Logic vs emotion

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I noticed that a lot of posts where Aspies claim that they are more logical than NT's. Pretty much, most people would say logic is more important than emotions. So, would Aspies be better off than NT's? Can one be too logical? Think of an Aspie who pretty much has very bland personality, rude, has no empathy, anal, goes by the book and whatnot. Emotions are not a bad thing. Human are social creatures. We care for each other, work in teams, and form relationships. This is based on emotions. With so many Aspies unemployed/underempoyed and having few (if any) friends, you gotta wonder why people value logic more than emotions.

I don't know how else to say this, but you are wrong. While, yes, we do have emotions, sometimes even stronger than NT's, we tend to be more logical in our thought processes. Too much logic? Nonsense. Logic tells us that we have no reason to be rude and anal. A truly logical person would have no emotions whatsoever, and all of those negative traits you listed are found in people who have an excess of negative emotions. Emotions are a bad thing. Emotions are nothing but instincts; while the very definition of intelligence is an ability to use logic to override the emotions. We don't necessarily have to be social creatures. The only purpose of relationships is to produce another generation. Emotional people are greedy and selfish. Logical people know that by working as a team and caring for each other, we can all benefit. And one last thing; most people don't value logic more than emotions. That's why were sometimes treated like fecal matter.

There is nothing bad about emotions as emotions, although they can lead to bad things. I should say that so does logic, and of course logic is not guaranteed to be correct. You can have 100% valid logic that is derived from false data, thus making the logic useless for anything.

The definition of intelligence is not the ability to use logic to override emotions. The definition of intelligence is one's ability to reason. While dictionary definitions are descriptive and not prescriptive, the dictionary definitions do not specifically refer to the supposed primacy of logic over emotion: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intelligence

Logically speaking, emotions are motivators. They motivate toward self-preservation, self-improvement, toward establishing ties, building communities, fighting for causes, seeking justice, being merciful, having a relationship, caring for one's family, and the list is endless. Without emotions, there is no motivation. Without motivation, there is no action, no survival, no improvement, no communities, no causes, no justice, no mercy, no relationships, no caring. Someone linked a study here several months ago that showed that people who had emotions found it very difficult to make decisions. If you have to decide what to have for lunch, and you do not want to have anything, will you be motivated to actually obtain a lunch to eat?

Here's the study: http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/10/3/295.full

From the conclusion:

Emotions are vital in the decision-making process. Sometimes bad decisions, sometimes good decisions, but is it worth removing the bad decisions if the good decisions go with it? Logic and emotion can and should temper each other.

Emotions like hate fear paranoia are chemicals that cause our body do so something to prolong survival promote reproduction and or prevent early demise

For example Love
Love is just a biological imperative to reproduce and pass on the genes; the chemicals involved are not that uncommon, testosterone, dopamine norpenephrin, vasopressin, oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin. After the initial love has been replaced with attachment, all you are really left with is a ‘habit’. Moreover, as most people will admit, anything ‘habit forming’ tends to be bad for you.

Logic when applied in isolation from emotion is as bad for the person as illogical and uncontrolled emotions.
Without emotions we are robots, without logic we are worse that the most base beast

When you said "Think of an Aspie who pretty much has very bland......etc" that is based on a stereotyped and mythical Aspie who doesn't really exist. No one would ever say I have a bland personality, I am NOT rude, I DO have empathy, I am NOT anal, and I certainly do not go by any book (in fact I'm a scofflaw). You can't pull one bad stereotype out of thin air and then use it as a valid example for an argument. That is a fallacious argument called a "Straw Man" argument.

Furthermore, it's not a tug-of-war between Logic and Emotion as you seem to imply. You can be an emotional person but choose to act rationally based on logic. Having overwhelming emotions with no ability to use rational reasoning is just as bad, or worse than, acting like a logical robot who has no emotions. Logic is what give purpose and direction to emotions. Unconstrained emotions without logical purpose behind them describes tantruming toddlers or criminals or insane people. Purely logical people who feel nothing describe someone who's dead inside and who lacks conscience or empathy, which describes many petty bureaucrats and other evil people.

You need emotions which are filtered through logic before you act on them to be a whole and rational human being. This is called having self-control. A person responding only to emotion without self-control is simply a madman.

Finally, your tossing in that Aspies have few friends and are often unemployed has nothing to do with either logic or emotion, and was a low blow for you to make. We are outcast because NT's use their emotions to notice we're odd or unusual, and fail to filter that emotion through logic before bullying us or firing us for trivial reasons. If these people would only use logic to understand that different doesn't mean bad or needing to be excluded and bullied, then we would not have any of these problems that you appear to be wrongly attributing to us being overly logical.

You made a fallacious argument to come to a wrong conclusion. Your emotions made you think illogically. What's so great about that?

It's a weird misconception that emotions and logic are mutually exclusive. Take the Iowa gambling task, there are 4 decks of cards, each deck giving/taking money according to a certain set of rules. It's structured so some decks give overall (small) gains, and some give overall losses, however those with overall losses may give occasional big rewards. The rules are too complicated to be worked out logically. Healthy participants tend to sample all decks before ultimately settling on the 'better' decks, resulting in an overall net gain. They even get a physiological response (increased skin conductance/aka sweating) when their hand hovers over 'bad' decks. Participants with impaired or non-existent emotions tend to stick to the bad decks (perhaps) due to the occasional high rewards, resulting in overall losses. So in this example emotions lead to the logical decision, even though participants don't consciously know they are making it.

