Submitted by AlexTurpin on 02/23/2008 11:56 AM Flag This Paper
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In order to make a decision spurring from moral considerations, as humans, we use consent as the basis of our moral and ethical decisions that affect people and relationships. We cannot know everything, but if we listen to one another, we can check and balance our decisions, mediate, and agree upon the best solutions based on all available input, information and possibilities. As long as we take into account any objections from ourselves or others and resolve those, decisions made by consensus satisfy both emotion and logic without contradicting one or the other. This is the ideal, so both reason and emotion are necessary for this process.
Reason and logic help to sort out what is contradictory and what would satisfy all conditions to maximize the good, minimize the suffering or sacrifice, and verify where the groups affected agree is equally fair to all concerned. However, emotions can guide us into the past or future, to ideas beyond our conscious knowledge that we may not otherwise consider in the equation. Intuition plays a far greater role in decisions than our limited logic can justify. In the end, unconscious, moral drives are what guides us by our emotions, and is the source of new ideas or revelations.
Reason is needed to bridle the creative innovative side of human nature that pushes us to better ourselves, to do more to improve our current or past situations. Both can actually help to balance each other. However, reason cannot be applied without the help of emotional "feel" of what is true or false, what is right or wrong, or what seems better or worse to the ideal situation.
The two work together, but emotion and unconscious feeling drives our reasoning, which is used to sort out the signals and choices to reconcile with practical circumstances, including how our decisions affect others