Is it really possible to separate emotion and reason?

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One thing, you can overrule "emotion" with logic in regards to a conclusion, and when you think about it, that's what logic is. Sure, I might apply logic to something I like, but like needn't actually have any say other than that I apply logic to it.

In a way, that's a separation as the emotion which is like doesn't affect the actual logical outcome; it just gave it a start.

Decisions usually require subjective value judgements, and these are not subject to reason or logic. Name a decision and at its root you will always find an arbitrary value.

In terms of strict logic, it absolutely is a cloud. There simply isn't any room for it in the process.

I think the problem here is largely semantical though. Reason and logic are placed on pedestals as the only valid methods of thought, but carry this to an extreme and it's quickly apparent how undesirable and dysfunctional this would really be. This is not solved by calling every form of thinking "reason" and blurring the lines, though. That just eliminates what is meant by reason, which certainly has many merits in its own right, just not exclusive merit.



Where is the emotion in game theory solutions? Or mathematics? There is no need to excise something that was never there to begin with.



These are all subjective values, guided by instinct and emotion. Reason and logic are totally independant of perspective. They follow whenever the premises (which are subjective and arbitrary, not logical) are true, to a conclusion that holds true depending on the premise.

It's like in algebra; if a=6 find the value for x. But a=6 is just arbitrary, and unexamined - it's not subject to the equation. It just is. That's how premises are. Wanting humans to thrive is based on the subjective value that this is a good thing, it's ok as a premise but it's not a logical argument, because it's subjective, and has no premise other than itself. Take another perspective - and this is no longer true. To an elephant, humans thriving is undesirable. From a planetary perspective, the same. So this is arbitrary, as all premises must be.





What difference does that make? Whether they can notice their reactions or not, or whether they are neurologically capable of doing so or not, has nothing to do with the nature of reason itself, it has to do with their nature. This is like saying that ants are capable of reason because they aren't capable of reason!

This is nothing more than an assertion. You might as well post "Are not!" I think the idea of "strict logic" is more fantasy than reality. The notion works fine for Mr. Spock because he's governed by writer, actor, and director. In real life, however, logic is more complex and less clear-cut than that.



Read some definitions of "Reason." I don't mean the dictionary, I mean in general. It is not defined as unemotional or unbiased. It is described as a means to make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, and to change or justify practices, institutions, or beliefs (this is from wikipedia). It is fairly arbitrary and I think to some extent self-serving to claim that reason supercedes or is somehow independent of emotion. Emotion is a part of human cognition and thus shades every part of it. It can't be excised or ignored. At best, one can take it into account and try to reach a conclusion that one hopes is not unduly influenced by it. However, most people are not well equipped to judge this.



I don't think it is absent in either case. Without emotion you would not have the motivation to study these things, to determine what you want to study when you study these things. There would be no reason to work out solutions to game theory problems or complicated theorems in mathematics. While the results may not directly reflect emotion, the commitment to achieve those results very likely involves emotion.



Okay, this is BS. Neither is independent of perspective. Logic cannot exist without consciousness to make sense of it. Logic is not an independent entity that only exists in one static form for all time. It is a cognitive tool that humans use to derive conclusions. However, two people starting with the same premise can reach different yet logically sound conclusions. Also, logic is easily influenced by emotion as I have repeatedly seen people use logic to reinforce their prejudices and beliefs by restricting the information taken into account, or simply being ignorant of contradictory information. Logic is a potential slave to GIGO. If you put nonsense in, you won't get any secrets of the universe back out.

Reason is no different. Further, it is impossible for any human being to act outside of their own perspective. If you remove perspective, you remove the human mind, which makes reason and logic utterly irrelevant.



Mathematics are not strictly a construct of human consciousness, however. They are an abstract means to explain the universe. Whether or not there is any consciousness to witness the occurrence of quantities (for example), quantities still exist. There are four lights whether or not Picard is there to see the lights. If two more lights are added there will be six lights whether or not anyone is present to count them or even whether or not anyone in the universe exists who is capable of counting them.

Subjectivity does not negate logic nor is it inherently logical. I would actually question the assumption that anyone could ever be truly objective. I believe that anyone who presents themselves as having an objective viewpoint has simply made an effort to shift their subjective point of view (or perhaps only claimed to shift their subjective point of view). The vast majority of claims of objectivity I have seen have been utter self-serving rubbish on the part of people making such a claim. Furthermore there is actually a form of logic that explicitly acknowledges subjectivity - "subjective logic."



