Intellect or emotion?

Decisions. We make them all day, every day. But what kind of decisions are we actually making? Decisions can be made based on either emotion or intellect. Emotion made decisions are based around the feelings of a person at the present moment or a persons intuition. An intellectual decision is made by listening to reason rather than that "gut feeling".

A person who is more biased towards basing his/her decisions on  intellect will most likely make the "wiser" decision than a person who bases their actions off of emotion. This is due to the fact that people who use intellect, process the pros and cons of whatever it is they are deciding before acting upon it. A courthouse judge in my opinion is someone who bases their decisions on intellect. A judge's personal opinion on whether someone is innocent or guilty cannot matter when determining the truth when there is evidence to say otherwise. A judge basing his decision on emotion would result in a more likliness of false imprisonment.

Intellectual decisions can be both good and bad. Positives of making intellect based decisions are that the action being decided on will most likely be more cleanly executed and a smarter decision, but on the other hand, sometimes a decision needs some intuition and emotion put into it. Intellect might be the smarter decision, but that does not necessarily mean that it is the better decision.

How do you define personal responsibility? When something bad happens that involves you, how do you know whether or not you bear some responsibility for it?

Personal responsibility can be defined so many different ways. The definition of it mostly depends on the person because everyone has their own idea of what responsibility is. To me, personal responsibility is thinking out an action if it is right or wrong before executing it. If it is wrong personal responsibility is also accepting that the only person you can blame is yourself. No one has total control of a person except for themselves, so any choice made is theirs.