You cannot change by logic a point of view arrived at by emotion.

Reading someone's comment on an article, they make the point that "You cannot change by logic a point of view arrived at by emotion." They put it in quotes and it does sound strikingly familiar. But I can't find that exact quote.

The closest I can come is Quote Investigator's research on You Cannot Reason People Out of Something They Were Not Reasoned Into. A quote with many versions but the originator likely being Jonathan Swift in 1721 in A Letter to a Young Gentleman, Lately Enter’d Into Holy Orders by a Person of Quality with

Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired.

There are all sorts of close permutations since then by Fisher Ames, Lyman Beecher, Jonathan Farr and others.

There is a subtle distinction between Swift's point and the commenter's.

Swift is saying that reversing an opinion with reason only works if the opinion was arrived at by reason. Fair enough.

The commenter's quote is saying that there are two means of arriving at an opinion, one via reason/logic and the other through emotion. In other words, there are two means of knowing, logic/reason and emotion and that reversing an opinion can only be done within the mode by which it was originated. If you reached the opinion via logic/reason, then it can only be reversed by logic/reason. If it was arrived at by emotion, then it can only be reversed by emotion (i.e. rhetoric.)

I don't think that is strictly true. You can arrive at something by reason and later recognize that there is an emotional element to the knowledge which colors your opinion. Or vice versa.

Not strictly true, but also a very useful prod to clarifying one's thinking.

And I do like the implied recognition that opinions and knowledge can be arrived at via two modes of thinking/sensing - reason and emotion. While, as a Classical Liberal, I set great store by the importance and value of reason, I think it is one of our gravest mistakes to ignore emotion. I think life is a constant interplay and testing of opinions arrived at by reason and opinions arrived at by emotion. The interplay and testing is the relevant issue, not the relative value of either mode of knowledge. They are equally important in their domains but their real value is in the interaction between them.

The analogy might be biological. There is little point in debating whether the male or female of any species is better or more important. Their value is from the interaction between one another.