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04-29-2007, 6:42 PM DonQuixote99 Joined on 04-28-2007 sw Ohio Posts 75 Emotional Decision-making The following is my analysis of the implications of a brief case study I found.  The implications seem profound to me, leading in fact to the conclusion that all human decision making is emotional!  If true this would seem to call for some revisions in the objectivist view of things…. The story concerns a person described as a ‘frontal lobe patient,’ called Elliot, who’d lost the ability to have emotional reactions.  He had no big emotions like fear and anger (mostly), no visceral emotions like revulsion or elation at ugly or beautiful things, no ‘gut feelings’ about things.  Elliot was mostly an emotional blank.  The result was not that Elliot was a coldly logical “Mr. Spock.”  Elliot was in fact badly disabled, because he found it terribly difficult to make cognitive decisions, and he had really bad judgment. For example, it was related how Elliot had a terrible time choosing between making an appointment for Monday of next week, or making it for Tuesday.  He would deliberate endlessly on the pros and cons of each of the two days.  My source speculated that this was because he couldn’t predict the future.  But it strikes me that he could predict.  That’s what his endless deliberations were.  He was predicting and predicting and predicting.  What he couldn’t do was stop predicting.  A normal person would think about their schedule a little, determine that “Monday is bad,” and decide on Tuesday for the appointment.  Note “Monday is bad.”  That is a conclusion, a judgment, and couched in emotional terms!  That is what our emotional process does for us—it makes judgments.  It takes cognitive data, such as “I have six things I have to do on Monday already” and sends back to our conscious mind an emotional feeling  “Monday is bad.”  That emotion tells us ‘problem solved,’ (at least that subpart of the problem) and we move on in our thinking.  It now seems clear to me that without an evaluation and emotional response process to tell him he’s solved the problem, Elliot couldn’t stop thinking about it.  When he finally did make a decision, he was basically guessing because he had no way to discern which of the many factors he had considered were the important ones.  This was why he suffered from very bad judgment and made poor decisions.  I find this role for emotions fascinating—I’ve generally thought of emotions in terms of ‘big motivators’ like fear, hate, and love and bonding.  Elliot’s problem reveals a much more subtle and pervasive role for emotions.  Our cognitive, conscious mind, it turns out, is distinctly limited, and can’t really function usefully without an unconscious emotion-creating process, which evaluates and assigns meaning to the facts discovered by cognition.    Report

04-29-2007, 8:31 PM NickOtani Joined on 04-21-2006 Posts 323 Re: Emotional Decision-making Objectivism is not anti-emotional or anti-evaluation. They are not Mr. Spocks. They do think evaluation is important in cognition. Cognition without evaluation is purposeless, and evaluation with out cognition is wish, whim. Cognition and evaluation need to go together. Every "is" implies an "ought." Of course, evaluations should be without wishful thinking or bias. That's what makes them, supposedly, objective. bis bald, Nick    Report

04-30-2007, 12:05 PM Mr Squiggle Joined on 04-04-2007 Posts 35 Re: Emotional Decision-making Don, maybe it is because without emotions a person has not way to determine if an outcome is good or not?  Humans generally judge whether or not an outcome is good by the way that it makes us feel.  We can come up with rational decision making methods and moral codes, but I think there is strong evidence that people make decisions based on how it will make them feel and then try to rationalise it after the fact. I don't know if this is actually a problem for objectivism.  Objectivism has always held that a life dedicated to rational and moral decisions should make individuals feel happy.  Objectivism does not say that emotions are bad or should be excluded from the decision making process - rather it promotes a way of behaving that is most likely to result in inidividuals feeling good all the time - and not just transient or 'unearned' happiness, because those forms of happiness don't last or help individuals in the long term.    Report

04-30-2007, 11:40 PM DonQuixote99 Joined on 04-28-2007 sw Ohio Posts 75 Re: Emotional Decision-making The problem I see is that Objectivism expects and indeed demands that people be rational.  However, emotions are not necessairily rational.  In Atlas Shrugged Rand more than once describes emotions with the metaphore of an instantanious adding machine, that totals all our reactions to a situation, with the sum being our emotional evaluation/reaction.  This is apt enough, I think.  But Rand seems to think all the factors that go into the sum are either the results of our reason, or ideas from others we have (unadvisedly) adopted uncritically.  She loses me there.  Because while I agree that those two sources of evaluation undoubtedly influence emotion, I don't see how other influences can be ruled-out.  The process by which emotions are created is unconscious.  We don't see the 'work,' we just see the result.  So we have no way to be sure that various sorts of irrationality aren't going into it--things like inate tendencies, inappropriate conditioned reactions, etc.  Indeed, a moment's unflinching consideration should convince anyone, I think, that their emotional reactions are imperfectly rational.  Combine that with the fact that Elliot's case demonstrates that emotional evaluation plays a central role in most or all decision-making, and we must face that fact that humans are less rational that Objectivism expects. The fact that Objectivist doctrine is mistaken about the role of emotion in our thinking may relate to the observed 'outbursts' of emotionality in some leading Objectivist figures.  These individuals believed they had a 'rational' method to control their emotions. When in crisis they found they were mistaken,  the result was more violent and uncontrolled emotions than usual.    Report

