So when I called Dr. Damasio, who teaches at the University of Southern California, I worried that he might strike down my humanistic observations with unflinching scientific objectivity. He didn’t — he hates the phrase ["I feel like"] as much as I do. He called it “bad usage” and “a sign of laziness in thinking,” not because it acknowledges the presence of emotion, but because it is an imprecise hedge that conceals more than it reveals. “It doesn’t follow that because you have doubts, or because something is tempered by a gut feeling, that you cannot make those distinctions as clear as possible,” he said.ADDED: I'm not sure why Worthen limited her discussion to the phrase "I feel like..." rather than "I feel...." "I feel like" feels different from, feels like something different from "I feel." See what I mean? The "like" suggests approximation and simile. The speaker seems to be dramatizing his internal landscape. You don't even need the "feel." You can just say — as the kids these day do — "I'm like...." The idea is: This is me, here, having this experience. Watch me enact it.
But "I feel..." — without the "like" — could casually substitute for "I think." It's verbiage, stalling for time, perhaps setting up an honest revelation of the thought process and conceding, accurately, that it hasn't been carefully worked out. It can suggest a willingness to accept new information and to accommodate what the other person feels. Maybe we could combine our intuitions and get somewhere in this process of figuring out what's the best policy or which candidate to vote for.
And conversation isn't just about finding answers to various pesky questions. The highest value of conversation is intrinsic, human beings in a relationship. To say "I feel" can be to offer access into that intimacy. Can be. If the other person is saying "That's just how I feel," the signal is: I don't want to do this intimacy with you.
The problem isn't the word "feel" itself, but the particular feelings, expressed in context.
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Men have feelings too. Sometimes I feel hungry.
Nobody says our emotions are not real and basic. But we must learn to control them with language that defines feelings within acceptable boundaries. That language tool becomes our shared culture that defines our shared feelings. This is traditionally experienced in religious worship.
"Feel" is probably the most used verb by women. It is reflexive but indicative of how the world is approached. Women are always asking men to share their feelings. Until they do.
I find it astonishing that anybody would not know that their own thinking is bound up with their emotions.
"Feel" is a handy heuristic, especially in a field where one has much experience. Talk to mathematicians about how they decide what to work on. But it is not proof. It should initiate the investigation not terminate it.
this is how marriage therapists suggest their patients speak to each other. It seems inevitable that the language has seeped out into the world. Therapists want people to say the phrase without the word "like" but Americans love the word like. It's more of an approximation so it covers more territory.
I first questioned the use of "I feel like" when listening to the Dr. Laura radio program years ago. She would correct callers who started sentences that way.
And now, I'll let myself out...
Of course gut feelings, personal preferences, and other reactions that fall under the "feelings" umbrella are perfectly legitimate.
The problem is that we've fallen into a habit of using "I feel" as a hedge against making the statement that we really want the other person to take away from the conversation. It's a shield, a defensive measure used to remove facts and logic as possible sources of counter-argument.
"I feel like making love." Why can't those guitar gods be more precise in their lyrics?
I'm OK with feelings determining some of the premises of an argument. Start with your premises, add in some facts and see where logic and argument takes you.
I'm not OK with immediately following "I feel like" with a conclusion.
Our current culture (including public school education) seems to endorse the latter.
I feel like this post doesn't reflect an excellent pop-neuroscience article I read last week about the correlation between empathy and brain-scans.
I feel ya.
Yet another woman attempting to justify allowing "feelings" to replace reason.
Repeal the 19th Amendment
"Yet another woman attempting to justify allowing "feelings" to replace reason."
Thanks for sharing your feelings, Gahrie.
Most things people discuss have some arbitrary starting point. "We hold these truths to be self-evident" is an admission that the existence or reality of the truths is not based on any observable feature of the physical world or human history, but merely on the way a couple of guys in Philadelphia felt that a just world should be put together.
Those "feelings", redefined as "truths", can then be a starting point for genuinely deductive development or elaboration.
So, feelings have their place, but just because they may be necessary to start things rolling, if they're also used to finish things off ("And in summary, Your Honor, I want it because I feel I should have it") they're not likely to be so successful.
I find it astonishing that anybody would not know that their own thinking is bound up with their emotions.
