• _db
    3.6k
    Typically people tend to differentiate between reason and emotion, or thinking and feeling. Yet I wonder how separate they really are, specifically in regards to beliefs.

    What does it mean to hold a belief based upon emotion? What makes this different from a belief formed upon "reason"?

    Say we have a short syllogism:

    1. If A, then B
    2. A
    3. Therefore, B

    This would be an example of a very basic logical, rational belief, assuming 1. is justified. But is there not a catch? Can we not add in a further premise:

    A. I desire/need/am coerced/am obligated to think logically

    Adding this premise into the syllogism is similar to adding a clock input into an electrical logic circuit: if the clock has a 0 value, nothing else occurs. It is only when the clock is switched to a 1 value that the rest of the circuit is available.

    But A. is not a logical premise. It does not take the form of a counterfactual or logical relationship at all. Perhaps one might argue that A. is a reasonable premise; yet we have only to ask why it is reasonable to understand (through logical counterfactual modeling) that if we do not accept the rules of logic, we will be put into danger and may possibly die quite quickly. But this, again, is not a logical premise.

    Thus another premise, in addition to the normative premise A, is:

    B. I want to do x (x being survive, understand something, create something, etc)

    Therefore, I conclude that reason is in service to emotion.

    So what even is emotion? Emotion is any "natural" (comfortable and effortless) state of mind. I cannot control what emotions I feel with a single thought, but rather can only analyze the causes of the emotion and manipulate the environment to either support or hinder their instantiation. I cannot tell myself "be happy!" and be happy, I must find a reason to be happy.

    Once again, reason is in service to emotion.

    I think, in the end, this all spirals back to philosophy of action, or the analysis of what makes us do things. In which case, I think what makes us do things is whether or not want to do things. And what we want to do is based upon incentives, i.e. pleasure and pain. I want a drink of water, because I am thirsty, so I drink some water. A man murders another person because he wants vengeance, and he wants vengeance because he desires justice, and he desires justice because the idea of injustice twists his insides.

    Again, reason is in the service of emotion.

    Therefore, any attempt to isolate reason from emotion is fundamentally flawed, because the very act of doing so has an emotional basis. It is this emotional basis of reason that gives reason its normative force. Without any incentive to think reasonably, there would be no reason to practice reason.

    And it is precisely this emotional basis that can be criticized, opening up new avenues of thought. It is this form of narrowing the possibilities that results in people holding dogmatic views. Thus any critique of another person, like "you are not thinking reasonably", is not referring to a separate "kind" of reason but rather a gradiance of reason - we may think that a person is not justified in believing in God simply because they feel some special spiritual experience, yet we ourselves may think that we are justified in believing there is a world outside of our experiences, simply because we "feel" there must be, in the same way the religious person "feels" there must be God.

    Another example: we've all had the experience, that of when you're looking over a high drop and have this strange thought or urge to jump off. But presumably you didn't (since you're reading this post), because you had some reason not to. And this reason was probably the gut instinct not to jump. You must survive, not out of reason but out of emotional instinct.

    But humans are not fully under the influence of primal instincts, at least not all of them. While other animals instinctively procreate, we can wait or abstain. While other animals eat other animals, we can abstain from doing so. Reason allows us to do so. We use reason, based in emotional instinct, to fundamentally overcome these instincts (at least some of them). But we are no fully independent of these instincts (we couldn't be), because we still feel pain and pleasure, the most basic incentives. And we have a third incentive, anxiety, that is attached to many of our other instincts, like survival and procreation. We don't commit suicide just because we want to feel more pleasure later, but also because we feel anxiety when contemplating death.

    And it is the human ability to conquer this anxiety, to use reason to analyze reason itself, that makes humans some of the strangest and neurotic creatures on earth.
  • apokrisis
    6.8k
    The brain evolved to evaluate the world. So you see what is happening and then how you feel about it is part of the overall reaction. If you see a snarling dog, one part of you might be searching for a rational plan of action. But the other needs to be gearing you up physiologically in terms of the machinery of fight or flight.

    So thinking and feeling always go together with perceiving. It's a package deal. The body has to be aligned with whatever "intellectual" choices are about to be made.

    Then the same applies even to just evaluating our own planned actions. When we think about what we might do next, our emotion centres (to put it ridiculously crudely) respond to the picture we start forming. We get a positive feeling about whether it is going to work or not. We can feel aha!, exactly right. Or oh no! this could go very wrong.

    Hitting upon the right answer that connects the dots of an intellectual puzzle is exactly the same as finding a mango tree when you are lost and hungry in the woods. The brain lights up with the same physiological orientation response. Your pupils dilate, your attention narrows, your heart rate changes. It may be just the answer to a puzzle, but you know the answer in fact feels right because you have this conviction in your bones - or at least in the neurotransmitters of your autonomic nervous system.

