Of Hearts and Heads

Sandy was a generous woman who brimmed with kindness and compassion. Her empathy was so far reaching that her heart would immediately melt at the sight of others' discomfort, and she helped others without thinking. If someone suffered on the road and asked for money, she would hand double the request, unquestioningly. However, Maria was different. She believed in thinking before acting, and was not one to easily give way to the emotions of the heart. She greatly disapproved of Sandy's behavior, for she felt it wasn't right to be charitable without thinking of the consequences. According to Maria, if Sandy handed out money and materials to the needy, especially children, they are taught to be forever helpless and dependent. Besides, what if the money was spent on drugs and frittered away? Isn't that Sandy's fault? She, on the other hand, would put some thought into the matter and come up with an effective and practical way of helping people. Maria never felt sad, nor did she empathize with people who suffered. She worked from a sense of duty, and put as much rationality as she could in the process. According to her, she was being more morally responsible, than someone like Maria, who rashly acted on her feelings of pity. But people around Maria saw her as a cold, unfeeling person. Everyone felt closer and warmer to Sandy, and they couldn't agree with Maria's point of view. (Original Source: The Pig That Wants to be Eaten, Julian Baggini)

Sandy is a person who listens to her heart, while Maria listens to her mind. Is one better than the other? Not really. If so, we wouldn't have evolved to have both feelings and rational thought. But, in order to be morally responsible, is feeling, or thinking, more important? Again, the answer seems to be both. But if we had to choose one over the other, due to some compulsive changes in the future of evolution, which one would it be?

One thing that comes clean is that both ladies act on good intentions. The consequences, and the means to achieve the good ends, are in question. To the practical person, Maria makes a lot more sense. At the end of the day, global issues such as poverty, cannot be eradicated if every philanthropist randomly gave out money and materials. There needs to be a plan, and a systematic effort to pool in money and effectively utilize it through long-term solutions. Such long-term solutions need to be conceived and implemented. Rational, practical thinking is of utmost importance to ensure money is well spent, and resources are managed properly, so that there is little disparity in its distribution.

But such rational thinking cannot be set into motion without the impetus of feelings such as compassion and empathy. Some people like Maria are motivated enough by their sense of duty. But to me, duty is incomplete without genuine feeling. Besides, sustaining a grueling long-term effort requires much more than just duty - there needs to some feeling of involvement.

We evolved to feel first, and then think. Our animal ancestors cultivated the sense of morality primarily through feelings of empathy to fellow members. From that instinct, we have come down several stages wherein we have a more sophisticated moral structure built on the pillars of empathy and rationality, for successful and harmonious coexistence. One cannot exist without the other. However, merely rational thoughts of helping people cannot sustain without the feeling to want to help. But a feeling of wanting to help has immense hope to be practically and logically structured, given some time. I think the essence of humanity lies in feelings of compassion and kindness. Rational thought follows those feelings. If we had to compromise, I think we would survive better with feelings of morality, than rational thought on morality. Imagine a scenario such as a sinking ship; would a plain sense of duty and rationality alone urge men to rescue others, before they tried to save themselves? Rationality would scream: save yourself, there is only 1 boat left.

In the above scenario, Sandy is surely commendable, but she has to be advised on how to effectively channelize her feelings and donations, so as to truly address core problems. While Maria is very sensible, a future of humanoids like her who are cold to suffering, but can calculate a plan of rescue, is troubling to envision.

Reflections: By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

According to legend, the river Piedra was so cold and frigid that anything that fell into it - leaves, stones, feathers...all turned to stone. Kind of a black-hole, into which one could hurl anything that they wanted to purge and exorcise out of them. Over the banks sits a woman, furiously writing down her life's story to be flung into the river; to forget, to heal, to extinguish her flaming agony. The book contains her story.

I expected a dramatic tale to unfold from the woman in this book, I expected this book to touch me deep as the woman wept. But what to me would have been a pleasant surprise, a touching gesture, and a means for a happy ending, was of total shock and sorrow to the woman. And I wanted to tell the woman - "You're overreacting, pull yourself together!" If Coelho had read my thoughts as I read through the book, he would have been completely exasperated at my reaction :).