The issue is, do you control your emotions, or do you allow your emotions to control you?
Thanks for sharing your feelings, Gahrie.
That's not a feeling...it is an opinion.
Gahrie likes feeling superior.
Gahrie likes feeling superior.
No...gahrie likes living in a country ruled by reason rather than feelings.
Feelings is going to give us Trump V Hillary.......how can anyone be satisfied by that?
When Bill said "I feel your pain", he was really saying I'd like to feel your breasts and your buttocks too.
It has a complex definition.
"Feelings is going to give us Trump V Hillary.......how can anyone be satisfied by that?"
What are you talking about? What could be more satisfying than such a classic tragicomedy? It's like Alcestis. If only they would both give themselves up to Death and spare the rest of us.
When my wife begins a sentence with the words "I feel like..." I am warned that what follows will not be true. That's not a bad thing; her feelings are important. But I am warned that we will not be discussing an actual issue but her feelings. It took me years to come to this conclusion.
That sounds okay, but she doesn't usually realize she's doing it, so I have to be careful and hopefully sensitive.
Saint Thomas Aquinas did some writing on this. Emotions are passions, and are neither good nor bad, but the actions they lead us to are good or evil. Aquinas, for example, did say "To be without anger is to be without reason."
To spare you the trouble of following the link, I offer a parts of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
PART THREE, Section One, Chapter One, Article 5
THE MORALITY OF THE PASSIONS
1762 The human person is ordered to beatitude by his deliberate acts: the passions or feelings he experiences can dispose him to it and contribute to it.
I. PASSIONS
1763 The term "passions" belongs to the Christian patrimony. Feelings or passions are emotions or movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to act in regard to something felt or imagined to be good or evil.
1765 There are many passions. The most fundamental passion is love, aroused by the attraction of the good. Love causes a desire for the absent good and the hope of obtaining it; this movement finds completion in the pleasure and joy of the good possessed. The apprehension of evil causes hatred, aversion, and fear of the impending evil; this movement ends in sadness at some present evil, or in the anger that resists it.
1766 "To love is to will the good of another." All other affections have their source in this first movement of the human heart toward the good. Only the good can be loved. Passions "are evil if love is evil and good if it is good."
II. PASSIONS AND MORAL LIFE
1767 In themselves passions are neither good nor evil. They are morally qualified only to the extent that they effectively engage reason and will. Passions are said to be voluntary, "either because they are commanded by the will or because the will does not place obstacles in their way." It belongs to the perfection of the moral or human good that the passions be governed by reason.
1768 Strong feelings are not decisive for the morality or the holiness of persons; ... The upright will orders the movements of the senses it appropriates to the good and to beatitude; an evil will succumbs to disordered passions and exacerbates them. Emotions and feelings can be taken up into the virtues or perverted by the vices.
1769 In the Christian life, the Holy Spirit himself accomplishes his work by mobilizing the whole being, with all its sorrows, fears and sadness, as is visible in the Lord's agony and passion. In Christ human feelings are able to reach their consummation in charity and divine beatitude.
1770 Moral perfection consists in man's being moved to the good not by his will alone, but also by his sensitive appetite, ...
IN BRIEF
1771 The term "passions" refers to the affections or the feelings. By his emotions man intuits the good and suspects evil.
1773 In the passions, as movements of the sensitive appetite, there is neither moral good nor evil. But insofar as they engage reason and will, there is moral good or evil in them.
1774 Emotions and feelings can be taken up in the virtues or perverted by the vices.
1775 The perfection of the moral good consists in man's being moved to the good not only by his will but also by his "heart."
Find the material here, with the footnotes. Catechism of the Catholic Church:
PART THREE: Life in Christ
SECTION ONE: Man's Vocation Life in the Spirit
CHAPTER ONE: The Dignity of the Human Person
"It doesn't matter how you feel inside, you know. It's what shows up on the outside that counts. Take all your bad feelings and push them down, all the way down past your knees, until you're almost walking on them. And then you'll fit in, and you'll be invited to parties, and boys will like you. And happiness will follow." -- Marge Simpson
"It can suggest a willingness to accept new information and to accommodate what the other person feels." It can but it mostly doesn't. If you cared, you could turn this into a testable hypothesis, if you are interested in statements that could be refuted by reality.
