The Rational Man's Approach to Emotions

[dan_edge]

[mrocktor]

That is very good Dan.

[Ifat Glassman]

I agree, great essay.

[EC]

That is very good Dan.

No, this is excellent. And what I need, because no matter how much I rationally accept all of this stuff deep down it always seems like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I can never fully be happy because I think when I'm happy things will "go wrong". I need to figure out why I think this way.

[dan_edge]

Thanks, guys (and gal). I'm really glad you liked it. I'm hoping to get an 'A' on this

--Dan Edge

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

I think the essay is very good overall, but you did have one paragraph that doesn't really hit the mark. I have no idea what grade you would get for it, but the following paragraph is not actually accurate:

It is crucial to acknowledge that emotions -- as an automatic, derivative response to previously formed judgments -- do not provide direct evidence about reality. Emotional responses are not volitional. Without the use of reason, one has no means of determining whether his emotions are responding to valid or invalid evaluations. Emotions can never be used as a substitute for logical thinking.

The fact that emotions are not volitional -- and one would have to be careful about what one means by this -- does not make them not have direct evidence of reality. Perception, for example, is strictly automatic (not automatized) and yet they give us direct evidence of reality. So, it is not the volitional or non-volitional nature of emotions that are the primary point about them not being tools of cognition. In regards to experiencing emotions, they are automatic -- i.e. one does not have to go through volitional effort to feel a particular emotion. However, unlike the senses, emotions are not automatic physiological chains of causation. The reason we can accept perception as the given, but not emotions, regarding that which we perceive giving rise to the emotion is that emotions come about due to automatized evaluations which are programmed into the subconscious either through volitional effort or just based on one's experience, and one may well have misjudged how to evaluate something or have some sort of psychological association based on some previous experience.

In order to make a conscious evaluation, one must gage the item under consideration based on a standard of evaluation; but in man, this standard of evaluation is not given automatically. Emotions seem to be doing that insofar as they give a specific response to a specific consideration of a fact, but one does not have man's life as the standard via emotions. Emotions can come about due to a hodge-podge of standards or pseudo-standards or even just associations with no standards, which is why they are not tools of cognition. Having an explicit, philosophic standard is necessary in order to gage the fact to that standard, otherwise one has no idea by what standard one is making a judgment that will result in an emotional response. Introspection is necessary to identify why one was having a specific emotional reaction to a fact, to find out by what standard, if any, was being used by the subconscious in making the automatized evaluation.

In other words, as you mentioned, emotions come about due to a subconscious processing, whereas perception is strictly physiological. Being an aspect of the subconscious means that the emotional mechanism is not directly accessible to the conscious mind -- i.e. one cannot get down in there and directly program oneself to feel happy when the automatized response is one of anxiety or sadness. One has to check one's evaluative premises, but that can be difficult to do, since it is not as easy as, say, looking over a computer code to find out what the "if see girlfriend then output happy" parameters are.

Since emotions are like a programming, rather than being physiological, this is why they are not tools of cognition, because the programming filter may or may not have a proper standard of evaluation.

Also, I agree with you that Objectivism does not recommend repression, but it is not immoral to not feel one's emotions, since they are not tools of cognition anyhow. In order for an act to be immoral one would have to be evading a fact of reality, or not wanting to evaluate it by a consciously held standard, but emotions are not necessarily using a consciously held standard. So long as one judges by a consciously held standard, say man's life as the standard, and taking the appropriate course of action, then one is moral. However, it is possible that by repressing one's emotions, other automatized processes done by the subconscious might also be blocked, which could lead to functionary difficulties, so it is definitely not recommended.

[Benpercent]

Great essay. The kind I like to reread.

A quick question: how does one resolve contradictions that are entirely abstract? I mean, take for example (your example), a guy who hates his mother that physically abused him as a child and then takes those feelings and blankets them over all women. In this case, what should he do to fix the contradiction in his subconscious? Should he introspect and, when such emotions come up, tell himself that his reaction to meeting a new woman is unwarranted and he should judge her as an individual?

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

A quick question: how does one resolve contradictions that are entirely abstract? I mean, take for example (your example), a guy who hates his mother that physically abused him as a child and then takes those feelings and blankets them over all women. In this case, what should he do to fix the contradiction in his subconscious? Should he introspect and, when such emotions come up, tell himself that his reaction to meeting a new woman is unwarranted and he should judge her as an individual?

Dan hasn't replied to this yet, but he did cover that in one of his essays that was presented on this board, but I can't find it to link to it. He recommended a lot of introspection and keeping a journal in order to keep track of one's evaluations behind the emotions. I think this is all good and well, but I have found that taking a more factually oriented inductive approach works better for these types of conflicts. In other words, for this particular question, the man ought to be not only introspective to realize he has a grudge against all women, but he ought to also observe women and realize inductively that all women are not out to get him or to punish him physically or psychologically.

