You made a very point point till the part you said that humans in such a world would still develop emotions.
I have said this before in a different reply, but for this hypothetical to work, we have to assume that emotions never existed, and never will — Kinglord1090
I didn’t say that humans in such a world would still develop emotions. I said that according to this psychologist , to be motivated purely by logic, that is, by the need to understand the world, to predict events and avoid loss of understanding , is to behave in all the ways that you call emotion , even though the only
motive is rationality. For instance, the characters Spock and Data on Star Trek are supposed to
operate purely on the basis of logic, it notice how they actually behave. They strive for outcomes and are disappointed if they don’t achieve those outcomes. I would also a argue that they behave in ways that are similar to guilt, anger and anxiety. The only difference between the way they that approach the world and people with ‘emotion’ approach the world is that their attitudes and desires are displayed coolly , subtlety. You’ll never see an ‘outburst’ of rage or weeping from them, but you’ll see the same processes of thinking that lead to rage and weeping in people with emotion. Basically, they are typical people on tranquilizers. Or one could say they act the way that autistic people do , claiming they don’t understand emotional behavior. But what we know about autistics is that they have feelings. Their difficulty is that they cannot process complex social interactions In other words, their difficulties in processing rapidly changing complex social logic is the cause of their inability to understand ‘emotion’.
This is why your dream world without emotion is merely a world of people on tranquilizers or a world of autistic people. It retains all of the changes in logical
processing that we are used to calling ‘emotion’, the only difference being they would occur more slowly, subtly.
Yes, I would argue that emotions as I see it is juice or energy.
The reason for it is simple, thats how we have been told it is.99% of people who arent interested in philosophy would give this same answer if asked.
Because thats what we have defined emotions to be.
If we were to ignore this definition, and use the psychologist’s definition instead, then we would have never had this problem. — Kinglord1090
I think you’re wrong that we would never have had this problem. We would have just about all of the problems that we do have now, for the reasons I stated above.
Let’s take guilt , for instance. You think it is a juice or energy?
Let me ask you this. You and I agree that if the only thing that motivates a person is logic, they will still be motivated to form friendships and social bonds. They will still want and need people in their life because we learn from each other , and the world makes more sense when we share ideas with each other. In order to maintain. the closet possible bond with another person (I’m not talking about emotional ‘love’, but an intellectual bond based on rationality) , we need to know how they see us, what role we play in their lives, how they see us helping them to understand their world better. In other words, we need to know where we stand with them. If I know that they ‘like’ me , what I am knowing is that they find me intellectually valuable to them.
So what happens when I meet someone new and discover that they are even more interesting than the person I had been bonding with previously? Will I feel an obligation toward that previous friendship? Or would I just continue to pursue my new bond and not concern my self with the previous one? You might think that if logic were my only motivation, I would simply not concern myself with the changed status of my previous relationship. But is this really true? What guarantees that I would understand fully why I found myself
preferring the second bond over the first? What guarantees that I would not feel ambivalent and confused? I am not talking here of ambivalence and confusion as ‘emotions’ . I am talking about them as logical, rational assessments of my relationships. When one relies solely on logic and rationality, there are many situations that one encounters that don’t seem to fit the logic one tries to apply to them because they require learning , a modification of one’s scheme of understanding. Until one can successfully update one’s understanding, one wil experience confusion, ambivalence, ambiguity , uncertainty , chaos. Again, I’m not talking about ‘emotions’ but features of the limits of rational processing. So I could very well be rationally confused about my responsibilities toward my previous bond. One could say that I was rationally torn between the old and then new relationship. Should I tell my old friend about the new one? Would the old friend rationally understand or would their logic be insufficiently flexible to glimpse why I abandoned them for my new friend? How are all these thoughts different from the ‘fluid energy’ of guilt? Because logical confusion, ambivalence and ambiguity doesn’t involve a feeling of suffering? But doesn’t it involve an awareness of confusion and loss? Isn’t that a ‘logical’ suffering’?
How does one deal rationally , logically with another person who hits me for no reason that I can see? It may be logical for me to assume or suspect that they knew better to attack me but they decided to do it anyway. Would it then be logical for me want to teach them a lesson, to make them mend their ways? What’s the difference between my desire to punish the other and the emotion of anger ? That anger is a fluid, an energy, and my ‘calm’ desire to punish the other is rational, logical ? But would a rationalperson act calmly if the other person is actively, immediately threatening them? Wouldnt it be logical to act aggressively, forcefully? Is this behavior still different from the emotion of anger? You would say yes, anger overcome sis and blinds us , but rational aggression and attack is logical.
What if I find out later that the person who attacked me mistook me for some one else , or beloved that I was the one who has wrong ed them first, and they were simply trying to ‘rationally’ punish me?
There could be an endless cycle of attack and counter attack, with each side believing that they were in the right. We could call this righteous anger , except that you would want to to eliminate the word ‘anger’ and substitute the term ‘logical indignation’, or ‘rational condemnation’.
At any rate , it seem to me that just about all of the situations in this world that keep it from being peaceful consist of two parties both believing they are in the right , and desiring to punish the other party, to show them a lesson, to get themto mend their ways. And all this violence , it seems to me, stems from people attempting to think as rationally and logically as they can about why the other person or persons could possibly do what they did and think what they think. All of this without the need to bring ‘emotion’ into the picture.
l