In all honesty, I'm a little too practical and rigid to let myself get lost in Coelho's stories. My fault is I cannot stop asking questions, stop searching for meaning, or stop pondering for explanations. This is perhaps why his book, "The Alchemist" didn't appeal to me much.

It took sometime for me to turn the book over in my thoughts, and I understood what Coelho was trying to convey. The book was meant for people like me - uptight in their thoughts. It teaches us to break down rules, to stop asking questions, to stop looking for explanations and to just give freedom to the spirit inside of us. Let the spirit guide us to our paths, to our calling and have complete faith in a higher authority. It's about being a Romanticist in life, to connect with the world, to speak to it's soul and to appreciate the beauty of it all. Coelho's books teach me to be a child again, and to be a complete Romanticist who would take their spirit for an adventure. I never understood why mountain hikers struggled so much and lost so much just to get to the peak... all they would see is a view, a nice one maybe, but you can see that on a postcard or a video. Coelho chides people like me in this book, using this very same example. There's much more for the spirit to feast on than merely a view, he says.

It's very interesting that throughout the book, the woman is conflicted with a battle between her heart and mind, sometimes between her heart and a phantom representing the society, and preconditioned rules. Coelho urges us to take risks, to just let go of ourselves, and to break down barriers we create for ourselves. Coelho's stamp of philosophy comes across in the book as he asserts that the Universe will conspire to make our dreams come true, if and only if, we had faith in them and listened to our heart, quietened our mind and neglected society.

In addition to this main theme, the book explores how a man and a woman in love can come together to create their own calling in life. I believe that each of us have our own destiny and calling in life. When we are single, we are on our own Path, our own Lane. But when we find a companion, the most crucial aspect is deciding how to merge our Lanes, find a common Path, and be true to both our callings. Coelho demonstrates how Faith plays a huge role in such decisions.

Listening to my heart, letting my spirit fly free and to have implicit faith in the Universe - are things I still cannot bring myself to do, although the thoughts are appealing. My mind doesn't shut up, it doesn't stop being skeptical and my heart often loses the battle. But I will surely remember this book, when the time comes when my mind can do nothing more, and all that is left is to garner faith, pure faith from my heart, and just bank on it's clarity.

When Rationality Demands...

Sophia had always prided herself on her rationality. She would never take a decision that didn't conform to rationality and reason. Some motivations are of course not driven by reason - love, taste, character etc. But Sophia's argument was, not being rational didn't always imply irrationality. While it is neither rational nor irrational to prefer potatoes over tomatoes, it becomes irrational when a person who loves potatoes buys a pound of tomatoes, when circumstances don't dictate the purchase of one over the other. However, Sophia is faced with a dilemma now. A very intelligent friend of hers is trying to persuade her that it would be perfectly rational to set off a bomb which would kill millions of innocent people, without any foreseeable benefits that might arise due to the massacre. Sophia is sure that her friend's logic is skewed. But using her rationality she can't seem to place her finger on it. And the argument suggests that she needs to set off the bomb immediately, so time to think is hardly an option. Sophia is plagued with doubt, for she has always been against intuitions and hunches and only favored rational analysis. However if she follows reason in this case, she seems to feel that she would do a terrible wrong by killing people. Should she knowingly follow the less rational path, or trust reason over feeling and detonate the bomb? (Source: The Pig that Wants to be Eaten, Julian Baggini)


What's up with these successive discussions involving bombs and massacre?! My blog is going to be soon blocked if this trend keeps continuing. First off, I really am not convinced with this excerpt. I don't know how an argument could be rationally solid if it involved -1) committing a gross crime of massacring thousands, and 2) have NO benefits from committing such a crime. I really cannot think of an analogous scenario. Rational analysis always consists of costs, benefits and risks triangle as part of decision making. If benefits are zero, and the costs SO high, I cannot fathom what sort of a rational decision-making strategy it would fall under. What could the "rational" motivations for such a crime be?


