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> There is no good reason why reason and deliberation should be unable to close over itself, let alone as "separate" a component as emotional state. It can be

> There is no good reason why reason and deliberation should be unable to close over itself, let alone as "separate" a component as emotional state. It can be done, but most rationalists never achieve this, in that it requires understanding the cause of emotion as it relates to one's own subjectivity. This often involves admitting hard truths about oneself, and is the process that psychoanalysis is intended to support. Instead they "rationalize", and come up with explanations like that one that follows, which don't understand the emotion so much as "explain it away" through what amounts to, as I said earlier, a metaphysical argument about the causal origins of the species. > Reason is a strategy that rose to some prominence in human evolutionary history because it is extraordinarily effective at making sense of the natural world. This sort of causal argument is why I tend to cringe at rationalist theory, because not only is it not necessarily true, there's no way to even tell if it were true. > The emotions are part of and arose from within the world. Without looking at the historical context in which they evolved, you may not be able to even understand what they're trying to tell you. Ironically I fully agree with this statement, except what I would mean by "historical context" is "the events in your own specific life that influenced your current sentiments", rather than history viewed as a totality. Again, a reference to the totality and causal origin of life; do you see why I describe it as theological or metaphysical? This is very similar in structure to Christian theories on the topic of e.g. original sin.

FeepingCreature 5y ago
> This sort of causal argument is why I tend to cringe at rationalist theory, because not only is it not necessarily true, there's no way to even tell if it were true. I mean, to be fair I'm leaning myself out the window a lot with that claim. But it seems plausible, and more importantly, the argument is resilient to why reason arose. I'm not saying this in a sense of "this is definitely why we have reason, and that's why I am right"; I'm more saying "even in this case where we don't necessarily have reason because it's useful," (note the alternate theory I list) "that is still no reason (heh) to expect it to mislead us." And I think we can confidently say that reason is useful today, at least, and submit as evidence approximately the last 10000 years of planetary history. I think it's not a big stretch to claim that the reason that reason is useful today may be the reason that it evolved to begin with. > Ironically I fully agree with this statement, except what I would mean by "historical context" is "the events in your own specific life that influenced your current sentiments", rather than history viewed as a totality. And again, I don't see why it has to be one or the other. Of course, even and especially in "events in your own life" it is ironically very easy to make up pat just-so stories to justify any reaction or sentiment. In comparison I honestly think evpsych is on a firmer footing, particularly given I don't think psychotherapy needs particularly to be correct about the causes it posits in order to function as therapy. Whereas if you are mistaken about the evolutionary cause of an emotion, you will completely misconstrue it and probably behave badly. > It can be done, but most rationalists never achieve this, in that it requires understanding the cause of emotion as it relates to one's own subjectivity. This often involves admitting hard truths about oneself For instance, I am very leery of the notion of "hard truths", because it imbues an argument with value based on the emotional work performed in reasoning it out. This is the exact sort of thing rationality says should not be expected to work. - Something does not become more or less true by being hard to admit; an untruth can be as hard to admit as a truth. You need to have a cognitive mechanism that is in principle capable of producing truths to begin with, in order to even arrive at a hard truth that you can emotionally reject. Without that, you're liable to just admit hard made-up claims as a form of catharsis. Is something being hard to admit evidence that it is true? Yes, but weakly - if it weren't convincing enough to outweigh being hard to accept, you probably wouldn't even entertain it. (How to be convinced by things that are true but hard to accept is actually a core tenet of rationality - see How To Actually Change Your Mind linked above.) But you still have to do the work to arrive at a true belief about yourself to begin with.
- Nav_Panel 5y ago
  > "even in this case where we don't necessarily have reason because it's useful,... that is still no reason (heh) to expect it to mislead us." There are plenty of cases of reason misleading, going wrong, perhaps as many or more as reason going right. But of course, judgment of right and wrong depends on your criteria, and reason will never help you achieve that which is prior to reason: faith, in the most basic form. But, in rationalist theory, by positing itself as the means and also the end (we use reason to get closer to reason; we have faith in reason), the term forms the sort of self-sustaining loop that Zizek (or really Lacan) calls a "master signifier", and is also the essence of all theology. All other considerations are shoved under the bus, or else dictated by a sort of bland evolutionary ethical theorizing, like "minimizing suffering", without really interrogating what that even means (if they looked into older philosophy, they would see that thought itself could be considered a form of suffering). It is not necessarily bad to hold to a master signifier as such, as all faith exists in this form, but the rationalists seem especially unaware or unable to interrogate their beliefs to this level. > I am very leery of the notion of "hard truths", because it imbues an argument with value based on the emotional work performed in reasoning it out. This is a misunderstanding of what I meant to express, and I apologize for using that term. In my experience (and in the psychoanalytic literature), "hard truths" are "hard" because they involve noticing objective aspects of ourselves that we were previously blind to. The recognition often comes in a flash, with a sense of relief, rather than through some sort of laborious process (of course, the preparation for that flash might well be a laborious process of re-learning how to look!). The "hard truth" is being able to admit something like "actually, I'm not just out to get the truth. I want social recognition after all." > Something does not become more or less true by being hard to admit; an untruth can be as hard to admit as a truth Such a focus on truth in relation to psychological affairs feels, to me, wrong-headed, in that all truth is contingent, grounded in some act of judgment. Don't read this the wrong way: contingent != relative. It just means that we need to address the question of "how do I know that true things are true?". The cultural impact of the enlightenment, especially of Kant, was to collapse "truth" into an intersubjective agreement based on sensory observation ("science"), but how can you achieve intersubjective agreement in affairs which are only observable to a single subject, such as "my emotions" (i.e. "how is psychology possible?")? This is where psychoanalysis had its real epistemological innovation: free association as a technique is a way of generating shared knowledge about what was formerly private. Christian "confession" functioned similarly. Modern behavioral psychology is several steps behind. But with or without such a technique, one can never really achieve the absolute (gnostic) truth about oneself, at least not without a strong frame that answers the question "under what circumstances is a given statement about myself true?" It seems better to ask the question of "what do I want that I'm having difficulty achieving? And what factual observations about myself can I make, which demonstrate patterns that prevent me from achieving this?" Notice how this moves the direction of thought (of reason, even!) away from "finding the truth" and toward a more environmentally-oriented mode of "understanding", closer to what Plato meant by that term, with its connections to "wisdom". The "hard truth" here as I mean it, is noticing sites of competing desires, as Spinoza and Freud do in their discussions of "ambivalence", and then being willing to take a stance or a risk that attempts to resolve the tensions. With that in mind... > I don't think psychotherapy needs particularly to be correct about the causes it posits in order to function as therapy. Whereas if you are mistaken about the evolutionary cause of an emotion, you will completely misconstrue it and probably behave badly. This is a feature, not a bug, because as I said earlier, the goal isn't to discover some absolute truth about yourself, but to solve problems. Evopsych explanations claim to provide truth, but actually serve to solve problems, through some intellectual sleight-of-hand. Similarly, the use of reason in thought serves to solve problems, meet individual needs, even if framed as "uncovering the truth". This + my deep involvement in the rationalist world for several years is why I feel comfortable making statements like this one from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28198926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28198926

