Feeling Rational

A popular belief about "rationality" is that rationality opposes all emotion - that all our sadness and all our joy are automatically anti-logical by virtue of being feelings.  Yet strangely enough, I can't find any theorem of probability theory which proves that I should appear ice-cold and expressionless.

So is rationality orthogonal to feeling?  No; our emotions arise from our models of reality.  If I believe that my dead brother has been discovered alive, I will be happy; if I wake up and realize it was a dream, I will be sad.  P. C. Hodgell said:  "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be."  My dreaming self's happiness was opposed by truth.  My sadness on waking is rational; there is no truth which destroys it.

Rationality begins by asking how-the-world-is, but spreads virally to any other thought which depends on how we think the world is.  By talking about your beliefs about "how-the-world-is", I mean anything you believe is out there in reality, anything that either does or does not exist, any member of the class "things that can make other things happen".  If you believe that there is a goblin in your closet that ties your shoe's laces together, then this is a belief about how-the-world-is.  Your shoes are real - you can pick them up.  If there's something out there which can reach out and tie your shoelaces together, it must be real too, part of the vast web of causes and effects we call the "universe".

Feeling angry at the goblin who tied your shoelaces involves a state of mind that is not just about how-the-world-is.  Suppose that, as a Buddhist or a lobotomy patient or just a very phlegmatic person, finding your shoelaces tied together didn't make you angry.  This wouldn't affect what you expected to see in the world - you'd still expect to open up your closet and find your shoelaces tied together.  Your anger or calm shouldn't affect your best guess here, because what happens in your closet does not depend on your emotional state of mind; though it may take some effort to think that clearly.

But the angry feeling is tangled up with a state of mind that is about how-the-world-is; you become angry because you think the goblin tied your shoelaces.  The criterion of rationality spreads virally, from the initial question of whether or not a goblin tied your shoelaces, to the resulting anger.

Becoming more rational - arriving at better estimates of how-the-world-is - can diminish feelings or intensify them.  Sometimes we run away from strong feelings by denying the facts, by flinching away from the view of the world that gave rise to the powerful emotion.  If so, then as you study the skills of rationality and train yourself not to deny facts, your feelings will become stronger.

In my early days I was never quite certain whether it was all right to feel things strongly - whether it was allowed, whether it was proper.  I do not think this confusion arose only from my youthful misunderstanding of rationality.  I have observed similar troubles in people who do not even aspire to be rationalists; when they are happy, they wonder if they are really allowed to be happy, and when they are sad, they are never quite sure whether to run away from the emotion or not.  Since the days of Socrates at least, and probably long before, the way to appear cultured and sophisticated has been to never let anyone see you care strongly about anything.  It's embarrassing to feel - it's just not done in polite society.  You should see the strange looks I get when people realize how much I care about rationality.  It's not the unusual subject, I think, but that they're not used to seeing sane adults who visibly care about anything.

But I know, now, that there's nothing wrong with feeling strongly.  Ever since I adopted the rule of "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be," I've also come to realize "That which the truth nourishes should thrive."  When something good happens, I am happy, and there is no confusion in my mind about whether it is rational for me to be happy.  When something terrible happens, I do not flee my sadness by searching for fake consolations and false silver linings.  I visualize the past and future of humankind, the tens of billions of deaths over our history, the misery and fear, the search for answers, the trembling hands reaching upward out of so much blood, what we could become someday when we make the stars our cities, all that darkness and all that light - I know that I can never truly understand it, and I haven't the words to say.  Despite all my philosophy I am still embarrassed to confess strong emotions, and you're probably uncomfortable hearing them.  But I know, now, that it is rational to feel.

Comments

[michael vassar]

It seems to me that social consensus accepts expression of strong feelings by women, just not by men.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Is it actually acceptance or just condescending dismissal?

[TGGP]

Since they aren't part of the web of cause-and-effect (so they might be epiphenomenal), are norms impossible to be irrational about?

I don't think it's inevitable that having emotion causes irrationality, but I think there is a tendency for it to cloud your mind and restraining yourself is a good idea. Maybe after calmly examining things you can say to yourself "This appears to be an optimum situation in which to freak out".

[Robin Hanson]

I agree that strong emotions can be very appropriate to many situations, but also think there is wisdom in the usual expectation that bias is correlated with strength of emotions. So it is crucial for us to develop better cues for distinguishing more versus less biased emotions.