@MikeR: "But I am warned that we will not be discussing an actual issue but her feelings." Sorry, bud, but here feelings are the issue, and also the meta-issue: nothing matters more than women's feelings. Get with the program.
@Tim: "It's a shield, a defensive measure used to remove facts and logic as possible sources of counter-argument." The feelers are well and truly immunized.
@dustbunny: "this is how marriage therapists suggest their patients speak to each other. It seems inevitable that the language has seeped out into the world" The therapeutic triumphed a long time ago. Philip Rieff was the real prophet of our age.
"That's not a feeling...it is an opinion."
You seem angry.
Right now I feel like quitting this and going out to fix the sprinkler drain plug in the corner of my courtyard.
You seem angry.
Why? If I oppose your position I have to be angry? If I had to assign an emotion, I'd choose sorrow.
My opposition to allowing emotion to control your thoughts and actions is based on observation and empirical evidence, not emotion.
I have never understood your opposition to reason, especially given your position as a professor.
Is it irrational to feel that some of my favorite numbers are irrational?
See Me
Feel Me
Touch Me
Heal Me
See Me
Feel Me
Touch Me
Heal Me
I feel
feel like
like I
I am
in a burning building
and I've gotta go
I wonder if I should think about examining my feeling that you and Gahrie are having some kind of... like... relationship.
Chinese christian church-planter Watchman Nee said the human soul is composed of three parts: mind, will, and emotion. The mind, he said, was "the leading part of the soul." The emotion, according to Nee, the weakest part. Nee further divided the human non-physical being into soul and spirit. The spirit, according to Nee, is where the divine can enter: Spirit matches spirit. From there the Spirit can spread throughout the soul until the person is truly sanctified (made holy). The final moment of completion is when the body, humanity's third part, is "transfigured."
Nee's theology makes a lot of sense to me. I see two great spheres, the physical and the metaphysical (call it spiritual), kind of like Plato. These two spheres meet at the human soul. The soul then negotiates between the two, using the body as an organ to receive the physical world and the spirit as one to receive the spiritual.
Hm. Why'd I write all that? I dunno. Maybe a prodding from that deepest part, the spirit.
"Feelings...
Nothing more than feelings
Wo-wo-wo-wo,
Feelings"
I mean, what else is left to say since Milwaukee has already brought up St Thomas & the Catechism on the passions.
The feelings express happiness, make one smile. Analysis of the feelings expresses happiness, all personality aside; makes one smile. The former uplift the soul, dependent upon space, upon duration, up the conception of humanity considered as itself, in its celebrated constituents! The latter uplifts the soul, independently of duration and space, up to the conception of humanity considered in its highest expression, the will! The former are concerned with vices and virtues; the latter only with virtues. Feelings do not know their marching order. The analysis of feelings teaches how to reveal it, increases the strength of the feelings. With the former, all is uncertainty. They are the expression of happiness, grief, two extremes. With the latter, all is certainty. It is the expression of that happiness which results at a given moment from knowing how to restrain oneself in the midst of good or evil passions. It uses its calm to render the description of the passions down to a principle which flows through the pages: the non-existence of evil. The feelings weep when they must, as when they need not. Analysis of the feelings does not weep. It possesses a latent sensibility which catches one off guard, prevails over miseries, teaches how to dispense with a guide, provides a combat weapon. The feelings, sign of weakness, are not feeling! The analysis of feeling, sign of strength, generates the most magnificent feelings I know. The writer who is taken in by feelings must not be placed on a par with the writer who is taken in neither by feelings nor himself. Youth intends sentimental lucubrations. Maturity begins to reason without confusion. He was only feeling, he thinks. He used to let his sensations wander: now he gives them a pilot. If I liken humanity to a woman, I shall not expatiate upon her youth's being on the wane and the approach of her middle-age. Her mind changes for the better. Her ideal of poetry will change. Tragedies, poems, elegies will no longer take precedence. The coolness of the maxim shall prevail!
