Debunking the pyramidal mind: A plea for synergy between reason and emotion

Emotional Skillfulness and Virtue Acquisition

“…The idea that cognitive functions and emotions are clearly separated and that between them there is a hierarchical relation (in either direction) is at odds with the results of some very interesting work in cognitive science and neurobiology. In this light, a more preferable view, one that is gaining traction in cognitive science, sees the emotional and the rational component Evidence of the constantly nonhierarchical interaction between cognition and emotion is offered in regard to mental phenomena such as memory, attention, control, drive, and motivation, and increasingly also in regard to neuropsychiatric disorders such as anxiety disorders, depression, schizophrenia, substance abuse, chronic pain, and autism (Pessoa 2008;De Oliveira-Souza, Moll, and Grafman 2011;De Caro and Marraffa 2015). It is time that moral psychology also accepts the idea that cognition and emotion, far from being in a hierarchical relation, constantly interact in a synergic way (see chapters REDDY; TURIEL; WALLE this volume).…”

Phronesis, Virtues and the Developmental Science of Character

“…The interdependence of cognition and emotion is vouchsafed also by current neuroscience (Pessoa, 2008) and is assumed by social cognitive models of personality touted earlier. Moreover, the phronesis model comes Developmental Science of Character 9 Human Development DOI: 10.1159/000496758 dangerously close to endorsing a discredited pyramidal model that divides the mind into lower and higher levels that run "… up to a vertex that is able to impart order to this hierarchy of functions and, above all, that is able to direct coherently the 'noblest functions' that define rational self-consciousness" (De Caro & Marraffa, 2016, p. 1696. Invariably the lower orders include passions, instincts and emotions, and in the phronetic model also early modeled habits and possibly individual virtues; and at the vertex stands phronesis both to impart reason and to keep an eye on individual virtues.…”