Many people perpetuate a strict dichotomy between reason/emotion, logic/feelings, apathy/passion, skepticism/faith, and so on. This has the dual consequences of falsely validating both (1) the logic lord who justifies his lack of consideration for others on the grounds that it's "more logical" and also (2) the new age woo-believer who justifies his anti-empiricism and anti-rationalism on the grounds that it's "more considerate" and "less cold-hearted".

I think this dichotomy, in all its variations, is fundamentally misguided. In practice, though, it's quite difficult to argue with someone who upholds this dichotomy because they frequently equivocate on what it actually means to subscribe to either reason or emotion. In the examples below, I try to disentangle this horrendous web of associations in order to arrive at a stance which should be agreeable to everybody:

Reason/Emotion Example: Consider a mother observing her son playing in the playground, when he bumps into something and falls down, causing him to start crying. Immediately, the mother has an emotional reaction characterized by concern. Corresponding to this emotional response is an intuitive judgment—to rush over to the child, validate his crying, and nourish his wounds. An inexperienced mother would likely act upon this intuitive judgment; but this would be contrary to reason, which instead understands that the child is overreacting to his wounds only because his mother validates this overreaction with comfort. It would therefore be better to approach the child calmly in order to assess the severity of his wounds and—after determining that he isn't seriously injured—encouraging him to keep playing, but to be more careful going forward.

This is the appropriate judgment arrived at through the sober practice of reason. Importantly, it is NOT in conflict with the emotional reaction, but with the initial intuitive judgment. The emotion itself (i.e. concern) is perfectly understandable and healthy; what was inappropriate was acting reflexively on this emotion without considering the perverse incentives (i.e. child overreacting) that this action (i.e. kissing his wounds) would inadvertently encourage. This is why it's not accurate to conceive of reason and emotion as fundamentally in opposition. In fact, emotion informs our values and reason then operates upon these values in order to make decisions about how to act. What are really opposed is reason (i.e. sober reflection) and intuition (i.e. reflexive judgment). Interestingly, it's important to note that our intuitive judgments are not set in stone. The more we practice reason, the better we train our intuitions to be. This is why a more experienced parent doesn't immediately rush over to kiss their child's wounds; not because they are more intelligent and are consciously reasoning through the consequences of that behavior, but because they've trained their intuitions in response to what their experience as a parent (in addition to sober reflection) has taught them.

Apathy/Passion Examples:

• Consider the person who fetishizes a calm demeanor versus an impassioned speech. The austere and "distinguished" white supremacist is not thereby more likely to be correct than the impassioned Cornel West fighting for civil rights; in fact, in this case, the apathy of the white supremacist is a reflection of his detachment from the real civil rights issues affecting black Americans, and correspondingly Cornel West's passion is a reflection of his genuine concern for and engagement with these very same civil rights issues.
• Consider the person who argues that, ostensibly, since values cannot be derived without emotion, that it is therefore more logical to forego values altogether. This approach fundamentally misunderstands the role of logic/reason, which is to operate upon emotions in order to form appropriate judgments, NOT to exclude emotions outright, as if they weren't a perfectly valid aspect of human experience. To the person who believes otherwise, that emotions are fundamentally flawed, one must ask why? and why wouldn't this apply to logic/reason just as well?
• Consider the person who believes that self-interest is somehow logically justified, whereas concern for others is always ONLY motivated by feelings. In fact, both egoism and altruism (qua ethical theories) are grounded in feelings; that is, I feel a certain desire and so I should act in accordance with that desire, OR, I feel sympathy for others and so I should act to help them. But, logic/reason may be operated upon these feelings so as to determine the course of actions which best achieves my self-interest (egoism) or which best achieves the greatest well-being for all people (altruism). There's nothing about self-interest which is necessarily "more logical" than concern for others, since both behaviors originate in feelings and can be guided by the light of reason. [Note: forgive my bastardization of the terms 'egoism' and 'altruism' in this example, just move past that point to understand the underlying message]

Skepticism/Faith Example 1: Consider a woman who is conflicted about whether to initiate a relationship with a man. On the one hand, she loves him and shares many interests with him and can see herself living the rest of her life with him, and she also is reaching the age to where she will soon want to start a family. On the other hand, he's currently unemployed and she recently got out of an abusive relationship and is worried about inadvertently entering another one.

