Heart vs Mind as the seat of Reason

[iBrian]

In the ancient world, the heart was the seat of Reason.

It wasn't until more modern times that the brain was isolated as the organ for intellectual thought.

However - for those who have ever felt themselves to be intuitive or have intuitive experiences - the feeling always seems to come from the chest area.

In fact, someone may even argue that the heart is the seat of unconscious processes, while the brain is the seat of conscious processes....

I would be very surprised if there's any kind of physiological explanation for this - I suspect that intuition as a process is as mysterious as consciousness itself.

However, if anyone has ever faced a decision between two options, and the intellect says to choose one option, and your intuition says to choose the other - it's intuition that gets it right.

Could the heart therefore be said to be a seat of reason of some form? If so, can this really be sustained by any sort of argument if there is no supporting physiological explanation?

Conversely, if it can be said that the heart cannot be a seat for reason, conscious or unconscious, then can intuition itself be considered as a form of reason? If not, why not?

Discussion starter...

 

[taijasi]

Several things occur to me. First, it has been said that we must learn to "think with our heart, and feel with our mind." I take this as more than wordplay. It serves as a reminder to try and keep things in context ... appreciating that everyone has their own background, and set of experiences. And it also suggests that we must not let our feelings overwhelm us, since the unreasoned approach can often be a dangerous - even deadly - one.

Another thought: Some people make an effort to distinguish between Intuition, and feelings. Often the expression "gut feelings" comes into play. And imho, this is a source of much confusion. If I am out camping alone in the Appalachian Mountains, and I suddenly realize that a large bear and her cubs are nearby ... my gut feeling is very quickly going to be something like, "Get the hail outta there!" It may even strike me so violently that I jump! But in this instance, nature has simply done her work - and it's up to me to choose the proper action. I would do much better to back away slowly, and always keep that mother bear between me and her cubs - than to suddenly flee, which my gut feeling had at first suggested.

But I'll go further and say, that if I'm walking along in my neighborhood here, and see - oh, say four or five rough-looking guys coming at me - I need to be equally careful about my gut feeling. For in this case, just as in the one with the bear, it could be foolish of me to tuck tail and run ... but more likely, it would simply be a source of amusement to these fine fellas, who really have no more ill intention to me than a rock does to a tree. If I do anything other than greet them in a good-natured way, I've only shown how fearful, or what a fool I am. The moral, between these two incidents, is that instincts like the proverbial "gut feeling" (activity of the solar plexus, or emotional chakra) - are there for a purpose, but that purpose isn't Reason. For that, the heart and head are both required.

Incidentally, those who have studied the chakras might recognize that the gut feelings of the solar plexus (and lower) are the same "base emotions" - along with the so-called negative stuff (fear, anger, hatred, jealousy, etc.) which must be sublimated by the heart (chakra) ... and transformed into Love. One can speak of this as an emotionally-centered type of experience, but I would suggest that we are going far beyond, or deeper than, just our feelings ... since Agape, or Unconditional Love, is much more than just "a nice happy feeling." It's like we punch through to an altogether deeper level of our being, where our warmest personal feelings resonate with a tremendous Wellspring of energy ... which imo is beyond "mind" altogether!

We cannot reason our way into Unconditional Love, or into the heart of another (or ourself). At best, we can gain insight, and find some degree of illumination. And yet, don't these terms - insight and illumination - both refer to light, the Light of Reason, which is very much related to the pineal (and to another thread at CR altogether), and to Descartes' Seat of the Soul in ... yep, the human brain? I don't mean to belittle these experiences in any way, or undermine the role of the Mind, the Intellect, Reason, etc. as part of our experience ... and psychological - even spiritual - makeup. But I do think that when we start speaking in terms of the Intuition, we need to consider that it might be a fallacy to simply reduce this to an emotion. Indeed, what if it's greater than both emotion and Reason?

I think confusion can be avoided by going back to the advice earlier: Learn to think with the heart, and feel with the mind. This underscores the importance of both faculties, and thinking internally (or in terms of the centers), I get the imagine of an Infinity symbol, between brain & heart.

