Understanding emotion is one area where current philosophical theories fall woefully short. I don't believe we have a good concept of what emotions are or what purpose they serve. The fact that many consider them separate things, reason-emotion dualism, shows how lost we are conceptually.
My primary meditation practice comes from Tibetan Buddhism. It's an active form of meditation where you think about concepts like compassion, and hold the feelings those concepts generate. After many years of this practice, I've come to believe that emotions are how our minds store values. Let me illustrate by means of an example.
Like most thoughtful adults, I know all the arguments for and against abortion. For most of my adult life I believed a woman's right to chose an abortion was more important than the life of an unborn fetus. After many years of meditation on compassion, the emotional weights I assign to the competing values tipped the other way. The arguments didn't change. I didn't suddenly come across new information. However, my conclusions based on those arguments did. Why? Because I now place a greater emotional weight on life than I do on choice. My reasoning was unchanged, but the values that substantiate those reasons did.
The purpose of the "self", the reason we have cognitive abilities is to weigh the plusses and minuses of our potential courses of action and make decisions. These plusses and minuses are stored in our emotions. Contrary to the popular belief that our "self" is the god-like master our our mind and our behavior, every decision we make is more like an act of Congress. Our mind forms coalitions of emotions either for or against a particular course of action, and whichever side has the greatest emotional weight wins. If you doubt this, make a decision contrary to your emotions and see what happens. It won't turn out well.
Consider addiction. If people were god-like in control of their mind's functioning and decision making, nobody would struggle with addiction. The ego or the "self" casts its vote along with the other emotional forces against partaking in the addictive behavior, but the stronger coalition, generally driven by pleasure, wins the vote, and people give into their cravings.
Consider also how artificial intelligence works. The software of an AI ranks everything mathematically. It creates a complex web of related numbers to form what it believes to be the correct answer. It learns from its mistakes, adjusts the numbers, and tries again and again. The mathematical number system functions exactly like emotions in the mind. We store our wisdom in emotions just like an AI stores its wisdom in numbers.
In my opinion, people would be far better served by examining and feeling their emotions rather than trying to ignore them or bludgeon them with reason. I'm not suggesting we give into fleeting emotions caused by circumstance, but every really important decision in life is a deeply emotional one, and pretending they aren't by putting on a Mr. Spock persona isn't very helpful.