- Lautreamont
I feel that men are much more emotional than women, that's why we expend so much energy hiding our feelings. Men invent the most stuff, start nearly all religions and create the most art because that is the only way we can express our feelings in a socially acceptable way. We call these feelings hunches, common sense, noodling, visions, inklings, etc. and are the fount of male creativity. Women are forced to be cold blooded and practical because they get preggers and have to manage the spawn. That's why they tend to breed with a strong, tall paycheck. Modern society has freed women from the birther drudgery and now they find themselves in positions to be creative like men. Weak men, like most of the posters on this blog, are threatened by women who want to compete. Of course, women need extra help because you know, evolution takes time and society changes faster than biology. Therefore, the overly emotional weak men who do have creative outlets whine and moan about how unfairly men are treated and their masculinity is stolen. In reality, these weak sisters never had it.
Therefore, the overly emotional weak men who do NOT have creative outlets whine and moan about how unfairly men are treated and their masculinity is stolen. In reality, these weak sisters never had it.
I wonder if I should think about examining my feeling that you and Gahrie are having some kind of... like... relationship.
Strictly Platonic..I take marriage vows seriously, even if they aren't my own.
If emotion is inherently a component of (faulty) reasoning and decision making (that's two words, not one), is it wrong to discuss our political opinions in terms of how we "feel"?
Indubitably yes.
Whenever I encounter someone who uses feel as a synonym for think I prepare myself for a torrent of fallacy alarms ringing in my head. We humans can't divorce our emotions from our reasoning, which is something we have inherited from our non-human ancestors. Apes have this problem as well, but in their case the emotional component is so strong that their ability to reason takes a backseat to their impulsiveness. They never progress beyond the impulsiveness of a human preschooler. Even more than brain size the apes' lack of emotional control has held them back, and barring human intervention, doomed them to extinction.
As we mature some of us gain a modicum of control over our emotions, however from infancy to about twenty emotion rules us more than reason. This is unfortunate because some research indicates that we're getting dumber, not smarter. Worldwide the average human IQ is closer to 80 than 100. There is also anecdotal evidence to suggest that our emotional maturation is becoming increasingly delayed. Today in America its not that unusual for 25 year olds to be fully dependent on their parents, and similar trends can be seen elsewhere. 500 years ago a 14 year old male was often a journeyman in a trade, which meant he was fully prepared for an autonomous life. Girls at 14 were considered not only nubile but fully prepared as independent homemakers. This wasn't just because life was less complicated then. These medieval teenagers thought and behaved as we do in our thirties. As we get dumber and more impulsively emotional — observe the typical university campus today and compare it to itself 65 or 70 years ago — we shall see more war, crime, and terrorism, not less. If we can survive long enough the law of adaptive radiation will eventually kick in and resolve our problems for us.
For the last 45,000 years or so there has been but one species of the genus Homo on this planet. Creationists consider this normal since they claim that Man was made in God's image, it follows therefore that one human species is to be expected. Nevertheless it is not. All of recorded human history is contained within a bubble of evolutionary equilibrium, as Gould theorized. Eventually a new species will branch off from Homo sapiens. If the general trend of the radiation of the Homininae hold true they will likely be smarter and less emotionally compelled than ourselves. They may live peaceably among us for thousands of years, but we'll be gone sooner or later.
@Qaestor Have you read "Descartes' Error"? Emotion is a necessary and inextricable part of reasoning. Your sense that it is not is itself emotional. I recommend learning about the human body, the brain, and the nervous system and coming to terms with the reality of being an organism.
Emotion is a necessary and inextricable part of reasoning.
No..reasoning is the process of logic overcoming emotion.
"I feel that" might be better than "I feel like".
And I like your response to Qaestor, but "coming to terms with the reality of being a human being" would be nicer than "coming to terms with the reality of being an organism."
Ann Althouse said...
Emotion is a necessary and inextricable part of reasoning.
It's the first step though. The next is to evaluate the triggers for each emotion as valid or invalid. Only after recognizing this and excising those conclusions reached via invalid emotions (like racism or envy) can one proceed to hold out the conclusions as worthy.
This is not how modern activists use emotion though. They state conclusions in terms of feelings because feelings are not subject to rebuttal. If a person says they exist then they do. But since the emotions driving the politically useful conclusions are mainly attributable to envy and hate activists must end the process before the introspective examination occurs. And so they invented the "questioning my experiences" faux outrage to prevent this exposure.
