Objectivism holds Emotions as volitional?

[Egosum—]

I was reading a book criticizing Objectivism: Is Objectivism A Religion? by Dr. Albert Ellis

He referred to one of Ayn Rand's quotes: "man's emotional mechanism is like an electronic computer, which his mind has to program--and the programming consists of the values his mind chooses (Rand, 1961a)." and for some odd reason assumed that rand was saying that--

". . . emotion is purely of cerebral origin; and that the emoting individual has full volitional control over his emotional reactions. This is untrue for many reasons:

1. Some emotions, such as sexual ecstasy or disgust over certain foods. . .biased by various physical sensations. . . moderately caused by cognition.

2. Cognition itself is inevitably correlated with. . . by bodily sensations and motor responses.

3. . . .once his emotional process is. . . forcefully under way, all the thinking in the world may not enable him to control it." (Ellis, 17-18)

I was thinking over it. Values--it seems he had a different concept or just forgot about that word in Ayn's quote. If my friend's happiness is more valuable to me than the taste of my friend's cooking, even if the food is disgusting, I will humor her.

Anyone read this Dr. Albert Ellis' book? I'm only on page forty and I can see a few errors but overall it's a good read--the only book about Objectivism in our library at school/public library.

Edited December 1, 2009 by Egosum—

[Grames]

I looked this up at my university's library back in the day. I found it to be useless even as criticism, I could not recognize any Rand in the blizzard of strawmen he was attempting to refute.

[Thomas M. Miovas Jr.]

I was reading a book criticizing Objectivism: Is Objectivism A Religion? by Dr. Albert Ellis

That's probably not a good place to start in your study of Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Dr. Peikoff's book, "Objectivism: The philosophy of Ayn Rand" would be better. But no, to answer your question, Objectivism does not hold that emotions are volitional in the sense that you can feel what you choose to feel for any given event. What Miss Rand is talking about is that you can have certain value premises that give resulting emotions due to certain evaluations based upon your value premises. In other words, you can come to highly value logic, and be thrilled when someone makes a logical statement, or you can learn about the nature of romanticism in art and feel pleasure reading a certain novel. Now, before you held logic in high esteem or before you held romanticism as the good, you wouldn't have felt that pleasure from those values. So what she is saying is that you have control over your value premises -- i.e. the standards by which you are going to judge something as being for you or against you -- but you do not volitional control over which emotion you will feel. The emotion is automatic, your value premises are not. You can change your value premises, but you cannot turn, say sadness over the loss of a value into pleasure.

Taste as in your taste buds is not an emotional reaction; neither is feeling pain when you touch a hot stove. Emotions are evaluations of of items in reality in relation to yourself --and you will feel emotional pleasure when something is estimated to be for you and you will feel sadness or fear when things turn against you. What you consider to be for you or against you is open to your programming, but the emotion is not directly open to your value premises as if you can make yourself feel happy when something bad happens to you.

Hope that helps.

[TheEgoist]

Emotions are automatic reactions based on your values. Animals have them as well. They aren't volitional in that you can simply be happy now. It depends on what you value.

[Bob G]

I was reading a book criticizing Objectivism: Is Objectivism A Religion? by Dr. Albert Ellis

He referred to one of Ayn Rand's quotes: "man's emotional mechanism is like an electronic computer, which his mind has to program--and the programming consists of the values his mind chooses (Rand, 1961a)." and for some odd reason assumed that rand was saying that--

I was thinking over it. Values--it seems he had a different concept or just forgot about that word in Ayn's quote. If my friend's happiness is more valuable to me than the taste of my friend's cooking, even if the food is disgusting, I will humor her.

Anyone read this Dr. Albert Ellis' book? I'm only on page forty and I can see a few errors but overall it's a good read--the only book about Objectivism in our library at school/public library.

So far it is impossible to find a critique of AR, for some reason. It would be a good thing to find someone who has a different philosophy who attempted to critique her actual positions. To my knowledge, it has not happened yet.

One thing you will findout about Ayn Rand is that she treats all of reality the same. She holds that a rational man will work to know it as it is. She applies this principle to the people she studied, including those she disliked. She did not create straw men.

The problem with my first my second sentence is that for anyone to attempt to know AR, they would have to use reason to identify her philosophy. Not many from the school's of the last century or so are capable of doing that.

You are better off trying to come up with criticisms of your own, using your own reason. But that is thinking things through yourself, which is Objectivism.