> I see nothing in your link that indicates rational is the opposition of emotional, or that rational presupposes a lack of emotion, or that rationality is incompatible with emotion, or that rationality is inversely proportional to emotionality.
> 1. Rational decisions and thoughts are based on reason rather than on emotion.
> 2. A rational person is someone who is sensible and is able to make decisions based on intelligent thinking rather than on emotion.
Meanwhile, this incorrectly conflates emotional responses with using empathy to predict how people would respond:
> the most rational thing to do in that moment was apply empathy to understand the man's emotions and choose a good tact that takes them into consideration.
By separating them, you correctly stated that rational thinking is not the same as empathy. Using empathy to understand someone's feelings and how they'll respond to an action is a good thing, but it is factually (see above definitions) and categorically not the same as using your brain and being rational.
It's hard to understand how you read that story above and didn't realize that what's going on is that the observer uses empathy to obtain information to use as inputs to a rational decision process. The empathy is NOT part of rational thinking or analysis, any more than learning some information from a textbook and applying that logically makes textbooks part of rational thinking.
Above, you said:
> understand the critical nature of things like empathy in rational analysis
...stating that empathy and emotions are part of rational analysis. They're not, as proved by both my statements, and by the dictionary definitions I was able to find rather easily.
At this point, it'd be better for you to admit that you're wrong and do some self-reflection than continue to argue with the dictionary, because it's clear that either you're not speaking the English that the rest of the world is, or that you're using the words correctly but literally don't comprehend what they mean.
I guess I have to spell it out for you:
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/eng...
> (of behaviour, ideas, etc.) based on reason rather than emotions
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/english-language-learni...
> 1. Rational decisions and thoughts are based on reason rather than on emotion.
> 2. A rational person is someone who is sensible and is able to make decisions based on intelligent thinking rather than on emotion.
Meanwhile, this incorrectly conflates emotional responses with using empathy to predict how people would respond:
> the most rational thing to do in that moment was apply empathy to understand the man's emotions and choose a good tact that takes them into consideration.
By separating them, you correctly stated that rational thinking is not the same as empathy. Using empathy to understand someone's feelings and how they'll respond to an action is a good thing, but it is factually (see above definitions) and categorically not the same as using your brain and being rational.
It's hard to understand how you read that story above and didn't realize that what's going on is that the observer uses empathy to obtain information to use as inputs to a rational decision process. The empathy is NOT part of rational thinking or analysis, any more than learning some information from a textbook and applying that logically makes textbooks part of rational thinking.
Above, you said:
> understand the critical nature of things like empathy in rational analysis
...stating that empathy and emotions are part of rational analysis. They're not, as proved by both my statements, and by the dictionary definitions I was able to find rather easily.
At this point, it'd be better for you to admit that you're wrong and do some self-reflection than continue to argue with the dictionary, because it's clear that either you're not speaking the English that the rest of the world is, or that you're using the words correctly but literally don't comprehend what they mean.