[michael vassar]

Well, at the very least women constitute half of society, it's certainly acceptance within that half. I actually think that it's actually acceptance more broadly though. Women are arguably not accepted my men in general, but in so far as they are accepted it is only in a few narrow domains, primarily science, engineering, and big business that women do best by adhering to men's norms.
Actually though, emotional suppression is only normative among men in science, in the military, and in low status positions. Enthusiasm (irrational exuberance) is the ultimate business virtue. If one doesn't claim a level of confidence that can't possibly be justified one is simply not a contender for venture capital or angel investor money. In a hierarchy, one's not suitable for upper management or sales. Beyond that, almost all social elites are, in large measure, "emotional expression professionals". Actors and actresses are the most obvious example of this, but I would say that this is also true of athletes, artists, and other performers and entertainers, religious leaders, and politicians. Al Gore was dismissed with a characterization of "wooden". Hitler practiced his emotional expressions for hours in front of a mirror.

[Matthew C]

Great points Michael. IE Clinton and "I feel your pain". . .

[Barkley Rosser]

This is one of those rare moments where the usually horribly heterodox economist, me,
defends orthodox economic theory. So, looked at very closely, orthodox microeconomic
says nothing at all about peoples' preferences themselves, which presumably involve their
emotional reactions to various things. What is assumed is certain things about these
preferences, that people know what they are, that they exhibit continuity, that they have
a degree of internal consistency in the sense of exhibiting transitivity, and it also
makes people behave more "rationall" and exhibit continuous demand functions if their
utility functions exhibit convexity. So, rationality is not about what your preferences
are or the degree to which they are based on one's emotions. They are that one know
what they are, that they have a degree of internal coherence or consistency, and the,
the biggie, that people actually act on the basis of their real preferences.

A lot of the problems regarding "irrationality" involve people behaving in internally
consistent manners, especially over time. Behavioral economists are now arguing it out
whether one should deal with this via multiple personality (or preference systems) models
or approaches that stress focusing on "rationality" and keeping mind one's "real" preferences.
Thus, hyperbolic discounting involves "time inconsistency." I want things now that I shall
regret having wanted so much later. I eat the candy bar now and wake up fat later, etc. etc.
Is this a combat of two preference systems or just "irrationality," People like Matthew
Rabin who tend to use the latter approch, in fact say that the goal is to have people be
"rational," to know their own real preferences and to act on them. If they really do not
mind being fat, then go ahead and eat the candy bar. But in any case, it is perfectly OK
either way to have the caring about being fat or not caring about being fat to be based on
one's emotional reactions. One should undertand one's own emotional reactions. That is
rationality.

[pseudonymous]

It seems to me that social consensus accepts expression of strong feelings by women, just not by men.

Traditionaly, women were thought inferior to men precisely because they were thought to have stronger feelings.

It is not thought wise to have anyone "emotional" in any position of importance.

But "emotional" is usually interpreted to mean that your feelings are easily swayed.

[Stephan Johnson]

Your thoughts on this would profit a lot from some reading of recent research in neuroscience--specifically people like D'Amasio, LeDoux, and Ramachandran, Sacks (there are lots others, too). The idea that rationality begins with some 'asking how-the-world is' as if that act itself were not completely shot through with emotional responses is hopelessly naive. Without an emotional response, one could never even form the judgment that the world-is-any-particular way. The brain lesion studies on this are pretty clear; it's an emotional response that both triggers and suffuses the judgments we make about the way-the-world-is. For sure strong emotional responses can get in the way of other emotionally charged inferences (those that are typically thought of as canonically rational), but the whole opposition of emotions and rationality, as if they were in any way exclusive, is wrong headed. There are some emotional responses to situations that we call rational, and there are others that get in the way of those. The normative evaluation of the judgments must be left up to some other valuative metric--e.g., conducive to other emotional attitudes, etc. In a word, Hume was right, righter than even he knew.

[Gordon Worley]

As I see it, what's most important is to make a division between rationality and emotions in terms of where they fit in the equations. Rationality describes the equations, emotions provide a source of evidence that must be applied correctly. If an outcome makes me happy, that should make me desire that outcome more, but not make me think that outcome more likely than if it made me sad (unless, of course, I'm evaluating the probability that I will be motivated to do something).

