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I've seen the claim that reason is just emotional rationalization before. It strikes me as dreadfully cynical. Rationalizing one's emotions is the entire point

I've seen the claim that reason is just emotional rationalization before. It strikes me as dreadfully cynical. Rationalizing one's emotions is the entire point of life. We experience something, it confuses us, we try to figure it out and explain it, model it so that we can better predict in the future. In other words, it's called "understanding". Understanding is a good thing, not a bad thing. I think the criticism is better and more narrowly targeted toward those that don't prioritize consistency. Yes, from your experiences and emotions, try to derive (or infer, rather) your principles. That's fine! But then, don't stop there. From there, try to remain consistent with those principles. And if they conflict, use that emotional experience to again understand and update your principles and then try to remain consistent with those.

lanstin 6y ago
Reason is not only or solely emotional rationalization, my point was that in the substrate of the brain, emotions are the motivator for our actions and long term patterns. You can't understand your self in completeness, at least so far. We are all just too complicated. There may be pieces you understand about your typical reactions and preferences, but like why do I like organ music and my wife hates it? Why do I love spicy curries and others don't? Very complex answers if any exist to these questions, much less why do I prefer a group decision making with a bit of arguing and a bit of time to mull over the answers? I don't derive or infer principles, I try to live up to principles, to squeeze something important into a few words so I can more often do the right thing and avoid the wrong thing. I certainly have emotions that are never going to be made into principles - I have even gotten so angry that I wished ill towards others, tho I cannot recommend the desire to harm others as beneficial for own happiness, the others well being, or society as a whole. For me the point of life is closer to building satisfying emotional experiences and connections, to people and to an great on-going work; to do good and heal harm; to enjoy each day's beauty. Those things are what make my reason work well. When I'm scheming in anger, my brain is less proficient at reason. When I'm walking under the pulsing Mars and mulling over some terraform issue, I'm a veritable fountain of rationality, which none the less cannot explain the happiness I feel when I return to the family after the walk. If you think you can come up with a reason to do one thing rather than another that is not based on something isomorphic to emotional drives, I wish good luck to you but I cannot have much hope in the likelihood of success.

lanstin 6y ago

Reason is not only or solely emotional rationalization, my point was that in the substrate of the brain, emotions are the motivator for our actions and long term patterns. You can't understand your self in completeness, at least so far. We are all just too complicated. There may be pieces you understand about your typical reactions and preferences, but like why do I like organ music and my wife hates it? Why do I love spicy curries and others don't? Very complex answers if any exist to these questions, much less why do I prefer a group decision making with a bit of arguing and a bit of time to mull over the answers? I don't derive or infer principles, I try to live up to principles, to squeeze something important into a few words so I can more often do the right thing and avoid the wrong thing. I certainly have emotions that are never going to be made into principles - I have even gotten so angry that I wished ill towards others, tho I cannot recommend the desire to harm others as beneficial for own happiness, the others well being, or society as a whole. For me the point of life is closer to building satisfying emotional experiences and connections, to people and to an great on-going work; to do good and heal harm; to enjoy each day's beauty. Those things are what make my reason work well. When I'm scheming in anger, my brain is less proficient at reason. When I'm walking under the pulsing Mars and mulling over some terraform issue, I'm a veritable fountain of rationality, which none the less cannot explain the happiness I feel when I return to the family after the walk. If you think you can come up with a reason to do one thing rather than another that is not based on something isomorphic to emotional drives, I wish good luck to you but I cannot have much hope in the likelihood of success.