Sometimes reading the posts and discussions here I am reminded of some of the most interesting characters in science fiction: the Vulcans of Star Trek.
It is my perspective that lovers of truth need to step up and take their place in the resistance against the president's assault on truth, and that if this assault is not turned back soon, Dictatorship is coming to America. I think we have more or less about five months to go before he has subverted the intelligence agencies to the degree necessary to manufacture the kind of 'evidence' that will pass to substantiate his claim to be the arbiter of truth. If any of this resonates with any here, then somebody more capable than I please take these ideas and run with them.
Interesting. I am an autistic man who struggles more or less successfully approximately every day to control my emotions. I received my diagnosis only months ago but have hated propaganda (the intentional installation of bias ie commercials) all my life. Without a doubt, recognizing and effectively dealing with bias is completely topical at this very moment in the evolution of American and world culture.
For someone who believes, like the late Derek Parfit, that moral truths exist just as mathematical and logical truths do, and that these truths are knowable through the use of reason, it's possible to have an entire worldview based solely on logic.
In Star Trek, the Vulcans are Utilitarians because they believe that it is logical to be a Utilitarian. This resembles recent work on meta-ethics by Peter Singer and, to a lesser extent, Parfit.
I know this post is really old, but I need to put my two cents in. The idea that Vulcans are emotionless is a misconception. They are very emotional to a dangerous extreme, see the Romulans. It isn't that they suppress or deny their emotions, the Vulcan controls their emotions. If left unchecked the emotions rage like a wildfire and so it must be controlled to be a cigarette lighter instead.
From my research into different philosophies and theologies the nearest that comes to Vulcan is Stoicism. Most think that Vulcans practice Zen meditations but I find that to be inconsistent with the Vulcan philosophy. As Zen teaches to emptying oneself of thought and emotion. Whereas, Stoicism teaches to control emotional response through logic and reason. To put it into simple terms.
Pluralistic (methodological) rationalists deal with this issue by, among a few other techniques, encouraging people to vet their emotional perceptions through reasoned cognition. See www.circleofreason.org, or the Wikipedia article on The Circle of Reason or pluralistic rationalism. This social philosophy is the closest thing we have so far to a real-world version of "Vulcan logic+IDIC."
The concept of Vulcan logic is also linked to the concept of C'thia - or reality sensing. This is a process of perceiving the universe without preconceptions. In Dzogchen this would be termed 'Natural Great Perception', or in Mahamudra as the natural residing in the alaya (consciousness). Such C'thia does not allow for the interplay of emotions, which is [per se] a reaction to non-real perception. That is the perceiving of events and overlaying a 'judgemen' based upon our emotional reaction to such phenomenon. The Surak saw that this could lead to problems, and actually urged us to 'identify with the other' - 'Do not stab the heart of the other with your spear; For you are he'. This arises from a fundamental understanding that we are all linked via the base field of conscousness, and that all phenomenon [and thus ourselves] are linked via a chain of interdependence. When we link the 'Natural Perception' with the (albeit passive) compassion arising from observing other's as they are - then Vulcan philosophy is imbued with a high degree of compassionate understanding of the other (one of the three supports of IDIC). Where this falls down is when pedant's [Vulcans without any high degree of training] interact with others without the benefit of intensive and long experience in the discipline of C'thia [which is usually mistranslated as logic - you can thank Amanda; Spock's mother for that early boo-boo as an early Vulcan translator]. "Logic, Logic; Logic is the beginning of wisdom...not it's end" Spock - The Undiscovered Country
There is no doubt that our core desires are emotional and not rational, so it doesn't make any sense to think that there could be a "perfectly rational" being. But this need not mean that reason is merely a slave to the passions. Reason in the form of moral philosophy can tell you when you should supress the impulses generated by your passions. Reason can also temper and elevate the passions; you can train yourself to *want* peace more and war less. Plus the exercise of reason offers satisfactions of its own, whether its proving mathematical theorems or doing crossword puzzles, that have no obvious basis in any core emotion.
There's a relationship between certain emotions and certain kinds of irrationality. Happiness and optimism are both linked to the overconfidence bias and the illusion of control. Fear is linked to loss-aversion bias. The desire for a certain outcome (which can be motivated by in-group bias) is linked to confirmation and disconfirmation bias. Then there are certain biases that don't have any apparent emotional connection, like the representativeness heuristic, the clustering illusion (seeing cause and effect where none exists), the gambler's fallacy, and the recency effect.
I'm not sure there are any emotions that don't affect some kinds of biases, but there might be emotions that are normally elicited in certain situations where the situation doesn't require reasoning that trips any of those biases.
Perhaps it would be good for someone to post a review on the literature regarding the relation on emotional arousal and cognitive bias. I doubt if it as simple as emotional = biased.
Vulcans have tradition and their philosopher, I don't remember the name.
Objectivism would be a good approximation of sort, in terms of the relation between reason and motivation. -- Prejudices and personal preferences, carefully cast as "rational".
I find the discussion here not about suppressing one's emotions at all but about correcting that which one considers logical and rational but is not. Perhaps there is an emotional analog, but neither would have much to do with "vulcan" logic.
It may not bear on the above, but one of the passages from this blog I've found most entertaining pokes fun at naitve Vulcan logic http://www.overcomingbias.c... (third paragraph from bottom).