In popular presentations of the reason vs. emotion dichotomy, reason should prioritize the woman's skepticism and ultimately dissuade her from initiating the relationship, whereas emotion should encourage the woman to have faith in her love for him and to ignore any doubts to the contrary. This dichotomy is utterly confused. In fact, both reason and emotion will drive the woman's both skepticism and faith:

• The skepticism can be motivated by reason insofar as the man's precarious financial status casts doubt on their ability to properly raise children should they choose to do so, and his (potential) proclivity for abuse or her susceptibility to being abused threatens the possibility of repeating the mistakes from the previous relationship.
• The skepticism can be motivated by emotion insofar as the woman is traumatized by her past abusive relationship and is currently unable to open herself up to new partners out of fear, thereby making the prospect of a new relationship currently unfeasible.
• The faith can be motivated by reason insofar as the man and woman really do share lots of interests that will make the relationship healthy and productive, and insofar as entering into this relationship will be an important next step for the woman both in terms of moving past her previous abusive relationship and also in terms of her approaching the age where she will naturally desire to start a family.
• The faith can be motivated by emotion insofar as the woman has a strong feeling of love for the man and experiences a persistent desire to be with him due to the tremendous enjoyment which she receives by being in a relationship with him.

Ultimately, the woman's decision (whether or not to initiate the relationship) should be guided by reason and sound deliberation; but this should not be at the expense of but rather in relation to emotional considerations—like her readiness to enter into another relationship after just getting out of an abusive one, or the subjective value which she places on financial security in a relationship, or the genuine enjoyment she receives from being in a relationship with someone whom she loves, and the potential desire to have biological children and raise them in a healthy marriage.

Skepticism/Faith Example 2: Consider a poor black woman striving to achieve something great against all odds. All her life, everyone who has ever been successful has been affluent, white, and male. Ostensibly, according to reason, this poor black woman shouldn't even bother trying to succeed because (statistically) she will almost definitely fail and end up in a worse position than if she had maintained more moderate aspirations instead. Nevertheless, motivated by an unshakeable faith in herself, she reaches for the stars and eventually succeeds, proving everyone else wrong and demonstrating the limits of reason alone.

Is this in fact a demonstration of the limits of reason? Not really. We're emotionally drawn to these kinds of success stories, leading us to believe that merely because things turned out favorably for the woman that she must have made the correct decision. This is just as fallacious as a lottery winner believing that buying lottery tickets is a good retirement strategy just because he got lucky. If in fact, as stipulated in the above story, the woman really risked losing everything in order to 'achieve greatness' despite having open to her the option of achieving moderate success much more reliably, then—even though there's not a categorical reason to choose the safer option—it really would be reasonable to think VERY carefully about the risk being undertaken. It may be the case that in certain niche circumstances, where the person is truly dedicated to and capable of achieving greatness and fully understands and accepts the risks, that the woman's decision was rationally justified, but absent this process of sober deliberation, it would not be good to act on mere passion/faith alone, whether or not she ended up succeeding. Once again, the fool who rests his retirement on the lottery is not vindicated, but rescued, by luck.

So, such stories should not be used to advocate for the use of emotion or passion in lieu of reason when making (important) decisions. Moreover, it should not be construed to mean that reason always motivates skepticism and emotion always motivates faith, since my elaboration above clearly lays out a rational case for having faith in one's self and taking the risk; likewise, emotion could just as well breed skepticism if the person's primary emotions were self-doubt, fear, insecurity, and so on instead.