I don't think I've answered the original question, probably should try and address it. One of the main features of autism is lack of 'theory of mind', for someone to think they are more logical than others it suggests they are making a judgement about other peoples thought processes, in this case presuming they are driven be some mass of emotions. Even NTs can't (generally) decipher other peoples thought processes well enough to deduce the reasoning behind actions, so it seems illogical to state you are more logical than others.

To me, logic is no more than a faculty of the mind. Emotion is the executive, the motivator. I believe that all our behaviour is emotionally driven....our logic merely tries to inform us of the wisdom of our proposed behaviour.

I think the confusion came about because of the way the Western world has developed.....emotions were seen as an inferior way of thinking, because science grew to be so powerful. Indeed, raw emotion without cold logic can easily lead to harmful mistakes, but it's also true that logic alone will do just as much harm, and given its immense power, it can probably be even worse.

I don't think we would do anything at all if we didn't have emotions. There has to be some (emotional) desire or fear before we will expend energy on making a change to fix it.

Even if potential friends and workmates don't particularly value emotion consciously, they will still react to your interpersonal skills and to your power to make them like you......it's written into the law that an employer must have objective, fair reasons for preferring one candidate over another, but in practise, if you don't get that positively charged rapport going during the interview, you won't get the job, assuming the employer has plenty of candidates to choose from. He might try to hire the people who seem like the best economic transaction for the firm, but his decisions will be compromised by whether or not he's taken a personal liking to you. As for making friends, nobody even expects to be doing that for logical reasons. I either get a good feeling or a bad one about a new person. Logic barely enters into it.

We're batting on a sticky because we tend to have alexithymia, so it's hard for us to know our own motives until it's too late. Paradoxically, our (arguably) superior logic is of no use to us in this, because we don't see our feelings clearly enough to subject them to proper scrutiny by the logical faculty, so we tend to rail about like immature kids, unaware that we're feeling angry, afraid, etc.

To play beautiful music, one must be strung just right, not too loose, and not too tight.

Ecclesiastes 8:6 For there is a proper time and procedure for every matter, though a man's misery weighs heavily upon him.

Nice insights from all of the posts. It's something I think about a lot. It seems like logic and emotion have different purposes in the human brain. They aren't two warring systems of decision making. They are interdependent systems.

Now that's an awesome insight. Having developed a powerful tool for analyzing data outside our heads, we like to tell ourselves we're using the same powerful tool inside our heads.

Well it's an idea of mine. I think others have made the same observation. I'm sure that's what happened to me.....some time during my school days, I got very spaced out by how everything could be explained and predicted with rational thought and diligent study. I remember confidently telling my Relate counsellor a few years later that aggression was a redundant emotion I had no use for.

Yes one can be too logical and that can be bad because then you come off as being cold hearted and ignoring the person's feelings. I think that is a very aspie thing even though NTs can do this too.

But even aspies need emotional support at times and even we get bothered by logic because our feelings are being ignored. We're human is why.

Everything is always bad if it's too much like too much water is bad or too much food or too much exercise or too much medicine, it's the same with logic, too much logic is bad. I also think too much emotion is bad. Too much of anything is bad.

I use a little of both. Logic is great and all, but showing some emotion is what makes people see you as human. Of course, show too much emotion and people will think your rocking chair isn't rocking.

Either way, moderation for both is an absolute essential.

There is no better example to this conundrum, be it fact or fiction, than Mr. Spock from Star Trek. Being able to be reasonable, to see things from a dull, logical point of view is an admirable ability, but almost useless in human life. Every fact, every logical conclusion is meaningless if isolated from the rest of the human mind. We would not be here today as we are if humans had been logical through all their lives. Many undertakings that lead to inventions and discoveries were taken under - under logical considerations - disproportional amounts of risk. Emotions and imagination - thinking of things in a way of prediction dictated by not only personal experience but irrational wishes and desires - is what sets us apart from any other species on this planet. An ant, even though it does not have a central nervous system, operates on instinctual logic alone. It is, basically, a machine that has been programmed with a certain task that it carries out without questioning its logic or its impact on future or past events. If us humans were operating on cold logic, we would start to stagnate, culutrally and technological. Being a person of reason can have its benefits when working in science. What keeps us moving is the fact that sometimes we do irrational things, because sometimes we have foolish wishes and desires, and we want to ask why.

I was definitely on his side in that episode where they were stranded on a hostile planet, and he wouldn't let the crew bury the dead because the time and energy spent on that would reduce their already slim chances of escape.

Just going by these forums, whilst they may like to think so, most aspies do not seem any more logical than NTs.

NTs may seem to do strange things for the sake of it, but if you don't see the invisible (social rules) then of course they look strange to outsiders

As for the rules themselves being illogical, yes, some may be outdated but if the rest of society still follows them it makes sense for an individual to follow them too; ignoring them may result in ostracisation or censure.