But what of those more intelligent beings who’s minds will always win over the heart? Hearts are impulsive, but the mind always does the right thing by the container it’s in, so what does that make a person who thinks rather than feels?
One wouldn’t be very bright at all if they let their mind win over their heart in any major decision. I would think that the heart wouldn’t forgive the mind for insisting against something it wanted. I don’t think the heart can be diminished once it’s there, it can only be turned negative. I think the goal of one who wishes to live more rationally would be to avoid letting the heart grow bigger in the first place, by I guess just avoiding and ignoring the emotions of others. That way it will never want much. But, even still the mind would have to give into that diminutive heart on the occasion that it does want something.
A parent, a teacher, a doctor, nurse, caregivers must put the heart aside often.
The biggest problem with a big heart is that at times, intentionally, other times inadvertently. Others will either see you as stupid (after taking advantage), or,
Irresolutely and seriously backward; or both.
Still others will see it as a ploy, an inside job trying to gain something, a dishonest show of character.
Still others as a sign of immaturity, of not having gone through the stages, or a sign of mental retardation. However, in any case, final judgment. Will be suspended, until the verdict is whether perhaps, a perverted and compulsive religiosity, as in a borderline pathology is showing it’s bizarre head, or whether some true religious fervor has taken hopelessly root.
Finally, with all these possibilities abounding, its most probable that the overall conclusion based on consensus is more of the above.
So intelligence wins, usually as a rule.
MagsJ
But that’s not true. It’s only seeing one side of the picture. Was it the heart which went into Nazi Germany to save the Jewish people from annihilation? It was a combination of both the heart and the mind. I think probably that most important things are accomplished by using a harmony of both - discriminate thinking and discriminate emotion.
I kind of disagree with your "always’ here. But I may be wrong. There may be some whose minds always win over the heart - but they kind of lose something human. They are more like robots. But there are times when the mind must transcend the heart or perhaps it just appears that it does. Perhaps it is positive human emotion which spurs the mind to do the greatest good, no matter if there be immediate cost. Sentimentality is not necessarily based on real caring - it can defeat it.
I don’t necessarily feel that hearts are impulsive. Some individuals may be but some are also rooted in love and compassion which isn’t necessarily impulsive but acts responsibly.
The mind doesn’t always do the right thing if it is not guided by a sense of humanness. It may become a psychopath.
Perhaps it is not always easy to determine which it is which rules and guides us at the moment - the mind or the heart. Perhaps one would have to know the individual.
Could this thread be renamed: unconscious over conscious?
Which one is usually one step ahead of the other?
For some, the heart is the last resort, after so many missteps, with nothing left, even the intelligence abandons. What is left?
A person who Thinks rather than feels, which would mean they do not feel, is lost. Very lost.
What is heart and what is mind? Is there gut, also?
You can also be an idiot but let your mind run your emotions.
You can be very intelligent and be run by your feelings.
There’s even not having a big split.
And naive. When I asked which one–the conscious or the unconscious–is usually one step ahead of the other, I asked it even in this context: those who think they are lead with the intellect rather than the heart are probably being persuaded by the heart (unconsciously) to let the intellect lead (with the heart unconsciously nudging it this way or that whenever it needs to).
One problem is that we can never be that sure to what extent the mind is acting in behalf of the heart.
For instance, one can’t help but feel that those who obsessively embrace such notions as logic, the scientific method, and logic are merely responding to an instinctual need for order and an intense aversion to disorder. Such people, were I to bring up the import of resonance and seduction in intellectual inquiry, would deny the influence of such baser human instincts in their process. They would argue to be above it which, in itself, suggests a more base impulse of a need for power. But still, one could reasonably argue that what is at work is is the resonance and seduction of order. They may claim to have left the heart behind. But you have to question to what extent they actually have.
Ultimately, I have to question the possibility of any intellectual process being purely cognitive.
There’sthat possiblility. They could also be being led by one single portion of ‘the heart’ which does not want to feel fear or loss of Control. there are other possibilities as well. But your Point about conscious vs. unconscious is important. Those who suppress their emotions, not surprisingly, are often the ones who know the least how they are affected by them.
Emotions/love/unconscious//intellect/rationalization/ conscious- are not equalent and quantifiable. There are loving parts to emotions, as there are unconscious parts of loving type emotions.
Some manifestations of love are conscious emotions, some unconscious. We usually act on the conscious parts by effecting behaviors befitting those emotions.
