Is there such a thing as an emotional truth, which is distinct from a logical truth?

[Occam Bandage]

Poll question: Is there such a thing as an emotional truth, which is distinct from a logical truth?

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. define the difference, please.

I suspect yes, but I don't know what you mean and have no idea how this is a R/T issue, which could alter my response.

[EFerrari]

4. Feelings v. facts?

[Occam Bandage]

8. Allow me to instead rephrase the question.

Are there truths, in whichever way you define the word "truth," which can only be understood, arrived at, or otherwise comprehended through emotional experience, and which remain either incomprehensible or occluded from pure reason?

[RaleighNCDUer]

15. Thanks. From that definition I would say 'no'. I have great faith in facts,

and do not believe in Truth.

Of course, my ex would say that would 'of course' be my reply, because I am emotionally stunted.

[EFerrari]

2. Sure there is. For example, when my sons grew up and moved, I felt abandoned.

That was the emotional truth. The logical and objective truth was, they were growing up.

[Occam Bandage]

13. I think that is a very, very good example. nt

[Birthmark]

3. Yes

...but it's internal to the individual and helps them deal with external reality in a way satisfying to them. It doesn't have to be true to you and I. As long as the emotional truth isn't asserted as reality there is no problem.

[EFerrari]

6. Emotional truth is a competing reality, just not shared reality.

And groups, to the extent they cohere, can generate emotional reailities, too.

[Birthmark]

10. Dammit!

Much more concise and clear than I said it. :)

[EFerrari]

11. Myself, I just wish people would cut it out!

:)

[Birthmark]

14. Not me!

Lately, the thought of other Americans with scissors gives me nightmares.

[dmallind]

5. Need more definition, but yes and no as I understand it

Are there opinions not based on logic that are true? Sure. Humans - even those who value logic - are frequently irrational without being mistaken. A choice of spouse for example may lead to a happy and lifelong partnership without being initially subjected to rigorous satisfice calculus.

But is there any OBJECTIVE truth that is emotional rather than logical? In other words something that is testable and verifiable by thrid parties that is established on an emotional basis not a logical one? Nothing I can think of.

[Occam Bandage]

12. To address your second paragraph.

A mystic might experience, through controlled meditation or prayer, a certain emotional state in which he believes himself to have found certain intrinsic truths that cannot be explained through logic. He might, however, be able to teach others to follow the same mystic "journey" he did, in which they also end up experiencing the same emotional state, in which they believe themselves to have been led by their master to the same intrinsic truth he had once found. They then become his disciples, and he founds a school of thought around the "truth" he has found, and more people come to find it as well.

This purely emotional "truth" is verifiable, then, by third parties who wish to see it verified, and who undertake the same course of disciplined meditation. Would you feel comfortable removing the quotation marks from the word "truth" in the previous sentence?

[dmallind]

16. BUt dollars to donuts that emotional truth is a logical truth in woo-woo clothes

All thought and sensation is biochemistry in the brain. Either with drugs or with the right physical or psychological stimuli it is possible to engender emotional results. If you fast long enough you halluicinate for example. Frontal (or temporal, can't remember offhand) lobe stimulation can produce ecstatic religious visions (the same part of the brain is responsible for spilepsy - a frequent corollary in the non-lab variety of visions). The exact details are well known to neuroscientists as to how this happens. I'm not one, so I can only give a sketchy overview.

That the person feels this as an emotional truth does not stop it from being an entirely logical one. That they misinterpret this truth as evidence of higher powers or woo-woo "planes of consciousness" rather than as abnormal brain function does not stop it from being merely the latter.

[Occam Bandage]

17. From that perspective,

and I will pause for a moment to say that I've studied neural function pretty deeply in college*, those events are not necessarily truths of any sort whatsoever, but are simply events. They are rationally explainable events, but does that necessarily mean the resultant perception is, at its heart, any sort of logical truth? From a logical perspective, might they be pure delusion unworthy of being called "truth?"



*and I say that not to portray myself as an expert but simply to reassure you that I am not posting from ignorance.

[dmallind]

18. Now you're getting into nihilism

When repeated stimuli lead to repeated response that's a truth. There are no "levels" of truth where we have to go all woo-woo and earn a capital T. Phenomena ("events") which can be empirically demonstrated are true, are the truth and are truths. They are deductively logical truths.

Start getting into doubting empirical data based on a valid process and we start going into a world where the Matrix is as valid as germ theory. Not going there.

[Occam Bandage]

20. I don't believe it's fair to grade the value of neurological events and their results equally.

If a person sees Obama, and reads an article providing fabricated "evidence" he is Muslim, the person may believe the evidence, and will make the inference that Obama is a Muslim. Given enough time to be stored by the hippocampus, the person's brain will recall the the "fact" that Obama is a Muslim as a truth equal to any other.

It is certainly true that person's brain has undergone memory events correlated with the belief that Obama is Muslim. It is not true that Obama is Muslim.

[dmallind]

21. Apples and oranges

Obama has not been tested and shown to be a Muslim by a valid process. The results of stimuli in the brain have been shown to lead to repeatable emotional responses. You are setting up a straw man based on the invalid assumption that I think all results of brain functionality lead to subjective acceptance of objective truth, whereas I am talking about the objective truth OF brain functionality itself. In effect your own argument validates mine: we can predict how the brain will respond to stimuli.

[Deep13]

7. The question is moot.

Truth comes from examining objective fact and not from either logic or emotion.

[Occam Bandage]

9. Then the answer is, for your definition of truth, "no."

[cosmik debris]

19. Can some thing be true for you and false for me?

That doesn't seem to fit my definition of truth. And it doesn't allow for emotional truth unless the emotion is universal.

[greyl]

22. I don't think emotions are either true or false. They are real.

Truth and falsity simply can't be applied to everything under the sun.

[Evoman]

23. Agree.

No such thing as "emotional truth". It's like saying refrigerator truth, potato chip truth, or Lexmark Z32 Printer truth (which is the shitty printer sitting next to me right now....or is it? *lifts eyebrow*).

[skepticscott]

26. What about things like

Coke tastes better than Pepsi

Star Wars is better than Star Trek

Mozart was a better composer than Beethoven

Those things are true for some people, but not others, based on emotion, feeling, personal taste or whatever. As opposed to universal, factual truths like "Mozart was born before Beethoven" or "mimes are annoying"

[Mamacrat]

24. I will say that there is a difference.

My example would be that several years ago I became separated from a younger relative due to her parents' divorce. (I won't get into the details.) I know that it is true that I did not abandon this person. She believes that I did; that is her emotional truth. I can tell her every fact to explain why what she believes is not factual, but that has not changed her emotional truth. In this case the logical/factual truth (and my emotional truth) differs from her emotional truth.

[rug]

25. Logic is the methodical stepping from one fact to the next.

But it is limited by the known facts.

Emotional certainty is based on knowledge acquired in an entirely different manner.

[struggle4progress]

27. There are all manner of "truths" that are not "logical truths" -- logic is a verbal

device for organizing ideas. But neither words nor ideas are necessarily "true" -- in fact, both can be highly misleading. It is impossible, for example, to determine by logic alone the material facts of the world, and not all human experiences are purely material in nature

[SidneyCarton]

28. I would say yes and no.

I believe there is an objective truth. However we are limited in our understanding of it because everything we know is based on perception, which is individual. Hence we all live in slightly different realities, and when our perceptions intersect with the objective truth, we see some things as they really are, but we never see everything as it actually is.