(May 6, 2015 at 5:36 am)Hatshepsut Wrote: ...
(May 5, 2015 at 7:19 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: Furthermore, the motivation to do anything always involves emotions. That was something Hume noted... But this is not involving "an objective value judgement." ...Evidently, your idea of "rationality" includes more than bare reason, but also feelings.
But we've chosen to divide human thought into two categories, "reason" and "emotion," and declare only the former "rational." This decision about the taxonomy of thoughts was already long in effect by the 18th century and is taken for granted unconsciously today. We might ask why emotion, a thing generated by the brain, does not represent the results of any kind of objective calculation. Often feelings are eminently rational. When we feel fear, it's a fair bet that it's because we're in danger of some kind.
I will agree that "reason" is broader. The brain makes emotional calculations very quickly albeit based on partial information and with biases toward the welfare of self and kin. And emotion "thinks" only about certain things. The slower-moving reason can aim at almost any topic and reach a higher level of verbal abstraction. Yet is this grounds enough to exclude emotion from universe of rationality? I might lean toward Chad Wooter on this issue, adding that it's the simultaneous use of both reason and emotion that produces "rationality." Remove either one and we're in trouble: Emotionally disordered people don't behave in a rational manner, while folks who refuse to reason act in a petty, self-centered way.
No, emotions are not rational. If we consider your example of fear, many times the fear is based on the possibility of something happening that one does not want. But that not wanting it is just another desire, another emotion. It is not based on reason at all.
Fear is more instinctual than rational. We see fear-behavior in animals of many kinds. Such instinct tends to help keep an individual alive, which in turn tends to help keep the species alive. This is more basic to how animals are than reason is.
The reason (or more properly, "cause") such instinct exists in species is because those animals that lacked such instincts tended to die off and not reproduce. That does not make it rational. That just means that one way of being is more likely to result in a longer life and offspring than the other.
Reason is helpful for determining means to ends, but it does not give ends in themselves. If you have a goal, then choosing appropriate means to achieve that goal is "reasonable," but the goal itself isn't based on reason. For example, if you want to live, then drinking poison is probably not a reasonable thing to do. But if you want to die, drinking poison may very well be a reasonable thing to do. What is "reasonable" to do is determined by the goal one has. But the ultimate goals themselves are not determined by reason.
I state "ultimate goals" for a reason. Once one has an ultimate goal, one can use reason to find intermediate goals, which are simply the means to achieve one's ultimate goals. This discovery of intermediate goals may mislead some people into supposing that goals are somehow based on reason, but the fact is that intermediate goals can only exist if there is an ultimate goal.
For example, if one wants to be able to eat, one might decide that it will be good to have money in order to buy food (because that is how most people get food in many societies). And to get money, one may decide to get a job, because that is often a way in which one can get money. Reasoning about such things can give one the intermediate goals, which is to say, it can discover the means to particular ends, but if we eliminate the ultimate ends, then there are no intermediate steps to achieve one's ultimate goals (since one lacks any ultimate goals), and consequently there can be no intermediate goals.
As for your comments on "emotionally disordered people," those are simply people who have different desires from what is considered normal by a society. It is not a matter of reason, but of attitude (i.e., feeling). To give an example that might help make this clear to you, before 1973, the American Psychiatric Association classified homosexuality as a mental illness. In 1973, they no longer classified homosexuality as a mental illness. Nothing changed about homosexuality itself. What changed were societal attitudes toward homosexuality.
If one had exclusively heterosexual desire, then homosexual behavior would be "irrational." But it is in all cases a hypothetical matter, based on the sorts of feelings one has. For someone with homosexual desire, homosexual behavior is "rational." It is all a question of what one desires, or, in other words, on the emotions one has. Change the emotions, and one changes the behavior that would be rational.
This is why Hume stated, rather provocatively:
"Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hume-a...man-nature
Reason is not the ultimate source of the passions (i.e., emotions). Reason is used to discover the means to the ends one has, not to give one the ultimate ends one has. The ultimate ends (goals) one has are a matter of feeling and emotion.
That some people have a prejudice in favor of their own feelings is not a sign that they are more reasonable than different feelings in someone else. Yet many people imagine such a thing, and it tends to cloud their judgement and get them to classify others as being "irrational" for feeling differently about things. Sometimes they try to rationalize their opinions, but they ultimately end up begging the question, presupposing that their feelings are rational and that contrary feelings are irrational. Thus, they reason fallaciously, showing that their position is not really based on reason at all.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.