Reason & Emotion

James R. Robinson finds ways of bridging the gap (or not).

- James R. Robinson

The heart and the mind, that is, emotion and reason, are often said to be in opposition. This is not so! This article aims to enhance our consciousness of the connection between the two.

Here, when I use the word ‘reason’, I will be referring to three distinct concepts. The first two are the faculty of reason – which is the power of thinking, comprehending, or inferring – and a reason – which is a spoken, written, or thought the statement of justification or explanation. The third use of the word ‘reason’ refers to the rationality or reasonableness of a statement or set of statements. This third use of the word involves judging, according to some given criteria, whether a specific statement of justification or explanation (a reason) is sufficiently rational or not – that is, as to whether the reason is a rational reason! For example, the statement: “I want to go to the corner shop to buy some tropical fish” contains the explanation ‘because I want to buy some tropical fish’. This statement, however, might not seem rational to someone who knew that the shop is a grocers and not an aquarium.