Philosophering Wankery
I took a step backward in scope from my last post, at least kind of. This may involve some pseudo math-lookalike stuff, and I apologize if its a bit contrived.
From last week: Something happens. We have some reaction (read: conclusion) X. We have a secondary reaction which calls the validity of X into question. So we do some introspection, and come up with some reasons/logic (read: premises) P that we may have used to reach X. Its almost like a rough sketch of a proof for why X is valid.
In some ways, it reminds me of some of the problems from 251 where you're given a proof and the assignment is to find the bad/incomplete step of the proof that makes it invalid. You know something isn't right, and you're trying to figure out where you've made the misstep that leads to (what you think is) the wrong conclusion.
The problem I run into most often is one fundamental to the human condition: emotions do not obey the rules of logic. I feel like theres an obscure math reference that could be made to using different sets of axioms in set theory, but alas I'm not enough of a math geek to make it. So how does one evaluate/find flaws in your emotions? Are all emotions valid? Can we conclusively prove some emotions are invalid? I feel like the answers to the last two are no and yes respectively, but what does it mean for an emotion to be invalid? We reject having that emotion? And what would that mean? You can not act on an emotion, I guess, but its not like you can just remove the emotion from yourself, they're part of you.
For what its worth, the problem that spawned this post was that in some ways I am nervous/unhappy about leaving new york and moving to california/starting work. And I "know" that I "should" be happy/excited about it all, and I guess I am in some ways, but in most ways the negatively valenced emotions are trumping the positive ones.
From last week: Something happens. We have some reaction (read: conclusion) X. We have a secondary reaction which calls the validity of X into question. So we do some introspection, and come up with some reasons/logic (read: premises) P that we may have used to reach X. Its almost like a rough sketch of a proof for why X is valid.
In some ways, it reminds me of some of the problems from 251 where you're given a proof and the assignment is to find the bad/incomplete step of the proof that makes it invalid. You know something isn't right, and you're trying to figure out where you've made the misstep that leads to (what you think is) the wrong conclusion.
The problem I run into most often is one fundamental to the human condition: emotions do not obey the rules of logic. I feel like theres an obscure math reference that could be made to using different sets of axioms in set theory, but alas I'm not enough of a math geek to make it. So how does one evaluate/find flaws in your emotions? Are all emotions valid? Can we conclusively prove some emotions are invalid? I feel like the answers to the last two are no and yes respectively, but what does it mean for an emotion to be invalid? We reject having that emotion? And what would that mean? You can not act on an emotion, I guess, but its not like you can just remove the emotion from yourself, they're part of you.
For what its worth, the problem that spawned this post was that in some ways I am nervous/unhappy about leaving new york and moving to california/starting work. And I "know" that I "should" be happy/excited about it all, and I guess I am in some ways, but in most ways the negatively valenced emotions are trumping the positive ones.