Emotion and Reason: Partners, Not Opposites

Dan Levine

University of Texas at Arlington

Levine@uta.edu

www.uta.edu/psychology/faculty/levine.html

Talk at Dallas Philosophers Forum, April 9, 2013

Opposition of reason and emotion in popular language

“Act rationally, not emotionally.”“Get out of your head and into your feelings.”

The phrase “acting emotionally” is used for an irrational murder, or falling for a toxic partner.

It is not used for someone who supports his/her family out of the EMOTION of love – or someone who works steadily on a job out of passion for her/his work.

What are the roots of the cultural emotion-reason split?

Philosophy:

Plato’s tripartite soul: appetitive, competitive, calculating

Aristotle’s altered terminology: nutritive, sensitive, rational

Good life involves some sort of control by rational (will) over emotional (nutritive)

But Aristotle still felt emotions were essential

Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy: “Aristotle's ethical works treat the pathe [[Greek word for emotions]] both as susceptible to reason and as integral to the good life, even as they allow that the emotions can impair our reason.

He was not quite as dualistic as Descartes many centuries later!

Descartes: importance of will

Descartes: will, or soul, is separate from emotions or bodily appetites.

Will can and should govern desires.

Will is the ultimate motivational force.

Damasio (1994) blamed Descartes for the denigration of emotion as against reason

Perhaps so. But it also had to with the Enlightenment, the rise of science and technology, the belief that we could order the environment to maximize human welfare.

But over the centuries there has been a backlash:

19th century romanticism in art and music

1960s and 1970s hippies and environmentalists

Et cetera

What do neuroscientists say about emotion and reason?

Paul MacLean (1960s, then 1990 book):

three brain layers from different stages of evolution:

Reptilian: controls instinctive behaviors associated with survival of individual or species.

Paleomammalian: involved in emotional behaviors and feeling states.

Neomammalian: processes sensory information, involved in thought, planning, conscious selection

Locations of 3 layers

Green: Reptilian brain    Orange: Paleomammalian brain (limbic system)Blue: Neomammalian brain (neocortex)

Frontal lobes: prime communicator between the 3 brains

Walle Nauta (J. Psychiat. Res., 1971): Frontal lobes allow plans to be “censored” by visceral reactions.

Antonio Damasio (Descartes’ Error, 1994): Patients with damage to ventromedial prefrontal cortex can’t make good decisions due to lack of emotional involvement.

More recent work

Joseph LeDoux – Mapped out the involvement of the amygdala (part of the limbic system) in automatic fear reactions.

Luiz Pessoa – Emotionally significant inputs have an advantage in processing but are still subject to attentional control.

Jaak Panksepp – 2012 book, neurochemistry of seeking, caring, fear, anger, lust, play/joy, and sadness

Locations of amygdala and other brain areas

Basal ganglia

Midbrain

ThalamusAmygdala

Hypothalamus

Frontal Pole

CerebellumPons

Medulla

Caudate Nucleus(head)

CorpusCallosum

Cerebrum

Putamen andGlobus Pallidus

Fornix Caudate Nucleus(tail)

Emotions influential but not dominantPessoa et al., 2002: “… first measure activation in

regions that responded differentially to faces with emotional expressions (fearful and happy) compared with neutral faces. We then measured the modulation of these responses by attention, using a competing task with a high attentional load. Contrary to the prevailing view, all brain regions responding differentially to emotional faces, including the amygdala, did so only when sufficient attentional resources were available to process the faces. Thus, the processing of facial expression appears to be under top-down control.”

“Systems view” of emotion and cognition

Pessoa (2008): “… complex cognitive–emotional behaviours have their basis in dynamic coalitions of networks of brain areas, none of which should be conceptualized as specifically affective or cognitive.”

“Systems view,” contd.

Neural network models by Grossberg, Levine, and colleagues since 1971: emotions and drives are needed to differentiate cognitive units

Reyna and Brainerd: We categorize and remember using “gist” more than “verbatim” knowledge. But gists are not necessarily emotional.

Dynamical systems perspective tells us:

Cognition Emotion

Decision

NOT IN OPPOSITION!

NOT TIGHTLY

COUPLED!

Short-term emotional reactions CAN interfere with reason

But long-term emotional satisfaction is a partner to reason!

Mathematical analogy:

Reason produces THEOREMS

AXIOMS must come from emotion

Also there are “higher” versus “lower” emotions!

Work of Perlovsky, including Levine and Perlovsky, Zygon, 2008: We have a knowledge instinct (KI), a drive to comprehend.

Satisfaction of KI is related to aesthetic emotions: appreciation of art, sublime values. Levine, 2012 conference paper: how these emotions in brain are like or unlike primary emotions

Reason and emotion as separate (and reason as superior) dies hard in science

One popular view (e.g., Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow; Epstein): we have two separate mental systems, one intuitive, experiential, and fast, the other rational, deliberate, and slow.

My contrary view:

1. Intuition is not always fast: may come after long involvement and much thinking.

2. Reason is not always slow: fMRI results of Krawczyk at UTD/UTSW show calculation is automatic in the scientifically trained.

Why should we care?

Not just an academic exercise!

Emotion-reason split is at the heart of our cultural crises.

John Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards

Michael Lerner, The Left Hand of God

Crisis of meaning

Tyranny of the “rational” marketplace over “emotional” personal ties.

People feel they are valued only for their ability to produce for a job.

Even romantic relationships are often based on “can you meet my needs?”

People who feel meaningless are vulnerable

Those who feel they are not appreciated for themselves, and only for their market value, can be manipulated by charismatic demagogues or terrorist leaders who promise to give their lives meaning and purpose.

Putting reason over emotion supports other rank orders

“Rational” > “Emotional”

Men Women

Whites Blacks

Straights Gays

But denigrating reason isn’t the answer either!

Creating a more egalitarian and harmonious society requires making the best of our complex brain pathways that interconnect emotion and reason.

The brain is “democratic”: no one region “rules”