Question My teacher claims that he is utterly emotionless; according to him, he isn’t clouded by emotions of any form, and has no emotional desire. He argues that any emotions he appears to possess are simply superficial occurrences, with the purpose of manipulating others. He argues that he is utterly objective and consequently, completely exclusive from any form of bias. My question is that surely somebody who objectively chooses to use logic over any form of emotional guidance and has “no emotional desire whatsoever”, is therefore exhibiting a desire in itself? Surely, if one assumes logic as their only form of reasoning, the logic must be based upon basic desires and principles, therefore denoting an emotional presence? I would be grateful if somebody could enlighten me!

Accepted:
June 24, 2010

Comments

Are you studying under Spock from Star Trek? You are on to what sometimes is called the paradox of desire. If one seeks to be rid of desire, one seems to be in the paradoxical position of desiring to be without desires, which is as hopeless as deliberately trying to go to sleep. Still, like going to sleep, it seems we can indirectly achieve this through relaxing and, arguably, someone may endeavor to be rid of desire by going into a state of what the stoics called apotheos (from which we get the English term apathy) a process of shedding desire rather than a state of desiring to be rid of desire. Richard Sorabji has a terrific book on the Stoics' project of taming and then either eradicating or simply moderating desire. If one is working with a general understanding of desire which would include wants and appetites it seems very hard to imagine a complete eradication of desire (can one really give up on the desire to breathe?)

I worry that framing the question this way begs the question -- you seem to assume that any 'choice' comes from or out of 'desire', but isn't that precisely what's at issue? I think we'd need to get a lot clearer on what a 'desire' is before we could answer the question in a satisfactory way ... For example, you seem to consider 'desire' a kind of 'emotion', but philosophers of mind typically would distinguish the two in various ways -- perhaps desires share a kind of 'qualitative character' or 'qualia' with emotions, but desires are typically characterized by having an object or content, one often expressible in words, in a way emotions are typically characterized as 'raw feelings' that may or may not have a specific object or content -- Once you separate desires from emotions, you then need to define desire in such a way as to make it clear that every choice comes from some desire ..... (Charles mentions Spock -- consider this thought. Suppose you could program a computer to do all sorts of complex tasks, including navigating its environment successfully. Maybe it's a robot that's programmed to explore the surface of Mars and send back data. That robot seems to have to make all sorts of 'choices' -- as it navigates its terrain, taking samples of some things, not others -- but do you want to say it has any desires? If not, why must all human choices come from desire?)