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.

  • tiramichuEnglish
    4·
    5 months ago

    I don’t believe there can be any sensible position which doesn’t consider both emotion and logic based on what’s appropriate in the circumstance. The trick is knowing how to weight one versus the other.

    Suppose you are a woman who has been dating a new guy. He’s smart and kind, wealthy, and has amazing parents. Logic says he’d be a perfect husband, but you just don’t feel any spark or love at all. Should you marry him? No, probably not. It’s super important to trust your emotions here, because logic by itself isn’t going to make you happy.

    Then suppose you are a 55 year old hiring manager at an IT firm. A candidate comes in for an interview. He’s a young black guy and your emotions immediately tell you (due to decades of ingrained prejudice) that he’s not a good fit. Should you save time and cut the interview short? No. You should override your feelings with logic, and recognise he has just as much potential as any other candidate.

    Logic and emotion are super important, we just have to use them for the right things in the context of our modern world.