Logic vs Emotion

[Darth Wong]

According to Vulcans, one must suppress emotion in order to be logical. Has anyone ever asked whether this is a valid argument? Or could it be (gasp) a leap in logic?

Emotion is a motivating factor. It can motivate people to action, or to inaction. It can also motivate people to say things or think things which may or may not be logical. However, I don't see why one must necessarily have no emotions in order to be logical.

One is logical if one restricts ones' conclusions to those which make sense. It is not necessary to walk around like a robot. If someone says "TWO PLUS TWO EQUALS FOUR, YOU IDIOT!" he is being emotional, but not necessarily illogical.

Comments? Is the entire Vulcan society based on pillars of bullshit?

[Frank Hipper]

A thought Ive had many times. When emotion has life preserving benefits, i.e. fear=alertness=survival or love=mutual support=survival, is it logical to suppress them? I know these are extreme simplifications, but does that make them invalid?

[Knife]

Most Vulcans in the shows generalize alot. Is this logical?

[Knife]

A thought Ive had many times. When emotion has life preserving benefits, i.e. fear=alertness=survival or love=mutual support=survival, is it logical to suppress them? I know these are extreme simplifications, but does that make them invalid?

Fight, Flight, or Freeze. Without these, how the hell do the Vulcans survive?

[The Dark]

It seems they are based more on being utterly rational than logical. Rather than admit they have irrational emotional reactions, they claim that logic places them above that, when in truth it is sometimes the irrational emotions that cause survival reactions. I may be off-base here (it's 2:45 am), but that's how it appears to me at this hour.

[neoolong]

I think the Vulcans don't trust themselves to remain logical in spite or despite of emotions. It's only logical to supress emotions if their pre-logic state was based in illogical emotional desires. They could then decide that emotions should be tossed out the airlock for pure logic. Of course, while this may work for the Vulcans, it does not and should not necessarily work for other people.

Ultimately, emotion doesn't need to be suppressed for someone to be logical. It just means that one has to understand his emotions and use them when necessary and disregard them when they are not.

[Stravo]

I think we're missing a key point. Vulcans are more emotional than humans, they have inetnse feelings that when acted upon can lead to their own destruction. Surak tried to find a way out of this trap and he substitued logic for emotion. By getting rid of the very thing that was destroying them and creating an alternate way to look at the world he saved his race.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Vulcans don't follow logic because it is inherently superior to emotion, but because it REPLACES emotional basis for making decisions. The Vulcan emotions were leading them down the path of self destruction so Surak found an alternative.

[Darth Wong]

I think we're missing a key point. Vulcans are more emotional than humans, they have inetnse feelings that when acted upon can lead to their own destruction. Surak tried to find a way out of this trap and he substitued logic for emotion. By getting rid of the very thing that was destroying them and creating an alternate way to look at the world he saved his race.

Isn't it still a false dilemma? Couldn't you say the same thing about the human medieval past, versus the scientific age? Sarek was going nuts in TNG and was controlled, but he was not well; haven't clinically depressed humans reached similar or greater heights of emotion? I have not yet seen any evidence to substantiate the Vulcan belief that their emotions are stronger than those of humans.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Vulcans don't follow logic because it is inherently superior to emotion, but because it REPLACES emotional basis for making decisions. The Vulcan emotions were leading them down the path of self destruction so Surak found an alternative.

You could say the same thing about the so-called "Enlightenment" in human society. It still seems like a false dilemma to me.

[data_link]

It is not nessecary to repress one's emotions to be logical - indeed, doing that is probably just about the most illogical thing you can do. Logic can only provide a basis for determining what follows from a premise. Of course, for logic to work, you must first have a premise. Emotions are that premise. Without them, there is no basis for most actions in life because it shouldn't matter what you are doing, you'll still feel exactly the same. Without emotion, life becomes inherently meaningless. The important thing is not to supress emotions, but rather to channel them - thereby ensuring that they support whatever decision you arrive at logically, and thereby ensuring that you won't do anything stupid. If you can do that, you will remain logical and yet still be able to have fun in life, which is of course a worthwhile goal.

