Afterword

When people speak of cognition and emotion, or of reason and the passions, they are usually referring to two distinct mental faculties. One of them is cool, calm, and collected and works towards its conclusions slowly by means of explicit logical rules. The other is hot, colourful, and jumps to conclusions by consulting gut feelings. However, just because the heart works independently of reason does not mean it lacks reasons. On the contrary, the Afterword concludes that the things that emotions do all have their reasons, and sometimes these reasons are very good ones. Not only are there passions within reason, but there are reasons within passion.

5. The computer that cried

The most recent discipline to have entered the debate on emotion is artificial intelligence. Since the early 1990s, computer scientists have become increasingly interested in building systems and devices that can recognize and simulate human emotions, and workers in robotics are already making some progress in this area. ‘The computer that cried’ discusses recent developments in affective computing and speculates on where it will lead. Will we succeed in building robots that have feelings just like we do? What might be the consequences of such technology? We may find that building artificial life forms with emotions—either virtual agents in a simulated world or real physical robots—helps us to understand more about our own emotions.

3. How to be happy

The range of things that can make us joyful or distressed is simply vast. Is there any pattern underlying this bewildering diversity? ‘How to be happy’ explores what makes us happy by considering some of the main findings in contemporary research on the psychology of positive emotions and happiness. It discusses the ‘technologies of mood’ that promise to provide us with short cuts to happiness, from psychotherapy and art to drugs and meditation. It asks whether or not they work and discusses the dangers that beset some of these attempts to circumvent the more circuitous path to happiness that natural selection laid out for us.

1. What is an emotion?

The word ‘emotion’ is fairly recent. Before the 19th century, people talked instead about ‘passions’, ‘sentiments’, and ‘affections’. ‘What is an emotion?’ begins by outlining the complex history of these words before exploring the variety of emotional experience in different cultures. However, our common emotional heritage binds humanity together in a way that transcends cultural difference. It is now widely accepted among anthropologists and emotion researchers that some emotions, at least, are not learned, but innate. The universality of basic and higher cognitive emotions argues strongly for their biological nature, shaped by our common evolutionary history.

2. The evolution of emotion

‘The evolution of emotion’ argues that emotions were—and still are—vital for survival. Ever since Plato, many Western thinkers have tended to view emotions as obstacles to intelligent action. We are all familiar with cases in which an excess of emotion prevents people from acting intelligently. The opposite idea—the positive view of emotion—is that emotions are vital for intelligent action. Until recently, this idea had not been popular among philosophers and psychologists, but considerations drawn from evolutionary theory and neuroscience now argue in its favour. The evolution of emotions such as fear, anger, joy, disgust, guilt, love, and revenge are considered along with the relationship between emotions and morality.

4. The head and the heart

‘The head and the heart’ explains how emotions affect ‘cognitive’ capacities such as attention, memory, and logical reasoning. The power of emotions to affect these things makes emotional technologies very appealing to advertisers and politicians. Appealing to feelings offers a way of making people change their minds without having to provide good arguments or evidence. For good or ill, and perhaps both, there is also a tendency for emotion to be amplified in social groups. The neural mechanisms involved with emotional contagion are considered along with the neuroscience of empathy. Empathy makes us mindful of our commonality and connection with fellow humans the world over.