I Feel, Therefore I Am

Age-old tradition treats reason and emotion as opposites. Whether in balance or in tension, they get paired with other dualisms: masculine and feminine, sun and moon, yang and yin, sophisticated and primitive, left brain and right brain. René Descartes famously wrote, “I think, therefore I am.” But if you only think, without also feeling, decisions are impossible. Logic may explain how to pursue a goal, but it can’t discern which goal to pursue. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio says, “It is emotion that allows you to mark things as good, bad, or indifferent.”

Damasio calls emotions an integrated set of rapid bodily changes that evolved for survival in response to danger or opportunity. In front of a charging tiger or truck, our bodies prepare to fight or flee. Our muscles tense, our pulse and blood pressure rise, our pupils dilate, our breath becomes rapid, all before our brains can formulate that we’re afraid. Later, as time allows, we can reason whether the danger is real or whether a reward is worth the risk.

“Life is not a series of calculus problems. Life is about movement,” New York Times columnist David Brooks writes. “Emotions guide the navigation system.” To teach children the alphabet but ignore story characters’ motives misses the boat. To estimate potential based on test scores alone is to overlook emotional judgment. To build a machine that processes data a zillion times faster than humans doesn’t mean it will replace us. To pit reason against feeling is self-defeating. We need both, working in tandem.

​Images: Symbols of reason and emotion.