Abstract
This paper deals with the problem of the theoretical relationship between concepts of reason and emotion. The main perspective of the paper is on the contemporary debate in the philosophy of science regarding the rationality of science and the role of emotions and other extrarational causes in explaining science and reason as such. The main purpose of the paper is to present a possible third way, a way of superseding an obvious and traditional dualism underlying these debates – the dualism of reason and emotion. Two main heuristics are used in the paper. The first consists in relating epistemological problems to common language experience, in order to validate or refute them. The second consists in tracking a common root of both parts of the epistemological dualism in philosophy of science. A proposal for superseding this dualism is put forward, based on the thoughts of Joseph Życiński. The proposal is then (in the last two sections) confronted with an example, proposed by LeDoux, of the empirical interpretation of the ‘reality’ of emotions in neurosciences. The pivotal role of the common language experience is thus confirmed. All this leads to the conclusion that the possibility of theoretically relating reason and emotions is not only a purely linguistic (analytical) game, but also an answer to a ‘real’ problem.
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Notes
- 1.
What is said about self-experience can equally be said about the experience of other people and of other biological species. No self-experience of what is called reason or emotion would (probably) be possible without a comparative experience of other people and of other species. However, this paper is not intended to discuss the psychological origins of the concepts of reason and emotion but only to present the basic meaning (referential, objective) and intuitions underlying those concepts.
- 2.
The dualistic distinction ourselves – objects is itself a result of self-reflection and of the mental and linguistic ordering of our self-experience.
- 3.
In this respect I follow the meta-philosophical position of Karl Popper, who denied any methodological importance to the logical analysis of language in solving real problems in philosophy.
- 4.
See for example Popper 2002: 8 (section 2, Elimination of psychologism): ‘My view can be expressed by saying that every discovery contains “an irrational element” or “a creative intuition”, in Bergson’s sense. In a similar way Einstein speaks of the “search for those highly universal laws…”’.
- 5.
This idea seems to be best articulated in the Popper’s famous idea of epistemology without a knowing subject.
- 6.
Życiński 1988: 135: ‘In this situation, attempts to absolutize the concept of rationality as well as the tendency toward a dichotomous division of interpretations into rational and irrational are an expression of a certain philosophy defended in a dogmatic manner but falsified by science itself’.
The idea of falsification of philosophical theories through metascientific facts was already present in the early writings of Popper, but only implicitly. In order to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings he preferred to use the term ‘falsification’ only in the context of the empirical method. In the context of the transcendental method of philosophy he used the expression ‘transcendental inconsistency or contradiction (Widerspruch)’.
- 7.
- 8.
By ‘construction’ I do not mean a subjective, social or psychological, construction but a theoretical one. The objects of science are only those objects that can appear in the theory or in an equation. Another term that could be used here is ‘theoretical idealization’. The objects of common language usually are not proper objects of empirical science because they cannot enter as such into scientific theories.
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Liana, Z. (2016). Can Reason Be Emotional?. In: Evers, D., Fuller, M., Runehov, A., Sæther, KW. (eds) Issues in Science and Theology: Do Emotions Shape the World?. Issues in Science and Religion: Publications of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26769-2_20
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