Our Premises vs. Our Emotions
on Sep.18, 2009, under Briefs
by Nathan McKaskle
Revised (Posted Originally: August 26, 2008)
ur emotions are a response to the premises we hold.
I think that when our premises contradict or conflict with our experience of reality, our emotions can tell the truth about our premises. Our premises are conditional to reality and as philosophers we must always compare our ideas to rational or logical consistency and empirical evidence to get the truth.
Here is a visual representation I have drawn in response to an experience this morning on the way to work. Click the images for a larger size.
A false, or absolute premise (click to enlarge):
A conditional premise, compared to reality (click to enlarge).
Curiosity is the opposite of control.
Perhaps you’ve experienced a situation like the above graphics represent. The principles used here can apply to many situations, in all areas of your personal and professional life. I hope this helps others, as it certainly helped me this morning.
As you can see, our emotions are, as Ayn Rand put it, “a sum totaled by the adding machine of the mind.” Emotions are truly valuable in alerting us to errors in our internal thinking policies, in telling us about our experiences of the outside world, and how consistent our internal world is with the outer world.
In exploring them, we discover the enlightenment of self-knowledge and bring about creative ideas and life enriching possibilities that we may have never even thought about before.
Emotions aren’t for sissies, nor are they a disease to be cured, they’re highly evolved human tools that empower and protect us all.
*With special thanks and credit to Stefan Molyneux and his book Real-Time Relationships available for free.
Audiobook Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, PDF, online or print.
Nathan McKaskle lives in Philadelphia, PA. When he is not delivering new content to the readers of Lost Liberty Café and studying philosophy as well as psychology, he is working as a Citrix Server Administrator at a major import/export company.
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September 18th, 2009 on 09:53
Great article and illustrations. I have one question though. I’ve debated with a friend who seems to use solely his emotions to determine what is moral which he calls “following your gut feelings”. Here is an example of the way he applies this and you’ll see why I find this problematic (as a voluntaryist).
If he observes a very strong man sitting right next to a lake while a little girl is drowning in it and the strong man could almost effortlessly save her by just pulling her out yet he does not, he says that the man is immoral. The reason is because his gut tells him so, he doesn’t need to use logic. He merely observes his emotional reaction which expresses outrage over the man not saving the girl.
What’s problematic here is that this leads him to justifying coercion in form of taxes. He sees the poor people in the role of that little girl and other people in the role of the strong man. He doesn’t believe that enough people will help the poor which he finds immoral of them and therefore advocates the use of force to make them do that.
My response to him was that using emotions to determine morality, or just about any kind of truth in reality is not enough, that we have to combine logic or reasoning capacity (our thoughts) with senses and emotions so that when emotions posit a particular premise the logic can check it for consistency in terms and application to see if it can be valid.
I guess what I’m asking is.. couldn’t then emotions themselves be not only the measure of premises, but the source of premises as well? I mean, “this must be so because I feel so”. If so would you find this method, of applying logic to premises that actually originate from emotions in order to evaluate them as valid or invalid, to be correct?
Thanks
October 23rd, 2009 on 17:58
I don’t think he’d be right in saying that not rescuing the girl is immoral simply because his gut feeling tells him so. Though certainly not rescuing a child who is drowning when you have all the power and all the opportunity to do so, would indicate a sociopathic lack of empathy.
You may want to read Universally Preferable Behavior if you haven’t, it’s a more rational proof of ethics based on a methodology that requires a logical and/or empirical consistency when it comes to moral theories put forward… not gut feelings. I do think the emotions are certainly a sum totaled by the adding machine of the mind and can be helpful in speeding up our capacity to process things rationally.