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painting. For Brentano, emotions directed toward an object in this way will be either
correct or incorrect, and judgement that the painting is either beautiful or not beautiful
cannot both be correct (Baumgartner & Pasquerella, 2004).
If a value derives from an emotion or feeling, is it really possible that it can be
described as correct or incorrect? Can one of the friends perspectives on the painting be
right and the other wrong? The aesthetic evaluation of the painting is a subjective,
evaluative judgement. The majority of people may agree with the first friend, achieving
some consensus on whether the painting is beautiful, but this does not make the second
friend wrong. It simply means he has made a different evaluation of the painting than
others. Consider the feeling of sadness that may be invoked on a very happy occasion,
such as a wedding or a christening. This feeling is not a matter for debate and even
though it may seem inappropriate for the occasion, cannot be described as intrinsically
right or wrong. The event may have sparked memories of a loved one who has died, or
other unhappy memories. Emotion is an individual, subjective, human experience.
Seedhouse (2005) also argues that value-judgements stem from human feelings: “I like
this”, “I am drawn toward this”, “this makes me feel sick”, “I am afraid of this”, “I find
this beautiful” (Seedhouse, 2005, p. xxiii). Seedhouse draws on the work of Antonio
Damasio (1994) to establish the link between rationality and emotion.
Damasio is a neurobiologist who, through examples of case studies, clinical experience
and examination of the function of the human brain, has concluded that emotions,
feelings and biological responses all play an indispensable role in human reasoning. As
the title of his book, Descartes’ Error suggests, Damasio’s research refutes the view of
rationality that human reasoning can take place independently from emotions and
feelings.
Feelings point us in the proper direction, take us to the appropriate
place in a decision-making space, where we may put the instruments of
logic to good use…. Emotion and feeling, along with the covert
physiological machinery underlying them, assist us with the daunting
task of predicting an uncertain future and planning our actions
accordingly.
Damasio, 1994, p. xiii
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