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Originally Posted by Pookie
Surely the fear of death disproves this theory.
Unless you're calling fear of death irrational.
And as fear is an emotion, something internal and intangible, how can conceptualized and actual fear be differentiated?
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This is why I argue that the fear of death isn't for most rooted in the fear of the unknown, or anything spiritual in nature - I hold that it lies more in the ego, as atari correctly identified it. It's the lamentation of what one will fail to experience upon dying. But again, that's very presumptuous and biased of me - I can't really identify with those that have a concept of the afterlife, positive or negative, religious or not, so perhaps this is a more prevalent basis of the fear of death than I realize.
And I think any emotion can be differentiated that way - you can theorize the unexperienced and unknown, and therefore predict a relative emotional reaction; however, to me that differs from anticipating an emotional reaction to/consequence of a prior concrete experience, one whose mere occurrence has conditioned your mental response.
Ex. Fear of afterlife = fear of unknown = conceptualized
Fear of being stabbed = fear of physical pain = actual
However, whether those are respectively illogical and logical are even debatable.