but is that not an emotional response? Doesn’t just about everything reduce to emotions or non-rational needs eventually?
I’m glad to see that five-sixths of the responses have been on topic so far. Let me repeat: This is not a copyright debate. Anyone interested in my views on copyright, and other subjects, can search the board for past threads.
To restate the questions in the OP: if the only reason to allow Group X to do something is that Group X feels strongly that they should be able to do it, does that mean they should be able to do it? How can we decide if their feelings justify their demands?
By “more important”, do you mean more convincing, or more likely to be correct?
I hope you agree it’s possible for someone to have strong feelings on a subject and still be wrong. What do you think is a proper way to respond to someone like that?
How does this not relate to what I was talking about?
How many here would not tell the photo lab (or the electrician) that they would feel that it was not okay to publish (or show a bunch of other people) their photo or poem? And if someone else challenged them, and told them that they shouldn’t have the right to tell the photo lab (or electrician) to do something with their work that they didn’t like, how many might say, “You don’t know how I feel about my poem or my photos. They’re not your photos, you can’t possibly have as much invested in them as I do.”
But, oh well.
We’ll see how this thread goes. I certainly am finding all the responses so far to be more than interesting.
A courtroom isn’t just a place for emotional appeals, though; it’s also a place to argue facts and reasoning. “My client could not have killed that man because he’s an honest, upstanding fellow and would never consider hurting someone else” might sway a jury, but “My client could not have killed that man because he was out of town at the time”, with evidence to back it up, is much more solid.
I’m afraid I don’t see what you’re getting at here.
Yes, in that case, emotion is a justification for the act of crying; being upset literally causes you to cry.
But suppose the person is upset because he lost his job… does his strong emotion mean his boss must take him back? Isn’t it OK to say, “I’m sure that if I were in your situation, I’d feel the same way you do, and I’d want the same thing that you want, but you still can’t have it”?
I agree that citing emotion as the cause of one’s desires is valid - “I want you to give me that because I feel like I need it” - but I’m not sure that it’s valid to go from there to actually giving the person what they desire.
To those of you who believe appeals to emotion are as valid or more valid than logical reasoning: Is there any limit to what can be justified with strong enough emotions? Should I be able to drive a car that fails smog check if I feel enough emotional attachment to it? If I feel strongly enough about holding on to my paycheck, should I be exempt from paying taxes?
I suppose we need some definition of what we’re talking about with the term ‘emotion’.
If, for example, intuitions (e.g. gut reactions) count as emotions, then all logic is actually supervened by intuitions. That is, what we take to be the rules of logic is based on our intuitions about what is true and possible. For example, that if a=b and b=c then a=c (transitivity of identity) is not provable save but by our intuition about the truth. Indeed, most of ethics and metaphysics is based solely on our intuitions (whether through thought experiments, rules of logic, etc.).
If our definition of 'emotion' does not include intuition, what exactly does it include?
Er, big sticks exist as well, and there are a depressingly large number of people who feel that if they have a bigger stick than you, they’re right. Now, if you feel that correctness is nebulous, and that both logical and emotional arguments can only be measured by the fact that they convince people, then good luck to you, and see you on the other side of soliptisim. The rest of us prefer to assume that yes, there is a reality, and yes, it mostly conforms to logical expectations, and that yes, if we can show that all A are B and x is A, then x damn well better be B.
Sorry for the hijack, but we’re doing James in Phil class and some things stick in my throat.
Why do you think smog checks exist in the first place? It’s because of the emotional attatchment people have to their lives and the quality of them. And that grander and more empathaziable emotional attatchment would trump your own unique and odd emotional attatchment. The same conflict of interests exists with taxes. You’re kind of all over the place, anyway. And you’re acting like we’d view all emotional appeals as being equally valid, just because we realize that emotional appeals can be valid.
I think I am beginning to understand Mr2001’s point. He is saying that strong feelings don’t make a thing true, i.e., that logic is valid for drawing conclusions, and emotions aren’t (which is, of course, stating the obvious).
But his examples are misleading. In the first example he suggests that a person’s emotional state should not be considered in judging their actions, which should be patently wrong to most. In the second example he suggests that a person’s emotional attachments should not be considered at all, which is correct if we are to isolate simply that rational side of things: for we would only do that out of sympathy, which is an irrational emotion. Unfortunately, we cannot isolate the rational side of things without distorting reality.
ryanhooper, I think our definitions of emotions and logic are clear enough here.
Rkts: If the definition is clear, does it include intuition or not?
It seems to me that it must include it, since an intuition is just as much an emotion as any other. If this is the case, the dichotemy between logic and emotional appeal is false; they are inextricably related.
“Ever”? Well, yeah, of course. Do you really want to ask that?
A man sees his 5 year old son run over in the street and, after he knows his son is dead, violently attacks the driver, without thinking about whether that person could have prevented it, before he’s pulled away by others. Do you blame him? Of course not. People are people. We can be overcome by emotions. Strong feelings are clearly a justification for the father’s actions in that case.
Your “example 2” gets clouded by adding the condition that the artist objects to publishing a review. That makes the situation unrealistic, and completely disassociates it from the thread you cite. (I know you did it to avoid copyright questions, but it still screws things up.)
Damn. You had a good thing going, but then… Obviously, strong feelings aren’t sufficient to make a point of view “correct”. But it’s also not true that a person can only be correct if they’re able to “prove it with logic”.
Seems to me like you’re skewing what yosemitebabe had to say, and posing a question that’s not well formed.
