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?
One of my favourite topics. People have been doing studies on this:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/20/opinion/meyer/main584753.shtml
and more on that study from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6356637/
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.
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.
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.
Never let the facts get in the way of the truth.
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?
I have noted that this statement is often tossed out by leftists more willing to slander than debate. Pot calling the kettle black?
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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…
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 
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.
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.
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.