Unfortunately, I think this model of mind is not how the human mind actually works. Emotions appear to change the equations, not their arguments, so eliminating emotions seems like an appropriate measure to increase the human brain's approximation of a rational process. Maybe you can allow yourself feel happy or sad at an outcome without it affecting the outcome, but getting to that point may require an unemotional transition period as you change your thinking to match that of a rational process.

[Eliezer Yudkowsky]

Stephan, it is important to establish normative separation between the roles that emotions play in perception (which may be part of the process of establishing truth) and the roles that emotions play in motivation (which should not normatively affect what we believe to be true). Yes, it may be the same emotion doing both things. But that doesn't change the normative difference in the roles.

When I say "rationality begins with" I am talking about deriving the normative criterion, not about the brain's real-world temporal order of evaluation.

(And yes, I'm read up on neuroscience to the level you specified.)

[Nancy Lebovitz]

It's my impression that men and women are permitted somewhat different sets of emotions--men are freer to show anger, women are freer to show sadness. And that showing emotion is more permitted now than it was a few decades ago.

As far as I can tell, it's possible to be emotional (or at least fairly emotional) and logical at the same time, so long as the emotion isn't territorial attachment to an idea.

[denis bider]

Eliezer: It may be rational to (choose to) feel, but feelings are not rooted in reason. Reason is a consistency-based mechanism which we use to validate new information based on previously validated information, or to derive new hypotheses based on information we have already interned. One can reason with great skill, and one can know a great deal about the reasoning process in general, and yet one's conclusions may be false or irrelevant if one has not validated all of the basic assumptions one's reasoning ultimately depends on. But validating these most fundamental assumptions is difficult and time consuming, and is a task most of us do not tend to, as we instead scurry about to achieve our daily goals and objectives, which in turn we determine by applying reason to data and attitudes we have previously interned, which in turn are based ultimately upon basic premises which we have never thorougly investigated.

These are the thoughts that I get after reading your eulogy for your brother, Yehuda. I get the impression that you are too busy studying how to defeat death, to stop and think why death should be bad in the first place. Of course, to stop and think about it would mean opening yourself to the possibility that death might be acceptable after all, which in turn would threaten to annihilate your innermost motivations.

[denis bider]

Think about it this way. The past 28 years of your life are already dead, as history is not something living. The future years of your life, meanwhile, have yet to come into existence. You have already lost all of your past; and as soon as you "gain" your future, you already lose it. All you are is but an ever-changing state; the "now" that you inhabit is but an instruction pointer in the registers of a machine that is continually executing instructions.

What do you care if the machine stops processing at any point? Do you think you will notice? Does a program's thread of execution notice when the OS swaps it out and resumes execution on another thread? Does a thread of execution notice if it is never resumed?

I'm not claiming that we are but software running on the hardware of the universe, but this is what you seem to posit; and if this is so, then death is no more terrible than it's terrible that the sky appears blue, or that the grasses appear green, or that the Sun appears yellow.

And yet, you seem to believe that death is somehow "horrible", so you are sad when it takes place; and you believe that other things are somehow "good", so you are happy when they happen. This seems to be at odds with the things-just-are view that you otherwise represent, and it tells me that these feelings of yours are based on something more fundamental, something more axiomatic than reason. Reason is a consistency vehicle; but these feelings of yours, they are. Reason may help provoke them, but they exist independently of reason. And indeed, such feelings are known to distort the reasoning process in people substantially, causing them to delay validation of critical basic assumptions, thus causing them to reach and stick by invalid conclusions even though their reasoning process may be sound. Garbage in, garbage out.

This reason-distorting effect is why emotions are thought of as at odds with reason. And with good reasons. :)

[Richard Hollerith]

I agree with Mr Bider. Humans get their terminal values from a combination of genetic transmission and cultural transmission. The former has been recently called on this blog the thousand shards of desire. Most people, even most extremely intelligent people, use their intelligence pursuing the values that have been transmitted to them genetically and culturally. What I find more virtuous than raw intelligence is the willingness of the person to turn his intelligence on these values, to question every one searchingly and to be prepared to throw them all out if that is what his intelligence and his studies instruct him to do. (Actually, if you throw them all out, you run into a problem staying motivated, but this is not the place . . .)

How I choose to conquer death is to redefine "me" to include not only my intelligence but also the effects of that intelligence on the world, so that when my body dies and my intelligence ends, "I" continue. The death of a mind is not the end of the world.