Aesthetics, Emotions, and Logics

Abstract

I have always liked the idea that our emotional response determined which of many possible logics we used in a given situation. It has face validity for me. And perhaps because I liked it, I never asked the next question - why do we have a particular emotional reaction in a given situation? I know that I am capable of having very different emotional reactions to very similar things and that others can have very different emotional reactions than I do to the very same thing. Why is that? What determines our choice (albeit unconscious and usually automatic in the same way that our choice of logic is unconscious and usually automatic) of a particular emotional response in a given situation? As you have probably already guessed, the answer is aesthetics.