[NOTE: I plan on editing this essay to make it more reader-friendly. I like the ideas in here, but the writing could be fixed. I therefore recommend reading “Can Reason and Bias Coexist?” before this one.]
“… no sharp line divides thinking from feeling, nor does thinking inevitably precede feeling or vice versa (notwithstanding the century of debate within psychology over which comes first).” – Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
“I’m hooked on a feeling; I’m high on believing.” – Blue Swede
Deceptive Dichotomies
As we puzzle out the world, we are often slow to grasp how the pieces fit together. Our picture of reality is a perpetual work in progress, consistently undergoing revision. This revision frequently requires us to reassess relationships between phenomena, as we learn which parts of nature directly affect each other, and which do not. We humans are easy to fool, regularly overlooking even the most basic connections around us. For instance, we rarely notice how seemingly separate concepts, such as inside and outside, up and down, and left and right, are actually interdependent: the existence of an outside entails an inside, up only exists relative to down, and left delineates right. Our mental landscapes are peppered with such dichotomies, tricking us into thinking that interrelated phenomena are entirely exclusive.
Some of the most revolutionary insights in human thought have dispelled longstanding dichotomies, revealing interconnections previously hidden from us. Newton dismantled the dichotomy between the heavens and the earth, showing that celestial and terrestrial physics are one and the same. Einstein broke the dichotomy – perpetuated by Newton – between absolute space and absolute time, unifying space and time into a single spacetime. Darwin and Wallace definitively knocked down the dichotomy between humans and non-humans, undeniably showing that all of life is related.[1] As we’ve revised our view of the physical and biological worlds, though, we’ve been slow to make comparable revisions to our view of the cognitive world.
For thousands of years, we’ve regarded thought and emotion as dualistic forces. Essentially, we imagine that we have two selves. Our conscious selves, capable of effortful deliberation, act through thought, and our subconscious selves, lying just outside of awareness, act through emotion. At different times in history, we’ve emphasized the primacy of one or the other of these two selves. Lately, thanks to an explosion of research on subconscious influence, we’ve been confronted with the fact that we are not the rational free agents that our culture presumed us to be. As a result, it’s becoming fashionable to believe that emotion reigns over thought.
This is a mistake, which stems from a widespread belief in a false dichotomy between thought and emotion. Contrary to common belief, thought and emotion are not separate forces, but actually grow out of each other. It therefore makes little sense to say that one supersedes the other. To think clearly and behave appropriately, emotions must be balanced and thoughts must be reasoned.
By erecting a dichotomy between thought and emotion, we blind ourselves to a complete understanding of the forces that influence us. However, despite the tenacity of this dichotomy, we can start seeing through it by simply reflecting on our own experience. (Before moving on, I’d like to clarify that I am not referencing rationality and irrationality in my use of the terms thought and emotion, respectively. Thoughts are not always rational, nor are emotions always irrational; we can think irrational thoughts, and emotions can encourage entirely rational behaviour. Where I refer to rationality, I will be explicit about doing so, using terms such as “rationality”, “reason”, etc.)
Feeling Out Thought
Whenever we’re thinking, we’re also feeling. Every thought, whether verbal, visual, audial, or otherwise, has an emotional aspect. This is because every thought is either understood or not, and impressions of understanding or misunderstanding are not thoughts – they’re feelings! We need never explicitly think, “Ah, I understand this thought,” because our understanding is conveyed emotionally. Therefore, every thought comes with, at minimum, the feeling of understanding or of confusion.[2]
With this in mind, we can see that the idea of a thought unaccompanied by emotion is nonsensical. What would it be like to think a thought without feelings of comprehension or incomprehension? Would it be like listening to a foreign language or abstract noise inside your head? If so, would this even qualify as thought? Indeed, for a thought to be a thought, feelings must be present.
Because thoughts and feelings are thoroughly entwined, we cannot alter one without affecting the other. This point can be appreciated by way of a concrete example.
Imagine that you’re experiencing dread about an upcoming commitment, such as a public speech or job interview. This dread manifests via thoughts about the future and unpleasant emotions. According to conventional wisdom, the thoughts and emotions that contribute to dread are separable phenomena – though they interact, they remain separate processes. But in fact, the thoughts and emotions that give rise to dread cannot be separated, because they do not simply interact with each other, but are part of each other. Were the conventional wisdom correct – with thought and emotion separate – then it should be possible for feelings of dread to exist independently of thought. Yet if we could lift our dread-inducing thoughts, the emotional state of dread would instantly vanish (after all, how could you dread an event that you’re not thinking about?). Likewise, if we could remove the emotional state of dread, the quality and content of our dread-filled thoughts would immediately change (because if you’re no longer feeling dread, why cogitate over it?). This is exactly what we would expect if thought and emotion are not separate, but are rather aspects of the same process.