    So to use syllogistic reasoning is a rather dry and learnt habit. But we then believe the results of such a process of assembling evidence in a cascade of steps because we can feel it all actually does fit together in recognisable fashion.

    Or often we can see the argument seems to work yet we feel troubled. That is where we might look more closely at the premises until - aha! - we spot with satisfied conviction the flaw we seek.

    So really, on one level, all this reasoning is very dangerous stuff. We end up believing anything only due to some emotional reaction. We check in with our rather subconscious and automatic orienting responses and discover which way our feelings want to point us.

    But on the other hand, our evaluative responses are highly evolved and pretty reliable for most real life decision making. So the trick is educating people to actually reason in a dispassionate fashion - or rather, to create the kind of fact-checking mindset where every step of any argument is fully exposed to a passionate response of the type that actually motivates strong self-questioning.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    I desire/need/am coerced/am obligated to think logically. — DarthBarracuda

    You're really discussing 'why think logically', rather than 'what is logic'. So you're trying to justify logic, in terms of other criteria that are external to it. But a syllogism needs no such justification; it is a 'primitive', insofar as it needs no further justification. None of which is to say that logic is all-knowing or sufficient for every problem.
  • apokrisis
    6.8k
    So you're trying to justify logic, in terms of other criteria that are external to it.Wayfarer

    But there is still a reason why we might choose one axiomatic base over another. The laws of thought have got to seem self-evidently right.

    That is, every normal person learning about the principle of identity or sufficient reason should feel aha! , yes I get it, at least the first few times they think about them.

    And it is that forging of an emotional bond to a logical precept that then makes it so hard to get people to question the foundations of their belief systems of course.
  • BC
    13.1k
    Emotion may temper our perceptions. Person A, who feels very angry, aggressive, hostile... -- which some people do a good share of the time -- is going to see ordinary events quite differently than Person B, who is characteristically calm, relaxed, and friendly. "A" will see more threat in otherwise neutral situations because emotions are going to color the interpretation of visual/auditory information. "B", viewing the same neutral events, will likely see nothing about them that would suggest alarm.

    In a real sense, "believing is seeing" because we want to be internally consistent. If we believe that pit bulls are intrinsically dangerous dogs, we will see whatever a pit bull does as threatening. If we believe that golden retrievers are inherently sociable, we are likely to view every gold retriever as anxious to be friends. "Some golden retrievers do bite people, and some pit bulls make good pets." This statement is, I believe, objectively true BUT it leaves a lot of room for ambiguity about retrievers and pit bulls. Most of prefer less ambiguity and more certainty.

    Emotions and beliefs are heavy hitters in the mind games that go on in our brains. It is sometimes not possible to tell whether we are being objective or not BECAUSE our perceptions and thinking can be colored so easily.

    Reason helps a great deal but it usually doesn't get the last word. [Which, by the way, doesn't mean that we are all stark raving mad. It's just that we aren't quite as 'rational' as we would like to think... rationally.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    And it is that forging of an emotional bond to a logical precept that then makes it so hard to get people to question the foundations of their belief systems of course. — Apokrisis

    I wonder how many times that sentiment was uttered in British India? O:)
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    I think the OP is actually an attempt to justify Hume's 'reason is a slave to the passions'. But it does this by use of reason, thereby undermining its own premises.

    It gives this argument:

    Major Premise: 'I want to do x (x being survive, understand something, create something, achieve an outcome)'

    Minor Premises: e.g.

    'I murder another person because i wants vengeance....and I desire justice because the idea of injustice twists my insides.'

    'I want a drink of water, because I am thirsty, so I drink some water. '

    Conclusion: 'therefore I take some action'.

    So the outcome is in each case apparently motivated by emotion, by wanting or desire.

    But the argument itself is syllogistic. So if you want to prove that the argument is true, the only way you can do it is by appealing to the very faculty which you are saying ought to be deprecated.

    Otherwise, how would you persuade others that your argument is true? By threatening them with force, or offering them an inducement? By yelling at them or flattering them?

    So I don't believe that this establishes the conclusion that 'We end up believing anything only due to some emotional reaction', or rather, this can only be shown to be true, because it is demonstrated to be so by a rational argument. So if the argument succeeds by persuading us by reason, then it undermines its own premises.
  • wuliheron
    440
    Emotions provide contextual information, that is, information related to contexts. Our shadow, for example, has no meaning outside of the context of the light and, according to classical logic, shadows have no identity independent of their context. What might appear to be a shadow in a room can become a faint blob of light when the sun goes down making its identity as either light or shadow entirely context dependent. That might sound ridiculous, but even the mathematics for photons confirm this observation with photons displaying no identity of their own independent of the energy and information they convey. Their behavior is the same as that of a shadow with photons being instantly absorbed and emitted and even displaying particle-wave duality as if they can be in two places simultaneously.

