You are right, the only reason I can think for doing anything is because I feel like it, because I want to, which is emotional. In some more detail, think this includes doing things to avoid things I am afraid of or that I find painful, also emotional. Certainly pleasure seeking is emotional. I attribute playing sudoku to my feeling of pleasure of having my mind occupied.
If you come up with something like a Kantian categorical imperative, I will tell you I don’t follow categorical imperatives because I don’t feel like it, and nothing in the real world of “is” seems to break when I act that way. And it does suggest to me that those who do follow a categorical imperative do it because they feel like it, the feeling of logical consistency or superiority appeals to them.
Please let me know what OTHER reasons, non-emotional reasons, there are to do something.
There’s no logical reason why any given entity, human or otherwise, would have to be motivated by emotion. You may be over generalising from the single example of yourself. Also, you would have to believe that highly logical, vulcan-like people are motivated by some emotion they don’t show.
There’s no logical reason why any given entity, human or otherwise, would have to be motivated by emotion.
There’s a trivial “logical” reason why this could be the case—tautology—if the person you are talking to defines “emotion” as “those mental states which directly motivate behaviour”. Which seems like a perfectly good starting place to me.
In other words, this conversation will likely go nowhere until you taboo “emotion” so we can know what work that word does for you.
You are right, the only reason I can think for doing anything is because I feel like it, because I want to, which is emotional. In some more detail, think this includes doing things to avoid things I am afraid of or that I find painful, also emotional. Certainly pleasure seeking is emotional. I attribute playing sudoku to my feeling of pleasure of having my mind occupied.
If you come up with something like a Kantian categorical imperative, I will tell you I don’t follow categorical imperatives because I don’t feel like it, and nothing in the real world of “is” seems to break when I act that way. And it does suggest to me that those who do follow a categorical imperative do it because they feel like it, the feeling of logical consistency or superiority appeals to them.
Please let me know what OTHER reasons, non-emotional reasons, there are to do something.
There’s no logical reason why any given entity, human or otherwise, would have to be motivated by emotion. You may be over generalising from the single example of yourself. Also, you would have to believe that highly logical, vulcan-like people are motivated by some emotion they don’t show.
There’s a trivial “logical” reason why this could be the case—tautology—if the person you are talking to defines “emotion” as “those mental states which directly motivate behaviour”. Which seems like a perfectly good starting place to me.
In other words, this conversation will likely go nowhere until you taboo “emotion” so we can know what work that word does for you.
It wasn’t my initial claim, and I have already pointed that seemingly unemotional people motivate themselves somehow.