Emotions

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Emotions are a response to your value-judgments of a particular object, person, event, etc.; and in order for man to have a legitimate value-judgment of something he must first know something about it. Reason gives him knowledge, and his value-judgments, based on that knowledge, give him emotions. Thus, man cannot have emotions without first possessing knowledge; in addition, the extent of his knowledge of something will determine his emotional involvement in it.

For example: A man sitting in a room is being witnessed by three other men, each with their own knowledge of him. The first witness knows the man as his brother, and feels ashamed; the second witness does not know the man at all, and therefore feels nothing for him, good or bad; the third witness knows this man as his wife's murderer, and feels rage against him. They all three have different feelings (based on their individual value-judgments), yet they are judging the same man.

Every emotion has a cause, and it is the responsibility of the rational mind to explore any emotion that is unaccounted for, and check its validity against the facts of reality.