Hot thought - Paul Thagard

Contrary to standard assumptions, reasoning is often an emotional
process. Emotions can have good effects, as when a scientist gets excited about a
line of research and pursues it successfully despite criticism. But emotions can
also distort reasoning, as when a juror ignores evidence of guilt just because the
accused seems like a nice guy. In Hot Thought, Paul Thagard
describes the mental mechanisms -- cognitive, neural, molecular, and social -- that
interact to produce different kinds of human thinking, from everyday decision making
to legal reasoning, scientific discovery, and religious belief, and he discusses
when and how thinking and reasoning should be emotional.

Thagard
argues that an understanding of emotional thinking needs to integrate the cognitive,
neural, molecular, and social levels. Many of the chapters employ computational
models of various levels of thinking, including HOTCO (hot cognition) models and the
more neurologically realistic GAGE model. Thagard uses these models to illuminate
thinking in the domains of law, science, and religion, discussing such topics as the
role of doubt and reasonable doubt in legal and other contexts, valuable emotional
habits for successful scientists, and the emotional content of religious beliefs.
Identifying and assessing the impact of emotion, Thagard argues, can suggest ways to
improve the process of reasoning.