filamentosmovimentos

"How can* emotion and feeling play a role in decision-making?
The answer is that there are many ways, subtle and not so subtle, practical and not so practical, all of which make emotion and feeling not merely players in the process of reasoning. (...) Feelings can be sensors of the organism's interior. They can be our sentinels as well. They let our fleeting and narrow conscious self know about the current state of life in the organism. Feelings are manifestations of balance and harmony, of disharmony and discord. They do not refer to the harmony or discord of objects or events out in the world, necessarily, but rather to the harmony or discord deep in the flesh.

(...)
Joy and sorrow and other feelings are largely ideas_feedback of the body in the process of maneuvering itself into states of optimal survival.

(...)
Human beings are as they are - living and equipped with appetites, emotions, feelings and other self-preservation devices, including the capacity to know and to reason.

(...)
I tried to check the accuracy of a quote, a link to Spinoza I had read long ago:
Proposition 18 in part IV of The Ethics: "... the very first foundation of virtue is the endeavor (conatum) to preserve the individual self, and happiness consists in the human capacity to preserve it**(s self)." In Latin the proposition reads: "... virtutis fundamentum esse ip sum conatum proprium esse conservandi, et felicitatem in eo consistere, quòd homo suum esse conservare potest."
The word conatum can be rendered as endeavor or tendency or effort, and Spinoza may have meant any of these, or perhaps a blend of the three meanings. The word virtutis can refer not just to its traditional meaning, but also to power, and ability to act. Curiously, in this passage, he uses the word felicitatem, which is best translated as happiness, rather than laetitia which can be translated as joy, elation, delight, and happiness.
At first glance the words sound like a prescription for the selfish culture of our times but nothing can be further from their real meaning. As I interpret it, the proposition is a cornerstone for a generous ethical system.
.. the foundation for a system of ethical behaviors... and that foundation is neurobiological. (...)
The biological reality of self-preservation leads to virtue because in our inalienable need to maintain ourselves we must, of necessity, help preserve other selves. (...)
The secondary foundation of virtue then is the reality of a social structure and the presence of other living organisms in a complex system of interdependence with our own organism."



Antonio Damasio in "Looking for Spinoza"

* in the original: "could" - related with the text developed by Damasio before this excerpt ** suggestion for modification by Catarina to "it" (the conatum) instead of "its self". 

"... do our ordinary moral concepts (the ones we deploy in token thoughts most frequently) have an emotional component? This is essentially an empirical question. (...) Current evidence favors the conclusion that ordinary moral judgments are emotional in nature.

For example, Moll, de Oliveira-Souza, and Eslinger (2003) measured brain activity as subjects evaluated moral sentences such as, ‘You should break the law when necessary’ in contrast with factual sentences such as, ‘Stones are made of water’. In both cases, subjects simply had to answer ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. They found that when subjects made moral judgments, as opposed to factual judgments, areas of the brain that are associated with emotional response were active.

(...)

Moral judgments are closely associated with ought-judgments, and ought-judgments are characteristically action-guiding. Sentimentalism explains why there is such a rapid move from thinking an action is wrong to thinking I ought to prevent or avoid that action. (...)

Sentimentalism theory explains the link between emotion and motivation. Philosophers disagree about whether moral judgments are intrinsically motivating, but they all admit that moral judgments characteristically give rise to motivational states."

Jesse Prinz, in "The Emotional Basis of Moral Judgments"