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Poll

Is sadness rational?

Yes.
- 19 (51.4%)
No.
- 6 (16.2%)
Sometimes.
- 12 (32.4%)

Total Members Voted: 16


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Author Topic: Sadness and Grief  (Read 10151 times)

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MobileDigit

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Re: Sadness and Grief
« Reply #30 on: April 11, 2007, 01:34:00 PM »

You're like the idiot who wants to legalize drunk driving because he thinks the drivers have control over their actions.

How?

You've never had an emotion you can't control?

Not that I can remember.

Why be happy either?  It doesn't get you anything.

It is more productive than sadness.


It's reasonable that people are helped, hindered, or otherwise effected by their emotions, as human beings are emotional creatures capable of reason.

If humans were bang-hammers-on-one's-own-fingers' creatures, would you support the action?

I don't think you can legitimately use the argument that because it was helpful in the past it still is.

I think I agree with what I presume the point of the previous poster who asked if emotions are irrational behavior by definition.  I guess it depends on what you're talking about specifically.

I am using the term irrational to mean an action that serves no purpose.

I don't want to step on anyone's spiritual toes here, but these feelings are a natural response to a loss.

The natural response does not make any sense.

Perhaps it's so that we remember a defining, meaningful, influence in our life.

Why not use reason to do this?


someone has to deal with a being that hasn't been taught anything, and empathy seems an efficient means to an end.

I don't think it is better than rationality.


Would you think emotionless reason would be an advancement in evolution for human beings specifically?

Yes.

Wouldn't something like cancer, or intelligence on a computer, be the most reasonable, and efficient, form of life?

No, because I'm not cancer or an intelligence on a computer. :P

How much ambition would we have without emotion, and again, how valueable would that sort of life be?

Why does one need emotion for ambition?


I guess you didn't notice the analogy I made showing that the purpose of pain is analogous to the purpose of sadness.

I guess you didn't notice my response:
I don't think people should love others in and of themselves, I think others should be thought of as a means to an end.
In that case, there is no reason for grief, because you already want to maximize the end.

Emotions are based upon your beliefs and values. They automatically reflect your unconscious evaluation of a situation in light of these beliefs and values. The only thing that you can validate are your beliefs and values, not your emotions. When you change your mind, your emotional reactions to things will change to reflect that.

Great, then I only need to stop people from emotionally caring about others.
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Taors

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Re: Sadness and Grief
« Reply #31 on: April 11, 2007, 11:23:12 PM »

No, because I'm not cancer or an intelligence on a computer. :P

He...he used an emoticon! He might be human after all!!
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Lindsey

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Re: Sadness and Grief
« Reply #32 on: April 11, 2007, 11:25:24 PM »

No, because I'm not cancer or an intelligence on a computer. :P

He...he used an emoticon! He might be human after all!!


ZOMFG! 

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markuzick

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Re: Sadness and Grief
« Reply #33 on: April 12, 2007, 01:12:45 AM »

I guess you didn't notice the analogy I made showing that the purpose of pain is analogous to the purpose of sadness.

I guess you didn't notice my response:
I don't think people should love others in and of themselves, I think others should be thought of as a means to an end.
In that case, there is no reason for grief, because you already want to maximize the end.

Emotions are based upon your beliefs and values. They automatically reflect your unconscious evaluation of a situation in light of these beliefs and values. The only thing that you can validate are your beliefs and values, not your emotions. When you change your mind, your emotional reactions to things will change to reflect that.

Great, then I only need to stop people from emotionally caring about others.

Feelings, including pleasure/pain and emotion, have a biological purpose, in that they are the rewards or punishments for the actions that promote or hinder our personal survival as well as the survival of our species, i.e., the purpose of feelings is the promotion of life.

From the perspective of the individual organism, the purpose of life is the experience of feelings, even the negative ones, for the relief, contrast and richness of complexity that they bring to the experience of the positive ones. From our subjective view point, the value of sadness and grief are the intensification of our appreciation of happiness and joy. In summary, the whole spectrum of  feelings are our ultimate reward and purpose for living.

I've already explained to you the biological value of feelings that linger after the event or action has occurred. Since my explanations centered around sadness, grief and pain, I only want to add to that my line of reasoning applies equally to the purpose of post event positive feelings as the post event negative ones.
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ILikeMoney

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Re: Sadness and Grief
« Reply #34 on: June 12, 2007, 01:09:15 AM »

MobileDigit, you can't change the meaning of words to further your cause.  Jesus Christ.
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ladyattis

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Re: Sadness and Grief
« Reply #35 on: June 12, 2007, 01:49:50 AM »

Emotions reflect the fact that we humans are able to react to situations through non-traditional means. Rational by definition means anything that happens in the mind, so yes emotions are rational, but sometimes pointless. Being sad that you're going to die is normal, or being mad that someone wronged you and you wish to have justice. Emotion is the 'tone' of the mental 'conversation' you are having, it's the total sum of your mental states, sometimes ones we're not fully willing to accept. That's its power, but never mistake it for a sixth sense or a license to be intellectually lazy.