A similar situation would arise if, say, one was bitten by a dog when one was young, and then avoided dogs because of those bad memories. After a while, this becomes routinized subconsciously such that one experiences a great deal of anxiety every time one is confronted by a dog -- even when it is just being playful. So, I have found that the best way of overcoming this anxiety about dogs is to go pet a few friendly dogs and realize inductively that not all dogs are out to bite you. And it takes a great deal of courage to act against a strong anxiety attack to get close enough to a dog, in this example, to find out that many of them are friendly and don't want to bite you at all.

In other words, I don't think introspection and checking one's premises mentally is enough. It's a start, but I don't think one can tell themselves consciously that all dogs are not out to bite you, and no longer experience the anxiety because the conflict won't be resolved in that manner -- at least not in my experience. In other words, make an inductively verifiable cognitive evaluation going by one's reasoning volitional mind and observe that all dogs are not out to bite you, a little at a time, and then one's emotional reaction will change.

I think this is an issue of objectivity being a relationship between man's mind and existence -- i.e. the mind alone, as in introspection, is not enough to resolve emotional conflicts.

This goes back to the idea that emotions are not tools of cognition, because they do not give you the facts of reality like perception does, nor are they directly under one's volitional control like our conscious mind is, which I think is what Dan was trying to get at in the paragraph I flagged him on earlier.

One ought to keep one's entire mind, the conscious and the sub-conscious, in tune with the facts of reality. In this sense, I think introspection alone when it comes to resolving these types of conflicts is like rationalism or taking the stance that if one tells oneself that the woman or the dog is not going to hurt you is insufficient because it is trying to do a mental processing without taking the appropriate facts into account. One needs the facts in order to make an evaluation, and if one is trying to change an emotional automatized evaluation, one needs even more facts in order for the sub-conscious processing to change.

[BrassDragon]

I also really enjoyed this, so thanks, Dan. I hope you do not mind that I have PDF'd it (for personal use only) so I can easily refer to it later.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

In order for an act to be immoral one would have to be evading a fact of reality, or not wanting to evaluate it by a consciously held standard, but emotions are not necessarily using a consciously held standard. So long as one judges by a consciously held standard, say man's life as the standard, and taking the appropriate course of action, then one is moral.

Someone asked me about this paragraph privately, basically asking if it was possible to not be evasive and yet still be immoral.

Theoretically, evasion is involved if one is rational and knows better than to do what one does, but does it anyhow, say out of a short-term gain or just doing it for the hell of it without thinking it through. But doing evil or being immoral requires one to know the difference and to understand, while in full focus, that one's action are counter to man's life as the standard, and yet go out of focus and doing an act that one would not ordinarily do. I suppose this doesn't require evasion per se, just non-thinking; but, of course, rationality is a virtue and one ought not to act on the irrational. Put another way, virtue requires a state of full focus on the facts of reality and the total context of one's knowledge and to not act against one's knowledge.

What I was trying to get at was specifically about how to handle emotions, and if ignoring or evading an emotion is immoral. Ordinarily, it is not a good idea to ignore one's emotions, because as Dan said, they can give you a good clue as to what one's values are, or at least what one's subconsciously held values are, which is why one is having that specific emotional reaction to those sets of facts. But if one is having emotional difficulties or a conflict between one's emotional reaction and one's consciously held values, ignoring the emotional reaction and acting on reason would be virtuous. However, one most definitely ought to discover why one had this conflict in the first place -- i.e. to discover what underlying subconscious value hierarchy led one to have that conflict -- and to resolve it using reason.

In short, I think one ought to know oneself, and realize that one's emotional reaction is telling one something about oneself or about what one has accepted subconsciously. In the long term, continuing to ignore one's emotions as being completely irrelevant can lead to further difficulties because the subconscious will tend not to act fluidly in those times when one has an emotion / reason conflict.

For example, going back to my dog bite scenario, let's say the guy was bit by a dog when he was young and he never discovered via induction that not all dogs are out to bite him. He falls in love with a wonderful woman and is invited into her home for a romantic evening. However, it turns out that she has a dog and he becomes paralyzed with anxiety when it comes up to him to be petted. This anxiety attack is going to prevent him from functioning normally and romantically with his new-found girlfriend. Basically the evening has been ruined for him because of his anxiety attack about the dog. He might even blurt out something like, "Get that damned thing away from me!" and if it is a friendly dog he has just ruined his girlfriend's assessment of him as being rational and level-headed.

So, it is best to resolve such clashes in the long-run. But maybe he didn't know what to do about it, say if he didn't know how to resolve the clash between friendly dogs and him getting bitten in the past. I would say that he wasn't being evasive, at least in the sense that ordinarily he never had to worry about such a conflict because he didn't have to be around dogs most of his life, and so it wasn't ever a serious issue in his context -- that is, not until he met this wonderful girl with a cute dog that he just couldn't handle due to the clash.

