I think the important point is it is a fallacy. It's ad hom as far as I can tell. We don't have to choose between emotions and reason (and a social primates, good luck with that endeavor) ((you didn't say this but to me the thread degenerated into a discussion of whether we are for reason or for emotions, which I think misses the point.)) I have noticed a turn towards more of this kind of ad hom also, and I think good practice would be to label it, also a third party. If we see someone ad homming in this way, even if they are doing it to a poster we disagree with or has their own basket of fallacies, we should label it out and demand they make a case, critique a position, support their own position.

I have noticed a turn towards more of this kind of ad hom also, and I think good practice would be to label it, also a third party. If we see someone ad homming in this way, even if they are doing it to a poster we disagree with or has their own basket of fallacies, we should label it out and demand they make a case, critique a position, support their own position. — Coben

Yes, I agree, but a qualification is in order: people claim ad hominem all the time and it's not a case of ad hominem.

"Gratuitous verbal abuse or "name-calling" is not on its own an example of the abusive argumentum ad hominem logical fallacy. The fallacy occurs only if personal attacks are employed to devalue a speaker's argument by attacking the speaker; personal insults in the middle of an otherwise sound argument are not ad hominem attacks."

In other words, someone can call me an idiot, and just so long as it is not meant as a refutation, evasion, poisoning of the well, then it wouldn't be an ad hominem, it could be abusive, but it could also be true, it just depends. Sometimes name calling can be justified, like when I say, Donald Trump is an idiot. This is actually an accurate statement based on his vast social ignorance.

Sure, but it seemed like your focus was on ad homs. They dismiss the argument through saying it is based on emotion or merely that the person is emotional. The ad hom may be implicit: 'since you are emotional, your argument is wrong', but it is present. I said nothing about insults nor did you. I thought the examples you were think of were where the person making the accusation was dismissing the position of the supposedly emotional person on the grounds they were emotional.

Rather than that they were merely saying 'oh, you are an idiot you are so emotional'.

For example...

By characterizing a rational position, as an emotional position, the defender is trying to dismiss it without actually having to deal with it. — JerseyFlight

Here the person is saying that because it is emotional (you have emotions) it is wrong. The emotions are not part of the position/argument, they are part of the person. What difference does it make to the position or the argument?

Yes, I agree. You are correct. I was just trying to qualify, to be thorough, because I know the fallacy of calling something an ad hominem when it's not comes into play. Defense and denial will use any trick at their disposal to retain the comfort of their belief.

Ah, ok. Yes, sure. Yes, ad hom and insult are often conflated. Some seem to think they have found a fancy way of saying 'that's an insult.'

]This is an exclusive OR disjunction meaning only one must be selected to the exclusion of the other. I bet most if not all people will choose reason over emotion any day but that's just my opinion of course. — TheMadFool

A devastating choice either way, but I would choose emotion. I'd rather be a rather poor primate than someone with no emotions. To no longer love my wife, nature, my kids. To no longer care about myself, kindness, connecting to others. To not have motivation for anything even to reason. To be a think, a calculator and one with no reason even to calculate since I have no motivations anymore. No goals that I care about.

And also without emotions we have a lot of trouble reasoning.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2014/06/17/172310/the-importance-of-feelings/

Emotions and reasoning are not neatly separated in the brain. Further you need non-rational - as opposed to irrational - processes when reasoning. Intuition and feelings of correctness, completion, having checked carefully enough, feelings that something is missing
surround and support the process of reasoning. Reasoning in human brains is not like programming. Small bits of feelings are present throughout the process and necessary for that process.

A person without emotions is severely handicapped as a thinker.

A devastating choice either way, but I would choose emotion. I'd rather be a rather poor primate than someone with no emotions. To no longer love my wife, nature, my kids. To no longer care about myself, kindness, connecting to others. To not have motivation for anything even to reason. To be a think, a calculator and one with no reason even to calculate since I have no motivations anymore. No goals that I care about. — Coben

Most of the time I feel the same way but which would you rather have around you when a tiger or lion makes its way toward your family? Cold logic or warm love?

Emotions and reasoning are not neatly separated in the brain. Further you need non-rational - as opposed to irrational - processes when reasoning. Intuition and feelings of correctness, completion, having checked carefully enough, feelings that something is missing
surround and support the process of reasoning. Reasoning in human brains is not like programming. Small bits of feelings are present throughout the process and necessary for that process.

