Israeli, anti-Israel, philosopher Oded Na'aman has a paper on 'the rationality of emotional change'. Can it explain why he is still whining about having had to do military service twenty years ago? Yes. He is seeking to make a career out of the terrible trauma he suffered acting as the equivalent of a Homeland Security guard for a couple of years two decades ago. Had he done a tour of duty in Fallujah, the fucker would now be fucking catatonic. Still, maybe Prince Harry will invite him on to his podcast or Soros will fund a chair or hammock for him on some nice Ivy League campus.
He writes-
The paper argues against a widely held synchronic view of emotional rationality.
An emotion exists in the moment. It may be revived by some triggering of memory but even then it exists only in that moment. We can't say there is a diachronic way of looking at a particular emotion such that it could be said to arise on a particular occasion and then to go away to visit its relatives in Australia only to return when some particular memory is triggered.
I begin by considering recent philosophical literature on various backward-looking emotions, such as regret, grief, resentment, and anger.
They are not necessarily backward looking. Regret-minimizing strategies are concerned with the future. A sage may feel grief when seeing a cute baby. He knows it will lose its innocence soon enough. We may resent a smart kid in our school not because he is currently better off than us but because we know that sooner or later he will have the big house and the beautiful wife and the corner office. Anger is forward looking. It is a way of signalling preference intensity and generally aims to change behaviour. Mum's anger was very effective in getting me to do my homework.
I articulate the general problem these accounts grapple with: a certain diminution in backward-looking emotions seems fitting while the reasons for these emotions seem to persist.
These accounts are given by shitheads who can't grapple with shit. Emotion intensiveness depends on all sorts of ideographic factors. Fatigue, inebriation, mental illness and many other factors can affect it. Moreover, emotions serve different functions in different circumstances. It is usual to quote Croce in this connection.
The problem, I argue, rests on the assumption that if the facts that give reason for an emotion remain unchanged, the emotion remains fitting.
A stupid assumption made by stupid shitheads teaching worthless shite. It is obvious that if you are drinking whiskey at a wake, it is fitting to break down and weep and be comforted by others who will soon break down themselves and receive comfort. Indeed, this behaviour may be repeated at every Death Anniversary.
However, I argue there are rationally self-consuming attitudes: affective attitudes that become less fitting the longer they endure while the facts that give reason for them persist.
Why argue for what is obvious? I was angry in 1983 that my video recorder failed to record 'the Sound of Music'. It would be pretty irrational for me to still express fury over that outcome- more particularly because I didn't actually own a video recorder. The thing was actually a microwave oven. Shit like that happens to me all the time. Maybe I'm actually a philosopher- not a Socioproctologist.
A widely held synchronic view of fitting affective attitudes denies that fittingness at a time depends on the agent’s attitudes at different times and therefore denies that the fittingness of an affective attitude can depend on its duration.
This is not a widely held view. It is some stupid shit worthless shitheads pretend is actually 'doing philosophy'.
The fact is, it is perfectly fitting for me to still experience great rage at my video-recorder if I had suffered some sort of brain injury such that I'm living a 'Groundhog day' type endlessly repeating memory loop.
Once we reject the synchronic view,
we are denying that emotions exist in the moment. They cease if you are knocked unconscious.
we may see that affective attitudes are often fitting due to the fitting processes of which they are part.
but that 'fitting' is arbitrary save in protocol bound contexts. Thus we may say 'it is not fitting that you break down weeping at work because your son was killed. Take a mental health day or whatever. You will be fired if you keep this up.'
These fitting processes explain the fitting diminution of backward-looking emotions as well as other diachronic aspects of the fittingness of emotions.
Arbitrary stipulations can fit any shit to any shit.
Like actions and choices, attitudes are subject to normative standards.
Arbitrary ones- sure. Any action which is not directly related to ridding the world of defecation is simply evil and like totes Nazi.
From belief and desire to envy, admiration, grief, amusement, and lust—we evaluate, criticize, disown, and endorse attitudes.
Not if we are doing useful stuff.
