A discussion on moral fervor: Our emotions are an indirect - TopicsExpress



          

A discussion on moral fervor: Our emotions are an indirect evaluation and to some degree automatic. If I hide a rattlesnake in your laundry basket, and it jumps out at you, you will likely feel fear before you have any chance to engage in reason. The fear comes from an evaluation of the current circumstance against an automatized judgment that rattlesnakes are dangerous. Actually, it wouldnt even have to be a rattlesnake. It could be a milk snake, and your initial reaction would STILL be fear. Because even though that INDIVIDUAL snake is not dangerous, you know that snakes in general CAN be dangerous, and you react with fear until you gain enough distance to engage in rational evaluation. These automatized judgments that lead to emotional reactions are usually accepted uncritically, but they can in fact be identified and questioned. It is through this method that one can gain control over how one reacts emotionally to particular stimuli. Either way, NONE of us absolutely controls his or her initial emotional reactions to a stimulus. We can only control our reasoned reactions after the fact, and if we can identify the beliefs that are automatized, we can challenge and change those in order to change our reaction to the stimulus. But this latter cant be done in real time.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Jun 2014 04:35:47 +0000

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