Freedomain Radio

The message I have accepted is that emotions are inexplicable and not matched with ideas at all.

I disagree.  First of all, emotions are not inexplicable.  They tend to correlated with objective reality.  Emotions themselves are a method of guiding action towards certain behaviours.  But they are not always correlated with the promotion of your well being.  That is not their 'purpose', or to put it more appropriately, that's not why they got selected in.  But I think there are two facts which make a lot of what Stef says at least generally applicable.  One, the desire the happiness/satisfaction is itself an evolutionary drive and has the function of oriented you toward action in general in the same way that emotions inform specific decisions.  Two, human beings express an incredibly high degree of adaptability and capacity for modification.  And I think emotions are strongly correlated with ideas and habits simply because this is the 'general specialist' trait of humanity.  Since the human being's primary adaptation is his mind and his most important factor in behaviour are his ideas, one can see why a malleable emotional/value structure is very important.  In fact, for the rational calculation to be any good it's going to need to trigger emotions and be subject to non-rational (not to say irrational) facts of desire.  I can't say precisely how far or to what extent this influences human psychology, but it would be just as mistaken to ignore this fact of human biology as it would to ignore the evolutionary and unplanned uniqueness behind a human mind.

I have you on my Skype contacts Rick - I look forward to chatting with you on the Sunday show, same time as when you were here last...

im not sure i understand why people have continued engaging in a board discussion with someone who intentionally wants to insult them.

Can anyone explain this to me?

Do people think its a good idea to listen to someone who has something to say about emotions that basically just wants to insult them?

There is an outside chance that my hostility is an outgrowth of a false-self and that if I understood this better I would not be trying to make others feel as insecure as I do about this topic. Understanding like that is a long way down the track and part of a great big fun-loving can of worms that starts with the answer to the question I've been trying to have answered.

Because nobody is fronting up to put their moral theory out there re emotions, and because I don't like playing the part of the bad guy in FDR316 (Bitchy Arguments) I'm going to let neutrinoide and Vichy hang.

But I think other people who come to this board in the future are going to wonder why the efficacy of emotions is never covered and that they will find their way to this thread. To them I suggest taking a look at Benefits and Hazards and perhaps Branden's 'The Disowned Self' as well as this very interesting podcast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh79AcIk8ps

Also, hopefully soon, I hope a new FDR podcast will come out soon (perhaps with me in it) that deals with this topic fully and finally.