Bluewing thinks Feeling has cooties

[ygolo]

Same. Well some of the time...it depends on the emotion...sadness and happiness never seem to affect me in that department. Anger, fear, and frustration seem to though.

For me, even being very happy, or very sad makes it hard for me to think clearly also.

If there is such a thing, "extreme calm" is when I think most clearly.

 

[Sunshine]

For me, even being very happy, or very sad makes it hard for me to think clearly also.

If there is such a thing, "extreme calm" is when I think most clearly.

Maybe it's just becaue I have myself so trained...being an enneagram 4 I get used to having to deal with my extreme emotions.

Not frustration and fear though. I have to really watch out for those. I swear I've done some of the dumbest things ever under the influence of those emotions. Luckily I don't have to worry about anger so much because it always seems to dissipate within minutes...I simply can't sustain it.

 

[SolitaryWalker]

For me, even being very happy, or very sad makes it hard for me to think clearly also.

If there is such a thing, "extreme calm" is when I think most clearly.

There we go, dispassionate contemplation is most conducive to clear-thinking.

Feeling is analogous to emotion as magnet to a metal.

How do I feel? How will I feel? How can I make the ambience around me more pleasant. Are all examples of Feeling at work. Technically it is thinking that is concerned with framing such questions, but it is at the behest of Feeling. This seems adequate to adduce that Feeling intensifies our passions and therefore leads us away from dispassionate contemplation which is necessary for clear-thinking.

 

[Sunshine]

So you are saying that being a Feeler makes ones emotions more intense?

 

[ygolo]

There we go, dispassionate contemplation is most conducive to clear-thinking.

Feeling is analogous to emotion as magnet to a metal.

How do I feel? How will I feel? How can I make the ambience around me more pleasant. Are all examples of Feeling at work. Technically it is thinking that is concerned with framing such questions, but it is at the behest of Feeling. This seems adequate to adduce that Feeling intensifies our passions and therefore leads us away from dispassionate contemplation which is necessary for clear-thinking.

So?

EDIT:Sunshine's question is also relavent. Though I think as a generalization, it may be true, it is not a foregone conclusion, nor does it mean anything from moment to moment.

 

[Sunshine]

So?

Hehe.
That's my question too.

 

[SolitaryWalker]

So?

EDIT:Sunshine's question is also relavent. Though I think as a generalization, it may be true, it is not a foregone conclusion, nor does it mean anything from moment to moment.

For this reason we must avoid Feeling (value-judgments) in making practical decisions in life as those earnestly require that we know what we are doing. The only reliable way to knowing what we are doing is thinking things through as accurately as possible.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

Popping in...

I've already pointed in the past how often Thinking driven pursuits result in emotional outbursts. Are we talking about emotions in terms of a sentimental thought process in ones mind, or the personal expression that we often associate with emotions?


I have a hypothetical question.

Let's suppose there are two people:

One is a person that is highly temperamental, but is concerned with logical and factual endeavors, and is very skilled and educated in handling them.

This other is a person that is remarkably self-disciplined and dispassionate, but cares not for logical or factual discussions and barely understands how to approach them.

Which of these too people is of more value to your society, BlueWing?

 

[Sunshine]

For this reason we must avoid Feeling (value-judgments) in making practical decisions in life as those earnestly require that we know what we are doing. The only reliable way to knowing what we are doing is thinking things through as accurately as possible.

So basically, "Don't try to paint a picture with a pitch fork, if you're going to paint a picture, use a paint brush."

As in "If you have a situation that regires thinking, use it, don't use value judgements."

??

ETA: Feeling (the descision making function) does not equal value judgements.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

For this reason we must avoid Feeling (value-judgments) in making practical decisions in life as those earnestly require that we know what we are doing. The only reliable way to knowing what we are doing is thinking things through as accurately as possible.

I agree, but... Practical for what? The practicality of a decision is determined in part by context. Namely, the context of ones aim. And of course, the context of ones aim is defined by Feeling. Your Feelings are partly what determine the practicality of a decision.

 

[ygolo]

For this reason we must avoid Feeling (value-judgments) in making practical decisions in life as those earnestly require that we know what we are doing. The only reliable way to knowing what we are doing is thinking things through as accurately as possible.

This does not follow.

Let's say making value judgements may in general make ones feelings more intense at times (I am not sure of this, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt). Yes, having intense emotion leads me means I do not think as clearly at the moments I have those feelings.