It is my perspective that lovers of truth need to step up and take their place in the resistance against the president's assault on truth, and that if this assault is not turned back soon, Dictatorship is coming to America. I think we have more or less about five months to go before he has subverted the intelligence agencies to the degree necessary to manufacture the kind of 'evidence' that will pass to substantiate his claim to be the arbiter of truth. If any of this resonates with any here, then somebody more capable than I please take these ideas and run with them.
Interesting. I am an autistic man who struggles more or less successfully approximately every day to control my emotions. I received my diagnosis only months ago but have hated propaganda (the intentional installation of bias ie commercials) all my life. Without a doubt, recognizing and effectively dealing with bias is completely topical at this very moment in the evolution of American and world culture.
For someone who believes, like the late Derek Parfit, that moral truths exist just as mathematical and logical truths do, and that these truths are knowable through the use of reason, it's possible to have an entire worldview based solely on logic.
In Star Trek, the Vulcans are Utilitarians because they believe that it is logical to be a Utilitarian. This resembles recent work on meta-ethics by Peter Singer and, to a lesser extent, Parfit.
I know this post is really old, but I need to put my two cents in. The idea that Vulcans are emotionless is a misconception. They are very emotional to a dangerous extreme, see the Romulans. It isn't that they suppress or deny their emotions, the Vulcan controls their emotions. If left unchecked the emotions rage like a wildfire and so it must be controlled to be a cigarette lighter instead.
From my research into different philosophies and theologies the nearest that comes to Vulcan is Stoicism. Most think that Vulcans practice Zen meditations but I find that to be inconsistent with the Vulcan philosophy. As Zen teaches to emptying oneself of thought and emotion. Whereas, Stoicism teaches to control emotional response through logic and reason. To put it into simple terms.
Pluralistic (methodological) rationalists deal with this issue by, among a few other techniques, encouraging people to vet their emotional perceptions through reasoned cognition. See www.circleofreason.org, or the Wikipedia article on The Circle of Reason or pluralistic rationalism. This social philosophy is the closest thing we have so far to a real-world version of "Vulcan logic+IDIC."
The concept of Vulcan logic is also linked to the concept of C'thia - or reality sensing. This is a process of perceiving the universe without preconceptions. In Dzogchen this would be termed 'Natural Great Perception', or in Mahamudra as the natural residing in the alaya (consciousness). Such C'thia does not allow for the interplay of emotions, which is [per se] a reaction to non-real perception. That is the perceiving of events and overlaying a 'judgemen' based upon our emotional reaction to such phenomenon. The Surak saw that this could lead to problems, and actually urged us to 'identify with the other' - 'Do not stab the heart of the other with your spear; For you are he'. This arises from a fundamental understanding that we are all linked via the base field of conscousness, and that all phenomenon [and thus ourselves] are linked via a chain of interdependence. When we link the 'Natural Perception' with the (albeit passive) compassion arising from observing other's as they are - then Vulcan philosophy is imbued with a high degree of compassionate understanding of the other (one of the three supports of IDIC). Where this falls down is when pedant's [Vulcans without any high degree of training] interact with others without the benefit of intensive and long experience in the discipline of C'thia [which is usually mistranslated as logic - you can thank Amanda; Spock's mother for that early boo-boo as an early Vulcan translator]. "Logic, Logic; Logic is the beginning of wisdom...not it's end" Spock - The Undiscovered Country
There is no doubt that our core desires are emotional and not rational, so it doesn't make any sense to think that there could be a "perfectly rational" being. But this need not mean that reason is merely a slave to the passions. Reason in the form of moral philosophy can tell you when you should supress the impulses generated by your passions. Reason can also temper and elevate the passions; you can train yourself to *want* peace more and war less. Plus the exercise of reason offers satisfactions of its own, whether its proving mathematical theorems or doing crossword puzzles, that have no obvious basis in any core emotion.
There's a relationship between certain emotions and certain kinds of irrationality. Happiness and optimism are both linked to the overconfidence bias and the illusion of control. Fear is linked to loss-aversion bias. The desire for a certain outcome (which can be motivated by in-group bias) is linked to confirmation and disconfirmation bias. Then there are certain biases that don't have any apparent emotional connection, like the representativeness heuristic, the clustering illusion (seeing cause and effect where none exists), the gambler's fallacy, and the recency effect.
I'm not sure there are any emotions that don't affect some kinds of biases, but there might be emotions that are normally elicited in certain situations where the situation doesn't require reasoning that trips any of those biases.
Perhaps it would be good for someone to post a review on the literature regarding the relation on emotional arousal and cognitive bias. I doubt if it as simple as emotional = biased.
Vulcans have tradition and their philosopher, I don't remember the name.
Objectivism would be a good approximation of sort, in terms of the relation between reason and motivation. -- Prejudices and personal preferences, carefully cast as "rational".
I find the discussion here not about suppressing one's emotions at all but about correcting that which one considers logical and rational but is not. Perhaps there is an emotional analog, but neither would have much to do with "vulcan" logic.
It may not bear on the above, but one of the passages from this blog I've found most entertaining pokes fun at naitve Vulcan logic http://www.overcomingbias.c... (third paragraph from bottom).