The Heart- the source of all pain?

[B. de Corbin]

Re: The Heart- the source of all pain?

Hmmm... the "urge" to survive? Or the "urge" to eat?

Subjectively, when you experience an "urge," what are you feeling? These urges express themselves subjectively as feelings - emotions.

From the point of view of pure logic, there is no reason to survive, or to continue the species.

If I am wrong in this, here's the test...

Give me a foundation premise for a logical argument that the species should continue which does not involve a value judgement based on what one feels.

[Corvus]

Re: The Heart- the source of all pain?

I have to agree with kashaku tatsu because almost this exact thing has happened with me (including the blackout stuff) in my opinion logic is much better than emotion not to mention easier to understand.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: The Heart- the source of all pain?

LOL- maybe. But you're still stuck wih the problem of whether logic has any purpose without emotion behind it.

Personally, I find logic to be very useful, but emotion is what gives me a reason to use it.

[DanieMarie]

Re: The Heart- the source of all pain?

LOL- maybe. But you're still stuck wih the problem of whether logic has any purpose without emotion behind it.

Personally, I find logic to be very useful, but emotion is what gives me a reason to use it.

Yep.

Also, I find logic is kind of subjective. It's supposed to be an objective quality, but what some people (individuals, cultures, women, men) find logical, others may not. Different people seem to think in different ways. The most obvious example I can think of is the conflicts you sometimes have between women and men. I hear from men alllll the time that women aren't rational, and while we do use our emotional qualities a little more openly, we don't often find men all that rational either (especially not as "rational" as they often think they are).

Often, it pretty much boils down to what feels right given a particular situation. You can weigh your options (and should), but there's something to be said for reading the feelings of others and trusting your gut as well.

[thalassa]

Re: The Heart- the source of all pain?

...plus, emotions are very much connected to instinct. That "feeling" you get that someone is bad news--it manifests as dislike, which is an "emotion". It doesn't mean that your brain and your body don't occasionally act out of accord...but not all feelings are conscious ones either (or logical).

[B. de Corbin]

Re: The Heart- the source of all pain?

Actually, formal logic follows very strict rules, like math (although there are diffeent "strains" of logic, just as there are different "strains" of math - Euclidian geometry vs. non-Euclidian geomtry, for instance). But it doesn't lead to inevitable truths because, in the BIG questions, value judgements inevitably come into play, and values really aren't entirely subject to logic (trying to make value judgements logical inevitably results in circular thinking).

In common language, though, "logical" often means "the way I see it," and there you'll get a lot of conflict.

What formal logic is really good at - even if it doesn't allow you to arrive at absolue truth - is in rooting out errors due to lack of information, misinformation, and prejudgements. A logical thinker would never state that women are less rational than men, except on the basis of averages (if the averages actually show that - I don't know that they do), and the logical thinker would also know that averages tell you nothing about any individual. A woman may be less rational than a man, but a logical thinker would have to gather data specific to that particular woman and to that particular man in order to know... and even then, there are different types of rational (which might be valued in different ways by different thinkers, leading to false conclusions), so the exact meaning of "rational" as used in that particular context, would have to be specified.

An example might be whether to buy a laptop computer for a kid's 10th birthday or put the money away to pay for college. Perfectly logical, sound arguments can be presented for both positions. The one that is chosen will depend on whether one values the child's here and now more or less than the child's then and there.

In short, doing logic is a lot like doing science (science is based on formal logic anyway...)

[DanieMarie]

Re: The Heart- the source of all pain?

Yeah I understand what you mean, I guess I just mean that in the human world, there is no such thing as -pure- logic because our values, our perceptions, and our emotions vary. And while it might seem -hypothetically- possible to apply pure logic to a situation, realistically it's about as possible as communism working. Human nature gets in the way.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: The Heart- the source of all pain?

Yes - that's it in a nutshell.

[KashakuTatsu]

Re: The Heart- the source of all pain?

Can't say I feel anything with urges. When the body makes me eat I don't feel hunger it just does. If I ate only when I felt hunger I'd eat like once a week if that. Sometimes if the shakes are preventing me from doing something (drawing, my job, etc) I'll eat something solely to stop them not cause I feel hungry, perhaps could be said I feel irritated at those times. Hence mentioning the black outs and doing things I'm unaware of on a conscious level. Think randomly throwing up. You're sitting watching tv, feeling fine, then the body just throws up with no feeling/warning/forethought. You can't stop it from doing what it wants, sometimes it almost feels like it has a separate brain. lol

and if the body dictates the absolute truth is to live (based on experiences that no matter how much you try to stop it from doing what it needs to in order to survive it still does it) then it's not logical to let the species or self to die off no matter if it's a judgment call for others or not. Since ya did a (vulcan?), they still procreated, ate and did things for their survival lol. =p

[Corvus]

Re: The Heart- the source of all pain?

Yeah I understand what you mean, I guess I just mean that in the human world, there is no such thing as -pure- logic because our values, our perceptions, and our emotions vary. And while it might seem -hypothetically- possible to apply pure logic to a situation, realistically it's about as possible as communism working. Human nature gets in the way.

Okay let's say its an individual's logic and this individual has a resonably high iq but is not able to feel compassion, sorrow, happiness, anger, fear, ect. I understand this veiw it is obviously possible to have perfect logic as we are human but without emotions clouding, interfering, or otherwise swaying our personal logic our decisions would make more sense and be more practical.