Questions for debate:

Do you believe that reason is more important than emotion or vice/versa?

Do you believe that society should make an effort instill reasoning skills in its children?

Do you believe we as a society are becoming more or less reasonable?

The romantic period isn't a favorite of mine, I'll leave it at that for now...

A balance between instinct and logic is important, but both are about equally valuable. I wouldn't say that you should live your life through emotion persay, but gut feelings are oftentimes more reliable than well thought out and analyzed logic.

Reasoning skills are exteremely important. Critical thinking should definitely be emphasized more in our children's education for the simple fact that it is essential to lifelong learning, despite the fact that we all hate word problems.

1. Neither one is "more important," and in fact they cannot survive without each other. Despite the science fiction concept of the emotionless robot, they are both part of the mystery of consciousness, and cannot be separated.

2. Sure. Who can argue against teaching anyone better reasoning skills? Would it not also be a good idea to try to instill the proper appreciation of the profound and complex depths of emotion as well?

3. No change, really. There has always been a lot of superstition around, and there always will be. Meanwhile, science keeps making slow and steady progress. In the very long run (centuries) I think humanity is becoming a little more reasonable -- at least part of humanity -- just because there has been an increase in knowledge.

4. I like the Romantic Period and I like the Classical Period. Reason and emotion, the sciences and the humanities; all are vital.

I would give a slight edge to reason, but ignoring emotion can be dangerous. I think we've all seen ideologues who will dismiss the human cost of their pet theories as being an appeal to emotion.
IMHO, using reason to evaluate the views you have arrived at through emotion is the best way to understand your own views.
Of course.
We are becoming more reasonable. Illogic and superstition still exist, but our rational understanding is continually growing- a rationalist today holds more rational views than a rationalist 100 years ago, because we have discovered how more and more things work. For that same reason, a superstitious person today is more rational than one 100 years ago.

I believe reason is much more important than emotion. Emotions, for the most part, are irrelevant and tend to just get in the way of making decisions based on clear, direct facts.

Of course I believe society should make an effort to instill reasoning skills in it's children - there needs to be much more emphasis on this than there currently is.

In American society, which is really all I can speak for, I believe we are becoming less reasonable. I base this on the rapidly growing presence of religion, which I see as being the antithesis of reason.

Would "value judgement" be part of reason or emotion... or both? Because we daily make decisions based on these "value judgements". I'd go with that they're equally important, although in certain circumstances, one be more important (e.g., I want less emotions in the paramedics that extract my body from a car wreck, but I want less reason from my gf when we're in the throws of passion, etc.).

I don't believe that society should instill reasoning in kids. That's really a parent's role, since it's something that had better be there by age 5.

Society is becoming more "reason-oriented", although not sure that they're more "reasonable" because of it.

I have a reputation for being hyper-rational, but I think a lot of people who claim reason as a virtue need to understand that reason does not preclude altruism or intuition. For example, consider the good old Prisoners' Dilemma. It's well known that a selfish opportunistic strategy is not optimal. What's less well known is that the same is true even for complex opportunistic strategies; "cooperate most of the time but try to get away with a defection every once in a while" still fails. The classic and simple "tit for tat" strategy still tends to outperform all but a few alternatives, and those few strategies are always variants of "tit for tat" that have even more of a bias toward cooperation, such as "tit for two tats" (which forgives the first defection). These spontaneously-cooperating variants succeed even though there's no specific expectation, at any finite time horizon, that the cooperation will be repaid. Such strategies perform better than any attempt to outguess an opponent. The same dynamics tend to apply in more complex situations from traffic gridlock to cooperate/compete decisions in business. What does around really does come around, and it's not irrational to factor that into decision-making. True "enlightened self-interest" incorporates not just gamesmanship but knowledge of system-level effects as well, and is very different than the sort of pseudo-rationality often espoused in a political or economic context.

I can't do an either/or on this. I don't see reason and emotion as oppositional forces, and I think that they both play a vital role in shaping our society. It's true that at times, emotion can lead people to do irrational things, but it also leads people to creation.



Absolutely. Reasoning skills are very valuable, as are emotional skills. Can you imagine what the world would be like with a bunch of Vulcans running around?



I don't think that we are any more reasonable than our ancestors, but we do have a greater knowledge base to work from than our ancestors did, which certainly helps give the appearance that we are more reasonable.