Can Humans Think Logically Without Emotions?

[Zeteg]

I wonder... do you all think that it's possible to have a human with "conscious thought" (excluding the idea that particles result in fate), without emotions? That is to say, can we still think logically if we don't exhibit emotions?

I'm asking because, I believe that if we all had no emotions, the intelligence of all humans would increase. Technology as well as logic would increase, and there really wouldn't be any crime. I'm not sure how this would affect everything else though.

Even if we could eliminate one emotion--love, our would would be so different. Think of all the people that have died in love. Think of all the warriors whose only mistake was to love, and were killed by their loved ones.

What are your thoughts to this?

 

[AiA]

First off, without emotion, there would be crime, but a lot less of it, not all crime is done in emotion, hence first degree murder, pre planned murder, that involves will. Now humans would probably be smarter because they wouldn't dwell on stupid apeals to emotion like tv and music etc. And the world would be much more logical cause they would spend more time doing things worse while than waisting time with apeals to emotion, tv music etc.

Now one last thing you HAVE to realize is that love, is NOT an emotion, let me repeat myself, love is NOT an emotion. Infactuation is an emotion, (the general understanding of love is infactuation.) But love is of totally different nature, whant to know what love is read the thread on love, read my post and there you'll have love, want to argue it argue there.

 

[Drayakir]

I disagree. Logic is good and all, but an emotionless person will not have "drive." The emotionless person will not seek to accomplish anything in his life- he wouldn't be interested in anything. Emotions provide the stimuli for action. Logic is the method of carrying it you. You can minimalize emotions, true; and I think (and attempt) to do that, but nonetheless, they are necessary as an impetus for any sort of action. Without emotions, we would stagnate.

 

[franznietzsche]

Logic is good and all, but an emotionless person will not have "drive." The emotionless person will not seek to accomplish anything in his life- he wouldn't be interested in anything.

Exactly. Consider a Stimulus-Reaction theory for behavoir. INput produces an output. Emotions are a processing mechanism for a large number of stimuli. If you remove emotion then any reaction driven by emotion will be gone--you've eliminated a middle step between stimuls and reaction and broken the chain. As a result you don't have things like ambition, or more generally 'will to---'

 

[dekoi]

Emotion is part of humanity. Why question it?

Without emotion, we would be lifeless.

Would you rather be an emotionless/lifeless automata who is an intellectual, or a human being with life and the potency to still be extremely intelligent?

This doesn't make sense to me.

 

[hypnagogue]

Aside from issues of motivation, it's not even clear to what extent emotions and intelligence are intertwined in the architecture of the human brain. Eliminate all emotion, and you may very well end up decreasing or even eliminating intelligence as well.

 

[dekoi]

Aside from issues of motivation, it's not even clear to what extent emotions and intelligence are intertwined in the architecture of the human brain. Eliminate all emotion, and you may very well end up decreasing or even eliminating intelligence as well.

Excactly.

The human being is an incredibly powerful being; everything in the body is complimentary.

 

[Ba]

Without emotion, we would be more like computers, I think no emotions and you lose intuition.

 

[AiA]

With out emotions people would be much more intellegent cause they wouldn't be waisting time, we would be more ambitious cause things like apathy and fear wouldn't hold us back, and I quote "Why is there such a gap between the great minds of aristotle, thomas aquinas, etc, this question can be answered with another question, what is the greater human trait, fear or laziness." Both which happens to be emotions, (apathy isn't really an emotion but emotions cause apathy.) An emotionless person dwelling only on things which are for his mind wouldn't be apathetic.

Emotions are, somewhat of a drawback to reaching our full potential, look at all the great people in the history books, how many of them were known for there great emotion or are known for their great minds.

 

[dekoi]

With out emotions people would be much more intellegent cause they wouldn't be waisting time, we would be more ambitious cause things like apathy and fear wouldn't hold us back, and I quote "Why is there such a gap between the great minds of aristotle, thomas aquinas, etc, this question can be answered with another question, what is the greater human trait, fear or laziness." Both which happens to be emotions, (apathy isn't really an emotion but emotions cause apathy.) An emotionless person dwelling only on things which are for his mind wouldn't be apathetic.

Emotions are, somewhat of a drawback to reaching our full potential, look at all the great people in the history books, how many of them were known for there great emotion or are known for their great minds.

I think you should've read my post.

Emotion is part of humanity. Why question it?

Without emotion, we would be lifeless.

Would you rather be an emotionless/lifeless automata who is an intellectual, or a human being with life and the potency to still be extremely intelligent?

This doesn't make sense to me.

