Notwithstanding the special situations where emotional responses are useful or even crucial, it is highly risky to rely upon them as sources of knowledge in cases where full conscious analysis is possible—as, for example, in the determination of basic principles in philosophy, logic, ethics, or human action. The misuse of emotions or intuition as the ultimate tools of cognition in these areas is a major source of the most grievous and destructive errors.

The habit of treating feelings as cognitive instruments is deeply entrenched in contemporary culture, as evidenced in popular language. For instance, in lieu of logical defenses of a policy ("I think we should pursue policy X because..."), we hear the constant refrain: "I feel we should pursue policy X." That subjectivist epistemology will be firmly rejected here, in favor of logical inferences from observable reality.