Problems with Logic and Rationality

I always have problems with those Stoic tropes where you have people who'd rather have their lives based on logic rather than emotion, due to their reason that emotion is easily manipulated, hard to control, and lead to reckless situations. The problem is that one's rationality can become as twisted as emotion. If a eugenics scientist rationalizes that it is natural that other races are inferior to whites, that mode of logic will affect how he conducts experiments as they are already tainted with his predetermined thoughts. No one seems to realize that your logic is likely to become skewed as your emotions.

After all, logic and emotions come for the same place. In a way they're the same thing. In the end all that happens is that one of the many motivations that are duking it out for your attention wins and then you start rationalizing it away to avoid the bitter taste of dissonance.

Logic is just fine.

Meaning on the other hand, and Value Judgments, are a whole other story.

Mandatory Less Wrong link

First post references a strawman, since eugenics is based on an (emotional?) preference, which has more to do with priorities than priors, and a prior that most often is interpreted as false, but one really wonders what a black person being inferior to a white person would even mean.

edited 21st Nov '10 10:42:16 AM by Roman

Does not compute

Yeah, the thing about this is that you're going off of Straw Vulcan instead of actual logic.

How I interpret the OP: "If it leads to a result that I don't like, it must be wrong".

"Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions." - David Hume

He was right, of course. Reason is the method, emotion is the motive. The two are not in any way opposites.

edited 21st Nov '10 10:20:37 PM by MostlyBenign

Go for it, Hume's coo- oh, you mean the reason's the slave of the passions one, yes?

lolninjaedit

edited 21st Nov '10 10:22:06 PM by Tzetze

Don't we have one for Emotions Vs Logic as well?

Emotions vs. Stoicism, I think.

I have a teacher who has some of the same ideas about science and logic - because people's "science" is often tainted by their preconceptions and stigmas (racism being a prime example), she comes to the conclusion that it is the fault of science and reasoning because it always comes to the wrong conclusions.

Both here and there, I'd argue - don't blame science, don't blame logic, don't blame reason. Those are merely the processes, the means of learning and finding new things.

Blame the person and their stigmas, for if a person attempts to learn while already having decided the place they will end up, then they're probably not learning, even though they'll never be disappointed.

edited 22nd Nov '10 1:16:03 AM by KnownUnknown

eugenics is a bad example of logic because it's based on a false premise.

Well, logic isn't even really falsifiable, if that makes any sense. You can't do a "test" for whether logic wrong-only a test for whether the premises are wrong. I guess. Not certain. I mean, you could have two correct premises that lead to a conclusion that's invariably false, and be all like "WTF Logic, WTF?"

Well, you can do a test on a heuristic, but you can't do a test on logic without employing logic.

edited 22nd Nov '10 6:23:11 AM by Roman

Logic and science are only tools, developed over centuries. They work because, if you do the same things under the same conditions, you always get the same result. It doesn't matter how you feel about it or what your preconceptions are (unless you're doing certain quantum experiments). Rationality, by its nature, leads to the asking of questions, some of which can get uncomfortable for some people. I'm not singling out anyone.

Logic and emotion may seem contradictory, but they can be complementary. You need compassion to temper blind mechanical thinking, just as you need practicality to temper blind sentimental feeling. It's no accident that men and women use different sides of the brain: we provide feedback to each other.

They work because, if you do the same things under the same conditions, you always get the same result.

That seems more like empiricism than logic.

Tomu got it. The dichotomy isn't between logic/reason and emotion, it's between belief in the non-arbitrary meaning or value of something we identify with, and the belief that all value preferences are in fact arbitrary and are basically sub-conscious impulses born of our evolutionary heritage or our early childhood development. It's between people who think that there is something irreducible about human experience, and those who believe that in principle, you could program a computer to do everything we think, feel, and do (and that if you did, you could predict it's responses ahead of time).

edited 22nd Nov '10 3:00:12 PM by DeMarquis

Argh, I opened this thread intending to post something but Roman beat me to it.

Except to do that you would need an even bigger computer.

edited 23rd Nov '10 1:18:07 PM by RawPower

Doesn't matter, since there are some people who believe very strongly that no computer, no matter how "big", could duplicate the human experience (whether it would generate some sort of equivalent artificial sentient experience is another matter).

@OP — Do not confuse rationalization with rationality.

Tzetze said: That seems more like empiricism than logic.

Actually, that's the science part, not the logic part. I guess you could say that science is a type of empiricism.

What I mean is that logical deduction is, well, deductive, not inductive. It doesn't rely on reproducibility.

Well, I don't see any problem with logic (although, that might be biased since nearly every choice I make is based off of it). Yeah, just like the Emotions vs. Stoicism says I have a sever lack of empathy and drive but on the plus side I'm usually not biased.

As said before, logic and science are not inherently bad. It all depends on who uses them. In my opinion, the best choice one has in decision making would theoretically be a mix of emotions and logic (although since the two have the tendency to clash, that can be challenging).

I was going to make a spearaste thread on this topic but what is the deal with the Emotions Vs Stoicism debate? Can't there be a balance somewhere?