The role of emotions in ecological and practical rationality

Abstract

This chapter considers the question of whether emotions are conducive or destructive of rationality. It notes that while there is a developing consensus that emotions are advantageous to ‘ecological’ rationality — the ability of an organism to cope successfully with its environment (though this consensus is not universally shared) it is often thought that emotions remain destructive of ‘practical’ rationality — an organism's ability to make correct decisions about how to act. The chapter attempts to query the latter conclusion, appealing to Antonio Damasio's ‘somatic marker hypothesis’, on which emotions are feelings that represent certain somatic states, and on which the ability to instantiate such states is seen as essential to rational decision-making.