When it comes to decision-making, perception and so on, what are your beliefs about the role and merits of feelings/emotions vs reasoning?

Some common positions:

  • Emotions tend to get in the way of reasoning - we should primarily rely on our logic and rationality to guide us. When feeling strongly about anything we should block it out and try to think purely in a rational way.

  • Reasoning can distract us when the right answer is to empathize or trust our gut feelings; it’s easy to be misled by a convincing argument but gut feelings can see through that.

  • Emotions and logic each play a role in observation and judgment. If both didn’t have a use, why would we have evolved to have them?

A lot of people probably don’t go all the way one way or the other. Even if you don’t have a particularly strong reason for why you feel one way or the other, feel free to express what you believe.

  • Ace T'KenMEnglish
    1·
    5 months ago

    Tiger example

    True, but logic could also state that a group standing their ground and making loud noises would drive the tiger away. Quickly arming yourself, defence, deterrence, and group tactics are a logical response. A little pre-planning leads you to be able to curtail an emotional response later. Running and screaming as the emotional response would most likely lead to at least one person being injured (as tigers can outrun humans in short bursts) if not killed and eaten.

    Kids example

    Yes. As a parent, yes, you go a little insane. Logic led me to say that we could handle one (which isn’t a decision everyone gets to make). Emotion led me to actually be a Father. Kids absolutely play on and demolish both of those processes. Kids are chaos incarnate.

    • 🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦@ttrpg.networkMEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      A little pre-planning leads you to be able to curtail an emotional response later.

      I addressed that:

      Later there’s room for reasoning: figuring out ways to arm yourself against tigers, say, or building traps to capture/kill them, or finding better places to go where there are no tigers. But in the moment, reason kills.

      • Ace T'KenMEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        Heh. Sorta. I’m saying plan in advance (as in before the theoretical expedition), and it seems like you’re saying planning later (as in after the first failure).

        I see what you mean though!

        • 🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦@ttrpg.networkMEnglish
          1·
          5 months ago

          You can’t plan ahead for unforseen circumstances though. Picture people who’ve never seen a tiger before in my example. There’s no time to stop and jaw about the right response, only time to turn tail and run.

          THEN you can talk about how to prevent that from happening in the future.

          Emotions have a very valuable role in, well, survival.