A person without emotions is severely handicapped as a thinker. — Coben

In my humble opinion the two emotions that matter the most are sorrow and joy - both, I'm led to believe, are causes of woolly thinking. Other emotions like jealousy, anger, hate, love, etc. are usually stumbling blocks insofar as clear and logical thinking is concerned.

Most of the time I feel the same way but which would you rather have around you when a tiger or lion makes its way toward your family? Cold logic or warm love? — TheMadFool

Absolutely no question: emotions. Who is better at logic, you or a gazelle/gorilla? Emotions are motivators and make fast decisions. In that case smell or sight of lion triggers a wash of emotion: fear and motivation based on it....running or hiding or defending/protecting, depending on what the family is doing. Ever see how musk oxen deal with an approaching lion. They are not using deduction, but intuitive and emotion driven choices. Also you are contrasting emotions with logic, which I think is a problem. Emotions are neither logical nor illogical. Though obviously a gazelle or me seeing a lion is being perfectly logical in getting scared and running. You certainly don't want to stand there and do some deduction. There is a lion. Lions are dangerous. It is running toward me. If it reaches me a dangerous animal is close to me. Therefore, I will create distance between me and....

dead.

Many emotional reactions are perfectly in line with what logical conclusions would dictate. And in fact millions of years of evolution have given us a great base for making all sorts of decisions. Of course emotions can mislead us. It's a bit like comparing bicycles and hammers. But further in most situations we need them both.

In my humble opinion the two emotions that matter the most are sorrow and joy - both, I'm led to believe, are causes of woolly thinking. Other emotions like jealousy, anger, hate, love, etc. are usually stumbling blocks insofar as clear and logical thinking is concerned. — TheMadFool

I disagree, though I also know that what you say here can be right. Anger for example can inform reason that there is a problem with someone. In a crisis situation, someone attacks your child, it is a motivator that revs the body up to defend the child. In a workplace situation where the boss treats you unfairly it can be a signal to a distracted mind that there is a problem and then also a motivator to assert yourself/deal with the problem. Of course one can come up with situations where emotions are problematic, but one can do this for reasoned conclusions. How connected are the emotions to what is happening? How well do we use these facets of ourselves? How connected are we between reason and emotion or are these functions too separate from each other as if we have two modes of dealing with situations? (when in fact we don't)

Do I love some reasonable arguments! But it's funny, emotions many times provide so much more information about the world. Pride, jealousy, disgust; these have steered humanity since its beginning. The problem is that, to obtain information from emotions, we need to open different channels, those more fit to noise and sights rather than words and meanings.
— dussias

Steered?! You might want to rethink that. Does a drunk driver steer himself at 100 mph into a tree? — TheMadFool

For example, your reaction to this. Pride in one's work can be excellent for the creation of anything from a vaccine to a great work of art. It is an emotional assessment and most highly skilled people will have pride. Of course there is problematic pride, but in your response it is as if these emotions are necessarily metaphorically the equivalent of a car crash. Disgust is something we evolved to protect us from, for example, disease and also to enforce social norms. It creates societal cohesion. Obviously if one differs with others about what is disgusting (and what is moral) one can consider their disgust wrong. But likely we accept our own. It is part of being a culture/group. Jealousy is, just on my gut (emotional:razz: ) reaction, the trickiest. Now as I hone in more with my analytical mind I still think it is the most likely to be problematic, however it is a natural byproduct of the strong feelings of attraction/love we feel for certain people. In a philosophy forum, I can't really see it being helpful.

Does fault imply decision or consciousness, then?
— dussias

It doesn't matter. It matters for psychological reasons of explanation, but not for the present context. The present context seeks to uphold the integrity of intellectual standards above and beyond the regress (manipulation) of emotional states. — JerseyFlight

I agree. Here we are typing responses. We are not blurting something out when someone walks up to us on the stress telling us what they think. Here whatever we write, whether driven by huge emotional reactions or more calm ones, is a conscious choice. I don't think one can argue that one flinched and produced a post or an adrenalin surge caused one to post here. Some posts of course trigger huge emotions, but one you get down to the really rather fine tuned actions of typing and generally sitting really quite still, you are not in a fight or flight state. You are responsible for your choices and you have time to focus on the assertions and arguments in the post you are reacting to. Someone runs into my bedroom as I am waking up and tells me there is no free will or there is no persistant self really has to accept the fact that I may focus on them, their emotions, their attitude and no give a good critique of their argument. I might even hit them, even if I agreed with their position.