FeepingCreature 5y ago

> This sort of causal argument is why I tend to cringe at rationalist theory, because not only is it not necessarily true, there's no way to even tell if it were true. I mean, to be fair I'm leaning myself out the window a lot with that claim. But it seems plausible, and more importantly, the argument is resilient to why reason arose. I'm not saying this in a sense of "this is definitely why we have reason, and that's why I am right"; I'm more saying "even in this case where we don't necessarily have reason because it's useful," (note the alternate theory I list) "that is still no reason (heh) to expect it to mislead us." And I think we can confidently say that reason is useful today, at least, and submit as evidence approximately the last 10000 years of planetary history. I think it's not a big stretch to claim that the reason that reason is useful today may be the reason that it evolved to begin with. > Ironically I fully agree with this statement, except what I would mean by "historical context" is "the events in your own specific life that influenced your current sentiments", rather than history viewed as a totality. And again, I don't see why it has to be one or the other. Of course, even and especially in "events in your own life" it is ironically very easy to make up pat just-so stories to justify any reaction or sentiment. In comparison I honestly think evpsych is on a firmer footing, particularly given I don't think psychotherapy needs particularly to be correct about the causes it posits in order to function as therapy. Whereas if you are mistaken about the evolutionary cause of an emotion, you will completely misconstrue it and probably behave badly. > It can be done, but most rationalists never achieve this, in that it requires understanding the cause of emotion as it relates to one's own subjectivity. This often involves admitting hard truths about oneself For instance, I am very leery of the notion of "hard truths", because it imbues an argument with value based on the emotional work performed in reasoning it out. This is the exact sort of thing rationality says should not be expected to work. - Something does not become more or less true by being hard to admit; an untruth can be as hard to admit as a truth. You need to have a cognitive mechanism that is in principle capable of producing truths to begin with, in order to even arrive at a hard truth that you can emotionally reject. Without that, you're liable to just admit hard made-up claims as a form of catharsis. Is something being hard to admit evidence that it is true? Yes, but weakly - if it weren't convincing enough to outweigh being hard to accept, you probably wouldn't even entertain it. (How to be convinced by things that are true but hard to accept is actually a core tenet of rationality - see How To Actually Change Your Mind linked above.) But you still have to do the work to arrive at a true belief about yourself to begin with.