Stravo - are you honestly suggesting that vulcans can maintain such incredible mental discipline that they can almost completely supress their emotions, and yet cannot maintain the ability to think logically with their emotions in place? I find that improbable. More likely, their society was violent and primitive, and the Vulcans were indoctinated into Surak's religion.

This also brings up an interesting point - the vulcans continually look down on religion and yet maintain dogmatic beliefs with unquestioning adherence to tradition of their own. Their religion consists mostly of doctrines of nonagression, self-deprivation, and regular worship, er, meditation. We see in ST:V that people on Vulcan are persecuted for heresy - spock's brother, in particular. We see from vulcan mating rituals that require the male to fight for the female that women are regarded as property. Is it just me, or are the Vulcans actually Christians in disguise?

[Stravo]

Stravo - are you honestly suggesting that vulcans can maintain such incredible mental discipline that they can almost completely supress their emotions, and yet cannot maintain the ability to think logically with their emotions in place? I find that improbable. More likely, their society was violent and primitive, and the Vulcans were indoctinated into Surak's religion.

Nope. I'm simply trying to explain my view of why they use logic exclusively. I'm not defending it, I just think that as a child growing up watching the TOS I LOVED Spock and Vulcans in general...BEFORE B&B anally raped the franchise.

Logic replaces emotion because as Spock stated the Vulcans were extremely primitive in their emotions. They were a passionate people and passionate people don't strike me as very logical. As a good point look at the whole McCoy-Spock dynamic. McCoy's arguments were based solely on emotion. Spock solely on logic. See the differences in the way they approached a problem.

[Perinquus]

A problem you get when you repress emotions is that they build up. It kind of like waters building up behind a dam. Then when the pressure gets to be too much, the dam bursts. We are actually finding this in the U.S. today. Lots of public schools have these absurd zero tolerance policies against violence, so that they even suspend grammar school kids playing cops and robbers with each other at recess - something harmless kids have been doing for generations. They eliminate competitive sports, and other things of that nature.

The problem that we are having (and that many in authority in the scool system won't face up to), is that when you deny kids every healthy expression of negative emotions, and every constructive, or at least harmless outlet for violent impulses, the pressure builds and builds, and when it eventually, inevitably bursts, the expression of violence these kids finally choose is often catastophic.

[Patrick Degan]

In TOS, it is established that the Vulcan people were prone to very violent emotions which resulted in wars which threatened to destroy their entire civilisation. Surak (or the Excalbian replica of Surak) states this to Capt. Kirk in "The Savage Curtain".

Recall the dinner scene in "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"; after hearing Commissioner Beale's idiotic racist spew against Lokai, Spock shrugs it off and makes yet another attempt at reason:

"Hmm... Commissioner, perhaps the example of my planet Vulcan may prove helpful. We were once a people like yourselves; wildly emotional, often given to irrational and irreconcilable viewpoints. Only the discipline of logic saved my planet from destruction."

From the evidence, it seems that the Vulcans adopted their philosophy of logic (as they reckon it) in the attempt to reengineer their entire culture and avert what was a course of racial self-destruction —the fate which befell the people of the planet Cheron.

It has been accepted as a truism that the Vulcans have or express no emotion whatsoever; that they keep that entire side of their natures tightly bottled up —expressed only during the pon farr or the challenge of the koh'nut'kalifee. However, like many truisms, this isn't strictly true.

If you observe the Vulcans from TOS (disregarding how they've been fucked up in TNG-onward by the same process that turned the Klingons and every other alien race into a one-note caricature), the Vulcans supress the passionate expression of emotion. But they still have the full range of emotions and these still express themselves albeit in very low-key and subtle ways. You see indications of this in the exchanges of affection between Sarek and Amanda in "Journey To Babel", the slight outbursts of anger by T'pau in "Amok Time" and the indications of something actively going on between T'pring and Stonn in that same story, the admission by Spock to the Romulan Commander that they did share something enduring in "The Enterprise Incident" and his later admission to Droxine that "extreme feminine beauty is always disturbing" in "The Cloudminders". Given that TOS was a product of the 60s, an era of active investigation by Western American culture of Eastern philosophies, it can be said that the TOS Vulcans were modeled off of Zen monks or came to be so modeled by the third season. They also do not express passionate emotion. but they do not altogether deny emotion either.

