I discuss the truth-value of emotions in a section on emotions in Sense and Goodness without God.

In short, emotions are false when they respond to false facts (an emotion following from a false belief fails to correspond to reality and is therefore informationally in error) or respond to true facts by fallacious inference (an emotion following from a true belief in an illogical way also fails to correspond to reality and is therefore informationally in error). Conversely, “rightful” emotions (by which I mean emotions that have informational accuracy) follow from true beliefs without fallacy.

The entire purpose of loathing as an emotion is to negatively dispose ourselves toward malignant people and things. It is therefore correct to feel loathing of someone who is actually (factually) loathesome. But it would not be correct to feel that way if they aren’t loathesome (either because the loathesome thing you think they did, they didn’t even do, or because the thing you are credited to them as loathesome, isn’t actually loathesome by any logical reasoning).

The folly in simply hating Hindus, for example, is that not all Hindus believe or do the things hated, and most even of those who do anything like it, do so rightly. For example, many Hindus are correct to fear local Muslims because they have in fact attacked them. If they also correctly recognize not all Muslims support those extremists, then they are not wrong. Their hatred is correctly targeted and not bigoted (they hate the Muslims who threaten them, and not “all Muslims”). It becomes bigoted only when they imagine all Muslims are the extremists. This allows for cases of a Schrödinger’s extremist (it is often impossible for a Hindu to know which Muslim is the extremist and which isn’t, particularly as extremists will hide or lie about their real intentions and beliefs, and so those Hindus are right to act with caution and distrust towards Muslims generally until they can verify reliably which kind they are).

However, imagine the actual bigot: a Hindu who actually hates Muslims altogether, and develops and even advocates publicly a vile system of false beliefs about Muslims. Hindu Nationalists even carry this all the way to violence, oppression, and murder. Those Hindus are in objective fact loathesome. It is therefore justified to loathe them.

What you do with that loathing is a separate question. This is where the semantics of emotional language can generate confusion (What exactly does “hate” mean? Or “despise”? Or “loathe”? Do they mean the same thing or different things, and if different things, what different things? And does their meaning change with context, and if so, which contextual meaning concerns you at the moment or, given the context of it, what meaning was meant by someone using the word just now?). But assuming you sort all that out, what is justified with respect to action requires other data than merely the emotion.

For instance, if supporting violence, oppression, and murder is loathesome, then it does not make immediate sense that this should be how you act on your own loathing. Because don’t you then become the very thing you loathe? There may be different answers depending on what exactly you mean and who exactly you are and aren’t targeting with your actions (e.g. killing in legitimate self-defense is valid; killing in imagined or fabricated self-defense is not). So you have to take care to decouple emotion from action. Those are not the same thing and the one does not entail the other. Emotion can motivate action; but what action that should be is a matter of evidence and reason—and other emotions.

The NCFM has led lawsuits that progressives have supported (even the ACLU). But they might have a darker side (see SPLC and RationalWiki). So caution may be warranted.

Contrast with NOMAS for example, and the other orgs I list in the article you are commenting on above.

Years ago I went on the website of NCFM (National Coalition for Men) started by Harry Crouch in 1977 and never saw any misogyny nor any sexism there. In fact, I have even spoken with Harry and there are women who are part of the organization not to mention when I spoke with Harry many moons ago it was a woman who was taking of the organization’s fiances. So maybe thats one example of a MRA website not having anti-women stuff on.

As much I appreciate your response to Jack and I too like you wish he escapes the toxic worldview that is internally destroying him. I do want to ask you why do you use the term “rightfully despise”? Is it valid to hate or despise bigots or anybody who has fallen into a toxic ideology for the time being? Is that not making things worse? I come from a Muslim background and have countless Muslim friends and relatives, but even I wouldn’t want to hate or despise a Hindu or a Christian who hates Muslims, due to the fact that I don’t know what he or she has gone through or what has influenced and compelled him or her to become deeply Islamaphobic.

Thank you for voicing an excellent example of irrational grievance culture.

And thereby missing literally the entire point of the article you supposedly just read.

You are lost in a delusion. You took the blue pill and it duly rewrote your memory of it as red.

I can only hope that someday you escape this delusion and discover the real world and how it actually works, in all its complexity. Especially when you then discover the billions of women who agree with you on every discernible fact, but rightly despise you for hating them for something they aren’t responsible for and that you could be doing healthier things to rectify. You could be seeking cooperation. You are instead pursuing aimless despite.

Which decision will trap you there forever. Until you change it.

I didn’t say he is wrong because his method of arguing is childish and incompetent. I simply pointed out that his method of arguing is childish and incompetent. That’s a plain statement of fact. It is also a valid reason not to bother reading or heeding him anymore, because it means you are unlikely to find anything better there, so listening to him is a waste of time. Because otherwise, I addressed his arguments on their own terms. I then concluded from that that his method of arguing is childish and incompetent (the exact opposite of an ad hominem; an ad hominem occurs when one reverses this premise and conclusion).

“This is the intellectual giant we are dealing with here”

That would be an example of ad hominem, unless you meant it?

And now an article at The American Prospect (which I have also added).

There has since been a 20/20 segment and an article in The Daily Beast.