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
Putamen and
Globus Pallidus
Fornix
Cerebrum
Caudate Nucleus
(tail)
Corpus
Callosum
Caudate Nucleus
(head)
Frontal Pole
Hypothalamus
Amygdala
Thalamus
Pons
Midbrain
Basal ganglia
Medulla
Cerebellum
Emotions influential but not dominant
Pessoa 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
NOT IN
OPPOSITION!
NOT
TIGHTLY
COUPLED!
Decision
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”
Men
Whites
Straights
>
“Emotional”
Women
Blacks
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”