Bringing subconscious impulses into a conscious template that we can interact with is an essential skill. I agree that having a good locus of control over emotional changes can determine our own outlook on life.

Thank you for your contribution, I will look into dialectical behavior theory more.

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I try to use the term "causal determinism" in discussions of free will. The progression of the state of the universe is strictly caused by the state of the universe (and nothing else), although it may not be a priori determinable from the state.

There's a concept in dialectical behavior therapy called "radical acceptance", part of which includes consciously accepting the emotions that come up from different stimuli in order to avoid making premature/misinformed judgments about what triggered our reactions.

From my understanding, our emotional responses to different events are formed through how we've experienced our unique challenges, traumas, and successes throughout our lives, and due to this we don't have ANY control over which emotions come up from new stimuli. (E.g. a person who's lost a loved one to an unjustified police killing might experience emotions more intensely hearing about a similar incident than someone who hasn't.)

In radical acceptance, it's observing our emotions and understanding what triggers each of them that allows us to think more objectively about a given moment. Humans are pattern-seeking creatures, and emotions are kind of like our brains' means of projecting our previous experiences/bias onto new ones in order to affirm the patterns we're familiar with. Our emotions are instinctual references to our past experiences; whether we use them in our reasoning depends on whether we still understand our high-level intentions as we experience those emotions.

Opposition implies two-sidedness. The opposite of reason is not emotion, or at least you haven’t shown us as much.

The opposite of reason would be un-reason. As an extreme example, committing a murder for a reason (pre-meditated) is different from killing someone without a reason (manslaughter). So shooting your annoying next-door neighbor is an applied reason, but accidentally hitting them with your car in a snowstorm with slippery roads has no applied reason, OR applied emotion.

So, I think you are wrong, and reason and emotion are not opposites. They are entirely separate, perhaps sometimes contradictory, tools to make decisions. Emotions can be used to make good decisions (using the feeling of guilt to recognize wrongdoing and apologizing), and reason can be used to make bad decisions (using ethnocentrism to define certain people in society as negative).

An emotion can be the driver of decision-making just as much as reason can, and the same goes for a lack of either.

Yes. This was spot on what I was thinking, myself.

I agree with most of this, with the exception that, to an extreme, rational thinking to explain emotions can transform into immature coping mechanisms. Rationalization will “explain away” certain emotions or reactions, like when someone with extreme fear or anxiety of lightning to believe this is natural, since lightning can instantly kill you.

Likewise, “intellectualizing” is an immature mechanism where one tries to “objectively” research or study a problem, thereby depersonalizing the person from the subject. An example would be a man with pancreatic cancer avoiding his feelings on the matter by reading clinical trials, drug trials, and survival rates for his disease at the level of a doctoral candidate instead of attending to his emotional state.

But these are extremes that you certainly didn’t imply, just worth noting, and I agree that practice is needed to find a happy medium of permitting emotional recognition and using rational thinking to guide towards a good solution.

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At the end of the day, they're just two sides of the same coin. Getting what we want.

Reason and rationality is the slow long term view of getting what we want, while emotion is the fast hot immediate view of what we want. The latter informs the former - when we step back, we consider the potential gain and loss through all possible emotional outcomes, not just the active one.

But they don't exist independently of emotion - that is still the thing that gives you a desire or drive for anything at all, and keenly relates to helping achieve your homeostatic and reproductive outcomes (i.e. surviving).

Sure.

I don't like to view emotions and rational thinking as if they are somehow opposite to each other or as if doing one means we are suppressing the other I think they are really interrelated to each other. Our thoughts directly influence our emotions, like you can literally think yourself to a bad mood. So I believe rational thinking plays an important role in "sorting" our emotions. I agree that emotions are "non-instaneous" and hence takes some time to manifest. That's why I think rational thinking may not instantaneously fix our mood but if practiced as a habit allows us to have greater control over our emotions over time.

