a book i am reading now by social psychologist jonathan haidt, called the happiness hypothesis, paints the struggle of emotions vs. intellect as a picture of a rider on an elephant. haidt is in essence following scottish philosopher david hume's statement that "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions."

in haidt's picture, the rider is an advisor -- not a king with a firm grip on the reins -- who represents controlled, conscious thought. the elephant, then, is everything else: emotions, immediate reactions, intuitions, etc. they can work together, but the rider is at the whim of the elephant; he can nudge the elephant to do what he wants, but he cannot make the elephant do anything against his will.

thoughts?

i rode on an elephant once

what was that like? did you feel as if you could control the elephant?

I'm having trouble understanding this one. If our intellect (can we call this reason?) were at the whim of our emotions and intuitions, then we would have no physical restraint. Our lives would be hedonistic.
Maybe our initial reactions and judgements arrive without reason, but I certainly think our actions can be, and often are, controlled by intellect.
Maybe I'm just not understanding this correctly.

i don't get it.

*reaches for economics textbook*

Basically the rider needs to weigh the cost (How long will it take to tame the elephant?
Will he have to invest in spurs or cattle prods?) of controlling the elephant vs. the benefit (will the elephant get him to his destination faster? Would he be better off driving in a car?)of having the elephant at his whim.

The process of riding the elephant involves monetary value of initial and ongoing expenses vs. expected return.

so is he saying that reason and logic should be subservient to emotions and passion?

i would, um, disagree with that.

i think much of what haidt is getting at here is that we all have basic emotional, intuitive reactions, and only after that does reason come into play.

ah! now i see!

it's the old net present value of all future returns vs. the cost of current and future capital! beautiful!!

no, i think you are understanding this correctly. basically, our neocortex plays advisor to our basic initial reactions and judgements that come from elsewhere in the brain. this does mean, however, we have a very basic moral sense that underlays our reason, and that our reason cannot fully control us, no?

This can be very controversial - for example, a high discount elephant implies a very low value on the welfare of future generation elephants, which may have a huge impact on the desirability of interventions to help the environment, and so on.

i don't know. he used the word "ought," which tells me that he's making a judgement on the relative importance of reason and emotion. and in his view, emotion > reason, a position i would greatly dispute.

if we "ought" to be ruled by our emotions, what differentiates us from beasts?

that makes sense.

i still think that reason can, on most (though not necessarily all) occasions, control emotional responses and instincts. i can't control what women i'll be attracted to, but i can certainly control which ones i'll fuck.

let us just be sure that we lay out that haidt and hume are two different people. haidt just uses hume's quote as he sees it being closer to the truth.

i do not see hume as saying that emotion is greater, or better than reason; i think what he is saying is that it is impossible to take natural, basic emotional and intuitive reactions out of the equation, and that reason IS -- and should be -- the advisor to these reactions, or else yes, we become beasts. he isn't saying we ought to be ruled by emotions; he is saying we ought to use reason to manage our emotions. this goes back to what i said before: reason only can control the emotions that come to you, which you have little to no control over. this is where the "slave" part comes in. follow me now?

i would agree (though women control that too!). there is a relatively new area of psychological research on what is being dubbed "emotional intelligence." emotional intelligence is, in one broad sense, the ability, capacity, or skill to identify, assess, and manage your emotions.

I shot my elephant long ago. I've been walking everywhere ever since.

I think there's two different instances going on here. One takes place in the instant when subject meets object - it is here that I believe intuition/emotion/nature rules.
However, I think more frequent instance we think about are our actions -after initial instinct- which are based on reason.

The analogy Haidt gives seems to suggest the latter is almost insignificant. People judge us based on our actions, which are more often than not the result of reason.

My initial reaction to my alarm this morning was the shut it off, but reason overruled and I got up. I wanted to sit on my couch and watch sports center, reason overruled and I read. I wanted to bring money for lunch, but reason overruled and I made a salad to take with me. So far, the events of today that have led me up this point have been ruled by reason.

ok. i buy this.


that would be interesting reading. and after spending a few years of teaching inner-city teenage females, i could probably add much anecdotal evidence to support the thesis that "emotional intelligence" indeed exists (or, in many cases, does not ).

I haven't read Haidt's book, but I have a passing aquaintance with Moral Foundation Theory. The underpinning of this theory is that there is nothing about the human make-up that is intangible. All things can be studied if the tools are available. We have been taught to believe that reason and emotion are two separate things. But in reality, all are the result of a series of electrical impulses that originate in the brain. And as such all aspects of human behavior are governed by evolutionary biology. I may not have this quite right (I'll go and read about it later), but I believe that Haidt's contention is that morality is not the result of an intangible. It is an evolutionary adaptation that binds human beings together into a society. One of the assumptions is that society is essential to the survival of the species. Morality is an adaptation that results in almost instanteous judgements, rationality is the thinking process that occurs after the fact (and requires much more time). And it is also evolutionarily adaptive because action is valenced, that it, there are multiple choices to be made, even within a given moral sphere. Some process must be used in to order to decide on a final action. This is where the rider on the elephant metaphor comes in.

Interestingly, several of you brought up sex. Morality is a subject that I've often seen compared to sex and to eating. All three are required for the survival of the species and encompass multiple fields of study.