There's a concept in dialectical behavior therapy called "radical acceptance", part of which includes consciously accepting the emotions that come up from different stimuli in order to avoid making premature/misinformed judgments about what triggered our reactions.
From my understanding, our emotional responses to different events are formed through how we've experienced our unique challenges, traumas, and successes throughout our lives, and due to this we don't have ANY control over which emotions come up from new stimuli. (E.g. a person who's lost a loved one to an unjustified police killing might experience emotions more intensely hearing about a similar incident than someone who hasn't.)
In radical acceptance, it's observing our emotions and understanding what triggers each of them that allows us to think more objectively about a given moment. Humans are pattern-seeking creatures, and emotions are kind of like our brains' means of projecting our previous experiences/bias onto new ones in order to affirm the patterns we're familiar with. Our emotions are instinctual references to our past experiences; whether we use them in our reasoning depends on whether we still understand our high-level intentions as we experience those emotions.
otterfist t1_j8xlv3f wrote
Reply to comment by Hip-Harpist in Reason and emotion are deeply connected. Understanding the interplay between them can help us make better sense of the world but eliminates the promise of objective rationality. by IAI_Admin
There's a concept in dialectical behavior therapy called "radical acceptance", part of which includes consciously accepting the emotions that come up from different stimuli in order to avoid making premature/misinformed judgments about what triggered our reactions.
From my understanding, our emotional responses to different events are formed through how we've experienced our unique challenges, traumas, and successes throughout our lives, and due to this we don't have ANY control over which emotions come up from new stimuli. (E.g. a person who's lost a loved one to an unjustified police killing might experience emotions more intensely hearing about a similar incident than someone who hasn't.)
In radical acceptance, it's observing our emotions and understanding what triggers each of them that allows us to think more objectively about a given moment. Humans are pattern-seeking creatures, and emotions are kind of like our brains' means of projecting our previous experiences/bias onto new ones in order to affirm the patterns we're familiar with. Our emotions are instinctual references to our past experiences; whether we use them in our reasoning depends on whether we still understand our high-level intentions as we experience those emotions.