Reason: think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.
logic: reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity.
feeling: a belief, especially a vague or irrational one.
emotion: instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge.
hysteria: uncontrollable emotion or excitement
I have never understood your irrational support of irrationality. However I do believe it to be sincere...that's part of the problem. I sincerely believe that we should make decisions about issues based on rational thought, and you sincerely believe that decisions should be based on irrational feelings. you have even stated that you believe text should be interpreted through feelings rather than analyzed through logic.
NB: Using Feelings to decide what we are to do about problems is "The Woman Card."
My support for the repeal of the 19th Amendment is not because I am angry with women, it is because I believe that most of them are unable to adequately control their emotions and vote logically.
Professor Vandiver said that the Ancient Greeks thought that we think with our guts, rather than our brains, as that's what it feels like, IIRC.
I find that hard to believe. But then again, I've also heard it said that Aristotle thought that the primary function of breathing was to cool the body and that Descartes thought the soul resided in the pineal gland. It was also a good long time before somebody figured out that the heart circulates blood, supposedly.
Go figure.
Will somebody please explain what part emotion or feeling play in proof of the Pythagorean theorem.
Emotion is a necessary and inextricable part of reasoning.
Correction. Emotion is an inextricable part of the human mind, but it is not necessary or even relevant to higher reasoning. There is no mathematical operator called emotion. I wrote about the differences between ourselves and apes, which are more a matter of degree than kind. More than anything else emotions are what makes an ape mind what it is. By comparison with the apes humans are like Gene Roddenberry's Vulcans. What set us on the path to humanity was our ability to compartmentalize our emotional lives, a trend that may have started far back in out evolution.
Perhaps the best way to distinguish our genus from the apes, besides bipedality, is our coolheadedness. Humans are the unexcitable apes. Without the explosions of rage and physical violence that are typical of African apes, our ancestors were able to form more stable social groups, which in turn allowed more long-lasting liaisons between adult males and their mates, which in turn permitted longer periods of infant dependency. Longer infancies made bigger brains possible. The larger human brain is still apelike in that emotional centers are closely associated spatially with cognitive centers — consequently we can hardly reason without an emotional response. Solve a Rubik's cube and one feels pleasure — the so-called "sense of accomplishment". Fail at some demanding intellectual task and one feels shame. Pride and shame are important to learning, we're proud of a Phi Beta Kappa key and ashamed of flunking, but they are not inherently necessary despite what Damasio might believe. There are nascent minds nearly everywhere that work without anything analogous to human emotion. They're called computers, and they may well be our successors.
Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, copyright 1994.
Is it necessary to point out that a lot of water has flowed under the bridges of neuropsychology, physical anthropology, and artificial intelligence in 22 years?
I'll give Althouse a reading assignment that a bit more up to date: Original Intelligence by David and Anna Premack
Logic works great in games with fixed rules and limited degrees of freedom. In the real world, uncertainty is unlimited making many logical solutions impossible to solve. Feeling is the imperfect interaction of a wild animal in a complex, dangerous world with limited resources beset with boobie traps and ambushes. Gamer logic chopping is for lemmings and other supercilious ninnies with bureaucratic minds. That said, fuzzy logic plays a vital roll in the interpretation of feelings to take appropriate actions in real time.
That professor would hate this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFIAouYD7Tw
Is “I feel” really “verbiage, stalling for time”? It seems more like another way of saying “I believe,” which can communicate a deeper commitment to a concept than “I think.”
There are nascent minds nearly everywhere that work without anything analogous to human emotion.
Thinking through some applications of robotics of which I have some awareness I realized that I may gone a bit too far in that statement. The Mars rovers have a high degree of autonomy in how they move. They have to be since remote control at those distances (Mars may be as close as three light-minutes and as far away as twenty) is useless. Typically a rover is given a destination within its daylight travel range, but the exact route it takes to that destination is up to its onboard AI. One of the routines built into a rover's "mind" is meant to avoid an unforeseen fall. If one of its wheels suddenly looses traction one possible cause is that the wheel is no longer in contact with the ground, possibly suspended over the edge of a cliff or crevasse. The rover reacts by immediately applying full motor power to the other wheels in a direction away from the suspect wheel. The routine is informally known as a panic attack, though I doubt the rover feels fear. Its an example of fuzzy logic, which is really just the application of probability to a situation of imperfect data.
