Take one small but telling example from the latest Star Trek movie: Kirk, in a dire spot, says he wants to be more like Spock: He?d like to choose not to feel. This reiterates an old rationalist desire. Rationalist philosophy, says David Brooks, believes ?reason is more powerful than and separable from emotion? and hopes that ?reason?triumphs over emotion.? This widely used dichotomy mis-frames what cognitive science shows.
Per Kahneman, feeling is a form of thinking. Both process data. Feeling does it faster. Either can be logically apt or inept. Each comes from different cognitive systems that Kahneman calls Systems 1 and 2. System 1 generates feelings; it?s fast, intuitive, and reactive, like Kirk. System 2 consciously thinks; it?s slower, deliberative, and capable of logic, like Spock (hat tip to Maria Konnikova?s Mastermind which uses Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson similarly).
Kirk?s wish is futile. We can?t directly choose not to feel. That?s not how human cognitive plumbing works. Feelings are like heart-rate or digestion, they?re involuntary. This unwilledness led the ancient Greeks to believe that strong feelings were visited on us by the gods (by personified external forces).
Our System 2 (inner-Spock) can choose our feelings, but only indirectly, by putting our System 1 (inner-Kirk) in situations that evoke them. We can train how our System 1 (inner-Kirk) reacts to contextual triggers, but only with substantial prior effort, not simply by System 2 (inner-Spock) decisions on the spot.
Kirk?s famous intuitive gut-feel decisions are System 1 driven. But ?Intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition,? says Kahneman. A firefighter knows ?without knowing how he knows? that a situation is unsafe because his System 1 recognizes cues, even if his System 2 can?t name them. This is ?the norm of mental life.?
When should Kirk-like intuitions be trusted? Kahneman says only if two conditions are met: first, in environments with sufficiently ?stable regularities?; second, after prolonged exposure to learn those regularities. Intuition can work in chess, but not in stock markets (which Kahneman says are subject to the ?illusion of skill.?). Sometimes following intuitions is extremely rational, as in the firefighter (see also Julia Galef?s Hollywood rationality error #3). In unstable unpatterned contexts, no productive intuitive System 1 recognition is possible.
Rationalist aspirations also misrepresent the dramatic moral conflicts that drama needs and Star Trek does so well. Jonathan Haidt has shown empirically that System 1 intuition is ?the main cause of moral judgment.?
System 2 rationality later provides justification.
To boldly go where no one has gone before, take both your inner-Kirk and your inner-Spock. Intuitions and logic work better together.
Illustration by Julia Suits, The New Yorker Cartoonist & author of The Extraordinary Catalog of Peculiar Inventions.
Previously in this series:
Kahneman and Bentham?s Bucket of Happiness
Kahneman?s Clarity: Using Mysterious Coinage in Science
What Rational Really Means
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=3ef20f1ba5314c15806a97b847146278
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