Summary

Hume once remarked that our faculties of reason were controlled by passions— feelings. Many of this philosophers’ ideas were clearly Buddhist, and are also reflected in modern psychology studies. One of these looked at people deciding between various possible purchases. Though they weighed the rational arguments for and against each potential purchase, their ultimate purchasing decisions could be predicted almost entirely by scans of the activity in the pleasure/pain areas of the brain.

No matter what the decision for a particular product, one may experience a feeling of remorse as a result. This is because feelings are good evolutionary motivators, from a physical sense to a social sense. Repeated studies have shown that the brain reacts similarly to physical pain and social rejection. The role of feelings as motivators has a long history.

Plato compared the relationship between feelings and the rational...