Are we irrational?

[Duty]

Given that the brain is just part of the nervous system, emotions and physical sensations can be categorized together. It's hard to say whether the "will to live" is a mental or physical desire: if you were hungry (starving), and had a choice between eating and injecting a drug to block the hunger signals, you would probably choose to eat, because you would recognize that there is more to your want than simply avoiding the pain.

See, I'm thinking a more primitive response. You're saying here that you could think about being hungry, and then not eating means a higher function pain/fear (death). I'm thinking about responses that are more basic: you are watching TV, your stomach rumbles, and without considering consequences or the future, your brain reasons how to get food and starts the process: you march to the fridge and make yourself a sandwich. There is still reasoning involved, but there is seemingly no emotional consideration: it's just a reaction to go and get food.


Another similar situation could be if you have an itch on your arm, and your brain reasons that anti-itch cream is the best way to get rid of this stimuli.

 

[AaronNight]

Now, emotions can be an important consideration when reasoning, but the assertion was they are necessary for reasoning...I don't believe the question has been answered.

I'll explain further.

As I mentioned earlier emotion is a mechanical description of pattern designed to help us better respond to our physical world. Its intent is as a supplement to our higher order functioning (Frontal Cortex behavior) and is instrumental in ascertaining cognitive detail that would otherwise remain problematically linear...

Consider 'touch'. There are different expressions of what constitutes appropriate physical touching. We know what is appropriate and what isn't as a result of a twofold cooperation between intellectual and emotional experience. Without comprehending what is perceptually appropriate to social context, we run the risk of offending cultural norms, thereby reducing our rate of success with other members of our species.

Consider appropriate social interchange as an ideal unto itself. Without consulting our experience with what is acceptable/unacceptable behavior in our daily routine (speaking out of turn; offering 'niceties' when necessary; knowing when to talk/listen, etc...) our likelihood of effective group participation is much less reliable, than if we choose to weigh emotion with reason.

It's a simple cost/benefit ratio.

---

If one wishes to effectively participate in communal behavior, one must invariably consult emotional norms when deciding how to behave.

Anything less is illogical.


(As an aside, it's somewhat...strange...to think that we can psychologically prevent ourselves from experiencing/examining emotion in our thinking process, aside from profound neurological damage to our hypothalamus/limbic network.

It's vastly beyond our psychological fingertips to divorce thinking into two hemispheres/models of analysis. Also an act of gruesome oversimplification in evaluating how the brain works.

I don't think I need to explain why...)

 

[Duty]

I'll explain further.

As I mentioned earlier emotion is a mechanical description of pattern designed to help us better respond to our physical world.

Of what patterns? Can you clarify more what you mean by "mechanical description?"

Its intent is as a supplement to our higher order functioning (Frontal Cortex behavior) and is instrumental in ascertaining cognitive detail that would otherwise remain problematically linear...

Consider 'touch'. There are different expressions of what constitutes appropriate physical touching. We know what is appropriate and what isn't as a result of a twofold cooperation between intellectual and emotional experience. Without comprehending what is perceptually appropriate to social context, we run the risk of offending cultural norms, thereby reducing our rate of success with other members of our species.

Consider appropriate social interchange as an ideal unto itself. Without consulting our experience with what is acceptable/unacceptable behavior in our daily routine (speaking out of turn; offering 'niceties' when necessary; knowing when to talk/listen, etc...) our likelihood of effective group participation is much less reliable, than if we choose to weigh emotion with reason.

It's a simple cost/benefit ratio.

---

If one wishes to effectively participate in communal behavior, one must invariably consult emotional norms when deciding how to behave.

Anything less is illogical.

There are more types of reasoning beyond social interaction (which seems to be the focus of what you are saying). The assertion was "reasoning needs emotion to function at all." Since social interaction was not specified, I assumed that meant all reasoning needs emotion to function at all. I still don't think you've answered the question. :/

(As an aside, it's somewhat...strange...to think that we can psychologically prevent ourselves from experiencing/examining emotion in our thinking process, aside from profound neurological damage to our hypothalamus/limbic network.

It's vastly beyond our psychological fingertips to divorce thinking into two hemispheres/models of analysis. Also an act of gruesome oversimplification in evaluating how the brain works.

I don't think I need to explain why...)

It seems pretty easy to me: our prefrontal cortex does not need to send or receive signals from any of the emotional centers of our brain to function. It can perform its executive functions and send the appropriate response to the language and/or motor cortex without any need for consulting the emotional centers.

 

[AaronNight]

It seems pretty easy to me: our prefrontal cortex does not need to send or receive signals from any of the emotional centers of our brain to function. It can perform its executive functions and send the appropriate response to the language and/or motor cortex without any need for consulting the emotional centers.

What about hormone distribution? Glial behavior? Motor system arousal? External influence from psychological identity? Gender roles? Socioeconomic identity? Nutrition? Sleep level? Pain index? Blood sugar level?

There's a ubiquitous network at play here. Far more complexity than what you offered (far more than what I offered...) that regulates how/when we experience emotion.

It's not just conscious thought that stimulates emotion...

Sure you must understand this.

---

The brain is much more complex than I think you're interested in conceding...

Conscious awareness of emotion isn't how we always recognize it.

I think this is our disconnect.

There are more types of reasoning beyond social interaction (which seems to be the focus of what you are saying). The assertion was "reasoning needs emotion to function at all." Since social interaction was not specified, I assumed that meant all reasoning needs emotion to function at all. I still don't think you've answered the question. :/

Eh.