Surely, reason does not need to be about rigid attachment to certain beliefs. If we are too defensive it may be because we are not so certain of these beliefs
Emotions are inevitably bound up with our ideas and perhaps reason can aid us to disentangle the emotions as well as the ideas.
The opportunities of this site give a chance for an interchangeable of ideas which should help us to stand back from our the narrow confines of our own thoughts. We can reach out, explore and embrace the development of our own ideas and dialogue with other searching minds.

For example, your reaction to this. Pride in one's work can be excellent for the creation of anything from a vaccine to a great work of art. It is an emotional assessment and most highly skilled people will have pride. Of course there is problematic pride, but in your response it is as if these emotions are necessarily metaphorically the equivalent of a car crash. Disgust is something we evolved to protect us from, for example, disease and also to enforce social norms. It creates societal cohesion. Obviously if one differs with others about what is disgusting (and what is moral) one can consider their disgust wrong. But likely we accept our own. It is part of being a culture/group. Jealousy is, just on my gut (emotional:razz: ) reaction, the trickiest. Now as I hone in more with my analytical mind I still think it is the most likely to be problematic, however it is a natural byproduct of the strong feelings of attraction/love we feel for certain people. In a philosophy forum, I can't really see it being helpful — Coben

The progress of society if one could call it that has been one from chaos in prehistoric times to order in modern times. This transformation of society has been mirrored by a shift in emphasis from emotions to reason. Am I correct?

The progress of society if one could call it that has been one from chaos in prehistoric times to order in modern times. This transformation of society has been mirrored by a shift in emphasis from emotions to reason. Am I correct? — TheMadFool

I guess I'd first wish you'd respond to points I made. It's now as if they never happened and a new set of extremely complicated ideas are raised by what I think is an unclear binary chaos/order now added on top of an already complicated, but I don't think analogous, emotion/reason dyad.

First, I doubt it was chaos or we would not have survived. It was a different kind of order and a simpler one. I think, for example, that herds of zebras, say, or schools of fish, are vastly more ordered than most groups of humans. Though they lack the additions our primate brains have on top of their brains. We both have limbic systems, but they lack the parts of our brains we associate with verbal reason. But order can easily be had without those things. IOW now we have shifted to new criteria (order vs. chaos) and I think that gets extremely complicated trying to relate these to emotions and reason. And also raises all sorts of issues around the implicit value judgments. Fascists have often thought that more liberal societies are less rational precisely because there is greater diversity of actions, association, cultural options and choices, sexualities, art forms, etc.. They see this as chaos. Are they more reasonable or less reasonable than their liberal opponents? Is order the best priority/evaulation point? and what order? Modern society in the Europe and the US is vastly more complicated and chaotic (certainly by many criteria) than that of a tribe or a middle ages serf and lord society. And please don't think this means I prefer feudalism. I just think this raises all sorts of new issues without really laying that out. Japanese culture pre-interaction with the West (certainly before WW2) was vastly less chaotic by most measures than Western societies and certainly the way WEstern societies are now. Does this mean it was better or more reasonable? Does order actually correlate with reason? Creatures with incredibly small and simple brains with nearly no reasoning power can live in extremely orderly groups:ant for example.

Emotions can drive violence, but it takes reasoned arguments to get a genocide going. You have to convince the limbic system not to feel group X is human and feel empathy for them.

And animals without anything resembling our swirling cities can lead extremely ordered lives, with clear expectations being met with incredibly regularity by the other members of their groups. A coterie of prarie dogs is extremely well organized, much lower chaos than much of our modern society. The act as a cohesive group with vastly more predictable behaviors. IOW they work well as groups and rarely really hurt each other, for example. That's much futher back in evolutionary time than human brains, as far as the evolution of the complexity of human brains. I don't think order and chaos are an easy correlation with reason and emotion. And while of course I want many things ordered, I want many things vastly less ordered than some societies have had them.

I also just don't understand why for one second I must choose. Any one who thinks one should be suppressed is denying one facet of themselves. They are immersed in each other. They, in us, need each other. They have different approaches but neurologically cannot be neatly separated. And reason cannot function without emotions.

