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Follow the Feeling
book

Follow the Feeling

by Kai D. Wright
August 2019
Beginner content levelBeginner
304 pages
6h 34m
English
Wiley
Audiobook available
Content preview from Follow the Feeling

4CREATIVITY APPLIED STRATEGICALLY: What Parts of a “Brand” Matter Most to a Digitally Wired Audience?

René Descartes, one of the most notable philosophers of the seventeenth century, is commonly known outside of academic circles for a series of principles best described as mind-body dualism. His central principle—“I think. Thought cannot be separated from me; therefore I exist”—is often truncated to “I think; therefore I am.”1 The ability to have thoughts is the essence of what makes humans supreme beings. But is thought the only thing that makes someone a being? Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud might vehemently disagree.

Descartes’ ideas on the centricity of the power of thought (a.k.a. reason and rationality) became a bedrock of economic principles. And economists, including Adam Smith, therefore reasoned that homo sapiens must always act in rational ways. The puzzle of Phineas Gage prompted a Portuguese neuroscientist named Antonio Damasio to investigate the divide. Is thought more powerful than emotions, or vice versa?

THE CRACKS IN THE AXIOMS

“Emotion, feeling, and biological regulation all play a role in human reason,” Damasio contested in his 1994 book Descartes’ Error. “We are not thinking machines. We are feeling machines that think.”2 His refutation of centuries-old theories included what he called the somatic marker hypothesis.

These somatic markers—indicators of feelings, of sorts—are tied to our emotions like bookmarks. Say a friend passes you a meme that almost ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781119600497Purchase book