This is a secular thread, so I should go easy on the metaphysics, but just for the record, some esoteric teachings give detailed figures for the number of spokes or "petals" of the various chakras in the human body. The heart is said to have twelve petals, while the crown chakra - at the top of the head - is called the thousand-petalled lotus. The precise number of petals is said to be 960, around the outside, with an additional twelve within. These twelve correspond precisely with the twelve petals of the heart chakra. And esotercially, the "heart within the head," as it is called, is the primary one. It is also called, the Jewel within the Lotus - and is supposed to be one of the most beautiful sights that any of us could ever behold!

Now good ol' Descartes may be thought of as a secular philospher by some, but I think there was more to his Cogito than a simple headtrip. Where did he come up with that business about the pineal, anyway?

Namaskar,

andrew

 

[China Cat Sunflower]

Is it the heart or the gut? Maybe a little of both.

Chris

 

[seattlegal]

My impressions are that intuition works on the principle of pattern recognition, {which has an interesting tie in with the different patterns of our heartbeat} , while the intellect works at interpreting, describing and explaining these patterns. Both intuition and logic are based upon reason, but through different means. Intuition recognizes what is there, and the intellect interprets what is there. JMHO.

It's like we punch through to an altogether deeper level of our being, where our warmest personal feelings resonate with a tremendous Wellspring of energy ... which imo is beyond "mind" altogether!

This resonation is a like a confirmation of the recognition of the pattern, IMHO.

But I do think that when we start speaking in terms of the Intuition, we need to consider that it might be a fallacy to simply reduce this to an emotion. Indeed, what if it's greater than both emotion and Reason?

Agreed. Inspiration might be a better term to use than simply emotion.

Regarding heart and brain functions, has anyone noticed just how many different parts of the brain govern the heart functions, or are affected by the heart? It's not like heart functions can be neatly identified with a specific area or level of the brain, but it seems like there is a broader integration associated with heart/brain functions than with many other bodily functions.

 

[iBrian]

I agree there's sometimes a problem between separating the concepts of "emotion" vs "intuition".

I see intuition as a different process than basic emotional responses - felt that before in the exact same context of approaching a large gang of youths in an area I used to live (it had a serious heroin problem, and recently the police there stated they won't bother investigating anything but serious crime there) - my base emotional feeling was to cross over, keep away, escape - my intuitive feeling was that I was perfectly safe and of absolutely no interest to them. My intellect sided with the base emotion, but an intuitive vote wins, even in minority.

 

[seattlegal]

I agree there's sometimes a problem between separating the concepts of "emotion" vs "intuition".

I see intuition as a different process than basic emotional responses - felt that before in the exact same context of approaching a large gang of youths in an area I used to live (it had a serious heroin problem, and recently the police there stated they won't bother investigating anything but serious crime there) - my base emotional feeling was to cross over, keep away, escape - my intuitive feeling was that I was perfectly safe and of absolutely no interest to them. My intellect sided with the base emotion, but an intuitive vote wins, even in minority.

Well, if you don't listen to your intuition, you will never really know for certain, will you? We can become very uncomfortable, both emotionally and intellectually, when faced with uncertainty. The opposite side of the coin is in the satisfaction gained in the pursuit of mystery, or the unknown. Without our curiosity, we will not progress, and without the warning aspect of our intuition, we won't survive to pursue the mystery. It's like the driving force that keeps us "alive."

 

[sjr]

Looked at biologically, the heart's efficiency is amazing. The heart works without interruption for 70 to 80 years, without care or cleaning, without repair or replacement. Over a period of 70 years, it beats 100,000 times a day, approximately 40,000,000 times a year - nearly 3 billion pulsations all told. It pumps 2 gallons of blood per minute- well over 100 gallons per hour- through a vascular system about 60 thousand miles in lenght (over 2 times the circumference of the earth).

The heart starts beating in the unborn fetus before the brain has been formed. Scientist still don't know exactly what triggers the beating, but they use the word "autorythmic" to indicate that the heartbeat is self-initiated from WITHIN the heart.

As the brain begins to develop, it grows from the bottom up. Starting from the most primitive part of the brain (the brainstem), the emotional centers (the amygdala and the hippocampus) begin to emerge. It is well known to brain researchers that the thinking brain then grows out of the emotional regions. That speaks volumes about the relationship of thought to feeling.In an unborn child there's an emotional brain long before there's a rational one, and a beating heart before either."

