Reason and Emotion part 2: A reason scale?

In part one of this post I ended with the idea of making a kind of “emotion scale”.

In thinking about finishing the post that I started, the one that I am chopping up in to different parts right now, it crossed my mind: I wonder if we could make a “reason scale” similar to how we could chart emotions, as I suggested.

It seems so obvious to me that we would be able to chart intensity of emotion regardless of what emotion is being felt. I think everyone with little difficulty could understand how they could rate a feeling of emotional intensity on a scale of 1 to 43, 43 meaning that you can no longer function and you will have to be committed. 😁

This morning, though, I was wondering if we could do the same with reason. Would it be possible to get people to rate her some quantity of reason that they might be noticing of them selves at any moment of the day?

I don’t know. Today I think I’m going to go along and there times of the day I’m going to try and gauge myself on a scale of 1 to 43 how reasonable I’m being.

Perhaps where zero on the rreason scale would mean that you are acting so unreasonably that you would have to be committed. 🤪

Maybe you readers might want to try and do the same, just as an exercise.

Can you?

Think about it. Just using this instruction: go through your day and periodically rate you’re reasonable Ness or your reason on a scale of 1 to 43, 1 being low intensity of reason.

What difficulties are you having with this instruction?

What is easy?

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23 responses to “Reason and Emotion part 2: A reason scale?”

  1. landzek Avatar
    landzek

    Hair girl. 🤣. = auto correct Hegel.

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  2. microglyphics Avatar
    microglyphics

    Here lies the rub. Have you ever visited a health practitioner where they have pain scales, typically from 1 – 10 (with smiley and frowny emojis), ranging from no pain to excruciating pain. I used to argue with my wife that the scale was not meaningful even as a relative device. Perhaps I said I was a 4 yesterday. Do I remember relatively what 4 was? If I say 3 today, has my pain gone down or have I become desensitised and simply interpret my pain differently today. Of course, there is also normalise a scale across different persons: A 4 to me may be a 7 to you. And who says the relationship is linear?

    The pièce de résistance was during childbirth. On her first contraction, the 10 on her pain scale reset. What she felt was a 10 previously was now a 7 or an 8.

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    1. landzek Avatar
      landzek

      Thx. I think the pain scale is for triage diagnostics mainly. I don’t know if researchers use it to determine precise pain dose or whether a person is getting better.

      I like the thoughts. Thx.
      ——

      My friend asked if I could define ‘reason’ so he would know we were measuring the same things.

      But I said. If I say emotion. It wouldn’t be difficult to rate how intense an emotion is, regardless if it is imprecise across a period. Why do you need a definition for intensity of Reason ?

      My idea of scaling is not for the purpose , though, of making precise measure. As you might see when I post part 3.

      Your input about for reason and emotion might differ is interesting though.

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      1. microglyphics Avatar
        microglyphics

        The pain scale is a triage tool, which, from a game theory perspective, should lead me to inflate the number I give to minimise my wait time and perhaps outcome.

        It is also used to assess progress, as I mentioned.

        As for a definition, it is important to avoid ambiguity and land on some unequivocal place. My economic definition was meant to parse it so thin as to allow the students to see that one could create a definition wherein empirical data could be used to assess compliance to it. Of course, one could argue separately that the definition did not capture some necessary essence.

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  3. maylynno Avatar
    maylynno

    And how would you rate a reason intensity? Does the reason have any intensity? Objectivity isn’t an indicator of reason? Or do you suggest that 43 for reason means feelings are completely numb?

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    1. landzek Avatar
      landzek

      Idk. 😄. Even though rating and intensity of reason isn’t really part of the meaning of the first post, when I was thinking about how I was going to wrap up the whole post it crossed my mind that we could easily think of rating and intensity of emotion and regardless of what that emotion is.

      So, it crossed my mind I wondered, since I’m kind of juxtaposing reason and emotion, if anyone if we could rate and intensity of reason in a similar manner?

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      1. maylynno Avatar
        maylynno

        Lol i dont think we can rate the intensity of the reason. It seems to me like a strange idea

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      2. landzek Avatar
        landzek

        Yeah it does. Some good food for thought though. Why do we so easily understand feeling as scalable but not reason ?

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      3. maylynno Avatar
        maylynno

        Lol because feelings can paralyze someone, like fear for example and can push this same person to do crazy things when in love. The change in behaviours caused by feelings make those latter scalable. It is not the same case for reason. Maybe there is but I just can’t imagine it

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      4. landzek Avatar
        landzek

        Perhaps. Reason, as an object, withdraws from view in a manner which prevents us from understanding how it operates. Perhaps all that is needed is an intention of knowing the object that is Reason in a manner which is able to view its operation as scalable, such as the way we know emotion as scalable.

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      5. maylynno Avatar
        maylynno

        Then maybe u are right! I am thinking about it

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      6. landzek Avatar
        landzek

        It’s weird that usually the comments I haven’t read are shaded a little darker, right? But often I can’t really tell which one is shaded on my iPhone here. 😁

        But: right?