(Of course, it's also a matter of the TOS Vulcans being portrayed by a wholly superior set of actors, who had much better writing and direction behind them and thus gave more than a one-note performance)

The original series paints a more complex picture of the Vulcans than the pale copies which have been cranked out in the years since. But of course, this is just about true in regards to every aspect of Trek, as has also been observed.

[Master of Ossus]

I think that the Vulcans rightly realize that emotions cause irrational actions, and seek to suppress emotions whenever possible because of this.

[SWPIGWANG]

If there is a perfectly logical being, he wouldn't object if I murder him.


The surival of a purely logical race is inlogical.



You can't surpress emotions, you can only let your emotions trust your reasoning will provide long term emotional well being.

[kojikun]

I find the vulcan stance that emotion = illogic quite funny.

For one, emotions were evolved (a logical process) to ensure our survival. Ofcourse, in this modern world emotions tend to put us at risk because were not thinking straight.

The truest logical emotional society i think is the Nietzscheans from Andromeda. The philosophy of using your emotions as a guide, but not letting them control you is inherent superior because gives you both the instinctual drive of emotions AND the reasoning and planning ability of logical thought. Plus, Nietzscheans are darwinists so they pride themselves on survivability. Another plus. :p

[pecker]

Actually, I think that basically the idea si that VULCANS need to supress emotions, as they nearly destroyed their world once before. Becasue the philosophy dominates their life, it just kinda bleds through towards their intereaction with others.

And it obviously works for them. Just becasue we may not like it, or it doesn't work for us, doesn't amke ti invalid.

I'm looking at them from a 'real' viewpoint, not the butchered crap that passed as B&B.

[Perinquus]

Well, looked at from a "real" viewpoint, I don't think it would be possible to suppress emotion completely. It certainly wouldn't be possible for us (or healthy, if we could do it - for reasons I've already listed). If Vulcans are more emotional than us - that is to say more extreme in their emotional responses, then realistically it should be even less possible for them.

The fact is, emotions serve a purpose, which is why they weren't bred out of us by natural selection ages ago. Take fear, for example. Fear is a big part of the survival instinct. A creature that recognizes a deadly threat, feels fear, and when that happens the body starts producing adrenaline, which sort of "supercharges" the body, allowing it temporarily to exceed its normal physical capabilities - to be stronger or to run faster etc. and thus improve the creature's chance to defeat or escape the threat. So in such a case, the emotion of fear can be a definite advantage in a survival situation (as long as it doesn't degenerate in to panic - but then creatures that give way to panic generally do not survive, and are removed from the gene pool by natural selection).

Other emotions provide similar advantage. Love, for example motivates people to give their loyalty to families and other groups, which is an advantage, since strongly knit groups are better able to survive than individuals, generally speaking.

There is a good reason we have emotions. They have been reinforced in us by millions of years of evolution. That alone would make it impossible for us to suppress them completely. It would also make it very unwise if we could do it.

A far better course would be to embrace a philosophy such as stoicism, which advocates mastering one's emotions, not discarding them.

[Slartibartfast]

McCoy's arguments were based solely on emotion. Spock solely on logic. See the differences in the way they approached a problem.

That's also why neither of them was the captain

[neoolong]

McCoy's arguments were based solely on emotion. Spock solely on logic. See the differences in the way they approached a problem.

That's also why neither of them was the captain

And why Kirk was.

[His Divine Shadow]

Comments? Is the entire Vulcan society based on pillars of bullshit?

Might just be something they've convinced themselves of.
As I remember Vulcans are very very emotional creatures, to the point where it can interefere with their ability to think logically.
And then some geezer came up with a doctrine(thankfully nothing like the Path of Forever, shut-up Kohr-Ah fans) that was based on controlling and supressing your emotions so they wouldn't go "Hi, lovely weather we're- RAWWWRGHGGH DIIEEEE!!!!" all the time

[Kamakazie Sith]

The Vulcans seem to have a serious problem with their emotions, perhaps in order for them to function logically they need to surpress their emotions. Given what we've had explained to us through various episodes this seems to be the most logical conclusion.