Nav_Panel 5y ago
> "even in this case where we don't necessarily have reason because it's useful,... that is still no reason (heh) to expect it to mislead us." There are plenty of cases of reason misleading, going wrong, perhaps as many or more as reason going right. But of course, judgment of right and wrong depends on your criteria, and reason will never help you achieve that which is prior to reason: faith, in the most basic form. But, in rationalist theory, by positing itself as the means and also the end (we use reason to get closer to reason; we have faith in reason), the term forms the sort of self-sustaining loop that Zizek (or really Lacan) calls a "master signifier", and is also the essence of all theology. All other considerations are shoved under the bus, or else dictated by a sort of bland evolutionary ethical theorizing, like "minimizing suffering", without really interrogating what that even means (if they looked into older philosophy, they would see that thought itself could be considered a form of suffering). It is not necessarily bad to hold to a master signifier as such, as all faith exists in this form, but the rationalists seem especially unaware or unable to interrogate their beliefs to this level. > I am very leery of the notion of "hard truths", because it imbues an argument with value based on the emotional work performed in reasoning it out. This is a misunderstanding of what I meant to express, and I apologize for using that term. In my experience (and in the psychoanalytic literature), "hard truths" are "hard" because they involve noticing objective aspects of ourselves that we were previously blind to. The recognition often comes in a flash, with a sense of relief, rather than through some sort of laborious process (of course, the preparation for that flash might well be a laborious process of re-learning how to look!). The "hard truth" is being able to admit something like "actually, I'm not just out to get the truth. I want social recognition after all." > Something does not become more or less true by being hard to admit; an untruth can be as hard to admit as a truth Such a focus on truth in relation to psychological affairs feels, to me, wrong-headed, in that all truth is contingent, grounded in some act of judgment. Don't read this the wrong way: contingent != relative. It just means that we need to address the question of "how do I know that true things are true?". The cultural impact of the enlightenment, especially of Kant, was to collapse "truth" into an intersubjective agreement based on sensory observation ("science"), but how can you achieve intersubjective agreement in affairs which are only observable to a single subject, such as "my emotions" (i.e. "how is psychology possible?")? This is where psychoanalysis had its real epistemological innovation: free association as a technique is a way of generating shared knowledge about what was formerly private. Christian "confession" functioned similarly. Modern behavioral psychology is several steps behind. But with or without such a technique, one can never really achieve the absolute (gnostic) truth about oneself, at least not without a strong frame that answers the question "under what circumstances is a given statement about myself true?" It seems better to ask the question of "what do I want that I'm having difficulty achieving? And what factual observations about myself can I make, which demonstrate patterns that prevent me from achieving this?" Notice how this moves the direction of thought (of reason, even!) away from "finding the truth" and toward a more environmentally-oriented mode of "understanding", closer to what Plato meant by that term, with its connections to "wisdom". The "hard truth" here as I mean it, is noticing sites of competing desires, as Spinoza and Freud do in their discussions of "ambivalence", and then being willing to take a stance or a risk that attempts to resolve the tensions. With that in mind... > I don't think psychotherapy needs particularly to be correct about the causes it posits in order to function as therapy. Whereas if you are mistaken about the evolutionary cause of an emotion, you will completely misconstrue it and probably behave badly. This is a feature, not a bug, because as I said earlier, the goal isn't to discover some absolute truth about yourself, but to solve problems. Evopsych explanations claim to provide truth, but actually serve to solve problems, through some intellectual sleight-of-hand. Similarly, the use of reason in thought serves to solve problems, meet individual needs, even if framed as "uncovering the truth". This + my deep involvement in the rationalist world for several years is why I feel comfortable making statements like this one from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28198926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28198926