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John Shaw

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Re: Sadness and Grief
« Reply #36 on: June 12, 2007, 01:58:20 AM »

Input = Senses.
Processor = Rational Thought.
Output = Emotions.

How we process what we experience results in how we feel about things.

Example:
Person X believes in God (Input is religious teachings.)
Person X believes that God created man, imbuing him with a soul.
Person X concludes that God imbues soul into embryo at moment of conception, and is therefore a living, rational being with feelings.
Person X concludes that destroying a fetus is functionally identical to murder.
Person X has a visceral negative emotional response to the concept of abortion. (Output)

Now, whether or not person X was right or wrong here is not the issue, nor is abortion. It's just the way emotions are derived from reason, even incorrect or evasive reason.

If you have a strong feeling about something, you have either thought about it and made conclusions, or you have chosen not to think about it and have a vague feeling of fear or unease.

Brains are pretty simple. (Kidding)
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Lindsey

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Re: Sadness and Grief
« Reply #37 on: June 12, 2007, 02:14:16 AM »

MobileDigit, you can't change the meaning of words to further your cause.  Jesus Christ.

I LOL'd.  Twice. 
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Travis

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Re: Sadness and Grief
« Reply #38 on: June 12, 2007, 03:51:46 AM »

This question is all backwards.

Everything you do is based on your emotions. They are what you make your rational decisions based on. They are a premise, not a subject.

Will eating shit make me plus or minus (happy or sad; healthy or sick; etc)

eating shit is the subject.
the outcome (happiness or sadness) is the premise for making a decision.

Without a premise you can not be rational, you can only be factual.

factual: eating shit makes you sick
rational : it is bad to eat shit because it makes you sick and you do not want to be sick. Being sick would make you sad.

« Last Edit: June 12, 2007, 03:54:59 AM by Travis »
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Re: Sadness and Grief
« Reply #39 on: June 12, 2007, 04:36:43 AM »

Sometimes emotions are the first step in creating functional and rational change for the better.
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Lindsey

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Re: Sadness and Grief
« Reply #40 on: June 12, 2007, 10:01:17 AM »

This question is all backwards.

Everything you do is based on your emotions. They are what you make your rational decisions based on. They are a premise, not a subject.

Will eating shit make me plus or minus (happy or sad; healthy or sick; etc)

eating shit is the subject.
the outcome (happiness or sadness) is the premise for making a decision.

Without a premise you can not be rational, you can only be factual.

factual: eating shit makes you sick
rational : it is bad to eat shit because it makes you sick and you do not want to be sick. Being sick would make you sad.



But being sad gets you nowhere.  Eat the shit.  You're irrational if you don't.   :lol:
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Re: Sadness and Grief
« Reply #41 on: June 12, 2007, 10:03:24 AM »

Everything you do is based on your emotions.

And everything you feel is based on what you know and think. You're the one who has it backwards. Actually, you just haven't followed the chain of reason to the source.
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Re: Sadness and Grief
« Reply #42 on: June 12, 2007, 10:04:30 AM »

I think of them as simultaneous.  I don't know, it's all relative.  Fuck it, let's go bowling. 
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Travis

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Re: Sadness and Grief
« Reply #43 on: June 12, 2007, 10:24:26 AM »

Everything you do is based on your emotions.

And everything you feel is based on what you know and think. You're the one who has it backwards. Actually, you just haven't followed the chain of reason to the source.

Sorry, emotions come before cognition. A baby cries for mommy (emotion) before it has rational knowledge of mommy. 
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ladyattis

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Re: Sadness and Grief
« Reply #44 on: June 13, 2007, 05:26:00 AM »

But why does the baby cry? It's a response to perceptual events, thus some rational processing is going on, just not the kind we're use to defining as rational.

Perhaps then the term rational being equivocated with cognitive functioning is the problem. Consider the fact that your brain is 'thinking' everytime you flip a TV channel or walk, it's parsing all those perceptual events generated by your senses (with the help of the nervous system). It's basically 'thinking' automatically, but this type of thinking doesn't come with concepts, it comes with percepts (the integrated/composed form of perceptual events). Each percept triggers a different response depending on a number of factors: memory, genetic 'instinct', and natural response (evolutionary adaptations). So these responses could be complex, but not always so, in the case of the baby, it's simply crying. This response requires very few steps as the nervous systems and motor nerves are able to accuate each muscle required for the response, it simply 'issues' the 'command' to cry.

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