The reason why I'm so convinced that there has to be a flaw in the argument is not entirely due to the fact that there are no benefits. It is mainly due to the fact that the outcome of such rational thought is evil and morally wrong, and I've been conditioned to believe that objective truth/decisions arising out of reason will only lead to good, not evil. And that is my little prejudice, for I have failed to remind myself of two aspects -
1) good, evil, right and wrong are perceptions. Hitler had his perceptions of "benefits" when he waged the war and tortured the Jews. From his view, his decisions could conform to rationality and reason due to his assumptions, inputs and perceptions. However my immediate objection would be that his "reason" was flawed and doesn't objectively correspond to universally accepted norms/"truths". Yet, I also am aware that there are no books on universal "truths"; everything starts getting subjective.
2) reason without feeling, need not always lead to morally acceptable "good" decisions. Imagine a ship were being run by a machine with no human intervention. Due to a storm the ship is flung off course and there's very less fuel to navigate the ship. The machine has alerted rescue operators. In the meanwhile the machine takes an inventory of the rations available on board and decides that they have just enough to sustain the 50 member crew for 22 hours. Now the machine spots a man hanging onto a skimpy piece of plank, shouting for help, a little further away on the waves. The rational calculation spits out the result that spending fuel and rations on rescuing this man will put the other members of the ship at high risk of surviving. Hence the machine rationally decides not to rescue the man (saving one versus millions, again). Well, the decision still is "rational" if feelings , emotions and moral conditioning were isolated.

I'm reminded of a statement I read long back - "A psychopath's decisions maybe socially unacceptable and irrational, yet inside his mind, the decisions and acts were very much acceptable; they were psychologically rational, yet socially unacceptable, due to the presence of only "reason" and no feeling." So where am I going with all this? Is calling Sophia's friend/Hitler a psychopath my conclusion?


I understand that although the massacre doesn't seem to hold any benefits to me or Sophia, in the eyes of someone (at least the perpetrator) there should be some "benefits," for even a psychopath is assured of the benefit of satisfying his aberration. If Sophie herself cannot see any such benefit that can rationally convince her, she can comfortably bank on rationality to not carry forward with the act. But if she can perceive benefits, she most certainly needs to involve both her heart and mind to settle into a middle ground before "cold-hearted" logic dictates a move; and this decision is not as simple as buying potatoes or tomatoes, it involves thousands of innocent lives. The gravity of the situation begs to involve feeling along with reason. The previous post on exercising torture to save millions is one of the trillions of cases in the real world that debates on whether or not to involve the heart in such decisions.

Human beings have evolved to develop more emotions, empathy, and compassion to their species and to others. Otherwise we would still belong to the barbaric tradition of killing people with a disease that has no cure, in order to save ourselves. At such a stage in evolution it is a sign of barbarism if the heart is not given a chance to be voiced out, during such decision making.

Now onto the mention of intuition. What is intuition? In this excerpt, intuition is totally isolated from rationality and is tainted with a "soft" color of gut-feeling. Is intuition really so cut off from rational thought? A book that I recently read paints a very different and surprising picture - can you imagine doctors in ER and firefighters in emergency rescue operations acting on their intuitions to save lives? And yet that's how experts make decisions! How does an expert cook? Is it their conscious cognitive effort that goes behind how much of what to put, when and how to judge if the food is done. How do they react when they have the faintest smell of a cake burning? Ask them for rational analysis and tips and you would get nothing, except a few hints on sensory perception. Such knowledge/skill is quite tacit and it's hard to verbalize our actions through rational means. The author and many other researchers claim that intuition is nothing but our ability to perceive very subtle cues in the environment to inform our decision making, which in the end almost appears automatic and intuitive. Even those like Einstein and Feynman have claimed that their discoveries were a result of their intuitive imagination that was further explained through mathematical equations. But not all of us are geniuses to have the clarity to rationally verbalize all of our intuitive feelings. Feynman hence urges engineers to develop intuition and not always rely on analytical calculations.

But the word intuition is ascribed to many terms - ESP, sixth sense, clairvoyance and other concepts that go against the notion of free will, and that opens a huge can of other pestering questions that have no definitive answers. But the scientific definition of intuition at least attempts to bridge the gap between perceptual sensory cues (feelings) and reason. So at the end of this boring ramble, I insist that Sophia needs to use both her feelings and reason to make the decision. In this case, if her feelings overwhelm the cold-hearted logic of massacring thousands , especially when she foresees little to no benefit, it is justified to bank on feelings alone, for relying on feelings to make a decision is not necessarily irrational.