We all know that our thoughts affect our feelings, and our feelings affect our thoughts (this fact alone should defuse the debate over whether thought or emotion prevails). But we seldom appreciate that we can actually feel thoughts before we distinctly think them. This is a common occurrence, though we rarely interpret it as such. For example, occasionally we get the urge to speak, but fail to convey the intended message. Despite knowing what we’d like to say, sometimes we just can’t find the words to do so. When this happens, we can feel the gist of what we plan to say before the right words actually enter our minds. At moments like these, we are feeling thoughts before we think them!
This all-too-familiar experience shows that the border between thought and emotion is hazy. If we can feel our way to a thought, how could a clear divide exist between thought and emotion? And how could one rule the other, when each can cause – and be caused by – the other?
Motivated Reasoning
Some would take the previous paragraphs as evidence that we are fundamentally emotional. If, they say, emotion always accompanies thought, then emotion is the definitive way to affect human behaviour. Although these people acknowledge the existence of rationality, they deny that reasoned thought ever truly convinces us of anything. Instead, they claim that reason only exists where there is a pre-existing emotional motivation to be reasonable, and that, therefore, reason is a mere appendage waved at the will of emotion.
In support of this idea these people point to the many instances where airtight reason fails to persuade (as in religion or politics), concluding that our capacity for rationality must, at base, be ruled by emotion rather than thought. Many academics have jumped on this bandwagon and, using reasoned argument buttressed by data, attempt to convince the masses that emotions are the only reason we’re ever convinced of anything.
But while it’s true that emotion often informs behaviour and colours our worldviews, this is only half the picture. By adhering to a false thought-emotion dichotomy, we wrongly assume that where emotion influences us, reasoned thought carries little weight. (Contrariwise, those who think that reasoned thought can exist apart from emotion are also misguided.)
When we mistakenly cleave thought from emotion, we see behaviour as resulting from either an emotional tail wagging a rational dog, or a rational dog wagging an emotional tail, and have trouble seeing any other options. But because we overlook the connection between thought and emotion, we oversimplify the forces that drive behaviour. In reality, the tail and the head of the dog wag each other, and to claim that one decisively wags the other, we’d have to ignore physical law. Likewise, to claim that either thought or emotion takes precedence, we must ignore their thoroughly interrelated nature.
So, if emotion doesn’t rule thought, and thought doesn’t rule emotion, what should we think about the idea of emotionally motivated reasoning? Should we retire the notion before it leads more people astray, or does it convey some worthwhile insight?
We can make perfect sense of motivated reasoning, so long as we appreciate that we’re motivated in concert by emotion and thought. Where emotion influences us, it does so in accord with our mental models of reality. Where thought influences us, it does so in ways that fit with our emotional grasp on life. We cannot draw a solid line between the two.
With this in mind, let’s consider two seemingly divergent cases – one apparently emotional and the other apparently rational – to better appreciate how emotion and thought interact with each other.
Common Paths to Belief
To an outside observer, religious belief may seem a clear case of emotional motivation stripped of rational thought. Apparently impervious to reason, religious convictions rarely falter when countered by solid arguments and evidence. In fact, many believers pride themselves on their insusceptibility to evidence, going so far as to enshrine this ‘virtue’ under the name of faith. Surely, it seems, this must be a case where emotions govern and thoughtful reason holds no sway. But not so fast. Thoughts and reasons are as essential as emotions in establishing religious belief.
Religious believers, like everyone, have a system of assumptions structuring their worldviews. These assumptions are paired with emotions, and this synthesis of thought and emotion comprises their system of beliefs. So, while we could maintain that a believer holds their views because they feel a certain way, we could just as fairly assert that they feel a certain way because of the existence of their views! In reality, religious belief cannot be categorized as either the product of thought or emotion, because it’s the product of both.
When we lack access to someone’s assumptions, their beliefs can look like purely emotional drivel, but may in fact be entirely logical relative to underlying assumptions. A worldview can only make sense in light of these assumptions, which are informed by both reason and emotion. And to determine whether our worldviews make sense, we must assess whether our various assumptions are consistent with each other.
Regardless of our assumptions, we all – religious, atheist, or agnostic – strive for consistency in our points of view. We have an instinctual motivation to settle upon harmonious views of reality, and cannot help but feel uneasy when we encounter internal contradictions. This trait confers obvious advantages: a consistent mental space can better map out regularities in our environments, making interactions with nature – and each other – more predictable. This trait also allows thoughts and emotions to be co-opted into the truth-seeking game, because it inclines us to favour logically consistent propositions (which are significantly more likely to reflect reality than logically inconsistent propositions).
Much of the time, most of us are not explicitly guided by the goal of truth-seeking; rather, we are guided by whatever works to get us through life. But whether we seek truth or not, we only endorse logic that meshes with our underlying assumptions.[3] And to check whether logic meshes with our assumptions, we employ both thought and emotion. Even in our most intellectual pursuits, emotion and thought are equally involved. For example, imagine the ‘aha’ moment in a scientific breakthrough.