I feel like a natural woman..... but at least I get to choose my own restroom.
Quaestor said...
This is unfortunate because some research indicates that we're getting dumber, not smarter.
There more variation; smart populations are getting smarter (far more opportunity for assortive mating), but so are dumb populations, it's just that dumb populations are having more kids (r/K mating strategies).
Worldwide the average human IQ is closer to 80 than 100.
Most put it at about 90. What do you think it was 50,00 years ago?
As we get dumber and more impulsively emotional — observe the typical university campus today and compare it to itself 65 or 70 years ago — we shall see more war, crime, and terrorism, not less.
There is less violence now than in the past. A lot less
All of recorded human history is contained within a bubble of evolutionary equilibrium, as Gould theorized.
We're not in evolutionary equilibrium, quite the contrary, humans are evolving far faster now than in the past, and Gould was a dishonest and crummy scientist: "Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to be seen by non-biologists as the preeminent evolutionary theorist. In contrast, the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not be publicly criticized because he is at least on our side against the creationists."
We're not in evolutionary equilibrium
That's not quite what I said. I was pointing out that the last 45,000 years is the longest period known in which there was only one extant member of genus Homo. That's the bubble, which is bound to burst.
"Ann Althouse said...
@Qaestor Have you read "Descartes' Error"? Emotion is a necessary and inextricable part of reasoning. Your sense that it is not is itself emotional. I recommend learning about the human body, the brain, and the nervous system and coming to terms with the reality of being an organism."
Professor, have you read Aquinas? Or more recently, anything on rational emotive behavior? The idea there is that first there is some triggering event. An individual has either a rational or irrational belief to interpret that event, and they respond with a healthy, or unhealthy, emotive response. Emotions are our servants, we get to control our emotions. Emotions are not superior to reason, unless you make them superior, because you are willing to let your emotions control you.
Quaestor said...
F-nande: We're not in evolutionary equilibrium
That's not quite what I said.
It's exactly what you said. Maybe it's not what you meant.
I was pointing out that the last 45,000 years is the longest period known in which there was only one extant member of genus Homo. That's the bubble, which is bound to burst.
I don't see why it matters; ~300 of ~1100 reptile genera have one species.
PS: you probably shouldn't reference Gould if you want to be taken seriously by people who are better informed than NYT readers.
I see the discussion has gotten to evolution and anthropology.
Read The 10,000 yea explosion and get back to me .
We cannot have an intelligent conversation about evolution and human history until you do.
When somebody says "I feel" it's not that they don't have reasons, it's that their not giving an explanation. Sometimes because it is compliacted, sometimes because they can't explain. But people can't explain everything they think. Can you explain how to recognize faces? If you can, you are a very good painter, maybe. Can you explain how to recognize what person is talking?
This is all an ad for Gwen Ifil. I feel.
Because Obama.
Math genius is inspired by much more than the idea of potential unheralded obscurity save among those one probably wouldn't want to associate with in any nonmathematical endeavour. Young men with visions of ruling the world Dr. Evil style are some of the child's mind's emotions as the synopses fire oddly creating later results as proven by others, regardless peerwise timewise, never having achieved those results even though possessing the same material as humans both previous and concurrent
With robots changing the world rapidly so will emotions driving what seems to be rational, reasoned decisions to the maker of such, Freud labeled the process rationalization as it happens. Feel like it is too tough to approach a possible mate forever, intellectualize your fear with repeating over and over how thinking about the sadly shameful station of your lot is actually what empowers you to achieve escape from the phony dumbies who don't think all day every day a out how to convince themselves the world has screwed them by bestowing intelligence unequal upon them.
The particular feel of the brain suctioned out of the skull is a feeling of continuing disparate decadeswise notoutpact with blacks bottom. Surely this was and is by design. Of Satan. Who else profits?
They will never have a context to voice anything, which nature accorded them at conception although that alone was and is and will never be a guarantee to be heard.
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