That last sentence is not rational or logical at all. It appears to be a fairly emotional appeal to absurdity - a fallacious argument. It has literally nothing to do with what I said, as I was restricting my statement to human beings, who have cognitive abilities that ants do not. Your response also has little to do with my statement, which is that there is simply no way to avoid the emotional responses that trigger before conscious thought, and that this does not necessarily reflect a knee-jerk reaction. For example, standing on a cliff and looking down is likely to prompt a fear or anxiety reaction in most people, and this is not knee-jerk at all, but a fear informed by instinct and experience, and a completely rational, reasonable, and logical reaction to being near a steep edge and a potential long fall.

You keep writing as if reason is something that exists independently of human thought, as if it has an objective meaning that cannot ever shift or change. However, reason itself is an artifact of human consciousness (although not necessarily only human consciousness) and is thus an inherently subjective process. It may represent an attempt to achieve objectivity, but true objectivity is likely as real as unicorns. This does not mean it is wrong to try to be objective, but it is probably best to understand and recognize one's own limitations in truly achieving objectivity, and understanding the flaws inherent in the notion of objectivity in the first place.



This is not a rational statement. Decisions are subject to reason, logic, emotion, and other features or artifacts of human thought. I find it bizarre that you can claim it is possible for humans to take a truly objective perspective (despite the fact that having a perspective subverts objectivity in the first place) and also claim that decisions are not subject to reason or logic.

You're confusing the qualities of the student with the qualities of the subject being studied.



Exactly, it's a tool to derive conclusions from premises. The premises aren't part of the process, and logic isn't applied to them. The logic is only the process of going from A (the premises) to B (the conclusion).

You're not really separating this process out from how premises are formed, and you seem to be under the assumption that the premises with which the process is iniated, are themselves subject to the process. They are not! Premises can be subjective and based on a particular perspective, but the process itself moves from A to B without any perspective other than what is defined by the premises. Logic isn't an "independant entity", it could not function without premises and premises are ultimately based on perspective or subjective values - but the process of logic itself, is not.



This has nothing to do with emotion in particular. There can be multiple solutions.



A logical argument depends on the premises being true, so yes, it is absolutely subject to GIGO.

That it's easily influenced by emotion - again you're confusing the qualities of logic with the qualities of those trying to use it. It's no secret that logic can be clouded by emotion, but deliberately restricting contradictory information to reinforce a pre-judgement isn't a feature of logic, it's a feature of people using it incorrectly.



On what do you base this statement? People remove themselves from their perspective all the time. If you've ever considered that the world might be better off without humans, which isn't hard to imagine at all, then you've done it.



So? This is a circular argument. You haven't demonstrated that all products of human consciousness are emotional.

Computers are capable of mathematics. Are they being emotional?



A person cannot, but they can certainly have ideas which are, from time to time.



4+2=6. This is an objective viewpoint. Therefore, they do exist.



Well, not exactly. It's like heuristics but not quite the same, although it serves a similar function. It isn't about subjectivity so much as probability in the face of lack of information.



But we were talking about a lack of logic, which is shared by both ants and humans. You claimed that we can redefine these things based on our failings, I claim that they are independant of our failings. I do not see a difference between what you're saying and claiming ants are logical - if we can just redefine things based on not being able to do them, then can't we say ants are rational beings? This is not rational, but it does follow necessarily from your premises.

It's the same fundamental error you keep making: the failure to distinguish between the properties of the subject and object.



It may be logical to fear falling off a cliff, but that response isn't caused by logic, it's a knee-jerk reaction prompted by instinct. Sometimes these things coincide, you know (when we're talking about instinct, this is actually quite likely to happen often, if you think about it - except, of course, in people who want to die). It doesn't mean they are the same process! Clearly instinct is different from a conscious process of deduction, and can function quite independantly from it. You're just blurring lines.



I take this as a confession that you're playing about with semantics. Words can change meaning, but what they stand for cannot. A carrot will always be a carrot, by any other name.

Reason and logic can and do exist independantly of human thought. The machines we are using to communicate are capable of the same processes, outside of human consciousness.




I never claimed that decisions are not subject to reason or logic - that is simply not present or even implied in what I said (this is an example of a knee-jerk response, here). I claimed that they require a subjective value judgement, which is not subject to logical processes, but is arbitrary. All logical arguments do. If you ask "why" long enough you'll run into the place where logic fails, because ultimately it must rest on arbitrary premises, or it has no foundation or starting point. Logic is a particular process - it is not, and cannot ever be, the whole of even a single cognition. It is merely an element.

