Good and Evil

[Hatshepsut]

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....

We love our romantic Enlightenment terminology for thinking processes, but emotion must be just as rational as any other process that takes place in human brains. There's no essential difference between the tissues that generate emotion in the brain and those that generate "rational" thoughts. In fact, brain areas used for both kinds of thinking overlap to some degree. Therefore, the distinction between reason and emotion is artificial. We've separated them conceptually for our own convenience. I'm not opposed to making this distinction because it is after all useful sometimes. Just as long as we're aware that we have done so, and avoid reifying our concepts.

If we suspect something merely unwanted is impeding, our response isn't fear, but frustration or disappointment. It's true that we can fear bad things which haven't yet happened to us, such as fear of crime in a rough neighborhood, although that only shows we have foresight. "Instinct" is hardly so simple or "primitive" as it appears, especially for mammals; generating an instinctive behavior can require as many neural computations as solving a mathematical problem does. We just happen to pay more conscious attention to "rational" thought processes than to "instinctive" ones, and I dare say with a passionate elevation in prestige for the former.  

I will agree with your assertion than many or most of our ultimate goals stem from emotion rather than explicit logic, the latter which indeed admits of formal and informal fallacy. And with your skeptical view of the APA club, which I share: psychiatry is far overanxious to label any difference as a mental disorder. Yet there are people who clearly do suffer from disorders of mood and affect: schizophrenics, bipolar patients, and so on. These folks usually experience trouble managing their daily lives, tending to fall into self-destructive behavior patterns.  

I hold to the moderate realist position. I do not think, like Plato, Forms/Ideas have independent existence...

...while I'm not sure I have the sophistication to commit myself to a school of thought. Plato's forms thing is related to the question of whether mathematics is discovered or invented, where powerful arguments have come forth for both positions. I do believe that the utility of "form," or categorization if that's what it is, as a thinking tool declines as the objects under consideration get more complex. Forms work well in mathematics and for quarks and leptons in physics, but less well for erecting a ladder of human social ideals. I take a "naive" view and prefer avoiding specialized philosophical jargon whenever possible.