However, those intense feeling have value in themselves, in that they define who I am more completely. If they are part of my subconsious, denying their existence, and repressing them does psychological harm (which leads to more intense feelings, at inopportune times).

Rationally speaking, why would one choose a certain profession over another? Why would one choose a particular lover over another? If you did not ever have intense feelings one way or another, how do you know what will provide you with the energy and commitment needed to do difficullt things?

 

[Sunshine]

This does not follow.

Let's say making value judgements may in general make ones feelings more intense at times (I am not sure of this, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt). Yes, having intense emotion leads me means I do not think as clearly at the moments I have those feelings.

However, those intense feeling have value in themselves, in that they define who I am more completely. If they are part of my subconsious, denying their existence, and repressing them does psychological harm (which leads to more intense feelings, at inopportune times).

Rationally speaking, why would one choose a certain profession over another? Why would one choose a particular lover over another? If you did not ever have intense feelings one way or another, how do you know what will provide you with the energy and commitment needed to do difficullt things?

Oh wow that was a really good post.

 

[reason]

Bluewing,

I would class myself as someone with a clear and precise reasoning faculty, and yet there is very little which is dispassionate about my reasoning. It may not be communicated by the words which I write, but the process of forming and analysing ideas is anything but calm and disapassionate for me, rather I am excitable, hyperactive, animated with expressive manifestations of captivating ideas. The experience is not calm and dispassionate, and I would not want it to be so. The enjoyment of intellectual discovery is at least half of my motivation for engaging in it.

 

[yenom]

Learning from one's thoughts lead to the development of logic and empirical reason, thuse creating the first thinkers.

Learning from one's emotions lead to the development of EQ and SQ and other psychologty theories

The purpose of logic is to find emprical truths, to verify what one thinks really exists in thre world of reality, not as an instrument to dissociate himself from his feelings. Beause what one thinks in his mind may not necesarily be real in the world of reality.

 

[Orangey]

From wikipedia:

"Monotonicity of entailment is a property of many logic systems that states that the hypotheses of any derived fact may be freely extended with additional assumptions. Any true statement in a logic with this property, will continue to be true even after adding any new axioms. Logics with this property may be called monotonic in order to differentiate them from non-monotonic logic."

But in moral situations, we are faced non-monotonic issues. For instance:

"Thou shalt not kill" --> "It is wrong to kill."

This is a universal statement. In monotonic logic, no matter what new statements are added to the argument following that premise, the first axiom "It is wrong to kill" remains true. But we think differently. Imagine if we add in another proposition, like "If we killed Hitler in 1939, we'd save the lives of 10 million or more people." Suddenly the initial statement is (for many people) no longer true. We have no self-evident truths off of which to base everything else, or very few, and very few of these have been totally proven to be such.

Because when we're dealing with real-world situations with moral values feeling kicks in. IMO it's easier to account for Feeling in a non-monotonic logic.

I agree with all of this. If we are dealing with issues of morality, the only way that they could be dealt with deductively is if we establish certain universal moral principles (such as "thou shalt not kill") and then apply them deductively to concrete situations. The problem with this, as you mentioned, is that it is impossible to generate rules and principles that will cover every situation and contingency, and this will result in inconsistencies within the moral framework that's been adopted (such as the "killing Hitler in 1939" example that you gave, which would contradict the principle of "thou shalt not kill"). In other words, moral reasoning is not able to be represented in deductive logic in an adequate or practical way (a way that is true to the way that humans make ethical decisions).

With the assertion that cutting out all Feeling functioning from debates regarding human affairs, one is faced with the fact that we can't reason monotonically and in our world Feeling is a way of dealing with non-monotonic situations on a case by case basis as new information comes in.

This is where I take issue with what you've said so far (and it is why I took issue with your original post regarding non-monotonic logic). Feeling is not a way of dealing with non-monotonic situations, but rather non-monotonic systems of reasoning provide ways of dealing with arguments and decisions that involve Feeling, as is the case with moral reasoning. Non-monotonic systems of logic can be applied to domains that do not involve Feeling at all.

In abductive reasoning we seek the best possible answers based on our current state of knowledge, and this involves a non-monotonic logic. But this perfectly describes our current predicaments with, say, abortion. Lacking a rigorously sound argument to determine whether abortion is 'right' before 20 weeks or after, or right at all, we have to 'feel' our way to a best-possible answer.