05-01-2007, 7:40 AM Mr Squiggle Joined on 04-04-2007 Posts 35 Re: Emotional Decision-making Don, your post really got me thinking last night. I think that objectivism was one of the best things that ever happened to me.  It made me feel free of the judgements of altruistic people and dogma that I have felt hovering over me all my life. But it has also, I am starting to believe, given me some bad personality traits too. It has made me judgemental, impatient, superior, and inflexible.  Those are all personality traits that I don't like.   I blame myself for adopting them, but I think objectivism lends itself to that. What I have started to embrace fairly recently is that human beings, even the most logical, rational ones, can't live up to Rand's image of the rational egoist. I don't agree that we are driven by our circumstances or that we don't have the ability to change, but I think it is a mistake to assume that any human being can make decisions devoid of emotions, the subconsciousness or psychology. I have not thought through what the implications are for objectivism if human decisions are dictated, as I suspect, to some extent by emotional, physiological and psychological factors of which we are not aware.  Does that mean we should not strive to be rational egoists regardless?  I don't think that necessarily follows.  But maybe there is space in objectivism for tollerance towards emotional decision making. I think it was Rand's greatest mistake to not build an analysis of the human mind and brain into objectivism.  There was plenty of phychological knowledge available to her at the time.  I suspect that if she had then she may have followed a different path.       Report

05-01-2007, 9:45 AM MattJ Joined on 02-12-2007 Posts 16 Re: Emotional Decision-making Rand did not comment on psychology and I believe did not like to enter that realm, this is where Nathaniel Branden came in to play. The introduction of psychology would have played havoc with her black and white view of the world. Yes we know what is is, and that A is A, but what about viewpoints, immediate environment, upbringing, demographics, value judgememnts based on facts in situations that may never ever occur again? We are not all born in a void and read Atlas Shrugged before we experience anything else, nor read an introduction to objectivist epsitomology and think pondersouly before we act.  If you are a perosn who strives to be the best they can but still hold on to your unique perception of the world...which is subjective, you cannot be an objectivist therefore you are flawed, go and chekc your premises...is this not dogma?    Report

05-01-2007, 9:58 AM Mr Squiggle Joined on 04-04-2007 Posts 35 Re: Emotional Decision-making Matt That is kind of funny.  It would be easy for me to be a rational egoist if I read objectivism whilst I was in the womb. Can you imagine what it would be like if you ALWAYS referred to objectivist epistiomology before doing anything? It would go something like this..."I have not yet gotten dressed today because I could not work out what colour underpants would be the most moral, and I couldn't find anything Rand said on the matter so I decided she must not approve of underpants and decided not to get dressed" :)    Report

06-09-2007, 2:42 PM DonQuixote99 Joined on 04-28-2007 sw Ohio Posts 75 Re: Emotional Decision-making I wrote the following this morning, in another forum here (Ayn Rand's Novels/Atlas Shrugged/Galt's Gulch).  But I think it's of 'general discussion' interest, so I'm copying it here: As for the question of do we have a moral duty to help others, or not, I'd say rationally we don't, but it's in our nature to emotionally feel like we do, sometimes.  Rand wrote off inate feelings as grounds for anything, and in fact denied they existed, but I don't think that's accurate.  Basically, I realize now that I don't think it's possible to create a philosophy with which people will want to live based on reason alone.  This statement has enormous implications, both for the whole project of Western Philosophy, and for the matter of how we are to live in real life. Too much rationalism blinds us to our inescapable emotional natures.  Just because altruism is irrational from an individual rational perspective does not mean real human beings will, by and large, want to live in a society that discounts altruism.  The emotional wants of people do not go away just because a rationalist sees no need for them. One of the modern conundrums that's been puzzling me is "What would a self-conscious computer/robot want to do?  What would be it's motivations?"  Without a human emotional-set, it's motivations would be alien and unpredictable.  Of course, anyone who thinks natural humans are rational and predictable should look at the entertainment offerings on TV, and ponder the implications of that. I'm going to have to look more into what the existentialists have been saying.  They have, after all, been trying to think clearly about the value of passionate individual choice.    Report

07-30-2008, 3:50 PM Donovan A. Joined on 07-23-2008 Dallas, TX Posts 6 Re: Emotional Decision-making Hello Don, Thanks for starting this topic. The primary questions seem to be: what role do emotions play in decision making and what role should they play.  First we should ask what are emotions. Emotions are an instant and automatic response triggered in relation to one's values. What emotions do not tell you is if your values are correct, if they are in fact good for you or not. Ayn Rand maintained that through introspection (assuming a properly functioning mind) we can identify the reasons for our emotions. Emotions in this respect are logical, and can be understood. This means that if something poses a danger to your life the proper emotion to feel would be fear, this of course depends on the fact that you value your life. If you do not value something at all, the emotion would be indifference. It is true that a person can act on their emotions, never asking if this is a good choice or a bad one. This is not what Objectivism recommends, nor is it what reality demands of man qua man. Consider what it means to act on emotions. When someone asks what makes you happy? Do you say “whatever makes me happy!” This leads you nowhere. It is the fact that values exist which makes emotions possible. "Reason is man's means of survival. Master the art of reasoning and you can gain independence. Through independence you can gain self-esteem. Through self-esteem you can achieve great happiness." - Donovan.A    Report

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