Emotion is a weakness in decision making.

Without further ado, I'll present my argument, starting with a revised definition:1. Emotion: physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience. [1]Prefer my definition for three reasons:1. It more completely captures what it is when we use the word "emotion" as covering a wide range of experiences from within the subjective experience.2. Fairness: My opponent's definition already creates a pretense for an emotion having to be something strong, unfairly skewing the perception of what it is we're talking about.3. My opponent's definition's are circular; emotion relies on the definition of feeling and feeling relies on a definition of emotion. ----Argument 1: On rationality: A: my opponent's argumentMy opponent attempts to argue that emotional response to any situation is irrational, and attempts to provide two examples, both of which I do not feel demonstrate anything of particular interest, nor do they prove his point. In the first (vaguely sexist) example he lays out a situation in which two people (A and B) share a common love interest C, and use what seems to be inductive reasoning to reach their conclusion. Person A uses an appeal to the stability of their relationship, while Person B appeals to testimony. My opponent says that the real problem is person C, but that isn't entirely clear. The problem more seems to stem from a desire to retain being exclusive. The whole matter at hand is not really what the debate is about, but even if it were, this is a non-starter. It doesn't matter if they're failing to grasp the entirety of the situation, the actual argument set up by my opponent seems to have two people making reasonable arguments given their position, though not particularly well reasoned arguments. My opponent's example of Senator Kyl making a false claim is also a non-starter in this debate; the fact that Kyl grossly exaggerated how many abortions Planned Parenthood performs has little to nothing to do with emotion; it has everything to do with dishonest political ethics and an attempt to sway fellow senators based on something that seems like an objective source; again, this seems like something based on reason. My opponent makes some argument about how this is an emotional tactic, but why this is so isn't entirely clear. His claim that this leads to terrible outcomes in the end is also unfounded, as we have no empirical evidence presented. B: Human irrationalityRegardless, there's no reason to believe that rationality leads to preferable outcomes, or that we are even capable of behaving an a coherent or rational methods [2]. Furthermore, there's no reason to think that rationality is particularly good, it might just be a useful way for creating a dichotomy between certain types of behaviors. Still, there's no reason to believe that there is some relationship between good outcomes and rationality. -------Argument 2: Decision makingGame Theory is a field of applied mathematics that is central to the fields of Economics, Finance Theory, Psychology, and Political Science; it is a method of measuring how we make decisions. In specific, it examines in particular how we make decisions and assumes that we are all rational actors. This is relevant to the argument in this key way: emotions are simply payoff modifiers, meaning that the way in which we act is still rational with emotions, it's just that emotions modify how we act. However, in the end, we still go for whatever we value the most at that particular time slice, meaning that emotions are a component of the decision making process. [3] [4]Let's unpack this a bit and take a look at a counter example where a person has no emotions. It seems intuitive to us that the person suddenly has little, to no reason to act or exert any decision making prowess beyond fulfilling the basic requirements of eating and keeping oneself alive. In a world where we have advanced to a point where we no longer need to worry about fulfilling our basic beliefs, a world without emotion seems impressively stark and devoid of most anything other than eating. My opponent may make the argument that we'll still have desires, but these desires only exist to meet basic emotional states; I do things to enjoy myself; enjoyment is an emotion as per the provided definition. Almost all decisions beyond immediate survival have some emotional component. When I kiss my girlfriend, there is an emotional component, likewise, when I run to the subway to catch my train, that's driven by an emotional desire to be on time. The entirety of my behavior is based on how I value things, which is driven by emotional impulses and justifications [5]Why is this key to the entire argument? If emotion is a part of the decision making process like I argue that it is, that would mean that a part of the decision making process weakens itself. First off, this seems to be intuitively wrong, we don't say that the decision making process is weak because we value things, we say that the decision making process is valuable because it helps us reach the things that we value. If emotion plays ANY central role in the decision making process, then it is not a detrimental factor, since the process itself is based off of emotion. ---Argument 3: Emotion can help us make better decisions. My opponent focuses on unclear emotions to show that they provide poor basis for action. However, we can just as easily imagine cases where emotion helps make us better decisions. Here are two examples:1. I am making a decision as to where I should go to a party. My options are in a crime ridden area, or in a relatively safe part of town. I also happen to have a general fear of crime and a general enjoyment of my physical and emotional well being, things which I don't need to say are rooted in emotion. I decide to go to the safer part of town. Over all, this seems like a better decision than one where I could have arbitrarily chosen either.2. I am attempting to decide whether to grade papers or enjoy myself, knowing that choosing the latter would severely delay the former. I realize that I value my students more than my own enjoyment, and that the shame would otherwise make me distraught were I not to grade their papers. I make the decision to grade their papers based on how my emotions guide my actions. -------Overview of the RoundThe resolution is Negation-Centric. Since it doesn't deal with any epistemic or metaphysical claims, it should not be evaluated as a system where inference to the best explanation functions. Instead, a constructive account about ethics needs to account for all possibilities [6]1a Is terminal defense, in the sense that it attempts to show that my opponent's main points don't lead to any particular conclusion in general, and that it doesn't do enough work to lead you to vote for pro. Don't let my opponent bring up completely new Pro arguments or ad hoc arguments, as that skews my own ground as I have to respond to more examples. If my opponent had good examples, they should have have been there from the start.1b. Functions as weak offense; if it obtains, if there's even a risk of you believing the con position, you should vote con, since there's no reason to buy into the Pro position if there's no reason to think that rationality is good. 2 and 3 Function as pure offense: If either of them pass, then you're going to immediately vote for Con, because Pro must be sufficiently robust as an ethical system to account for them.1. Myers, David G. (2004) "Theories of Emotion. " Psychology: Seventh Edition, p. 500.2. Ariely, Dan Predictably Irrational. . http://asset.soup.io... 3 Dresher, Melvin Games of Strategy 3rd Ed4. BdM, Principles of International Politics. 2000. 5. Frankfurt, Harry Reasons of Love. 2004.6. Street, Sharon In Defense of Future Tuesday Indifference