Questions about Logic and Reason

[sarahmichigan]

Some questions have come up in my mind or the mind of my LJ friends as I've been putting up logical fallacies, with examples, for discussion.

1. How much should we rely on reason and how much on emotion when making decisions about our personal lives? Setting law? Other decisions?

2. Are there circumstances where purely reason should be used to make decisions? Only emotion?

3. How much of our laws are based on morality? How much should be?

I tend to agree with the position that other people shouldn't be able to force their morality on me in the form of laws about private consensual adult behavior. And yet, some of our laws obviously reflect the majority's moral stance on various issues (i.e. "murder is wrong"). However, I think that while there is an *overlap* between morality and law, morality isn't the sole or even most important factor for determining law, because morals vary from good person to another good person, based on personal experience, religious and cultural background, etc. What I think is going on is a sort of "societal contract," in which we agree not to murder one another not so much for moral reasons as for practical ones. There's a reason that banishment was a terrible judgment thousands of years ago; especially in primitive environments, it's much harder to survive on your own than in a cooperative group. People who violate the unspoken social contract put the good of the group in danger, and that's why we agree to many laws that restrict our freedom-- it's because they're for the good of the whole group, even when they infringe on individual's rights.

Anyhow, additional thoughts on any of these questions?

Comments

[pstscrpt.livejournal.com]

Are there circumstances where purely reason should be used to make decisions?
Always. *But*, any emotional consequences should be a factor in the decisions.


The problem with social contract theory is that there's no longer any way to opt out of it, and there really wasn't by the time Locke formalized it unless you wanted to go all the way to America *and* past the western frontier.

[bernmarx.livejournal.com]

"Murder is wrong" is one of the sublest cases of begging the question there is, because it's not "killing humans is wrong" -- the majority supports the death penalty, most people support defensive wars, and so on. What "murder is wrong" translates to is "we don't approve of killing humans in ways we don't approve of," which is tautological. The moral judgment comes in "what sorts of killing don't we approve of?". Generally, we can agree on "killing another adult human who did nothing to you, because you wanted to kill someone" being wrong. Beyond that, though, it's a mess (how about killing someone who abused you? who abused your children? who threatened to kill you? who was acting in a way that endangered you or your loved ones? who invaded your private space? ... and so on).

[http://users.livejournal.com/_earthshine_/]

Wow... a good point succinctly made. And, as you say, a huge question (mess)!

[tacit.livejournal.com]

There are and throughout history always have been two different, incompatible views on the purpose of law in any society.

The first view is that the purpose of law is to enforce virtue. Hence, we outlaw murder because murder is morally wrong; we outlaw theft because it is morally wrong to steal the property of another; we outlaw sexual intercorse with a person not one's spouse because such intercourse is morally objectionable.

This is the view of law embraced by almost all social and religious conservatives. Such prominent figures as Edwin Meese, Charles Keating, and John Ashcroft have espoused this view of law (Keating once told Congress, "I say legislate morality, and then enforce those laws!"-ironically, he was later convicted of embezzling money from Lincoln Savings and Loan, causing a collapse that triggered the destruction of the entire savings and loan industry).

The opposing view is that te function of law is to provide a stable foundation upon which to build a society rests, but providing this stable foundation is not a question of morality. So, murder is illegal because a society can not function if its citizens can kill one another with impunity; theft is illegal because the social system of financial exchange can not function if its members are free to steal from one another or defraud one another; but the regulation of consenting adults' sex lives is a matter outside the function and purview of the state, as it does not affect the ordinary operation of practical social systems.

I personally adopt the second view; regulating morality is not and never should be the proper role of the state. I doubt that you will find anyone who embraces one view who will accept the other, however.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

Ironically enough, I actually believe in both to some degree- see my comment below.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

1. How much should we rely on reason and how much on emotion when making decisions about our personal lives? Setting law? Other decisions?

Used correctly, emotion and logic are not at odds. We should listen to both fully when making decisions on a personal level.

Legal decisions are best made on a basis that is generalisable. Emotional decisions are seldom generalisable; thus, evidence and logic form the best basis for law.

This seldom happens in practise.

2. Are there circumstances where purely reason should be used to make decisions? Only emotion?

On a personal level, no. There is never basis for completely ignoring your emotional reaction to a situation- doing so can be quite dangerous (http://www.amazon.com/Gift-Fear-Gavin-Becker/dp/0440226198)- or for refusing to consider logical consideration.

