'Every time a resolve or fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing fruit, it is worse than a chance lost; it works to hinder future emotions from taking the normal path of discharge'- William James
'Logic is the anatomy of thought'- John Locke
How do we make a decision and then how, when we have made that decision do we know it was the right one?
If we followed our gut as James says and our gut decisions became the norm we would somehow always manage to remain true to ourselves. This may be so, but 'above all to thine own self be true', may do good for me but what about you? If such a case is to be right for you we must trust Rousseau and accept that humans are innately good hence our true impulses and urges will lead to a greater good. On the other hand if Hobbes is correct and humans are innately evil then 'the life of man [will be] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short'.
On the other hand can we really detach ourselves from our emotions can we calculate and compute without caring and concerning. I am most definitely a rationalist, a reasoner and logician but surely years of evolution and following our gut has brought us to many a logical conclusion. Every thought is tinged with motive, which then in turn is tinged with emotion. Logic is the sum of emotional averages, the shortest route to your gut without any detours. I think James was on the right track and for every emotion their is a thought and for every thought their is a reason and for every reason their is an emotion, and this emotion is logic, it is the truth, your truth and the truth for all humans.
Peace out.
3 comments:
I disagree. Logic and emotion are not linked or otherwise enjoy complimentarity. Emotion,gut,instinct is what naturally rises into our minds from our innate selves, whereas our reason,logic,analytical-ness is a product of our intelligent minds. That is why we have inner conflicts - our instincts vs our reasoning. St. Paul calls it old self vs new self. Thank you. Frank
I am just reading back over my thoughts, it appears to be a fleeting moment of insight that I am trying to recapture. If I recall correctly my claim was based upon an evolutionary premise, the idea being that logic has to have some sort of basis from emotional origins, although both entities are disparate I think my point was that emotion was evolution's logical answer to the randomness of the world and the most logical way to avoid entropy and to propagate a species. So from this perspective the root of all 'human' logic has an emotional basis, but this emotion was based on a more universal logic. Might juts be yammering. But thanks for you comment Frank!!
I see what you are saying. It makes sense that our "gut," which evolved in an earlier time, would not be entirely set aside by the developing mind, but would feed into it. When someone rationalizes an evil act - could this be the basic self getting it's way...?
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