Intellectual debate: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

[Danneskjold]

We cannot avoid death because our body breaks down physically with time. We can take many steps to avoid this, but our bodies break down as each organ is used. Because someone is contained in their body and there is no dichotomy between the mind and the body, as the body breaks down and stops functioning the mind cannot sustain itself. That is why death is inevitable.

There is no such reasoning behind why we cannot prevent (by one means or another) emotions from controlling us. We are able to control the larger and larger emotions the stronger our rationality (or just the stronger we are mentally) gets, so why do you say it's impossible to control the largest ones?

[Mikee]

Jeff,

I did not say that it's impossible to control strong emotions. I did say:

"The character (will) and intelligence (ability to reason) of a person governs their ability to control their emotions."

That is, not everyone has the same abilities.

By the way, not everyone thinks that death is inevitable. See "Extropianism".

[Danneskjold]

I'm sorry, I should've been clearer. These questions are pointed more towards Michael.

[Paul Mawdsley]

Framing our understanding of the human psyche and behaviour in terms of reason and emotion is a mistake. These categories do not capture and clearly distinguish all the emergent properties of the human psyche that influence our consciousness and behaviour. The distinctions these categories miss are clouding this discussion.

Rand captures the emergent properties of consciousness and behaviour under the categories of reason and emotion. Some may have noticed that I tend to use different categories when talking about the emergent properties of the psyche. I talk about orientations of consciousness, rational frameworks and motivational biases. I would add one other element to this: automated action sequences which are responsible for our automated learned behaviours and habits. These automated action sequences are programmed in us through classical conditioning, instrumental learning, observational learning, and proactive learning. (Proactive learning is what I call such learning that requires use to create our own action sequences piece by piece such as when we learn to ride a bike or drive a car with a standard transmission. I can't recall the common terminology for this type of learning.) So I see four categories, where Rand only framed her views of the emergent properties of consciousness and behaviour around two.

Mike E., I hate to disagree with you but there is no such thing as inappropriate emotions. Emotions just are. (Although they may occur at inappropriate moments. This is where control is required over their overt expression.) They are a metaphysically and biologically given. They are the expression of our response to some stimuli viewed through the lens of our causal and metaphorical interpretations. Emotions are an expression of, and feedback about, what things mean to us in the context of our intuitive understanding. Emotions are simply an expression of the core of our being's evaluation of whether or not some stimulus will increase or decrease the integrity of the organism, along with some impulse to act in a certain way relative to that stimulus. The nature of that action is programmed through learning. The evaluation of whether or not the stimulus will increase or decrease the integrity of the organism is dependent on our intuitive interpretation of the context surrounding the stimulus. Therefore, there is a cognitive component (intuitive interpretation) and a learned component (automated action sequences) shaping the expression of an emotion. But the emotion simply is.

When we talk about controlling unwanted or inappropriate emotions, we should really be saying that we want to control unwanted or inappropriate learned automatic action sequences or we should be saying we want to control unwanted or inappropriate intuitive interpretations of our self and the world. We cannot, as such, control emotions. The only control we have over our emotions themselves is the control we have to direct our awareness toward them or away from them or the resistance we have to their automated behavioural expressions. An attempt to control our emotions directly ends up being an attempt to turn our awareness away from their existence and away from the information they contain about what the world means to us. It is an attempt to decrease the level of our consciousness. Put another way, it is an attempt to increase unconsciousness. The act of increasing unconsciousness toward our emotions is otherwise known as suppression in the short term or, when automated, is known as repression in the long term.

When we practice unconsciousness toward our emotions, we do not eliminate them. We only eliminate our awareness of them. We eliminate the tools and choices that come with the conscious processing of information. We submerged the meaning of things to us and we submerge our knowledge of the motives behind our behaviour. When we practice unconsciousness toward our emotions, we loose all control over their manifestations.

