Motivation and INTP Psychology

[BurnoutPriest]

"Reason alone cannot move us to do anything."
While this quote is controversial, I am somewhat convinced of it's veracity. This alone could probably provide an interesting discussion, but I want to bring up an implication of this quote.

INTPs tend to be somewhat lazy or unmotivated in general. Multiple descriptions of the profile bring this fact up. They also bring up the fact that INTPs always try to shy away from their emotions, to get beyond them or belittle them in an attempt to acquire objectivity. Now, tying this all together, could the INTP general apathy be caused by this suppression of emotions? Is one of our great weaknesses caused by one of our perceived strengths?

I'd love to hear your thoughts about this random conjecture.

 

[Beat Mango]

I agree, and you'll love this article, it provides evidence for your theory (funnily enough I just posted it in another thread, but it is even more relevant here):

http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2009/02/27/1235237919890.html

A quote from it:

To Damasio, Elliot's pathology suggested emotions are a crucial part of decision-making. Cut off from our feelings, the most banal decisions become impossible. A brain that can't feel can't make up its mind.

I feel like the more I know, the less I desire, and it sucks. I thought understanding how I work would lead to me being able to control my fate a bit more, get more out of life in terms of success and enjoyment, but it hasn't worked out that way. It's just made me feel very neutral (although I may have become neutral anyway, who knows).

 

[Ghost1986]

a major "oh shit " moment in my life.

i was having a session with the shrink and we were talking about me using my emotions more. i told her i prefer to use logic and suppress my emotions. she said she noticed and asked if i realized logic requires emotions. i replied with "your freaking kidding me!"

i try to deal with nothing more than positive and negative. i try to supress all other emotions including hatred and happiness. happiness happens or rearly that i dont even notice when it does happen anyway.

 

[Artifice Orisit]

So to be happy we should also be willing to hate?

she said she noticed and asked if i realized logic requires emotions

Academic logic is the comparison of two known facts to derive a third, this doesn't require emotion.
But the word "logic" is commonly misused to describe the occurrence of general cognitive processes that most often involve an emotional aspect.

 

[420MuNkEy]

she said she noticed and asked if i realized logic requires emotions.

I would say your shrink is utterly wrong in that statement.

Yes, emotion can be used in logic, but it is not inherently required. For example, if doing action A causes pain and doing action B causes pleasure, logically, one would choose action B over action A. However, presuppose you hate the number 3 and were given the problem 1+2. Would your hatred change the outcome of the equation? No.

 

[cheese]

I have a fair bit of faith in this idea, BP. I lurked around the schizoid forums (slightly ironic community) for a while, and there was a high correlation between emotion and action. One of them mirrored my suspicions when he said a totally emotionless schizoid would simply let himself die (I think at some point more 'physical'/less overtly emotional processes would take over - the body is geared towards survival - but you get the point).

More, but not now.

*edit
Interesting link BM. I've been thinking for a while that emotions are a short-cut to decision-making, with background processing performing a more primitive? and extremely fast cost-benefit analysis (probably more in the form of stimulus-reaction). This seems to be in favour. I feel good.

 

[walfin]

I would say your shrink is utterly wrong in that statement.

Yes, the shrink is wrong (imprecise, that is). Probably she means that human acceptance of logic requires emotion.

As an aside, I think they've kind of got it wrong - emotion does not support logic. It supports judgment.

Logic is meant for a purpose. The structure is useless if there are no fundamental premises to begin with.