(Open-Ended) Emotions vs Reason
(Open-Ended) Emotions vs Reason
When it comes to decision-making, perception and so on, what are your beliefs about the role and merits of feelings/emotions vs reasoning?
Some common positions:
-
Emotions tend to get in the way of reasoning - we should primarily rely on our logic and rationality to guide us. When feeling strongly about anything we should block it out and try to think purely in a rational way.
-
Reasoning can distract us when the right answer is to empathize or trust our gut feelings; it's easy to be misled by a convincing argument but gut feelings can see through that.
-
Emotions and logic each play a role in observation and judgment. If both didn't have a use, why would we have evolved to have them?
A lot of people probably don't go all the way one way or the other. Even if you don't have a particularly strong reason for why you feel one way or the other, feel free to express what you believe.
You're viewing a single thread.
Emotion is short-cut that has evolutionary strength. Overthinking things can be highly maladaptive. Consider seeing a tiger making a run for you and your group. Reasoning through (or, worse, discussing) your options is going to get everybody in your group killed because the process of reasoning is far slower than the reaction speed of emotion. Fear, on the other hand, will have everybody in the group scattering, running away screaming.
In the first case everybody (or almost everybody) in your group dies. This is maladaptive. In the second case one, maybe two die. This is far more adaptive behaviour.
Later there's room for reasoning: figuring out ways to arm yourself against tigers, say, or building traps to capture/kill them, or finding better places to go where there are no tigers. But in the moment, reason kills.
Similar things go with concepts like lust and love. Sure you can think through and discuss all the reasons why it would be best to have procreative sex, but โฆ ah โฆ there's plenty of "local optimization" trouble that makes it more practical not to procreate and let others do the procreation (until nobody is procreating and the species dies out). The emotion of lust comes to the rescue as your instincts override your reason and you make the beast with two backs, thus procreating. Which leads us to the advantage of love. In this case let's address the parent/child love bond. Again, children are an inconvenience and any reasonable person, courtesy of the local optimization problem, will likely come to the conclusion that abandoning the child is the smart thing to do. But dammit, they're so cute, D'aw!, and she's got her mother's eyes and her father's hair and look! She just puked! Isn't that cute!? (Parents are literally insane; partially by sleep deprivation, but mostly by emotion.)
On the lust thing, my take is that lust provides an initial attraction to want to be with someone and spend time with them, and then due to spending more time together you form closer bonds which may grow into love.
Similarly with the biological predisposition to find children adorable and want to protect them, that's what makes things work initially, but later you likewise grow to love them on their own merits.
Love is also an emotional response, of course, just a different sort of one.
Well yes, I was using some specific examples to illustrate a point that emotion has adaptive qualities essential to survival, not trying to map out the utility, interrelationship, and impact (both adaptive and maladaptive) of every emotional reaction! ๐
Tiger example
True, but logic could also state that a group standing their ground and making loud noises would drive the tiger away. Quickly arming yourself, defence, deterrence, and group tactics are a logical response. A little pre-planning leads you to be able to curtail an emotional response later. Running and screaming as the emotional response would most likely lead to at least one person being injured (as tigers can outrun humans in short bursts) if not killed and eaten.
Kids example
Yes. As a parent, yes, you go a little insane. Logic led me to say that we could handle one (which isn't a decision everyone gets to make). Emotion led me to actually be a Father. Kids absolutely play on and demolish both of those processes. Kids are chaos incarnate.
A little pre-planning leads you to be able to curtail an emotional response later.
I addressed that:
Later thereโs room for reasoning: figuring out ways to arm yourself against tigers, say, or building traps to capture/kill them, or finding better places to go where there are no tigers. But in the moment, reason kills.
Heh. Sorta. I'm saying plan in advance (as in before the theoretical expedition), and it seems like you're saying planning later (as in after the first failure).
I see what you mean though!
You can't plan ahead for unforseen circumstances though. Picture people who've never seen a tiger before in my example. There's no time to stop and jaw about the right response, only time to turn tail and run.
THEN you can talk about how to prevent that from happening in the future.
Emotions have a very valuable role in, well, survival.