There may well be reason to defer a logical discussion with a particular person, but that's another issue.

3. How much of our laws are based on morality? How much should be?

All of our laws should be founded in morality. The catch is this: law should be founded in moral consensus- no smarmy minorities trying to sneak in laws that are against other people's beliefs. If you want me to buy in to your morality, persuade me politely.

Further, I believe that law should focus on that subset of immorality that (a) is enforceable, and (b) constitutes significant public threat.

Am I making sense?

[tacit.livejournal.com]

All of our laws should be founded in morality. The catch is this: law should be founded in moral consensus- no smarmy minorities trying to sneak in laws that are against other people's beliefs.

Yet moral values are, by their very nature, subjective, and therefore unlikely to be subject to universal consensus. And if you simply accept a moral value because more tan half the population accepts it, you run the risk of what Thomas Jefferson called "the tyrrany of the many over the few."Just because 51% of the people in a given place agree that X is immoral does not necessarily mean that X is, in fact, immoral.

You also will quickly encounter a difficulty when you try to reach morality by consensus: whose consensus do you use? A community's? An entire nation's? It's quite common for one region in a nation to subscribe to different moral values from another region. Even in a single town, you can have a problem, because any town of any decent size is not really a community--it's a collection of hundreds or perhaps thousands of communities, some of which overlap and some of which don't. In Atlanta, for example, the moral values of the BDSM community are significantly at odds with the moral values of the evangelical community; if you accept the notion of morality by consensus, then whichever community happens to be largest wins.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

It's both as difficult as you say- and not nearly as difficult.

It's horribly difficult to pass laws that comprehensively represent everyone's morality.

It's not particularly difficult to pass laws that represent the overlap, and only the overlap.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_earthshine_/]

1. How much should we rely on reason and how much on emotion when making decisions about our personal lives? Setting law? Other decisions?

2. Are there circumstances where purely reason should be used to make decisions? Only emotion?

I'll try to answer these two together, since they're very intertwined in my head. All below is imho, of course.

I view reason and emotion as two aspects that work together, but also must serve each other.

In any decision, i believe there should be -- at least at the end -- a rational process based on reason. However, emotions can, and very often should, serve as some of the inputs to that process. (The post i wrote -- and still must follow up on -- about "irrationality as the axiom" is about that.) I do not believe it's wise to react in emotions, but very much believe in reasonably acting upon them, so to speak.

However, just as emotions can prop up our reasonable process, so reason should also be used to check our emotions. Not only must we use reason to guide us in any dealings with others (since they may not share any emotional inputs to our conclusions), but it's also very advisable for us to spend time analyzing our emotions to help encourage healthy personal growth.

3. How much of our laws are based on morality? How much should be?

The first half of this question i cannot speak to. I don't really know much about the formal definitions of morality, nor the history/basis of law. If forced to guess, i'd probably assume that most of law is rooted in the "social contract" idea, and the rest wobbles around that mean at the whim of political climate and power structures' inclinations.

How much should be, however, is something upon which i can at least venture an opinion.

All law should be based on something "moral", in the sense that it should be based on placing value on something. Those values are probably things akin to "happiness", "liberty" or "stability", and whether or not they're truly moral values or just values based on assumptions of human existence, the end goal of law is nonetheless to try to establish and guarantee them.

The key, then, is to try to decide what, exactly, we wish to establish and guarantee. My personal vote is the idea of "free will": that one should be able to do as they wish, providing they harm or impede no other.

The catch, of course, is that there is nothing any of us can do that does not effect everyone else. My breathing takes oxygen away from the entire planet. My driving a car uses up fuel and pollutes the planet. My need for morning coffee drives a market with large economic, political and environmental implications; a person who wishes to use heroin drives an even more impactful one. Et cetera.

Even if the entire world could agree on a basic premise of trying to establish laws that provide "free will" to all (which is sadly a far cry from where we are now), it would then need to set to the task of trying to decide on the optimal point in all of the trade-offs involved. Breathing's probably going to be OK... but how much fuel consumption and pollution is too much? Does a society in which addictive substances are legal automatically endanger someone somewhere somehow?

It's not an easy problem, nor does it have a solution that will be static. I believe that all we can attempt to do, once we establish the "moral" basis we're shooting for, is build a system of laws that provide as much flexibility as possible and enable efficient review/revision as we learn more, but also protect the most basic of rights.