    Reason can therefore be viewed as largely the purview of our conscious mind attempting to fill in our more emotional subconscious observations of our current context. You could say the unconscious uses the differentials of brain waves to rapidly assess what's missing from this picture, while our conscious mind utilizes synaptic functions to produce integrals in an attempt to fill in the Big Picture with meaningful content. That's a gross generalization, but you get the idea.

    It means a context without significant content is a contradiction alone the lines of saying we can have a statistic of one and that logic is actually derived from pattern matching rather than vice versa which all the rapidly accumulating evidence in neurology and quantum mechanics both support. Logic is digital, while emotions are analog and the combination of the two can be much more powerful in some situations than either one alone explaining, for example, why the US government has recently announced that it has classified a few jokes as "Vital to the National Defense" and hinted that congress is investigating and, of course, they have no comment.

    When is a stupid joke no longer merely a stupid joke? When it happens to be more useful than anyone's stupid ideas about reality.
  • _db
    3.6k
    So really, on one level, all this reasoning is very dangerous stuff. We end up believing anything only due to some emotional reaction. We check in with our rather subconscious and automatic orienting responses and discover which way our feelings want to point us.apokrisis

    Yes, we follow the rules of logic not simply because they seem to match reality fairly well but because it "feels right" to think logically. The decision to use logic may itself be logical but it based upon an emotional conviction.

    The normativity of logic enters when we start asking why we should use logic and reason. Logic is necessary to complete projects. Unreasonable behavior tends to hurt other people. Unreasonable behavior tends to hurt yourself.

    So when we criticize people for not thinking logically or thinking emotionally, it's more of a difference in degree than a difference in kind.

    I think the OP is actually an attempt to justify Hume's 'reason is a slave to the passions'. But it does this by use of reason, thereby undermining its own premises.Wayfarer

    But the argument itself is syllogistic. So if you want to prove that the argument is true, the only way you can do it is by appealing to the very faculty which you are saying ought to be deprecated.Wayfarer

    I'm not saying that logic ought to be thrown away. I'm saying that reason has the capacity to self-analyze itself, and realize that for every position we have, we have a basic emotional premise. This is why I said that humans are some of the most strange and neurotic organisms on the earth; we have a tendency to analyze things that aren't beneficial to our survival. The reason we have philosophy is because we have anxiety - philosophy is the intellectual method of calming anxiety (whether that be the curious anxiety or the panic anxiety).

    So yes, Hume used reason to show that reason is a slave to the passions. Yet it was clearly his passion to show that reason is a slave to the passions. He had a desire to do so.

    Emotions and beliefs are heavy hitters in the mind games that go on in our brains. It is sometimes not possible to tell whether we are being objective or not BECAUSE our perceptions and thinking can be colored so easily.Bitter Crank

    Agreed. All this reminds me of Nietzsche's proclamation of epistemic perspectivism; i.e. those who weren't dancing couldn't hear the music.

    Modern day skepticism is dogmatic.
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    'm saying that reason has the capacity to self-analyze itself, and realize that for every position we have, we have a basic emotional premise. This is why I said that humans are some of the most strange and neurotic organisms on the earth; we have a tendency to analyze things that aren't beneficial to our survival. The reason we have philosophy is because we have anxiety - philosophy is the intellectual method of calming anxiety (whether that be the curious anxiety or the panic anxiety) — DarthBarracuda

    It that the reason 'we' have philosophy, or do you think that might be something particular to you?
  • _db
    3.6k
    If not anxiety (curiosity or panic) then what else would cause us to investigate something we don't have to?
  • Wayfarer
    20.6k
    Notice the assumption that curiosity is a product of, or form of, anxiety. Don't you think it's possible that you're generalizing on the basis of your own motivation?
  • ralfy
    42
    They are both part of the human condition, where actions and behavior involve combinations of the two.
  • Buxtebuddha
    1.7k


    I've recently been reading a bit of Rousseau, and it seems as though he very much argues that emotion is the foundation for decision making, and that reason must be taught. His example of babies not reasoning from the get-go appears pretty watertight, although I'm not quite so sure. I realize you're the one asking the questions here, but what do you think of Rousseau? I'm a beginner to his writing, so perhaps you know more than I do! :-#
  • _db
    3.6k
    Notice the assumption that curiosity is a product of, or form of, anxiety. Don't you think it's possible that you're generalizing on the basis of your own motivation?Wayfarer

    No, I don't think so. I am curious about a lot of things - and if I don't get answers or discussion about things, I end up thinking about them on my own. I can't just let them go, and I highly suspect this is the same experience that made people discover new things. Not-knowing is unbearable, it's just that in curiosity, the desire to know coincides with the anxiety of not-knowing.
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