 

[Jaiket]

In fact, someone may even argue that the heart is the seat of unconscious processes, while the brain is the seat of conscious processes....

Who? Why?

I would be very surprised if there's any kind of physiological explanation for this - I suspect that intuition as a process is as mysterious as consciousness itself.

I would be surprised if there wasn't.

 

[iBrian]

I would be surprised if there wasn't.

I'm sure there would be an appropriately reductionist claim that any "gut feelings" in the body when making decisions in stressful environments, are nothing more than the physical sensation of changes in the digestive and hormonal systems in reaction to stress.

My suggestion would be that this is neither an attempt to describe or explain the phenomena - merely dismiss it - and for the time being, science is not advanced enough to even begin to address the concept of intuition any more than it can explain consciousness, so it remains a matter of anecdotal account, rather than something that can as yet be quantified or qualified.

2c.

 

[Jaiket]

My suggestion would be that this is neither an attempt to describe or explain the phenomena - merely dismiss it - and for the time being, science is not advanced enough to even begin to address the concept of intuition any more than it can explain consciousness, so it remains a matter of anecdotal account, rather than something that can as yet be quantified or qualified.

Fair enough, I don't know to be honest.

 

[Devadatta]

Regarding heart and brain functions, has anyone noticed just how many different parts of the brain govern the heart functions, or are affected by the heart? It's not like heart functions can be neatly identified with a specific area or level of the brain, but it seems like there is a broader integration associated with heart/brain functions than with many other bodily functions.

Hi y'all.

Lots of interesting thoughts here. I’d like to pick up on what SeattleGal is saying here.

Rather than head/heart I see this as the contrast between localized/interdependent, or perhaps dualist/non-dualist. My feeling is on the side of those who look at this problem in a non-dualist way. Huxley (not the writer guy but the evolution guy) I think said that the brain without the body is a piece of biological nonsense. The brain/body is one interdependent system. There’s no doubt that some mental/emotional functions can to some extent be localized, but only to an extent. One obvious example is the famous right brain/left brain split, which further research I believe showed to be over-simplified; language or spatial skills are not in fact so absolutely hard wired in one hemisphere or the other.

William James in fact held that rather than an emotion beginning in the brain as an idea and then travelling efferent nerves to some part of the body to trigger a physical response, it’s the physical response that comes first, travelling along afferent nerves to the brain, where the emotion is labelled and set into a cognitive framework of past experience. I guess the idea is that a significant visual stimuli – a hungry bear, starving addict – while entering at the eye and directly wired to the brain, might in fact travel faster along other neural paths, say, to the solar plexus. Or, maybe the message is received in many places at once, and the more complex process of the higher brain just takes more time than the immediate responses of the heart or gut.

Of course, that was like a hundred years ago (but we all love ancient theories here don’t we!) and neuropsychology, etc., has no doubt travelled some distance, but it only points up how intimately one brain/body in fact are.

As far as intuition goes, while in one sense a very elusive concept, in another it seems pretty straightforward. We know that we take in masses of information that the conscious mind – one moving point over an endless dark flux – by definition can’t be aware of from moment to moment. But the information is stored & connections are made, often in dreams, those great problem solvers. And it may be as well, that some of this “storage” is distributed in some heart-like fashion in other parts of the body. So here you may have a vast store of potential knowledge.

Finally, I would echo Brian, in a sense. I’m agnostic on the existence of chakras, subtle bodies, nadis & other theoretical objects of inner mappings, but I have a strong feeling (intuition!) that these theories do point to some actual relationships/processes in the brain/body, which modern medicine really doesn’t say much about. So in lieu of a comprehensive modern theory, we can hardly completely discount the ancient ones.

Sincerely,
Devadatta

 

[iBrian]

I’m agnostic on the existence of chakras, subtle bodies, nadis & other theoretical objects of inner mappings, but I have a strong feeling (intuition!) that these theories do point to some actual relationships/processes in the brain/body, which modern medicine really doesn’t say much about. So in lieu of a comprehensive modern theory, we can hardly completely discount the ancient ones.