I agree that just because one is sad about a fact’s existence, the strength of the emotion will not alter reality to change that fact. Ex. Grandma has cancer, and while it’s natural to be sad, being sad won’t change it. I think that’s a healthy worldview.

At the same time, the emotional response does carry utility in arguments, but it shouldn’t be the primary means to finding solutions. I hope that wasn’t the message you received from my comment.

Continuing on the example of “grandma has cancer.” I’m a medical student who has witnessed numerous end-of-life conversations, and the emotional conflict most families struggle to grasp is the amount of suffering the patient endures. I know this is anecdotal, but the families who seem to struggle less are those who value either a cure to illness or palliative care (pain management, functional support like eating/sleeping, quality of life measures, etc.) Families and patients who identify the particular fear of suffering can make more sound/reasonable decisions.

Families who cannot firmly identify their fears or emotions will firmly grasp onto the plan of “no suffering = do every chemotherapy and surgery and radiation treatment possible.”

So I don’t advocate for the latter scenario at all. Guarding maladaptive emotions is not a productive way to reach good solutions, you are right. At the same time, in the sphere of public opinion, it is considered rude to identify other’s as emotional, but in reality this should be more tolerable. I mean, Snickers can say “you’re not you when you’re hungry” but if you or I said that in a heated debate, our cause would be lost.

Lol good point thanks for your contribution

>They aren’t. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Emotions get in the way of truth.

This isn't necessarily true. Emotions can get in the way of truth but not always.

In general, emotions are more "basic" than rational thought and have faster processing time, using less information - they evolved earlier after all. In a crisis where time is a crucial factor, emotions and instincts had the potential to save an organism. However, if time is not as pressing a concern, rational thought then gains the advantage in optimally exploiting a situation. As you say, I think humans make judgement calls based on emotion despite being capable of reasoning simply because people are naturally lazy. Logical thought is more taxing, requiring more energy and time.

Yes it is. Definitive also.

'They are opposites' isn't a meaningful statement

We're all wet electric meatballs running skeleton mechs. Objective rationality was never realistically on the table.

I agree with how you characterize emotions as a tool in the decision-making process. It is an available asset that supports reasoning, but certainly should not be the guiding compass.

I might have rushed here. This first bit is where I was trying to summarize the essential debate on emotion and reasoning.

If logical reasoning is a product of the mind, and emotions are also a product of the mind, and there is a belief that emotions would disrupt reasoning, then it follows that emotions should be suppressed when one is actively applying logic to a problem.

This is especially considered where, in everyday life, people who “act on emotions” instead of logic or linear thinking are seen as impulsive or unreasonable. I don’t think that’s necessarily true, as in the case of instinctive/survival-based decisions, but that feels obvious.

Instead, I’m trying to argue that non-instantaneous decision making can take emotions into context, because outright ignoring the input of emotions is a denial of an essential part of the mind. I think emotions matter greatly as we apply reasoning to problems.

This is merely a critique of false objectivity, not actual objectivity. The actual process of objectivity necessarily involves communal dialectics with people who disagree and challenge in order to weed out emotional processes. This takes time effort and discomfort.

The problem with these sorts of articles and how people interpret them is that they appear to be some sort of “gotcha” on the merits of objectivity when in reality they aren’t saying anything new or unaccounted for in the spheres that actually orient themselves around objective pursuit.

Guarding against this reality (of one individual or a monolithic group of people claiming to be objective) is the basis of science, peer review, American democracy via representation, and dialectical processes. It’s an indictment on dictatorships or loss of free speech to challenge ideas, not an indictment against objectivity. It is a critique on single individuals or like minded grouped claiming to be purely rational and thus immune from the necessity to participate in dialectics.

That’s not to say objectivity applies to everything: metaphysical values such as sacrificial compassion vs a survival of the fittest mentality are purely subjective. But we can still apply objective processes to them: ie we can tell if a person is holding and applying a stated value consistently or hypocritically; we can tell what the results of a value produce.

Science also is aware that we can’t know anything for sure which is why it relies on “verisimilitude”, that is, some things being more certain to be true than others, and notions of utilitarianism (ie what is our goal and will doing X produce this).