People who choose to control their emotions and people who choose to be controlled by their emotions are two sides of the same mistaken coin. Both erroneously see emotions as a distinct faculty of consciousness that competes with reason for control over behaviour. Emotions do not control behaviour. Again, emotions are an expression of, and feedback about, what things mean to us in the context of our understanding, and they include a non-specific impulse to act relative to some stimulus. They provide us with information and with an impulse or motivation to act. It is not emotions that compete with reason for control over our behaviour. The analytical reasoning of our conscious processes competes with the causal reasoning of our intuition. Sometimes analytical reasoning produces the correct conclusions. Sometimes it is the causal reasoning. Also, the automated behaviour associated with our emotional reactions competes with the action alternatives produced creatively and rationally. The solution is not to suppress and repress emotions by reducing awareness but to evaluate the competing modes of reasoning and the competing action alternatives by increasing awareness. This is the healthy alternative.

Paul

[Victor Pross]

"Extropianism".

Mikee, would you care to explain it for us?

[Ellen Stuttle]

Ellen, that's a misrepresentation of what Victor said, and I never saw him retract it (though I saw Michael try to retract it for him). But even if he did retract it, he didn't until the very end.

It's a direct quote of what he said. The post is still there as of today, with the wording I quoted, at the top of every page of that discussion. As I recall, he modified the statement well before the end. In one of my posts to Victor, trying to get clear exactly what his thesis was, I said something like, "As you've acknowledged, no one is literally born knowing how to draw." I don't recall his disagreeing with this. I'm not going to search back through the thread to find that specific exchange.

But what are you saying here?

Just what I said, that it's discouraging when myths about people's viewpoints are recycled. See my next post.

Ellen

___

[Ellen Stuttle]

The talent people think our talents are determined by our genes; [....]

Shayne, WHO on the talent thread said that? Quote anyone who said anything so simplistic, aside from Victor's misworded comment in his initial post, which, as I recall, he subsequently corrected.

What was said was that no matter how hard some people try, they'll never be able to draw well (or do math well, etc). This was attributed to inborn "talent". So how exactly did I misrepresent? I essentialized, I don't see the misrepresentation.

Well, I certainly do. I see you again using the description "the talent people," as if there was a group of people who hold the identical viewpoint. The one person whom I recall saying anything as simplistic as you describe was Victor, in his initial post. Here's another quote from the post: "They [those born knowing how to draw or play a musical instrument - my insert] go on to be artists, [if they chose - [Victor's misuse of brackets where parentheses are the correct usage]] while others can’t draw to save their lives. And they never will, no matter how much they try. The same goes for playing a musical instrument."

Dragonfly stated the viewpoint that some people will never be good enough for a career as a concert pianist no matter how much they practice. Although I didn't specifically second that remark, I think he's right, although I pointed out that there are numerous possibilities for a career in music other than being a concert pianist, a point with which he did not express disagreement. He also said that there are people who haven't the intelligence for the higher reaches of math. Again, I agree, though I didn't specifically comment on the limiting factor of an intelligence ceiling. (I did say that there are ways in which people can make a living using math short of having the ability for the higher reaches.)

Neither Dragonfly nor I would sign on to something so simplistically stated as that "our talents are determined by our genes"; we are both well aware of the complexities of embryological development and of nature/nurture generally. Nor do I think MSK would sign on to so simplistic a statement. And by the end I thought that Victor was seeing a more complex picture than he started out presenting. So, yes, I do think your statement is a misrepresentation, not an essentialization. And I feel a sense of dismay at seeing a statement like that made after some 600 posts on the thread. It leaves me feeling, so what's the point of trying to get things clarified when the net result is that the same sort of overgeneralization is made at the end as was made at the beginning?

The thing of relevance here is whether we have a choice or not to be blinded by our emotions. Yet that is the one thing that no one here but me wants to discuss.

Well, thanks for telling me what supposedly is the subject of discussion. I see that subsequently people have started to address that issue.

Ellen

___

[Ellen Stuttle]

The title of this thread is rather misleading, this has little to do with an "intellectual debate", I got the impression that I'd strayed into Solo territory with all this sniping and bitching, instead of on OL.

Chuckle. Your post hit the board one minute before mine -- although you were posting early in the day your time and I was posting in the wee hours here, just before heading for sleep.

Ellen

___

[sjw]

Ellen you are confused. Since I really wanted to see this thread get started in a healthy direction (and it has recently up until your misguided posts), I'd rather not say more here. Start a new thread if you care to be corrected. I'll correct you there, not here.