The thing is you need to use emotion to decide to use logic to make a descision. Without emotion there is nothing driving you. You just use emotion differently, not not use it.

Unfortunately, there are no emotionless human beings.

I think the first reply that edgewaters gave was a sufficient explanation. I've thought about this sort of thing regularly for the past 5 years and I've held the exact same views as him for a while. When you start thinking about this sort of thing I think you inevitably get drawn into nihilism in the sense that you lack a belief in any inherent value.

Logic is defined as the rules that govern correct inference from a premise, therefore it is not possible to do logic without a premise. If you do a little bit of Hume then you can see that this does not allow for the possibility of objective morals. This is because there is no clear way of getting an ought-statement from an is-statement*, so any logically derived ought-statement must have another ought-statement as a premise. There is no ought statement that is objectively true in the same way that is-statements can be true, so any logical proof of an ought-statement must require infinitely many ought-statements as proof beforehand. Objective in this context is defined as something that different observers can agree upon. The reason is-statements are more objective than ought-statements is that you have sensory organs that can determine what is to a high degree of accuracy and that correspond well to other people's sensory organs, whereas there is no check that we can do on the validity of ought-statements (you can do subjective checks, but no one has any reason to believe that your subjective opinions are valid).

Math is nothing but logic and it clearly requires no emotion to function. Logic in the strictest sense is completely independent of emotion, but cannot tell you what you should do. Emotions provide the premise, as edgewaters said in his first post.

*If you doubt this, think about statements like, "there should be no starving people in africa, so there aren't," and "there are starving people in africa, so therefore it is just for them to starve." It seems clear to me that is and ought lose their independent meanings if you can go from one to the other like this.

It's interesting that you invoke Hume here, as he said

I do not see how viewing emotion as a vital part of human cognition inevitably leads to nihilism. But then, this is a thread in which I am arguing scientific data vs. philosophy, and I simply do not see how empirical data should be subordinated to philosophy in such a manner. Obviously, philosophy influences science and informs how science is done, but when one uses philosophy to counter empirical claims, then the discussion has gone off the tracks.

I also think that the constant insertion of mathematics and logic as being truly unemotional is shifting the goalposts and confuses the results with the processes used to achieve results.

Hume hardly counts as a philosopher because nearly everything he said was objectively true (in the nearest possible sense).

Hume was a nihilist in the same way I am. I meant nihilism in the sense that there is no inherent value in anything, which is a philosophical position and not an life-attitude. Hume was also a nihilist in the sense that he did not trust human reason very much either. He said once that when he thinks about this sort of thing (also including the basis of human reason) he feels despair at how feeble his basis of knowledge and reason are, but when he takes a break and looks at it later it seems absurd to him and he lets it go and hangs out with his friends (but he said it with much more sophisticated language).

Really the scientific method is a philosophy in itself, so if it gets influenced by other philosophy very much then it isn't science anymore. The only way I can think that philosophy might change science would be if somebody's religious beliefs or something changed what he was interested in studying, but if it changed the way he studies then it would no longer be science.

I do not know how I used philosophy to counter empirical claims. Empirical claim almost sounds like an oxymoron to me anyway because if it is empirical then you don't need to claim it; it is just there.

I see nothing unfortunate about it. Without emotion, there would be no passion, and without passion, there would be no progress. No one spends countless hours in intricate thought or experimentation if they do not derive some sort of satisfaction out of it.

After 50 years in a prison called Life & Reality? I can safely say..
No.
Or rather it is, but most people will not. For emotionally charged political issues, people actually dig in when shown evidence of error or facts contrary to their favorite position.
I find it mildly depressing.
Honestly.

Sincerely,
Matthew

I probably misunderstood your post at some level.

What I meant is that the research says that emotional stuff happens when you think. There are variations in people (for example, where most people have an emotional reaction to certain words, psychopaths do not). This is simply empirical data.

As for the word "claim" one meaning is to assert or maintain as a fact. My usage was correct.

The scientific method is a product of philosophy, and is constantly being altered by philosophy. Probably the biggest recent influence would be Karl Popper, who introduced (among other things) the concept of falsifiability, now a critical element of scientific analysis. There are always philosophical debates surrounding things like empiricism, and even the purpose and nature of science itself (e.g. the ongoing battle between instrumentalism and scientific realism)

Sure, but not all thinking is covered by the terms "reason", "rationality" or "logic". And while you may be having emotions as you do math, it doesn't mean they are part of the math (and no matter how you might try to dismiss it, math is a type of thinking and reasoning, you can't just exclude it because it disproves your notions).

Point taken.