Though such attitudes are not voluntary,
unless they are. If we pretend to care about shit that does not concern us, our attitudes are likely to be voluntary. I see there's a guy with a placard outside the Israeli embassy which reads 'Death to all Juice'. It is an attitude I endorse. I don't want Juice. I want Whiskey.
they are rational in the sense that they can succeed or fail to meet the normative standards we apply to them.
It is not rational to want to meet the normative standards of shitheads.
Furthermore, it is thought that the rationality of these attitudes is related to the fact that they are about an object or directed toward it. It is said that such attitudes can succeed or fail to be fitting, suitable, or appropriate with respect to their objects. They are therefore known as fitting attitudes.
These shitheads thought it was fitting for them to shit on Israel despite the fact that Israel is a democracy whose smart, hardworking, people don't want to kill infidels
Recent philosophical discussion of fitting attitudes has revolved around two main issues. The first is the explanatory issue: whether, at the most fundamental level, the fittingness of an attitude is explained by the value of its object or, as the so-called fitting attitudes theories of value maintain, the value of an object is explained by the attitude that is a fitting response to it, or, finally, both the fittingness of an attitude and the value of its object are explained by one’s reasons.
This is silly. It is obvious that these shitheads only have attitudes so as to fit into some academic clique or citation cartel. Fittingness is about fitting in. It isn't fitting to fist yourself vigorously during a Cabinet meeting. Look at what happened to Theresa May.
Second, there has been much debate about a related issue, known as the wrong kind of reason problem: how to distinguish facts that make an attitude fitting or appropriate to its object from facts that seem to give us reason to entertain the attitude but do not make the attitude fitting.
Easy. The latter sort of fact has to do with the environment we find ourselves in. I think I have a positive attitude to homosexuality because science explains that it isn't actually caused by eating ravioli. Still, there are certain places and times where I don't give expression to this attitude of mine because it would not be fitting. Also, my head might be kicked in.
In this essay, I wish to reinvigorate a third issue, which might as well be called a non-issue because philosophers seem to be in general agreement about it—namely, how do rational attitudes evolve over time? I will argue that the answer to this question that is commonly presupposed by philosophers is mistaken. The answer I propose instead constitutes a significant departure from the current understanding of the rationality of attitudes in general and of emotions in particular. Consider the following scenario. Walking down a dark alley at night, I notice a shadow of a large animal appearing from around the corner. I stop dead in my tracks, paralyzed with fear.
That's not rational though it may be 'natural'.
A moment later, I sigh in relief and embarrassment: the lights of a passing car made a tiny mouse cast a long, intimidating shadow.
Suppose you were a policeman or an ex-soldier. You are likely to have received training to suppress your 'natural' emotions and to act rationally in a tactical manner.
My fear rationally fades as I recognize that there was no danger.
No. Something irrational- viz. an emotion- faded because the 'trigger' ceased to exist.
Now suppose some other shadow in fact belongs to a bear. Fear seems fitting as a response to a bear in a dark alley.
No. It may be a 'natural' response. It is not fitting at all more particularly if you are a policeman or an ex-soldier or a person of stout heart and quick brain.
And yet if the bear carries on without noticing me and disappears around the next corner, my fear may rationally diminish.
Fear is irrational because it is an emotion. It may appear of disappear for all sorts of reasons. One can explain the irrational but this does not mean that unreason has some reason of its own. Similarly, one can explain why fellatio occurs. But no explanation can, by itself, give Biden a blowjob. This is because Neo-Liberalism is very evil.
In this version, my fear diminishes not because there was never any danger, but because there is no longer any danger.
But there are may other versions which are equally arbitrary. You felt fear because your mother was over-protective or, perhaps, because it is true that, as Daddy said, you a big sissy and are bound to grown up to be a big fat Queen which is totes untrue because though I am rather fat still Prince Charles preferred to marry some bony blonde rather than espouse a Tamil virgin of extraordinary girth.
Finally, suppose there is a bear and he does not walk away but rather stops and looks right at me. I know that if I keep still the bear is more likely to leave me alone, but my fear makes me tremble.
Because, though emotions may be natural, they are not rational and don't always have survival value. This is why we have evolved ways to suppress or re-channel those 'Darwinian algorithms of the mind'. Still, the 'freeze' reflex may be useful.
