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:
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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.
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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.
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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.
On the lust thing, my take is that lust provides an initial attraction to want to be with someone and spend time with them, and then due to spending more time together you form closer bonds which may grow into love.
Similarly with the biological predisposition to find children adorable and want to protect them, that’s what makes things work initially, but later you likewise grow to love them on their own merits.
Love is also an emotional response, of course, just a different sort of one.
Well yes, I was using some specific examples to illustrate a point that emotion has adaptive qualities essential to survival, not trying to map out the utility, interrelationship, and impact (both adaptive and maladaptive) of every emotional reaction! 😀