 

[Duty]

What about hormone distribution? Glial behavior? Motor system arousal? External influence from psychological identity? Gender roles? Socioeconomic identity? Nutrition? Sleep level? Pain index? Blood sugar level?

There's a ubiquitous network at play here. Far more complexity than what you offered (far more than what I offered...) that regulates how/when we experience emotion.

It's not just conscious thought that stimulates emotion...

Sure you must understand this.

---

The brain is much more complex than I think you're interested in conceding...

Conscious awareness of emotion isn't how we always recognize it.

I think this is our disconnect.

I'm not contending any of these claims. They just don't effectively prove or disprove the proposition in question:

"Reasoning requires emotion to function."

I think our disconnect is you're trying to prove a tangent (one you think I'm disputing) and I'm disagreeing based on not seeing how it connects to the original question...not its truth or falsehood.

 

[AaronNight]

I'm not contending any of these claims. They just don't effectively prove or disprove the proposition in question:

"Reasoning requires emotion to function."

I think our disconnect is you're trying to prove a tangent (one you think I'm disputing) and I'm disagreeing based on not seeing how it connects to the original question...not its truth or falsehood.

It's clear our failure is mutual.

 

[TheLastMohican]

See, I'm thinking a more primitive response. You're saying here that you could think about being hungry, and then not eating means a higher function pain/fear (death). I'm thinking about responses that are more basic: you are watching TV, your stomach rumbles, and without considering consequences or the future, your brain reasons how to get food and starts the process: you march to the fridge and make yourself a sandwich. There is still reasoning involved, but there is seemingly no emotional consideration: it's just a reaction to go and get food.

You do have to consider some things, though, like what to put in the sandwich (and even the decision to make a sandwich, as opposed to opting for the fastest possible method of consuming food, perhaps eating a plain slice of bread).
You have a point about primitive responses, however, because there are some things that we do before any sophisticated thought process can come into play. See below:

Another similar situation could be if you have an itch on your arm, and your brain reasons that anti-itch cream is the best way to get rid of this stimuli.

Grabbing a tube of anti-itch cream requires the prompting of higher brain function. The first reaction (practically a reflex) is to scratch the itch.

 

[TaylorS]

Everyone is irrational, some people are just in denial about it!

I run into this a lot in discussions on ethics, politics (I'm a left-winger), and religion (I'm either an atheist or pantheist depending one's definitions). I don't know if this is truly a T thing or not but I often notice from Ts a lot of "rational arguments" that to me are obviously rationalizations of irrational gut sentiment and social convention.

and of course logic is totally dependent on correct premises, junk in (humans are rational utility-maximizers) means junk out (Government regulation is bad!).

 

[Hotherym]

Has anyone linked to the damn studies where they show people missing emotional responses due to stroke and whatnot are often incapable of reasoning and decision making? I don't have them on hand, don't have time to read through carefully, but just wanted to bring it up.

 

[Duty]

Has anyone linked to the damn studies where they show people missing emotional responses due to stroke and whatnot are often incapable of reasoning and decision making? I don't have them on hand, don't have time to read through carefully, but just wanted to bring it up.

Do they lack initiative or do they completely lack the ability to reason? Can they still do a reasonable complicated math problem or is it that they just don't have the motivation to do it?

 

[Hotherym]

Do they lack initiative or do they completely lack the ability to reason? Can they still do a reasonable complicated math problem or is it that they just don't have the motivation to do it?

If I remember correctly, they can do things like math, but when it comes to every day decisions and life reasoning, they're disabled. It doesn't seem like motivation in the respect I'm thinking of it, it seems directly like a process that is disabled, as if it simply can't be executed, often to their extreme frustration. So, in short, executive function malfunction.

One of these days I'll get around to finding the research again, unless someone gets around to it before me.

 

[TaylorS]

Has anyone linked to the damn studies where they show people missing emotional responses due to stroke and whatnot are often incapable of reasoning and decision making? I don't have them on hand, don't have time to read through carefully, but just wanted to bring it up.

I ran into a book called Descartes' Error based on exactly that.

 

[Duty]

It doesn't seem like motivation in the respect I'm thinking of it, it seems directly like a process that is disabled, as if it simply can't be executed, often to their extreme frustration.

If they don't have emotion, did they really get frustrated?

 

[lullaby]

Ni isn't directly irrational, it just has a hard time coming to explain the rationale behind its conclusions. INFJs are particularly good at picking up little symbols and patterns in the behavior of others that most types won't recognize...but then not being able to explain why they understood something so subtle and unknowable by others.

So there is a reason Ni types come to their conclusion, it's just tough for them to explain why.


Fe is similar to the pattern recognizing of Ni, except Fe is like a database. Ni recognizes the symbols and patterns, and then checks it against the Fe database to come to conclusions. Fe is about understanding how a person feels by how their dress, expressions, etc match up against the cultural (and individual if the INFJ has familiarity with this person) norm for which emotion they may be feeling.


So in that sense INFJs are not irrational, they just have to develop the ability to explain their conclusions (Ti). They have to learn to be able to later pick apart what normally just comes so naturally to them. Underdeveloped INFJs can be a frustration for others, as they basically do the "just believe what I say, even though I have little evidence/explanation" routine.

This is so true. I am constantly unable to explain why or how i know things. It can be frustrating to no end!

 

[Hotherym]

If they don't have emotion, did they really get frustrated?

Yeah, in their own way, I guess. I think it's more in the processing, but I'm not sure. Alexithymics seem to have the same problem, yet experience emotions physically.