Are you suggesting emotions are necessary to goal-oriented behavior?
There should be some evidence for that claim; we have people with diminished emotional capacity in wide range of forms. Do individuals with alexithymia demonstrate impaired goal-oriented behaviors?
I think there’s more to emotion as a motive system than the brain as a motive force. People can certainly choose to stop taking certain drugs which induce emotional highs. 10% of people who start taking heroin are able to keep their consumption levels “moderate” or lower, as compared to 90% for something like tobacco, according to one random and hardly authoritative internet site—the precise numbers aren’t terribly important. Perhaps such altruists, like most people, deliberately avoid drugs like heroin for this reason?
Are you suggesting emotions are necessary to goal-oriented behavior?
There should be some evidence for that claim; we have people with diminished emotional capacity in wide range of forms. Do individuals with alexithymia demonstrate impaired goal-oriented behaviors?
I think there’s more to emotion as a motive system than the brain as a motive force. People can certainly choose to stop taking certain drugs which induce emotional highs. 10% of people who start taking heroin are able to keep their consumption levels “moderate” or lower, as compared to 90% for something like tobacco, according to one random and hardly authoritative internet site—the precise numbers aren’t terribly important. Perhaps such altruists, like most people, deliberately avoid drugs like heroin for this reason?