[Victor Pross]

Ellen,

Thank you for painting a picture of minimal input and understanding on my part on the talent thread. We can clearly see that emotion doesn’t color your views.

About the talent question: Being one of the people I speak about, [one who was born with an innate talent that was honed later on with thousands of hours of practice] I think that this may allot me a perspective not available to you. While it is true that I did gain a greater appreciation as to the complexity of the talent issue—I did not walk away having changed my views in any fundamental way. One more thing: yes, yes, we are all so impressed with the constant waving of your intellectual credentials. You don’t need to downplay other people to get across your point of view.

-Victor

ps

I like brackets. AND Dragonfly and MSK were on the same page as me in the talent thread--but they were not therefore "the talent people."

Edited January 20, 2007 by Victor Pross

[sjw]

With overpowering emotions, these times are not many. (Think about Rand's depression after writing Atlas Shrugged. It paralyzed her. Was she being morally weak during that time? I don't think so.)

Writing good fiction demands a healthy and happy set of emotions. Obviously if you include this scenario of Rand's as an example of being "blinded by emotions", then most everyone is indeed blinded by them at times. The problem is that that is a package deal (i.e., "failing to discriminate crucial differences").

There is a crucial difference between not being able to create--and actively pursuing whims or evading reality. The former is obviously not being "blinded"; the latter obviously is. When I say that we can choose to be blinded or not, I am certainly not saying that we can choose to rewrite our emotions on the spot and make ourselves happy. On the contrary, even if you could do that, it'd be self-destructive (some try though).

[Ellen Stuttle]

Paul, BRAVO!! Excellent post (#104).

Ellen

___

[Mikee]

Paul,

"Emotions just are." True. But insofar as emotions lead to actions [that is what they are for, spontaneous action to deal with a recognized situation] they can sometimes be inappropriate. A simple example is a person who is deathly afraid of bees. He's driving 70 miles an hour and a bee buzzes by his head. He reacts wildly in panic focusing entirely on the bee and crashes the car killing himself and someone else. His emotion "is", but his reason should have taken over to control the situation. I am personally of the opinion that it is a moral issue whether or not we take steps to reprogram ourselves if we knowingly have phobia of this kind in order to be able to control our reactions if an unexpected situation comes up. The fellow that crashed the car and killed himself and someone else is morally responsible for that act.

Please don't hate to disagree. I value disagreement.

-Mike E.

Victor:

http://www.extropy.org/

[sjw]

Thank you for painting a picture of minimal input and understanding on my part on the talent thread. We can clearly see that emotion doesn’t color your views.

And again we see Victor accepting the idea that emotion doesn't blind some people--but only as a tool to insult.

[sjw]

Jeff & Mike E.: You're both a breath of fresh air.

[Ellen Stuttle]

I like brackets.

Like them all you will, Victor, they're confusing. They're supposed to be used for material inserted into quotes (and for some other uses also, but not in the way you often use them).

Ellen

___

[Victor Pross]

Shayne,

I never excluded myself from the thesis of my original post. I owe up to it. I am an emotional person—proudly. [Hey, I’m an artist, what do you expect?] But my emotions aren’t as such that I create a fantasy universe from them—such as the religious person who is lonely or who is afraid to die and therefore creates a super buddy called God who will have him live forever and happily. But yes, I am an emotional person. So are you. In fact, I can clearly see you are a very, very sensitive man. You get me going. Sometimes, it is true, I want to bitch slap you, but other times I want to take you in my arms....I want to tell you that everything is going to be okay.

Victor

Edited January 20, 2007 by Victor Pross

[sjw]

there is no such thing as inappropriate emotions. Emotions just are. (Although they may occur at inappropriate moments. This is where control is required over their overt expression.)

Have you read Nathaniel Branden's writings in The Objectivist?

In any case, Paul's view is not the correct view, nor is it the Objectivist view. Here's the correct view:

It's true that emotions "just are" and we have no direct control over them. But it is not true that emotions are always appropriate. If we feel like stealing for the fun of it--that is inappropriate. If we feel like lying to get away from something we should be held accountable for--that is inappropriate. But we are not morally responsible for the emotion. We are only morally responsible for what we choose to do. So the truth is that emotions are not morally right or morally wrong.