Mental Illness Example: Consider a person who is anxious and depressed. At a rational/intellectual level, this person most likely understands that their thoughts/feelings (e.g. "Everybody is looking at me and thinks I'm stupid"; "I'm such a burden on everybody"; "Nobody cares about me, they would be better off if I were dead") are not well-founded, i.e., likely false and always counterproductive. This self-awareness is a big source of frustration because the person understands what they need to do in order to improve and that many of their reflexive thoughts/feelings are inhibiting this goal. Nevertheless, at an emotional level, the anxious and depressed person can't help but have these thoughts/feelings. Even if they can articulate all of the reasons why these thoughts/feelings are baseless and counterproductive, they still experience them and their negative effects on one's psyche.

This is an area in which the division between reason and emotion is productive and meaningful.

There is a popular tendency to adopt one of either extreme between intuitions and principles regarding the way in which one formulates/updates their beliefs: intuitionism and dogmatism. Much like the reason/emotion dichotomy, this division is littered with associations which are difficult to disentangle. Ultimately, I think the process of reflective equilibrium resolves these tensions and confusions, and also more accurately relfects the way the people do (and ought to) reason.

Intuitionism:

• The intuitionist purely relies on intuitions about particular circumstances, dismissing the relevance of overarching systems / principles on the basis that "life is too complicated to be reduced to a set of principles."
• Pros: Usually leads to correct views on most questions, since our intuitions are well-trained by experience and conventional wisdom.
• Cons: Fails to account for general principles of reason like the principle of non-contradiction, i.e., there's nothing stopping two intuitions from conflicting; occasionally leads to very incorrect views on certain issues, especially those which one have not been scrutinized by a broad community (e.g. religious and political beliefs from insular communities); fails to motivative beliefs, leading to moral luck and the inability to reason about issues for which one lacks the necessary intuitions.

Dogmatism:

• The dogmatist uncompromisingly adheres to some set of doctrines, despite how undesirable the conclusions may be, insisting that "intuitions are unreliable" and "if I'm uncomfortable with the conclusion, that's just an emotional bias against reason."
• Pros: Forces one's views to cohere logically; good at challenging biases inculcated by one's experiences (e.g. learning from insular communities, or non-representative anecdotes).
• Cons: Fails to consider the fallibility of the principles which one adopts, and so insists that any conclusions derived from these principles must be correct; fails to consider the epistemic weight of intuitions, especially their role in both shaping and being shaped by broader principles.

Reflective Equilibrium: The healthy balance between intuitionism and dogmatism is reflective equilibrium.

Anyone who has learned a bit of philosophy or critical thinking has likely come across a list of formal and informal logical fallacies: ad hominem, begging the question, affirming the consequent, argumentum ad populum, appeal to authority, etc. At first, encountering these fallacies can prove to be quite exciting and useful, as one begins to recognize them all over the place, which aids one's attempts to think rationally. However, if one is perceptive, they will also quickly realize that many arguments which at first seem to employ one or more common fallacies in fact turn out to be logically valid, not fallacious at all. For instance, is it an ad hominem fallacy to point out that a media pundit is being funded by billionaires and so he is not a reliable commentator on their activities? Is it an argument ad populum fallacy to believe in scientific consensus because they are taken to be reliable indicators of the truth? Is it a fallacious appeal to authority to recommend that someone follow a professional doctor's advice compared to some crazy online blog post written by someone with no credentials in medicine or mechanism for being held accountable for misinformation?

What the above examples demonstrate is that many of these so-called fallacies aren't actually fallacious. What some defenders will say in response is that my examples aren't fallacious because they don't actually employ the fallacy which they purport to employ, they only seem to upon first glance. For instance, most of the inferences being made are from the reliability of certain sources of information to the likely truth of their statements. This is a valid inference, unlike the inferences employed by the fallacies (e.g. if someone has bad characteristics, then what they say should be rejected; if most people believe something, it's probably true; if someone has good characteristics, then what they say should be accepted). What's confusing, though, is that it's very easy to interpret my statements as invoking these fallacies, and in most actual contexts, people would not bat an eye if I were accused of employing these fallacies after making those statements. This can be summed up by the what's called the fallacy fork: Either a logical fallacy is so strictly defined that it's genuinely fallacious but almost never employed, or it's so loosely defined that many genuinely valid inferences can be accused of being fallacious by comparing them to one of this long list of so-called fallacies.