emotion over reason, reason over logic...

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techstepgenr8tion
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03 Jan 2006, 3:25 am

Has anyone else pretty much gotten to the point where they've really found that, being what we are as human beings, the embracing the toxiticity of emotional thinking and trying to throw away ones morals on some levels is the only way to ever find something in a lifetime without dying full of regrets? I don't know if I'm fully there yet, I think there's still a potential to play that one tongue-and-cheek but the more I understand the NT world on this the more I'm realizing that I'd have to walk a finer and finer line to make that one work right (having the relationship success in this world with this society vs. being able to look myself in the mirror) ...just some food for thought on an issue that never really gets raised arround here but one that's been raised to a head in my own personal life and I'd love to see what everyone would have to say.


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03 Jan 2006, 5:11 am

My policy is that emotion is a fun place to visit but i wouldnt wanna live there.


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NeantHumain
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03 Jan 2006, 7:48 am

The duality of emotion and reason is an ancient fallacy. I do not consider emotion and reason fundamentally separable, distinct entities. If a person had either without the other, that person would not seem very human. Our understanding of emotions can be aided through reason: Why do we feel as we do? In addition, emotions guide our line of reasoning. The world is not black and white; nor is it black, white, and shades of gray. We see the world as an iridescent spectrum of reds and blues, greens and purples. Without our emotions, we would be hopelessly lost, unable to focus on what's really important.

If we were mere computers, evaluating the veracity of some value or the value of some quantity, logic alone would be enough. It isn't, though. Likewise, if we were ephemeral beings who lived without consequence and without tradeoffs, we could make do with emotion alone, or very nearly so. We can't, though. Some subjectivity is inherent to our way of being. Values are emotional; they do not exist on some ideal plane. We assign value to the things in our lives, and we use reason to clarify them and set an order of value between value. This is the wonder of the human condition.



pyraxis
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03 Jan 2006, 11:37 am

Wow. I fully agree with Neant about something. Wonders never cease.

I really think it's like he says. Emotions guide picking the premises, rationality guides the formation of a logical argument in their defense. If emotion calls you to do something immoral, rationality guides the self-control to hold yourself back. But if surviving in the world requires abandoning rational morals, it's time to do a cost-benefit analysis to see if it's worth staying that rational - and if it's not, redefine the premises that led to those morals.



toddjh
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03 Jan 2006, 12:21 pm

It's tempting to reject emotion sometimes, but without emotion, what are we doing anything for? Pursuit of happiness can't be justified by rationality alone; emotional experience is necessary to explain why happiness is good.

Jeremy



NeantHumain
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03 Jan 2006, 2:25 pm

pyraxis wrote:
If emotion calls you to do something immoral, rationality guides the self-control to hold yourself back.

Likewise, reason may impel a person to do something immoral, but emotion would hold that person back. It may seem very reasonable to take something someone else owns, for example, because it would provide you much benefit, but the emotion is that it would hurt the other person and make you think less of yourself. Psychopaths lack the emotional inhibitions that prevent them from doing things such as the scenario I just mentioned.



pyraxis
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03 Jan 2006, 3:37 pm

Yeah, you have a point about it working backwards sometimes too. That's where it gets tricky, because of predictions of long-term consequences. I like living in a society where people don't randomly take each other's belongings. The short-term benefit of stealing may be negated on a macro scale. At the moment I believe that reason still wins out against petty self-motivated actions like theft or cruelty. But I admit I don't know enough about socioeconomics to back up that belief with fact.



Nomaken
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03 Jan 2006, 7:10 pm

I sometimes wonder, or in other words i suspect, that emotion is impossibly seperable from logic. That all thinking and experiancing at its core, its most base premises are emotional truths in our minds. Because when you ask why enough and find out why you really do things you at some point need to make a leap of faith assumption which you usually(NT's do this practically all the time) feel strongly about.

I also wonder if all ideas have emotional building blocks, as well as all thought.


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toddjh
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03 Jan 2006, 7:13 pm

Nomaken wrote:
Because when you ask why enough and find out why you really do things you at some point need to make a leap of faith assumption which you usually(NT's do this practically all the time) feel strongly about.


Agreed. Pyraxis said it well: Logic is a method used to follow a set of premises to their natural conclusion. It can't provide the premises.

Jeremy



Funaho
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03 Jan 2006, 8:49 pm

If I may be so Aspie as to bring up a Star Trek reference here, let's not forget the lesson taught by V'ger.. :) Sometimes you need the emotional side so that you can make that leap of faith and discover things that you would not have discovered by pure logic alone. I am a very rational person but I still have a deep-seated belief that there is more to the universe than science can explain right now, especially when it comes to the phenomenon of consciousness, I have this suspicion we may one day discover that consciousness is indeed the great shaper of matter and energy in the universe. This is one reason why I chose the signature I have now. :)

That being said, I still find the emotional world terribly difficult to deal with, but I don't think I"d want to live without it.