What happens in a scientist’s mind when they figure something out? Weeks, months, or years of study culminate in a great insight. Has the motivation leading to this moment resulted from thought or emotion? We generally characterize science as a strictly rational pursuit, but the feeling of solving a scientific problem often precedes the process of thinking through the solution. Scientists regularly report knowing that they’ve solved a problem before actually working it out. To some observers, this might suggest that emotion supersedes thought. But feelings of scientific insight would not occur but for all of the hard thinking that comes first. And neither would they occur without the thinking that inevitably follows, because feelings of insight are but one stage in the blooming of logical, thoughtful comprehension. Thoughts and emotions are both engaged even at the peaks of human reason.
So, belief systems – religious or scientific – are wrapped up in thought and feeling, but what about physical behaviour? As we will shortly see, it too depends on both.
Impulsive Behaviour
Most of our behaviour is initiated by inchoate desires that cause us to act in certain ways. Aside from the most basic of reactions (such as jumping at the sight of a snake), these desires – known as impulses – lead us through life. Every deliberate action is preceded by an associated impulse. And though we rarely notice these impulses amid the hustle of life, their existence is indisputable.
For example, before speaking we experience a linguistic thought combined with the urge to verbalize it. Before checking our phones, we experience a mental image of our phones combined with excitement and anxiety. Before moving, we subtly visualize our body parts shifting and feel compelled to follow suit.[4] As these examples make clear, impulses are fusions of thought and emotion: they combine visual, audial, tactile, or other imaginings with various feelings. Because the impulses that incite behaviour consist of thought and emotion, to ignore either is to ignore what makes us tick.
If we lacked either the ability to feel or to think, we could not carry out any voluntary actions. To appreciate this point, imagine that one morning you wake up without the capacity to think. You are now confronted with the insurmountable challenge of navigating the world without your cognitive faculties. What would this be like?
If you could not think, you would be stuck in bed forever, trapped in a haze of amorphous emotions and urges, with no mental reference points to ground yourself. You would be unable to access memories, stripped of mental representations of your body and the room, and bereft of linguistic thought – that is, you could neither understand your situation, nor figure out how to get out of bed, nor form the words to call for help. From the outside, you would seem to be in a vegetative state.
Likewise, if you were somehow able to think but could not feel, you’d be equally incapacitated.[5] Without the urge to pursue thoughts, or the feeling that you should do something, you’d be utterly impotent. As the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio recounts in Descartes’ Error, people with flattened emotional states have great difficulty selecting from a host of options, no matter how much they deliberate. We can think until our synapses wear out, but we can do nothing else (not even speak) unless emotion drives us to act on our thoughts.
Our behaviour is a complex arrangement, and thoughts and emotions compose an inseparable harmony. To lose either is to lose what makes us human.
Making Sense
Our confusion about the relation between thought and emotion has much in common with our confusion about the mind-body relationship. When we ask whether the mind controls the body or the body controls the mind, we ignore the fact that the body exists within the mind and the mind within the body.[6] So long as we’re breathing, both move each other together. Thoughts and emotions have a similar relationship – in a way, they exist within each other.
It’s often convenient to dichotomize thought and emotion. Sometimes we just want to apologize for getting angry, or tell someone we’ll think about a proposal, and leave it at that; there’s no need to get too nuanced in everyday speech. But we should know that such a way of thinking offers a condensed version of reality, an economical stand-in for the real thing. Most of the time this convenience is harmless. However, when it leads us to neglect or overemphasize the influence of either thought or feelings, it can cause harm.
All of humankind shares the basic motivation to construct a view of the world that makes sense, and this journey involves thought and emotion. This is as true for the non-believer as it is for the religious fundamentalist. Therefore, we need more than just thought, or just emotion, to change ourselves for the better. We need – and cannot help but engage – both.
[1]Contrary to what many believe, Darwin did not come up with the theory of evolution, nor was he the first to suggest a natural selection-type mechanism as the driver of evolution. He did, however, present enough evidence (along with Alfred Russel Wallace) to establish evolution by natural selection as fact.
[2]And a lack of understanding is, in a way, a kind of understanding, in that our confusion cues us to understand that we don’t get the picture.
[3]To this, someone might say, “What about your endorsement of the fact that E=mc2? How does this mesh with your underlying assumptions if you cannot even follow the maths and physics?” Though I cannot prove that E=mc2, I have the assumption (through thought and feeling) that it’s safe to trust Einstein (and those who claim to have confirmed his work) on this point.
[4]Many people have not noticed the visuals that precede movement. To notice them requires a fair bit of awareness and might even require low stimulation environments. As the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has said of these fleeting visuals, they are “often masked in consciousness by our awareness of the movement itself.”
[5]As mentioned above, I’m sceptical as to whether thought can exist without emotion. But for the purposes of this thought experiment, I’m pretending that it can.
[6]The body exists within the mind because you are currently aware of your body within awareness (ie. your mind). The mind exists within the body because your brain – which gives rise to your mind – is housed within your skull.
Stories From the Ground. 