In the present context the fault lies with the person who is trying to evade criticism (the burden of proof) through the medium of emotion. — JerseyFlight

One wonders why we great philosophers are always so eager to provide criticism. That couldn't possibly have anything to do with emotions, right? :-)

I think the moderators just need to be aware of the fact that philosophy offends people because it refutes their positivity, and not seek to ban people merely because other people are getting emotional and offended. That is not a good enough reason. A skilled debater doesn't need to call people names, he can dislodge his opponent from the basis of his own premises. But this is enough, people get super emotional when this happens. They just can't believe it, and so they do the first thing that comes natural, try to demonize the person who is refuting them, to cast them in a negative light, as a villain, as a fiend, as a fanatic. Anything to sustain their denial and sense of identity which is attached to their belief. — JerseyFlight

I agree entirely, and would add. Ideas form beliefs, beliefs form belief systems, and belief systems form a sanity. If this is threatened, the emotional response is similar to a physical threat, in that the fight or flight reflex is triggered, and then reason goes out the window.

This is the difficulty of debate on this forum, I believe. We personally construct these belief systems, and have faith in them, and when they get knocked down it is painful. We know how personally painful it is, but we cannot know how painful it is for another. Some people feel very little pain, whilst others feel the slightest pain. For this reason, I tend to back off once I see the check mate in a couple of moves, as it is difficult to gage the stability of the opposing poster in a public forum, as a result the point is often not sufficiently made.

For this reason some rules of engagement would be useful, or at least a warning for new members, or a policy that everyone can agree on. Personally this risk element is what I find attractive about this forum. It makes me cautious about what I post, and sharpens my thoughts. And, as others have mentioned, being subjected to this risk, can result in surprisingly good new ideas.

I feel it is extremely poor form however, and well out of order, to try to ban somebody because your personal philosophy cannot reasonably stand up to theirs. That would be school yard bullying, in my opinion, not philosophy.

Personally this risk element is what I find attractive about this forum. It makes me cautious about what I post, and sharpens my thoughts. And, as others have mentioned, being subjected to this risk, can result in surprisingly good new ideas. I feel it is extremely poor form however, and well out of order, to try to ban somebody because your personal philosophy cannot reasonably stand up to theirs. That would be school yard bullying, in my opinion, not philosophy. — Pop

What an important point! Being subjected to the dysregulation can serve to sharpen one's critical abilities. I just love this and it's so very true, it forces one to innovate.

feel it is extremely poor form however, and well out of order, to try to ban somebody because your personal philosophy cannot reasonably stand up to theirs. That would be school yard bullying, in my opinion, not philosophy. — Pop

Question for you both, is it also extremely poor form to ignore and exclude people from conversations for the same reasons? If it weren't for individuals like you both, I think I'd just leave this place and not waste my time with pig ignorant bullies who are too stupid to realise their envy of you is the reason they don't like you. If they took but one second pull their heads from their ass, they might see that you are equal to them and that their mental midget superiority complexes do more harm to themselves than they do to you.

There are good people here. Very good thinkers who are worth staying for.
I have learnt a lot in my short time here. Don't let a few bad apples spoil the exprience for you.

I guess. It just pisses me off that some people can believe their thoughts are untouchable even though they focus only on the people they think are inferior to them.

By characterizing a rational position, as an emotional position, the defender is trying to dismiss it without actually having to deal with it. — JerseyFlight

Just a few months ago the common theme was to question the validity of reason being a method for obtaining truth. It seemed to me that there was an "infiltration" of reason-deniers whose aim was to discredit reason itself in favor of subjective, emotional interpretations of evidence for our origins and relationship with the world. "Subjective truths" is a commonly used oxymoronic phrase around here.

Religion and politics and ethics are philosophical domains rife with emotion. Most of the problems in these domains stem from confusing their subjective "truths" with objective ones.

I know what you mean. I just stay focused on the philosophy. I think the trick is to try to keep it fairly impersonal and reasonable. Its difficult to ignore strong reason.

Religion and politics and ethics are philosophical domains rife with emotion. Most of the problems in these domains stem from confusing their subjective "truths" with objective ones. — Harry Hindu

A most excellent point. None of us are immune from this because we are emotional beings. The point however, to speak in Hegelian terms, is to use the mediation of thought against the immediacy and mindlessness of emotion.