I quite agree here - personally, I'm quite uncomfortable with the general terminology used because it's difficult to relate concepts such as "chakras" to actual measurable experience. Anecdotal experience tells me that too blanket an affirmation or denial of the concept doesn't really help with our potential understanding of it, so "agnostic" seems a good word to apply.

 

[suanni]

Could it not be that the heart is the seat of the soul and it is the soul that is the intuitive part of our being?

 

[flowperson]

This is an interesting thread.

By placing this discussion into an adversarial mode ( Heart vs Mind ) and so implying at the outset that the discussion itself precludes any final decision or outcome that might describe a complimentary yet dynamically balanced system, I believe, is unfair to what we were/are intended to be as thinking and feeling beings.

There is not, as yet, definitive scientific proof of a well-defined heart-mind systemic connection, but there are some tantalizing indicators.

For example, there is a bundle of about 40,000 brain cell neuronal structures above and contiguous to the heart. This is the only place elsewhere in the body that these types of cells exist outside of the brain and the central nervous system. Research into the sequence of events of causes and effects during the onset of Parkinson's disease shows that this is the first area of any nervous system of the body affected by the degenerative disease, even before its effects are seen and felt in the motor areas of the brain, which then cause onset of the familiar palsy symptoms in its victims.

There are brain scan research activities being ramped up as this is written that seek to establish physiological paradigms for defined interactions between and among the emotion-driven systems of the body and the brain-driven systems.

For example, it is now known that music therapy can reduce perceived and experienced acute pain felt in the body by a factor of 20-30%. Scans of the limbic structures of the brain (amygdala, pineal, etc.) show that exposure of the brain to pleasant odors, soothing musical sounds, and pleasant tactile experiences trigger the release of hormones and proteins that serve to relieve stress and anxiety throughout the body.

Conversely, research is showing that repetitive and constant exposure to an environment or situations that cause stress and anxiety significantly increase individuals' chances of the onset of chronic disease stiuations such as hypertension, self-abuse, auto-immune disorders, usage of addictive substances and behaviors, asthma, diabetes, etc. Of course this is also dependent to a substantive degree upon the genetic susceptability if the individual.

And so, while the systemic interactions are not well defined and elucidated as yet, many in health sciences are beginning to view the human body as a wholistic system, that is intricately interconnected on the inside; and, in an overall manner, functions to self-adjust its entirety to protect and sooth itself in response to environmental assault from the outside.

This viewpoint is not yet popular amongst the western ideologues of medicine who seem to view the human body as some sort of mechanical device that can be fixed much as an automobile can for a while with water, fuel, and oil additives, and through the replacement of spare parts for worn out ones. To an extent the latter is true, but others recognize that maintenance of healthy lifestyles over lifespans are powerful preventatives for the onset of diseases.

Yes, the heart and mind are intimately connected, but not in obvious or well-known ways. But through an exploration of the creative arts and their products we can all witness the outcomes of these interconnections and benefit from the experiences of others, and thereby sometimes help ourselves.

flow....

 

[inhumility]

The heart starts beating in the unborn fetus before the brain has been formed. Scientist still don't know exactly what triggers the beating, but they use the word "autorythmic" to indicate that the heartbeat is self-initiated from WITHIN the heart.

A fascinating post from sjr .
I think it would be of interest for the members if I quote here some relevant verses from Quran.
Chapter 23 Al-Mu'minun [23:13] Verily, We created man from an extract of clay; [23:14] Then We placed him as a drop of sperm in a safe depository; [23:15] Then We fashioned the sperm into a clot; then We fashioned the clot into a shapeless lump; then We fashioned bones out of this shapeless lump; Then We clothed the bones with flesh; Then We developed it into another creation. So blessed be Allah, the Best of creators. [23:16] Then after that you, surely, must die. [23:17] Then on the Day of Resurrection you shall, surely, be raised up.” unquote

I think that the stage “Then We developed it into another creation.” as mentioned above is when soul is created in unborn fetus and some sort of consciousness begins to dwell out of sheer unconsciousness.
It is also to be noted that the seat of Revelation from God is said to be heart and seat of reason is brain, the reasoning should be in the light of the Revelation in the matters of religion, but of course not blindfolded.
Thanks