This is a case involving an ethical decision, which does indeed involve feeling. As I said before, however, not all instances of abduction (or default reasoning, circumscription, etc...) involve Feeling because abduction is not used exclusively for moral or ethical reasoning.

I brought this all up because it seems to me that this clarifies somewhat the place of Feeling in a rational debate about human affairs. If we rely on a monotonic logic, like the classical first-degree and subject-predicate logics, it's more difficult to rationally include Feelings as determiners of best-fit solutions.

This is true, though I would point out that the business of determining best-fit solutions, whether they include Feelings as determinants or not, is not the function of monotonic logic anyway. That is a nitpick of your last sentence, though, and it doesn't interfere with the meaning that you were trying to get across, so you can ignore this .

Anyway, I hope I came off at least partially clear in this post .

 

[Samuel De Mazarin]

This is where I take issue with what you've said so far (and it is why I took issue with your original post regarding non-monotonic logic). Feeling is not a way of dealing with non-monotonic situations, but rather non-monotonic systems of reasoning provide ways of dealing with arguments and decisions that involve Feeling, as is the case with moral reasoning. Non-monotonic systems of logic can be applied to domains that do not involve Feeling at all.



This is a case involving an ethical decision, which does indeed involve feeling. As I said before, however, not all instances of abduction (or default reasoning, circumscription, etc...) involve Feeling because abduction is not used exclusively for moral or ethical reasoning.



This is true, though I would point out that the business of determining best-fit solutions, whether they include Feelings as determinants or not, is not the function of monotonic logic anyway. That is a nitpick of your last sentence, though, and it doesn't interfere with the meaning that you were trying to get across, so you can ignore this .

Anyway, I hope I came off at least partially clear in this post .

Vagueness in wording may have led to your reading my saying that use of non-monotonic logic implies use of the Feeling function. This is absolutely not what I meant and I must accept responsibility for poor phrasing.

However, I'll point out two sentences of mine:

"With the assertion that cutting out all Feeling functioning from debates regarding human affairs, one is faced with the fact that we can't reason monotonically and in our world Feeling is a way of dealing with non-monotonic situations on a case by case basis as new information comes in."

I never said non-monotonicity implies the use of Feeling function. I said that Feeling is a way of dealing with non-monotonic situations --- in our world.

Also, I did not say that abductive thinking means we must use Feeling functioning. However, when it comes to abductive thinking in moral realms, Feeling function is a sine qua non, as I like to say.

So, what I meant by my post about monotonic-versus-non-monotonic logics is that when people contrast firm logical thinking with rational thinking that involves the feeling function, it seems to me that they associate rational thinking with classic monotonic logic, with simple inferential chains that do not account for the exigencies of imperfect knowledge bases and limitations in obtaining accurate knowledge about various situations.

If we acknowledge that non-monotonic logic is far more representative of how we deal with real-world situations, then the role of Feeling in rational decision-making is made far easier to swallow by hardcore Thinking types like Bluewing. This was my aim in raising this admittedly esoteric subject.

______________

I think we're on the same page, frankly... to summarize as succinctly as possible my point:

When someone says, 'you're not being logical because you're letting your emotions get involved', it's not always because he/she has a valid point about emotion running riot. He/she may be thinking of classic monotonic arguments and cutting the possibility of using the Feeling function out of the decision-making process. If people prejudiced against use of affect in rational thinking were to make a more concentrated study of different but equally justifiable systems of logic, they would probably be less willing to condemn outright the use of the Feeling function in decision-making. Hence my raising of the issue of non-monotonicity as a logic which can accommodate Feeling function (but which, Orangey, as you pointed out, doesn't in anyway entail the use of Feeling function).

 

[SolitaryWalker]

Bluewing,

I would class myself as someone with a clear and precise reasoning faculty, and yet there is very little which is dispassionate about my reasoning. It may not be communicated by the words which I write, but the process of forming and analysing ideas is anything but calm and disapassionate for me, rather I am excitable, hyperactive, animated with expressive manifestations of captivating ideas. The experience is not calm and dispassionate, and I would not want it to be so. The enjoyment of intellectual discovery is at least half of my motivation for engaging in it.

The emotional attachment seems to be to the quest for truth. Not to a particular idea.

Someone who is excited by the idea of finding out what is true will be able to think clearly with a relative ease.


Someone who is emotionally attached to a particular idea will not.

