Emotions and Cognition: From Myth and Philosophy to Modern Psychology and Neuroscience

Abstract

In this chapter, we have reviewed some historical landmarks of thinking about emotions. We have seen that emotions, at times reviled as a primitive layer and considered by far inferior to cognition or reason, have been upgraded from a fickle and primitive layer of human and animal nature alike. Instead, owing to Darwin’s path-breaking writing on emotions, scientists now generally acknowledge them as a layer that, though not inherently directed by rational processes, nevertheless express a kind of rationality and intentionality all of their own. Even at the most automatic layers, emotions provide important functions in that they control a wide range of homeostatic processes. In that way, they assure that the exquisitely fine-tuned equilibriums necessary for survival are regulated and maintained by processes that are built into lower brain centers—processes that evolution did not trust to the slower functioning process of rational, cognitive judgment. Nevertheless, we have also seen that recent writers on emotion emphasize that with increasing experience and development, a cooperation of these automatic processes can help to greatly expand the power offered by the more ancient automatic regulation processes. In the chapter to follow, we will discuss how such expansion functions and how it is able to produce more powerful regulation of emotions and social life.