        What if we’re just used to having an association of feeling to reason. What if there’s a certain correspondence, a certain “regular” association between reason and the various states of emotion such that reason it’s self is just a sort of “space” of emotion not recognized as such.

        I mean when we think about systemic racism, for example. In America, at least, this is a pretty hot topic. It basically says that while I may not be racist so far is my attitude upon the world or how I interact or relate or treat people of different skin colors are different cultures, I never the less might be involved and perpetuating a systemic racism by behaviors and ways of viewing the world that are just natural to me or seem natural to me because of the system in which I am involved and have been acculturated too, so to speak.

        I ponder whether or not that this condition that were noticing now, say of cultures and races and stuff, is indeed a situation that arises because we are having a sort of cultural saturation, Like, all the human cultures have come against each other insufficient density to be able to have to now noticed this difference and then confront it and it did come up with new ways of relating to human beings as indeed a global and common creature that is the human being.

        But might not we as a “culture that is human being” then find ourselves not unique as a creature or an entity of the universe such that now as a common whole (i’ll be at still working out the cultural frictions) might find ourselves in capsulated in a further kind of ideological cultural limitation. Perhaps this limitation is it self manifested in such ideas of what it is to be human against the idea that there are different humans. But once we recognize a common human being, maybe the categories themselves that are defining ourselves in and toward a world might likewise fail or reveal themselves as not giving us the actual view of ourselves in the universe. And so, perhaps, I am bringing up these categories called reason and emotion.

        Is that making any sense? I just thought about it right now in consideration of your responses.

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      7. maylynno Avatar
        maylynno

        So in a way, in a nietzschean way, reason is as much as a survival instinct as a feeling could be. Adding to this social and cultural determinations and how this shape us into the human beings we are today. This is how i understood your ideas here

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      8. landzek Avatar
        landzek

        Dude I keep missing replies. This one is four days old.

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      9. landzek Avatar
        landzek

        Can you elaborate a little more on this Nietzsche idea?

        And did you get my reply where I ask if you would like to read The second part of the philosophical hack. ?

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      10. maylynno Avatar
        maylynno

        Nietzsche believes that reason, feelings, desires etc. Have 1 source:instinct. I don’t know if it more clear now to u

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      11. landzek Avatar
        landzek

        Huh. I didn’t remember that. It’s been a few years since I’ve read Nietzsche and not everything sticks.

        Instinct. Hmm. I do remember that he said something about existence stems from the gut, or something like that.

        So are you saying that the way that you’re reading my post is to say that reason is also instinct?

        That sounds to me a lot like intuition and inspiration. But more I think it sounds like somehow we can cognitively grab a hold of such an instinct and then behave like Spiderman or something like that, like have spider sense all the time.

        I’m not sure if that’s what you’re really meaning right here, but..

        I am skeptical that a person can have a perpetual waking state where they know that they are for filling their purpose in the world consciousness at all times. Personally I think the idea is vested in what I consider Alastair Crowley type of thinking (Basically all the continental philosophers up to Wittgenstein and then even the postmoderns to an extent). “To do that I will shall be the whole of the law”. I think it’s a kind a real idea.

        I suppose what crossed my mind in the recent emotion post is that the problem with putting reason at the top is that it thinks that it can join with emotion in some sort of harmonious activity that we generally call passion; And I think this is really wet hair girl was trying to describe as well as Kirkegaard as well as Nietzsche.

        And really it goes back to the ancient idea that we can become one with God, Or that we can live entirely in gods well at all times through an active will.

        I suppose I’m not really concerned with whether or not that might be the case or whether or not that’s possible.

        I think I’m suggesting more that the idea of that reason is giving us and ability to choose things is not true. It is indeed real, but I don’t think it’s true.

        So I guess yeah after processing your comment it does seem to fit into a kind of instinctual kind of idea. But I would say an instinct that cannot be known about.

        Actually, I think you hit it right on the head. Lol.

        Because the issue I’m trying to outline in my work is this “other way” that I see most of the time is missed in discussions about all these romantic and continental philosophers.

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      12. maylynno Avatar
        maylynno

        The way Nietzsche perceives it is that humans developed all kind of faculties (consciousness, mind, communication, language, reason, passion, desire, feelings, emotions) out of the instinct of survival. This force, which in Nietzsche’s theory, can be active or reactive. Active is the will of life and the will of power. The reactive is resentment. And they are both influenced by our surroundings and the way we cope with it. So both use reason but each will lead to 2 different ways of life..

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      13. landzek Avatar
        landzek

        Hmm. I never looked at him that way, through those terms. Interesting.

        Liked by 1 person

      14. landzek Avatar
        landzek

        Maylynno 🙂. Will you please be a beta reader for the PH part 2 ? If you have time. It’s 150 pages of 5×7 size.

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      15. maylynno Avatar
        maylynno

        I would have loved to but in the time being I am correcting the official exam of philosophy for the French baccalaureate.. so I might be away for a while..
        Anyway here is my email if I want to send it and I will read it when I can:
        maylynnodebs@gmail.com

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      16. landzek Avatar
        landzek

        Cursed employed philosopher!! 😄

        No prob.

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      17. maylynno Avatar
        maylynno

        🙈

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