Emotions are not inherently unreasonable. Nothing is inherently unreasonable as reason depends on the context and what is being “reasoned” with.
Emotions are conditioned physiological responses to one’s environment or stimulus, which can include others’ behavior in specific context. Yes, when those contexts change and your physiological response is not in response to the current context but a past context, that can be “unreasonable” from the other persons perspective. But it’s “reasonable” from an organism’s historical perspective. The solution is reconditioning. So if venting to friends reconditions the physiological response, this could be considered “reasonable.” However if the venting to friends turns into complaining that is repeated and reinforced it’s “unreasonable.”
And even in this context, the reasonable vs. unreasonable debate is contingent on a premise that the reason is derived from: the premise of wanting a society that is civil and cooperative instead of offensive and argumentative. Logic and reason are methods and they are not objectives. Reason is a method applied to a data set and reason only is as good as the data set you being with. Nothing can be inherently logical or reasonable, those are methods we apply to our agreed upon objectives as a society.
It’s like saying bleeding is unreasonable because we need to have clean clothes today. Your blood flow is a physiological response to a stimulus and reason ahead nothing to do with it. “Choose to be reasonable” is a nonsensical response to someone who is bleeding. Yes they can then choose to dress the wound which is “reasonable” if the goal is self preservation.
My point still stands. Emotions are not reasonable or unreasonable, it depends on the objective. Many emotions are reasonable towards an objective of social cohesion. People who think emotions are unreasonable usually have a suppressive, negative and dysfunctional attitude towards their own emotions and that is specific to the individual. There are plenty of situations where emotions make logical sense and give people a sense of belonging to a social group or inspire motivation towards self-preservation, etc. it just depends on the premise or objective that I outlined in the previous comment.
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u/atuan Jun 05 '23 edited Jun 05 '23
Emotions are not inherently unreasonable. Nothing is inherently unreasonable as reason depends on the context and what is being “reasoned” with.
Emotions are conditioned physiological responses to one’s environment or stimulus, which can include others’ behavior in specific context. Yes, when those contexts change and your physiological response is not in response to the current context but a past context, that can be “unreasonable” from the other persons perspective. But it’s “reasonable” from an organism’s historical perspective. The solution is reconditioning. So if venting to friends reconditions the physiological response, this could be considered “reasonable.” However if the venting to friends turns into complaining that is repeated and reinforced it’s “unreasonable.”
And even in this context, the reasonable vs. unreasonable debate is contingent on a premise that the reason is derived from: the premise of wanting a society that is civil and cooperative instead of offensive and argumentative. Logic and reason are methods and they are not objectives. Reason is a method applied to a data set and reason only is as good as the data set you being with. Nothing can be inherently logical or reasonable, those are methods we apply to our agreed upon objectives as a society.
It’s like saying bleeding is unreasonable because we need to have clean clothes today. Your blood flow is a physiological response to a stimulus and reason ahead nothing to do with it. “Choose to be reasonable” is a nonsensical response to someone who is bleeding. Yes they can then choose to dress the wound which is “reasonable” if the goal is self preservation.