I don't know that it is possible to resolve all such clashes before the facts confronting oneself bring up a severe clash between reason and emotion. Maybe the guy thought he had worked it all out, and then he is confronted with facts that effectively lock up his subconscious as a kind of psychological allergic reaction that he didn't even know was going to happen under some very specific circumstances. And, like a sneeze, he blurts out something in the stress of the moment that he regrets later on. That's why I stress that it is important to keep both the conscious mind and the subconscious in tune with reality. However, keeping the conscious mind in tune with reality is quite a bit easier because one doesn't have direct access to the workings of the subconscious. Sometimes, one doesn't even know that one still has a problem until one is confronted with a specific factual encounter.

[dan_edge]

The fact that emotions are not volitional -- and one would have to be careful about what one means by this -- does not make them not have direct evidence of reality. Perception, for example, is strictly automatic (not automatized) and yet they give us direct evidence of reality. So, it is not the volitional or non-volitional nature of emotions that are the primary point about them not being tools of cognition.

Thomas,

Very good point. The structure of that paragraph does imply that emotions are not tools of cognition because they are non-volitional, which is incorrect. Throughout the paper, I was arguing that only a volitional faculty can evaluate the data provided by emotions. But the argument as presented in the passage you quoted is a non sequitur.

Thanks for your comments,

--Dan Edge

[dan_edge]

A quick question: how does one resolve contradictions that are entirely abstract? I mean, take for example (your example), a guy who hates his mother that physically abused him as a child and then takes those feelings and blankets them over all women. In this case, what should he do to fix the contradiction in his subconscious? Should he introspect and, when such emotions come up, tell himself that his reaction to meeting a new woman is unwarranted and he should judge her as an individual?

Dan hasn't replied to this yet, but he did cover that in one of his essays that was presented on this board, but I can't find it to link to it. He recommended a lot of introspection and keeping a journal in order to keep track of one's evaluations behind the emotions. I think this is all good and well, but I have found that taking a more factually oriented inductive approach works better for these types of conflicts. In other words, for this particular question, the man ought to be not only introspective to realize he has a grudge against all women, but he ought to also observe women and realize inductively that all women are not out to get him or to punish him physically or psychologically.

I agree with Thomas that it takes both introspection and experience to overcome psychological ills. In my writing, I focus on the introspection part of it because that is my particular interest, and also because I believe this aspect is not as well understood.

In many cases, people don't realize that they have a psychological problem. Or they may know they have a problem, but not know the source of it. This is where introspection is critical, and where journaling can help. You can't fix a problem you don't know the source of.

--Dan Edge

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

I agree with Thomas that it takes both introspection and experience to overcome psychological ills. In my writing, I focus on the introspection part of it because that is my particular interest, and also because I believe this aspect is not as well understood.

<snip>

You can't fix a problem you don't know the source of.

Thank you Dan, for this comment and the previous one regarding my input.

I certainly agree with you that one needs to introspect in order to realize one has a problem and that one needs to discover that one's emotions are not telling one factually that something is actually for oneself or against oneself. I think the default position regarding emotions is that they are correct in identifying positive or negative aspects of reality, else why would one have that particular emotional reaction? It takes introspection to realize that one has a premise, a programming, or an association that leads to that emotion and that these can be incorrect or not conforming to actual existence.

I think many people tend to take an emotional reaction as the given, such as when one touches something that is hot and one feels pain and from that removes one's fingers from the fire. In the case of physiological reactions, they are accurate -- i.e. if one does not remove one's fingers from the fire then one will get burnt, one will suffer actual damage. And it takes an introspective effort to realize that just because one's emotions are telling oneself one thing that it might be better to do the opposite -- i.e. follow reason. With the fire analogy, most animals will run away from fire out of fear of getting burnt, but because man has reason and can act against that fear, he can tame fire and use it to his advantage, and thus no longer feel fear but pride in his accomplishment.

Similarly, if he introspects about the source of his emotions, then he can follow reason more assuredly. And I think you are right that a lot of people do not understand that there is a psychological or subconscious source for emotions, that they are not a direct contact with reality, and that there is another step in there that is giving that emotional reaction.

I think a lot of people might even feel fear or anxiety when they first come across Objectivism. Having been Catholic when I first came across Objectivism led to those emotions in me. But understanding the nature of emotions via Objectivism and the moral code of following reason instead of emotions, and by further studying and observations, my emotional reactions eventually changed to one of pleasure when I think about Objectivism. I think a lot of people don't understand the nature of emotions, and thus, when feeling fear or anxiety with regard to Objectivism, drop it as if it will do them harm.

So I think understanding the nature of emotions is crucial in the spread of Objectivism, at least for those who have a strong negative emotional reaction to it at first glance. A misunderstanding of emotions, and the tendency to treat them as physiological reactions, can lead one to turn against it due to fear or anxiety. But, like taming fire, if one sticks with reason, it is worth the effort.