I should overcome my fear and keep still, not because my fear is not fitting—on the contrary, it is perfectly fitting given that I am engaged in a staring contest with a bear—but I have other reason not to succumb to my fear. I have reason concerning the consequences of my fear; specifically, concerning the prospects of my survival.
You have reason and you have emotions. Sometimes, your reason says 'suppress or re-channel the emotion'. Sometimes it says the opposite. Why? In Social contexts emotions express preference intensiveness also there is a mimetic aspect to them. This can be useful in speeding up Social Choice though, obviously, it could also be disastrous.
This admittedly crude account of my fear of a bear in a dark alley is meant to illustrate three ways in which an affective attitude may rationally change or diminish.
No. These are three explanations, or reasons, for this to happen. It is not the case that something irrational has its own reasons to increase or decrease. That is merely a manner of speaking. But we could as easily say that emotions have mother-in-laws with whom they sometimes fight or that some naughty emotions were expelled from MIT for sodomizing Chomsky.
Either I realize that what seemed to call for a certain affective attitude does not in fact call for it; or the attitude is no longer called for because its object has changed; or the attitude is called for but there are other facts that count against entertaining it.
This is like realizing that those affective attitudes which sodomized Chomsky were acting in an uncalled for manner. Why couldn't they just shit on his tits like everybody else? Anyway, that is the reason it is wrong to entertain those attitudes though maybe if you bump into one at the pub, there is no great harm if you buy it a pint and a packet of pork scratchings.
In each of the three cases, whether the attitude rationally persists or changes is independent of facts about its past existence.
This is unlikely. There are hysteresis effects because emotions affect the endocrine system.
According to a common picture of rational change in affective attitudes, these are the only three ways in which an affective attitude can rationally change.
They aren't rational and can't 'rationally change' though no doubt we can train ourselves to suppress or redirect emotions.
Of this picture, I make four claims. First, I show that this is indeed a widespread conception of rational change in affective attitudes,
amongst shitheads similar to himself
which guides, in particular, recent views about backward-looking emotions, such as grief, regret, resentment, and anger. Second, I argue that this common conception is mistaken: a change in the rational status of an affective attitude might depend on the attitude’s duration.
Because people think you are crazy if you are still steamed about that video-recorder of yours which failed to record 'Cheers' back in 1983 probably because it was actually a microwave oven.
More specifically, I offer a counterexample to this conception of rational change by showing that some emotions are rationally self-consuming: the longer they endure the less rational they become.
If they are 'self-consuming' they can't fucking endure. True, one can be angry that one was angry and blame the thing that made you angry all the more. I am furious that I have wasted so much of my life being angry with a video-recorder which was actually a microwave. Frankly, if I saw a video recorder just now I would beat it with vim and vigour. Then I would break down and cry. My tears will redeem me in the eyes of the Holy Microwave Oven.
Third, I argue that the common conception of rational change in affective attitudes rests on the mistaken assumption that fittingness is synchronic, that is, that what affective attitude it is fitting for one to have at a time does not generally and directly depend on one’s affective attitudes at other times.
But affective attitudes are either 'natural' or simulated for the purpose of 'fitting in'. They don't depend on shit though one can always explain them away. But those explanations are ignorant and arbitrary. It is a different matter that Scientists can find better and better structural causal models of the emotions and thus discover new anti-depressants or things of that sort.
I trace the appeal of the synchronic view of fittingness to a mistaken analogy with true belief.
But 'true belief' is an oxymoron. We know that our beliefs are sublatable which is why we are content with a Faith that is a mystery.
And, fourth, I propose a diachronic view of fittingness according to which what affective attitude it is fitting for one to have at a time can generally and directly depend on what non-instrumental process it is fitting for one to undergo.
'Non-instrumental process' means a process which has no fucking effect. I may say that it is fitting for Oded to entertain at a grand banquet certain emotions which sodomized Chomsky and this process- which in fact is carried out every time Oded farts- is 'non-instrumental' because it achieves nothing which is why nobody bothers with it. Fuck. I actually said that didn't I? All is the fault of that video recorder which turned out to be a microwave oven. Now I'm having to entertain emotions which sodomized Chomsky by farting in a repetitive, yet wistful, manner.
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