can we make decisions completely divorced from emotions

[sushi]

Based on my observation, human beings usually make decisions and judgements influenced by emotions, impulse, and subconscious. Its almost instintual

we dont make the best choices for ourselves or others when under such influences.
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no matter how logical i claim to be or my prefrontal cortex is, i cannot completely seperate emotions and bias from decision making. I am not saying i want to aspire to be spock, but i think that sometimes we often make decisions asnd preferences with emotions (limbic) than with prefrontal cortex not.

Like if i dont like some X person based on first impression without knowing or understanding his character more deeply, its already an emotionally driven judgement/decison (digust). I am pretty sure its same for most other people I have encountered.

With sufficient training, you can train yourself to not react and make decisions/judgements immediately. Learn to wait things out before jump. This reduces the influence of emotions on your behavior and choice. Its like a form of procrastination that allow me to process and think things through before taking a leap. But the emotion demon is still there.

 

[Cognisant]

I don't think its possible to be truly emotionless, there needs to be some kind of bias to the decision making process or else we wouldn't make decisions or do anything really. A perfectly rational being would (devoid of pain) simply stop breathing and expire, not out of any particular desire to die rather without any desire at all it would cooly evaluate its situation, see the futility of it, and take what it sees as the most expedient course of action to the inevitable resolution. Or maybe just sit there catatonic until it expires naturally due to being neutral about efficiency.

I think what you're talking about is the ability to control one's emotions and I think that is a skill that we can learn.

 

[BurnedOut]

You can certainly feel like that in many cases. In those cases, you are, in fact, technically being emotionless while taking your decisions but then there are cognitive biases involved. I think it is moot to discuss if cognitive biases are always emotion-based or not.

eg. Entering a train and automatically turning left and picking a seat. Why? The right-hander's brain is left-side biased.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

no

 

[sushi]

Its more like the ability to switch it on and off, especially emotions and mood. and better at controlling it

when my mood is crap over some bad news or events, i lack the ability to get motivated and make optimal decisons

the best example of emotional self-sabotage and not rational enough is in investing, the fear and greed roller coaster ride. Also when frightened and paralyzed , you are less likely to survive being in a war.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

The only way you can dampen emotions is by dampening all of them, which is a symptom of depression, which chronically can turn into dementia.

Emotions are there to guide you over what you should do. If we don't manage them correctly they can make our position worse. Victim narrative is strong in me too, but semantic thoughts are just following the underlying emotional patterns we've been going through our whole lives.

Being able to shrug off negative information and dedicating yourself to information that is relevant and that you can actually control is hard. Look into emotion regulation therapy, honestly the fact that a lot of these practices aren't commonly promoted is really discouraging. It all get shoved in with mindfulness and productivity enhancement that someone can sell.

 

[scorpiomover]

Antonio Damasio studied this several years ago. He wanted to find out the effects of emotions. So he studied people who had had severe brain damage in the areas of the brain that handle emotions, who also reported that they were unable to feel emotions, including some scientists. He gave them some tests, and also a control group of normal people.

The people without emotions did ridiculously bad, so bad, that you'd say that their IQs were at least 10-20 points below the average of 100.

So yes, you can make decisions that are completely divorced from emotions.

But people who do that tend to make a lot of incredibly bad decisions.

 

[Minuend]

No. Humans are hard wired to be motivated and so on from feelings. Even psychopaths that are portrayed as empathyless have hard wiring where they feel pleasant feels in some situations and from some actions.

Even the drive to be emotionless or rational is an emotional one. Theres not really any reason to strive to be that, other than an emotional need to feel like you are being an logical, rational being. If you have no emotions, you don't give a fuck whether you are logical or emotional. Wanting to be rational/ logical have emotional drive behind it. Thats what you feel you need to/ want to/ should be

 

[ZenRaiden]

I still marvel at the idea that people somehow decided that emotions and thinking are not the same category.

Emotions of course are not the same thing as a though or idea, but they are literally the thing that makes our minds work in some capacity.

The idea we can compose our selves and be able to restrain our emotions to not cloud our ability to think in rational ways and the ability to not let emotions to get into the way of thinking is not the same as not using emotions.

I believe it is here somewhere where some people assumed for some odd reason that actual thinking must be absent of emotions to work.

 

[Yellow]

All of what @ZenRaiden said, plus some...

It's physically impossible for us to make decisions devoid of emotion. Our executive functioning takes input from both the amygdala and the hippocampus.

A healthy mind gets balanced input from both, and an unhealthy one gets more amygdala than hippocampus. So if your amygdala is well-regulated, and your hippocampus is undamaged, then you're going to make decisions less dominated by negative predictions. That's about as close as you're going to get to non-emotional reasoning.