For example. Someone who highly values abortion or pro-choice will be emotionally excited as soon as the discussion on the topic starts. They will not be able to think through this problem easily because their emotions will eclipse the sober judgment required. Yet someone who values objective thinking will not have his emotions excited until he has begun thinking.

Thus his emotions are sparked as a result of thinking. (As he gets excited about the idea of contemplation and search for truth)

Eventually, he may be emotionally charged enough to be at a point where his emotions interfere with sober judgment.

At that point his value on clear-thinking will lead him to do all that is necessary to continue thinking clearly, even if this means to silence the passions.

The fact that we often see this accomplished seems to show that the passions are not as strong as that of value-centered thinkers. More specifically because we are able to silence them enough to be able to think clearly.





So 2 reasons for thinking the two emotional attachments different.

1)Emotions are easily seperated from the dispassionate thoughts when necessary.


2)Clear-minded people tend not to make strong attachments to most ideas discussed.

This does not follow.

Let's say making value judgements may in general make ones feelings more intense at times (I am not sure of this, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt). Yes, having intense emotion leads me means I do not think as clearly at the moments I have those feelings.

However, those intense feeling have value in themselves, in that they define who I am more completely. If they are part of my subconsious, denying their existence, and repressing them does psychological harm (which leads to more intense feelings, at inopportune times).

Rationally speaking, why would one choose a certain profession over another? Why would one choose a particular lover over another? If you did not ever have intense feelings one way or another, how do you know what will provide you with the energy and commitment needed to do difficullt things?

Again, analyze your feelings. The difference between a value-centered thinker and what I call an analytical thinker is that the former interposes dispassionate analysis between his values and his actions, whilst the value centered thinker merely acts out on his feelings.

Here are the two posts I think LL et. al. are referring to:





To me it IS slightly ironic that BW's idealistic society rests upon his own value judgments. And I think some of these statements do seem slightly unhinged. BUT- I agree that there is a seed of reason in there, that misjudging subjectivity for objectivity is a source of some of the world's problems. I don't think we need to adopt BW's values which rate objectivity higher than subjectivity. I do think we need to be very aware of when our ideas are subjective, and acknowledge that our subjective values are not intrinsically worth more than anyone else's.

Even when we are being truly objective I think we need to allow for the possibility that we are mistaken. As was discussed in reason's "boredom" thread a few days ago, we've got to be able to go forward with whatever is the best theory at the time, without being married to it.

Again, there is rational foundation for the value judgments I have. Being married to an idea is a result of subjectivity. Valuing the idea in itself. If you value objectivity, you will be chiefly concerned with the truth, this means coming up with new ideas if necessary to replace the ones you've had for a while.

 

[Samuel De Mazarin]

Again, there is rational foundation for the value judgments I have. Being married to an idea is a result of subjectivity. Valuing the idea in itself. If you value objectivity, you will be chiefly concerned with the truth, this means coming up with new ideas if necessary to replace the ones you've had for a while.

I think a big hurdle to jump is to explain in concrete terms, rather than in abstractions, how one might apply a value-less thinking to issues relating to, say, politics.

For instance, how can one achieve value-less appraisals of the death penalty, or jail terms, or criminal rehabilitation?

 

[Magic Poriferan]

BlueWing, I really wanted you to answer this question.

Let's suppose there are two people:

One is a person that is highly temperamental, but is concerned with logical and factual endeavors, and is very skilled and educated in handling them.

This other is a person that is remarkably self-disciplined and dispassionate, but cares not for logical or factual discussions and barely understands how to approach them.

Which of these too people is of more value to your society, BlueWing?

 

[Samuel De Mazarin]

BlueWing, I really wanted you to answer this question.

Let's suppose there are two people:

One is a person that is highly temperamental, but is concerned with logical and factual endeavors, and is very skilled and educated in handling them.

This other is a person that is remarkably self-disciplined and dispassionate, but cares not for logical or factual discussions and barely understands how to approach them.

Which of these too people is of more value to your society, BlueWing?

I can't imagine the second person really existing... I mean, what would be his/her method of making decisions? She/he would be a robot which merely takes inputs... the only human beings I could think who would act like this are completely demoralized slaves or wage-laborers...

well... I guess that means I can imagine some like that.

My unasked-for guess is that Bluewing would probably be forced to choose the first one (the logically-tempered temperamental fellow) unless the second one (the automaton) was supervised by one of his philosopher-kings.