Can our feelings help us know?

Exploring the role of emotions in our search for knowledge

If asked to imagine an ideal for a reliable source of knowledge or information, we would typically think of a rational, careful and unemotional person. Through investigations of people who have sustained different types of brain damage, neurologist Antonio Damasio uncovered cases that call this stereotype into question.

As outlined (among other places) in his book Descartes' Error, there are a group of people with particular injuries (damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex) that result in a disconnection between their emotions and their rational or decision making processes. These people, against our stereotype, tend to struggle to make decisions and are slower to work through a range of thinking puzzles. The lack of emotional feedback in their thinking processes often results in an indefinite, dispassionate process of weighing different options without any impetus to land an answer.

This raises a fascinating question: do our emotions and feelings play an important, or even necessary, role in how we process knowledge and identify what is true?

While all of us, at some point, make judgements about what is true based on how we feel - lovers and sports fans are common examples - we normally see this as a human flaw. Genuine knowledge and the truth, we tell ourselves, is best found when we put our emotions to one side and consider the evidence dispassionately. Yet the evidence from Damasio suggests that a truly dispassionate thinking style ends us with us endlessly spinning our wheels and never getting anywhere.

This might seem like an odd choice of topic for Humble Knowledge, but it lines up neatly with some of the themes in previous posts on the history of Western thought. These outlined ways that philosophers have tried to ground knowledge purely on rational processes and arguments, albeit with a range of different types of acceptable inputs, and how they have universally failed to establish anything with certainty. Pure rationality doesn’t get us to the conclusions we expect.

History also shows there have been interesting shifts in the human faculties and processes that different thinkers rely on to establish knowledge. The Ancient Greeks relied solely on human reason; Medieval thinkers added in divine revelation; empiricists expanded the importance of human experiences over time; scientific thinkers added in considered human actions (via experiments); while recent thinkers have been considering societies, power structures and human languages as necessary components. This shift away from a sole reliance on human reason suggests another question: what human faculties are involved in knowledge and are emotions one of them?

If we adopt epistemic humility, and move away from a reliance on reason, it makes sense to believe that multiple human faculties are helpful for gaining knowledge, but none are (by themselves) fully reliable. On this way of thinking, our various faculties work as a set of interconnected abilities: something like the strands in a rope. No strand in the rope can do the work itself and all support each other.

Working from this picture, it is plausible that emotions or feelings are one of the faculties that can contribute to knowledge. This hypothesis is supported by a range of regular experiences, some of which are below. My aim is to motivate the idea that emotions are useful for gaining knowledge and are significant parts of our information processing mechanisms.

As this is more a hypothesis than a thesis, please provide comments and feedback. Most useful would be suggested reading or directions for further research.

A closer look at our emotions

Before I get into a few examples, it is important to make one thing clear. The argument is not that we should simply trust our feelings. Emotions provide a complex feedback mechanism that should not be taken at face value. Positive emotions sometimes points us towards greater knowledge and sometimes take us away from it. Likewise, negative emotions can point us in different directions. As the examples will show, effective use of emotions in better finding knowledge requires self-reflection and closer examination of what is going on inside us.

One obvious way that emotions play an important role in gaining knowledge is through wonder, passion, excitement and curiosity. Scientists and academics aren't (normally) unemotional robots carefully sifting through the evidence. They wonder about puzzles, are passionate about what they do, get excited by results and findings. These emotions aren't extrinsic to research but core driving forces behind most of the best work. People who are emotionally invested in what they are studying work more diligently, examine results more carefully and are likely more creative in what they do.

A second example is that emotions sometimes precede and illuminate firm conclusions. We often feel like a hypothesis, approach or an argument is right or wrong before we have the evidence or can explain why. While we often think of this an intellectual intuition, our experience in this situation is often visceral and emotional. Our mood changes, our energy levels shift and our body language is different. While we often deride people who make decisions based on ‘gut feel’, in many situations experts are guided by that feeling. They just don’t rely only on the feeling, but test and confirm it.¹

A third example is similar, except it points in a very different direction. It is quite common for someone to make a claim or argument that we disagree with and we find ourselves getting unjustifiably angry, defensive or upset. Social media offers common examples - one person makes a carefully worded point and they get shouted back at.

This is a good illustration of the need to be careful at reading our emotional reaction as it is unlikely that the person or their point is simply stupid or rude. What has often happened is that their argument has pin-pointed a weakness in our thinking that we hadn't noticed. We care about our beliefs being true and when someone points out a flaw in them, even inadvertently, we often react emotionally before we intellectually realise the flaw exists. If we are getting unjustifiably defensive, it is probably a sign that we need to rethink our ideas and our justifications. We may still have the right conclusions but it needs further testing.

This process is sometimes talked about under the concept of ‘cognitive dissonance’. While it is a useful framework, it fails to capture its highly emotional nature. But, when you are watching for it yourself, it can tell you very useful information about the quality of your arguments and conclusions.

A similar example is what happens when we come across evidence for something that we already believe. Jon Askonas explains this point eloquently in a recent essay:

“Confirmation bias” names the idea that people are more likely to believe things that confirm what they already believe. But it does not explain the emotional relish we feel, the sheer delight when something in line with our deepest feelings about the state of the world, something so perfect, comes before us.

We may not always have the sheer delight, but we very often have a kind of warm inner glow at finding things that confirm our beliefs. And, if we are not being self-reflective, this can be a dangerous trap as we simply get all our existing beliefs confirmed because it feels good to do so. If we are more self-reflective, however, the prevalence of this delight or inner glow is often a warning sign.

We don’t have emotional reactions to the confirmation of something that is already established fact. It does not feel good to have the germ theory of disease, for example, confirmed. So if we are feeling the sheer delight or warm inner glow, our idea isn’t something established, and we should be careful to actively look out for competing or differing evidence. Otherwise we simply create our own filter bubble and biased view of reality.

Feelings can help

These examples illustrate ways in which our emotions, when treated carefully and critically, can help us know more. Notably, this involves treating our feelings as an important source of information but not relying on them. There are likely many more examples and readers are welcome to offer any they have observed.

The examples also show ways that paying critical attention to our emotions can help us practically. It is a different way of identifying strengths or weaknesses in our thinking or knowledge. Importantly, it complements various other methods we have and can help us avoid some errors in thinking or knowledge. As looked at previously, epistemic humility means that we are all prone to getting things wrong and anything that helps reduce this is welcome.

1. For a range of examples of this process, see Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink.