Why We Feel: The Science of Human Emotion
by Victor S. Johnston

Paperback - 224 pages (April 1999)
Perseus Books; ISBN: 073820109X ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.97 x 9.53 x 6.31
Review by John G. Martin
Notwithstanding its brevity, reading this book should not be undertaken lightly. Why We Feel is a complex but clearly argued case for the evolutionary basis and utility of emotions.

Johnston’s frankly materialistic view of the rise of consciousness and the role of emotions in ordering that consciousness is based on the idea of "emergent properties." He uses the analogy of cars in the "race of life." The only challenge for the cars in this race is a sharp corner they must make to avoid a brick wall. Those cars that negotiate the corner are used at a "robotic factory" as the basis for future car designs. In this view, the emergent property of the cars is their ability to master the corner successfully; the design changes at the factory merely attempt to maximize that already existing emergent property.

Similarly in living beings, while "nerve cells are certainly the active agents in the nervous system [the factory design changes] . . . their organization depends on the survival value of the emergent properties that arise from that organization." In other words, the continued survival of living things results from the fostering of emergent properties that promote survival in a changing environment.

Johnston delves bravely into artificial intelligence and the structure of DNA (actually, not so bravely; he is a professor of psychobiology in New Mexico), explaining both how learning machines learn through the accumulation of data useful to improve the emergent properties their creators have given them, and, in living things, how genetic changes result in the strengthening of emergent properties with survival value.

In human beings, it has often been pointed out, consciousness is this sort of emergent property. Emotions, Johnston says, are as well. Emotions guide our consciousness toward behavior that is conducive to survival, that is, to reproductive success. In fact, "the real importance of feelings—emotions as well as affects—lies in the role they play in regulating how, what, and when we learn and in determining how we reason about the world around us." Johnston makes a convincing case for this, citing a wide variety of studies and hypothetical situations that show just how large a role emotions play in human decision making.

One quibble. In closing, Johnston voices the standard grumble of the rugged truth-hunting scientist that humans can become fully conscious only when they cast off primitive notions of the supernatural and embrace themselves as moral animals, appreciating the beauty and creativity of their own minds. But just what in his creative and beautifully argued thesis precludes the existence of God? Perhaps not merely a quibble after all.

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Emotion: The Science of Sentiment
by Dylan Evans