Ie a sole scientist is not able to be objective, but a group of 100 disagreeing scientists can work to hone in on and weed out subjective biases and cognitive errors in a collective effort to arrive at a 93% certainty that X is X, with a maximum certainty of perhaps 99%. Never 100%.

Doctors are trained in this way too. It’s why a good doctor won’t ever tell you that you have a 100% chance of survival in a surgical procedure or medicine. The best one could say is “this procedure has a 99% observed success rate without any serious complications to resolve issue X and we believe the benefits outweigh the risks”

And that was arrived at through long term dialectical processes, whose methodology can be applied to a myriad of other issues in life. This is what objectivism means - it is not a solo effort, it is not a short term effort, and it is not a certainty. Rather it is working together as humans through dialectics using specific methods intended to weed out biases and emotions.

It’s not perfect, it’s not easy, it’s not quick. But it does work towards a stated goal, ie, practically reducing suffering.

In summary - the entire premise of objectivity proper is that subjective biases exist and we are trying to control for them through specific communal methodologies and diverse dialectics.

Misunderstanding this leads to overly simplified ideas such as “one person can’t be objective, therefore all there is is subjectivity”.

It also overlooks the fact that while no group of humans can be perfectly objective (ie none will hit 100%), they can collectively be closer to or further from away objectivity.

Finally, I am not downplaying the value of emotional subjectivity it is to our being human. We need both. I am merely clarifying what I find to be a consistent abuse of the idea of objectivity. Your dogmatic uncle bob who loves to belligerently argue is not the definition of an objective person.

They are opposites. End of story.

Disciplines my ass.

> …emotions have potential to be good drivers of instinct and direction of values.

So what? Wouldn’t the instincts and values of an individual determine whether or not we want them to be driven by their emotions?

There’s this idea that instincts and emotions are some sort of source of truth. They aren’t. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Emotions get in the way of truth. And instincts are just non-rational self serving reactions we have to protect our selves in some way.

This is one of the biggest problems with the human race I think. I’ll try not to get political, but we have major human rights issues at the moment and they are primarily driven by emotions. What’s really scary, is that scientists who perform studies and write papers are also subject to emotional bias.

No matter how strongly someone feels about something. No matter are sad they are about it. No matter how nice they are, we shouldn’t accept something as truth if it isn’t true. But we do it all the time and make excuses for it. And also tend to refrain from discussing it in public debate, to protect people’s feelings. It’s apsurd.

All you're doing is thinking of them in terms of binary oppositions. This is quite an outdated approach that most disciplines agree is not correct. Biology, psychology, sociology, philosophy etc. will all clearly show the two are interactive and not necessarily easily distinguished.

What is your opinion on the intertwining of logic/reason and emotion? Or are you just a skeptic contrarian who won’t offer an original thought on the matter?

Tell me how you really feel.

>If I were a surgeon who felt nervous putting a patient on an operating table, the emotion of fear is quite valid in the reasoning to operate

On the contrary, emotion serves as a canary in the coal mine, but you still have to know what killed the canary. It doesn't play a prominent role in the reasoning to not operate, but it does indicate that there is likely a good reason to not operate you still need to identify.

Or, rather, the emotion alerts you to an issue, but you are not going to cancel the surgery and go to your boss or the patient and say "I got a bad feeling about it." You are going to investigate that feeling using reason to find what the true problem is. If, after a thorough investigation involving second opinions, you find nothing to be the problem, you will likely ignore or downgrade your emotional concerns as reason and evidence take clear precedence.

A similar thing arises with your concept of emotion on either side of an argument. It is not working in the same capacity as reason, and thus, is not replacing it (though it may distract). It is useful as a time saving heuristic to mentally debrief and provide your rational mind with a "second opinion" that may catch something it missed. IMHO, this is not a necessary practice in exercising reason, but it is a good practice to engage other parts of your mind to support your reasoning systems as they are anything but infallible.