 

[hypnagogue]

With out emotions people would be much more intellegent cause they wouldn't be waisting time, we would be more ambitious cause things like apathy and fear wouldn't hold us back, and I quote "Why is there such a gap between the great minds of aristotle, thomas aquinas, etc, this question can be answered with another question, what is the greater human trait, fear or laziness." Both which happens to be emotions, (apathy isn't really an emotion but emotions cause apathy.) An emotionless person dwelling only on things which are for his mind wouldn't be apathetic.

Please address my previous post before you assert this so confidently.

Additionally, it's somewhat mind boggling that you assert that emotions cause apathy. Apathy is defined as the lack of emotion!

Emotions are, somewhat of a drawback to reaching our full potential, look at all the great people in the history books, how many of them were known for there great emotion or are known for their great minds.

Excessive emotion can be an obstacle to rational thought, but that doesn't imply that any emotion at all is hazardous to rational thought. As an analogy, too much fat in a human's diet will surely lead to a premature death, but having no fat is also an unhealthy condition. The same could very well be true of the effect of emotion on the intellect.

 

[AiA]

Dekoi, you say that happiness dwells on emotions, who do you think is happier, lived a more fulfilled life, Socratese or Al Bundy from married with children.

Though with emotions we still have the ability to be intellegent, without emotions we would all be intellegent and very possibly more happy than emotionfull people are.

 

[AiA]

I never said emotion was bad, if I implied that I apologize, I'm simply stating that without emotions man will be at a higher level of being.

 

[dekoi]

Dekoi, you say that happiness dwells on emotions, who do you think is happier, lived a more fulfilled life, Socratese or Al Bundy from married with children.

Though with emotions we still have the ability to be intellegent, without emotions we would all be intellegent and very possibly more happy than emotionfull people are.

How could we be happy by going against human nature to have emotion and an intellect?

Extremely contradictory.

 

[dekoi]

I never said emotion was bad, if I implied that I apologize, I'm simply stating that without emotions man will be at a higher level of being.

Perhaps a higher level of intellect, but surely not a higher level of BEING.

Once again, contradictory.

 

[AiA]

I see no contradictory in what I say, when one is as intellegent as socratese, and everyone lives with the intellect he has, isn't that a higher being, now of course intellegence doesn't determine how valuable your life is, but wouldn't it be a lot easier for people to be more purposful when they are all as intellegent as socratese, like look at Goths, and 'teenage rebels', sex, drugs, are these not all consequences of emotions?

 

[dekoi]

I don't understand what is misunderstood here. I stated that perhaps without emotion we would be able to understand more and take in much more knowledge. But that does not make us happy. We will not be happy with this intelligence; in fact (and this is where your contradiction comes), we would be quite the opposite because are going against our human nature to experience emotion.

Again, we can not be happy without emotion. Knowledgeable: yes. Happy: no.

 

[AiA]

When looking at what happiness is, you must realize that it comes with knowledge, when we study happiness we learn it, someone who never learned of true happiness most likely won't be happy cause the only thing they know as happiness would be happiness in its simplist form, emotionful joy, which is the lowest form of happiness, (wanna question happiness, go to the thread "the highest form of happiness")

 

[jammieg]

Maybe when you go to sleep you get really close to being emotionless, which if emotions primarily give context to the world we percieve then that would explain why dreams often seem meaningless.
I'm not convinced no emotions would be a good thing, I mean if they were all bad then would we have them, would evolution instill us with them, and just what are emotions anyway? Plus it would make life boring I think, so boring we wouldn't even know it was boring.
Who knows maybe Socrates had too much emotion, maybe too much emotion makes people more intelligent, if they can learn to manage it, or like one of his students(I think) sort of said that any fool can get angry but it's knowing when and where and to just what degree that makes them wise.

 

[franznietzsche]

With out emotions people would be much more intellegent cause they wouldn't be waisting time, we would be more ambitious cause things like apathy and fear wouldn't hold us back

Ummm, no.

We can't be more ambitious without emotion because ambition is an emotion. Apathy is a lack of emotion. Apathy doesn't hold us back, because apathy is like a hole: it is a lack of something, not the presence of something. So by removing emotion, you maximize apathy. By definition.

 

[Drayakir]

I second that. No emotions give rise to apathy, apathy destroys the need to exist. You'll have a load of suicides on your hands if we eliminate emotions.

Though reducing emotions- minimalizing them, that is a good thing. Leave two, or something. Like love and anger, or fear and desire. And let yourself be driven by them.

 

[AiA]

I have constantly stated that humans would be better if without emotions, well I have recently learned of my fault, emotions are apart of human nature and there is no reason to deny it, and besides, people with emotions have just as much potential with emotions as they do with, the only difference is with emotions humans have a tendency of getting 'distracted'.