I view the concept of an emotional side and a reasoning side as just another form of dualism.
As for where you're applying causation: "In correct operation, the emotional side sets long-term goals and policy, which the reasoning side then tries to find the best ways to achieve." As if detailed actions are 'caused' or initiated by the reasoning side, in pursuit of goals 'set' by the emotions; in practice, all decisions and actions have interacting contributions of logic and 'gut feeling', and all attempts to separate and categorize the two are misguided.
Particularly so, when there is so much looping and recursion (and often, internal contradition) in the decision, within and between the 'logic' and 'emotion', that the concept of a causal chain is meaningless.
I doubt we're going to manage to reach any kind of synthesis here; "all attempts [...] are misguided" suggests to me that you won't be satisfied until I retract this entire post and recant my viewpoint completely. Which I won't do, because although your points about overlap and interaction are entirely reasonable I don't think they invalidate the entire approach. The dividing line is certainly pretty fuzzy, but that doesn't stop it from being a meaningful concept: many concepts without a sharply defined boundary are useful concepts nonetheless.
In particular, I disagree that in practice most or all decisions have so much intermingling of both sides that it's impossible to tell where any given impulse came from. I think in many entirely practical cases, it can be pretty clear one way or the other.
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I view the concept of an emotional side and a reasoning side as just another form of dualism.
As for where you're applying causation: "In correct operation, the emotional side sets long-term goals and policy, which the reasoning side then tries to find the best ways to achieve." As if detailed actions are 'caused' or initiated by the reasoning side, in pursuit of goals 'set' by the emotions; in practice, all decisions and actions have interacting contributions of logic and 'gut feeling', and all attempts to separate and categorize the two are misguided.
Particularly so, when there is so much looping and recursion (and often, internal contradition) in the decision, within and between the 'logic' and 'emotion', that the concept of a causal chain is meaningless.
In particular, I disagree that in practice most or all decisions have so much intermingling of both sides that it's impossible to tell where any given impulse came from. I think in many entirely practical cases, it can be pretty clear one way or the other.