The same goes for the intellect, some are rational, some are unconscious.
So the question is : do subconscious knowledge connect with unknown ,un expressed emotion? And when they do, can an interpretation made of them, as in an analysis of dreams?
This makes the whole issue of hear over mind matters that much more complicated.
They say most things conscious or unconscious have their reasons, why he effect the heart or the intellect.
According to the above reasoning, no definitive answer can be given as to the emphasis the psyche places on one or the other, because of the anomalie between them is further confused by the various shades of meanings and feelings associated with our awareness of them.
However, I think once the gamut of how we think the intellect can be effective in our relationships runs it’s course, our feelings take up the slack, and we basically by gut level instincts.
And there are unconscious thoughts, even.
I did ask back aways for some clarification.
And some of the unconsciuos is rational. And much of the conscious is irrational.
My aim was not to focus on linguistic preoccupations., but to show how a hierachy of attitide/values can shift from the intellect to matters of heart, when analysis comes to a blockage or return circularly to the same concern, via an undifferentiated conscious/unconscious dynamic.
I wasn’t directly responding to you, this is true, but my Point was more that I Think there is a lot of confusion involved in these terms, but also in the ‘organs’ they are referring to. Not simply as a linguistic issue, but as a ‘what is actually going on issue’.
There seem to be at least three elements involved here: the heart, emotions, and the unconscious. I think we need to be clear as to the subtle differences between these as I myself was guilty of confounding them earlier. Based on the way we talk about “the heart,” it seems fair to say it is the seat of our emotions, but I sense a strong connection exists between the heart and the unconscious–almost as though they could be spoken of interchangeably (this, no doubt, has a lot to do with a theory of emotions I had a long time ago). It might be that emotions are often signals of unconscious stirrings–as when we’re depressed or angry and we don’t know why. So if the heart is the seat of our emotions, and emotions are sometimes signals of unconscious stirrings, then the heart at least has a hand in the unconscious.
You can also have unconscious thoughts, of course, but these seem to be things that are made unconscious. The heart is that which decides what to make conscious or unconscious.
Just a suggestion: I Think thought vs. emotions is a Little clearer than heart. it’s still not quite within the philosophical tradition - since mind would include emotions and heart stuff - but I Think it is better. Here’s why: 1) heart carries connotations of love and care, and emotions are obviuosly much broader. You likely would include all emotions under heart, but I Think it can be misleading or make some people reluctant to attribute certain things to the heart, like say ‘rage’ or ‘terror’. 2) We also have gut. as in gut feelings. Here we often have very diffuse and or very strong emotions, triggered by things we may have an even harder time explaining than we do things we associate with ‘heart.’ But they are still emotions. If we have thoughts vs. emotions, then we do not have to Think about the whole gut feeling and what they are issue. (there is also scientific support for feeling centers in both the heart and the gut, where there are huge nerve complexes, the largest outside the brain.
Then we have a simpler grid with four boxes conscious emotions, conscious thoughts, unconscious emotions, unconsciuos thoughts.
Which is ironic because the origins of the “heart” being the seat of emotion comes from those emotions which were most correlated with racing hearts: principally terror.
Yes, I’ve heard of that… but do you think these nerve centers have anything to do with emotion?
Perception of relating ideas of correct interpretation of the connections of conscious and subconscious elements within the whole complex of the nervous system as a whole, rather than any particular nerve center, is most determinate of emotion I think. We may feel as if fear start from gut level, but it begins with a signal perceived within an interpretive context. The heart is between the gut and the brain. It seems like, a locator of values in terms of an emotional grid, both: physiologically and psychologically.
Sure, though I actually feel terror in my belly first, then my heart races, I start to sweat, my thinking goes haywire…etc.
Absolutely. I also Think emotions are not limited to nerves - Candace Pert, neuroscientist, make this argument based on receptors found throughout the body in Molecules of Emotions. I also found research in (possibly) The spiritual anatomy of emotion : how feelings link the brain, the body, and the sixth sense. I have read this book, but it might not be the right one. But they found that some neural processes being in the heart and gut and these stimulate the brain. IOW they set things in motion, not the other way around. They’ve also found that glial cells play a role in ‘mind’ taken as a whole. These function more slowly than neurons and spread effects less linearly. My guess is that mind will be found to be in much more of the body than we currently Think it is. Even in the last ten years much evidence has come in to support folk theories of mind, including those around hearts and gut feelings.