Emotions can be for or against our chosen values--and that makes them something we appropriately judge as "appropriate" or "inappropriate" and then take the proper steps to change them over time. Emotions that are in line with our conscious values strengthen and motivate us to pursue them even more. So we try to change them, since they are *inappropriate* to our consciously chosen values.

[Mikee]

Jeff & Mike E.: You're both a breath of fresh air.

Shayne,

Thank you!

[sjw]

Victor you purposefully like to inflame and insult. Your top purpose in life is caricature, and this penchant for mocking people has seeped deeply into your entire person. Just like your latest irrational caricature of me as "sensitive" in spite of the fact that any rational person who was being persistently insulted from irrational grounds would take offense.

You were the one that started this thread, yet you can't even last as long as this thread in staying civil. That speaks to the hypocrisy inherent in tolerationists, and underscores why the true standard should not be "toleration" but "rationality".

Edited January 20, 2007 by sjw

[Dragonfly]

I like brackets.

Like them all you will, Victor, they're confusing. They're supposed to be used for material inserted into quotes (and for some other uses also, but not in the way you often use them).

For example for commutators and segments...

[Dragonfly]

It's interesting to see what Nathaniel Branden wrote later in life:

We must be guided by our conscious mind, Rand insisted; we must not follow our emotions blindly. Following our emotions blindly is undesirable and dangerous: Who can argue with that? Applying the advice to be guided by our mind isn’t always as simple as it sounds. Such counsel does not adequately deal with the possibility that in a particular situation feelings might reflect a more correct assessment of reality than conscious beliefs or, to say the same thing another way, that the subconscious mind might be right while the conscious mind was mistaken. I can think of many occasions in my own life when I refused to listen to my feelings and followed instead my conscious beliefs—which happened to be wrong—with disastrous results. If I had listened to my emotions more carefully, and not been so willing to ignore and repress them, my thinking—and my life—would have advanced far more satisfactorily.

A clash between mind and emotions is a clash between two assessments, one of which is conscious, the other might not be. It is not invariably the case that the conscious assessment is superior to the subconscious one; that needs to be checked out. The point is not that we follow the voice of emotion or feeling blindly, it means only that we don’t dismiss our feelings and emotions so quickly; we try to understand what they may be telling us; we don’t simply repress, rather we try to resolve the conflict between reason and feeling. We strive for harmony, for integration. We don’t simply slash away the pieces of ourselves that don’t fit our notion of the good or the right or the rational.

Another point is that the idea that there is a sharp distinction between emotion and what we call "rational thinking" is misplaced. Much of that rational thinking is steered by our emotions, even if we think that we are completely objective and that our reasoning is like a mathematical proof, but we're good at deceiving ourselves in that regard. Man is the rationalizing animal, and Rand was certainly no exception.

[sjw]

It's interesting to see what Nathaniel Branden wrote later in life:

I'm pretty sure he wrote the same thing earlier in life, while he was with Rand. Because that's what I got out of it. It's just that later he pretends that Rand wasn't aware of the fact that emotions are providing information that, along with conscious information, should be integrated. Rand did not preach that we should repress. That's an unjust caricature.

[Dragonfly]

Rand's viewpoint may be summarized by this statement by Galt:

"If any part of your uncertainty,” said Galt, "is a conflict between your heart and your mind—follow your mind."

NB states that this advice may turn out to be quite wrong, so in that regard his viewpoint is certainly different from that of Rand.

[Danneskjold]

What does Branden will think will turn out wrong more:

Always following your heart?

Always following your mind?

A clash between mind and emotions is a clash between two assessments, one of which is conscious, the other might not be. It is not invariably the case that the conscious assessment is superior to the subconscious one; that needs to be checked out. The point is not that we follow the voice of emotion or feeling blindly, it means only that we don’t dismiss our feelings and emotions so quickly; we try to understand what they may be telling us; we don’t simply repress, rather we try to resolve the conflict between reason and feeling. We strive for harmony, for integration. We don’t simply slash away the pieces of ourselves that don’t fit our notion of the good or the right or the rational.

I don't think that necessarily contradicts Galt's statement. All Branden said there was (essentially), "think more about it, then follow your head."

Edited January 21, 2007 by Jeff Kremer