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 ...