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...Or did we merely obscure the deeper drivers of reason itself?
We say we want to be rational, and we subsequently think we need to avoid emotionality. So I begin to review my emotions. I eventually find that we don’t have a good definition of it. In my search, it seems few people have noticed that, or at least, we don’t pay a lot attention to it.
Finally there is an interesting post: “what-are-emotions?” The author, Myles H. , found that all rational terminals relate to emotions. In fact we can never avoid emotions at all. So it’s critical to find out what our emotions really are, and then we will see how we can view our emotions.
What are emotions? What’s the boundary of emotions? Is it enough to just include “happiness” “anger” and so on? We have learned that dopamine arouses our desire and thus badly affects our rational decision. There must be too many tiny emotions disturbing our rationality without being recognized.
I try to sort out three classes of “sense”, not complete but inspiring: those obvious and instant, like joy, happiness, anger, sorrow, envy, and the special “beauty”; those everlasting and subtle, which humans have recognized well, like dignity, sense of responsibility, achievement, belonging and identity(most of them don’t even have a single word to refer to);those influence our sight, way of thinking, and then our decisions, but almost invisible: sense of crisis, superiority, desire for control, paranoia, and even the impulse to perform a certain behavior. If you recognize it, it seems clear; but most time we are subtly affected by them unconsciously, which will accumulate to be disastrous. And it is not that emotions are all exhibited here, but that I can’t explain those sensitivities in words.
What we’re talking about, is far beyond just “emotion”; I prefer to call it “sensibility”. I try to give a definition of it: Sensibility includes all factors drive us away from logical accuracy; it might not even be perceived as a sense(like invisible desire), but deflects the tendency how we think, decide, and behave; and all of that stems from the information in genes, or what we call instinct.
Sensibility matches rationality. It is the toughest opponent against the objective world.
But can we really get rid of sensibility? Before we set out inhibiting all sensibility, we must answer: Should we deny all sensibility? In “what-are-emotions?”, Myles H. suggested that emotions are the terminal values, which I strongly agree. All rational value ends up as an extension of sensibility. For example, why do you need more money? Why do you go traveling? Why does humanity long for advance? When we ask “why” one more time, we will find all traditionally rational value fading, dissolving into sensibility, the value given by instinct and gene. We are no longer rational.
But we’re not denying ourselves; all we do makes sense. It’s just that we need to clarify what the true meaning of rationality is. Sensibility defines what we do, but rationality defines how we see the world. Rationality enables the implement of sensibility, in which sensibility endows rationality with meaning, and rationality tells us what sensibility to choose and how to reach.
So, we do need rationality to understand the world, understand ourselves, and understand sensibility and rationality itself. Not a slogan to show our superiority, but to understand more, to see the world more clearly, to tell who we are.
It’s just a beginning. We just have the concept of sensibility, and we will see how our perceiving of it makes all the difference.
...Or did we merely obscure the deeper drivers of reason itself?
We say we want to be rational, and we subsequently think we need to avoid emotionality. So I begin to review my emotions. I eventually find that we don’t have a good definition of it. In my search, it seems few people have noticed that, or at least, we don’t pay a lot attention to it.
Finally there is an interesting post: “what-are-emotions?” The author, Myles H. , found that all rational terminals relate to emotions. In fact we can never avoid emotions at all. So it’s critical to find out what our emotions really are, and then we will see how we can view our emotions.
What are emotions? What’s the boundary of emotions? Is it enough to just include “happiness” “anger” and so on? We have learned that dopamine arouses our desire and thus badly affects our rational decision. There must be too many tiny emotions disturbing our rationality without being recognized.
I try to sort out three classes of “sense”, not complete but inspiring: those obvious and instant, like joy, happiness, anger, sorrow, envy, and the special “beauty”; those everlasting and subtle, which humans have recognized well, like dignity, sense of responsibility, achievement, belonging and identity(most of them don’t even have a single word to refer to);those influence our sight, way of thinking, and then our decisions, but almost invisible: sense of crisis, superiority, desire for control, paranoia, and even the impulse to perform a certain behavior. If you recognize it, it seems clear; but most time we are subtly affected by them unconsciously, which will accumulate to be disastrous. And it is not that emotions are all exhibited here, but that I can’t explain those sensitivities in words.
What we’re talking about, is far beyond just “emotion”; I prefer to call it “sensibility”. I try to give a definition of it: Sensibility includes all factors drive us away from logical accuracy; it might not even be perceived as a sense(like invisible desire), but deflects the tendency how we think, decide, and behave; and all of that stems from the information in genes, or what we call instinct.
Sensibility matches rationality. It is the toughest opponent against the objective world.
But can we really get rid of sensibility? Before we set out inhibiting all sensibility, we must answer: Should we deny all sensibility? In “what-are-emotions?”, Myles H. suggested that emotions are the terminal values, which I strongly agree. All rational value ends up as an extension of sensibility. For example, why do you need more money? Why do you go traveling? Why does humanity long for advance? When we ask “why” one more time, we will find all traditionally rational value fading, dissolving into sensibility, the value given by instinct and gene. We are no longer rational.
But we’re not denying ourselves; all we do makes sense. It’s just that we need to clarify what the true meaning of rationality is. Sensibility defines what we do, but rationality defines how we see the world. Rationality enables the implement of sensibility, in which sensibility endows rationality with meaning, and rationality tells us what sensibility to choose and how to reach.
So, we do need rationality to understand the world, understand ourselves, and understand sensibility and rationality itself. Not a slogan to show our superiority, but to understand more, to see the world more clearly, to tell who we are.
It’s just a beginning. We just have the concept of sensibility, and we will see how our perceiving of it makes all the difference.