(whew I almost started my scientific-philosophical rambling there...)


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04 Jan 2006, 11:44 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Has anyone else pretty much gotten to the point where they've really found that, being what we are as human beings, the embracing the toxiticity of emotional thinking and trying to throw away ones morals on some levels is the only way to ever find something in a lifetime without dying full of regrets?


I think that depends a lot on the type of people you're around. I do know from experience that highly emotional people and highly logical/moral people tend mix like oil and water (I just worked for two days with a coworker whose thinking seems to be 99% emotion and she was driving me crazy). Our type of thinking tends to be the minority and I think that's definitely a big barrier for us, but if you can find enough other people who think like you (coworkers, friends, etc) then you can make it work - I know that from experience too. I'm not saying you should stay in the same place if it really is holding you back, just that it shouldn't be necessary to go too far the other way and compromise who you are too much either.



techstepgenr8tion
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04 Jan 2006, 5:00 pm

First off, from looking at some of the first few posts and replies I have to agree - pretty much everyone's thoughts and actions are some ratio of both emotional and logical where one guides the other with neither truly always being the starting point or controlling factor. I guess when I say that though about emotion over logic I guess I tend to think of emotion vs. logic like id vs. superego (yeah, its symbolic of that age-old fallacy that Neant was mentioning but I wonder if it's a fallacy as much as it is a simplification of terms - like AS and NT).

Amy, as for what your saying, very good way to break it down. I think that's what it is - many of my friends are more logical but spur themselves to be more chaotic just to show they have guts to do what's wrong sometimes when it's the cool thing, a lot of the people my friends hang with are either like that or more id than self-control, and between that and the two-faced politics of work it feels like everyone's indirectly telling me that being more superego controlled really is a sign of weakness, one that will always hold me back with them, and one which will keep me separate from them on so many levels.

However, I just had a spark of hope today when thinking about some things. I had two girls watching me while I bussed tables, actually seeming to get more and more interested in what I was doing, seemed to actually quiet down and full-focus when they realized I was conversing with another guy, and they were actually unbelievably attractive but they were of a social demographic that I've completely forgotten about because, at least as far as anywhere I've been going in life, they've been tucked away and out of site. What I'm pretty much getting at are the wholesome/intelligent doctor's daughter types. While vibing like a nice guys really seems like it's the kiss of death with most women, with them its just the opposit. I'm realizing also right now that I work with a lot of college kids but they're a) from a local liberal arts school where all the parents send their popular alcoholic brats, b) the rest are commuters to local colleges like myself who are a little better but still fit in pretty well with them (mind you, I can hack it with these two groups superficially, just that my chances of dating in these groups seems like its practically impossible). On the other hand its funny, I've never known what types of students were at the other more expensive local colleges and, like most people, I assumed that what I seemed to be surrounded by are the norms everywhere. Well, its funny, at this firm I'm starting at I had a christmas dinner with them about a month ago and the main partner's daughter who works there is a lot like those 2 girls I mentioned earlier - reminds me a lot of that girl from Cider House just that I think her ethics are probably a lot better. Hell no, I'm not getting any ideas on that end, but I am realizing that being that I'll have a job in a very popular downtown location loaded with young professionals and being that I hit it off with her pretty well IMO (and she probably has more than enough friends...) I'm really thinking that the work world for me is gonna be much the opposit of what most people say it is - the work world may be a goldmine whereas the college party and bar scene was practically a desert with a few close-but-no-cigars dotting the way and nothing more.


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04 Jan 2006, 8:13 pm

pyraxis wrote:
Wow. I fully agree with Neant about something. Wonders never cease.
I really think it's like he says. Emotions guide picking the premises, rationality guides the formation of a logical argument in their defense. If emotion calls you to do something immoral, rationality guides the self-control to hold yourself back. But if surviving in the world requires abandoning rational morals, it's time to do a cost-benefit analysis to see if it's worth staying that rational - and if it's not, redefine the premises that led to those morals.

Exactly-formula above puts my pragmatism so well.
I'm fear-based, so that keeps me out of trouble, also rational enough to be "intelligent" & self-reflective. Extremely risk-averse, is that an irrational survival mechanism ? Is difference between logic & emotion like diff. between fact & opinion ? Logic only goes so far, it doesn't tailor for individuals & it provides no "meanings".
I feel motivation most at physical sensation level. Then at emotional level, which can be the conduit between "body and mind". Lastly is thinking. I sense X which leads me to perceive emotion Y which causes thought Z. Not always simple, rarely am I aware of any of it.
Know that I come up with words to provide a rationale long after I've experienced an instinctive volition. I want something now and I figure out later why I needed it. I have a response and don't see a pattern or underlying theme until long after. Like not creating an outline/table of contents until I'm finished writing something.
Things happen to me & I just wonder what's going on, my state of mind feels randomly selected, not under "my control". I try to give folks disclaimers about what's stuck in my brain at the moment, give them a "heads up".


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