Interesting, but I’d say the case for the dominance of feelings over reason is overstated. It makes sense to recognize that many or us are more driven by emotion and feeling than by logic about many things, but many are not, and we are all logical about some things and emotional about others.

Facts exist, and with a little self-awareness we can achieve useful levels of objectivity by listening for that little voice that tells us something “can’t be true”, and finding out for a fact whether or not it is true. Many of us do a decent job of this, and make reasonably rational decisions frequently.

Andrew’s argument makes a lot of sense about how to communicate with and understand people who are being driven by feelings, especially in the context of persuasion and changing minds. As he says, you can’t counter feelings with facts. What you can do however, is establish some rapport based on expressing respect for their feelings. “I may not agree with how you see things, but I think I understand why you feel that way.” Once you do that you can often ask them to open up to your feelings on the subject, which can often lead to a productive introduction of supporting information. You can change minds this way.

Andrew writes” Our goal is actually less to be correct, then it is to convince someone else of our correctness or, less self-centeredly: we want agreement, shared clarity.” I could not disagree more. Our goal isn’t more agreement, it’s better decisions. There was a lot of shared clarity about the decision to go to war in Iraq. What was missing was a shared understanding of the facts of the situation — culture, politics, likelihood of success.

My angle here is not that much different from Andrew’s, many of us make choices based on feelings when we would be better served with an analytical approach. People can and will change their minds when exposed to facts and analysis. But, to get them to open to you, you have to understand and identify with their feelings in a way that shows them you respect their feelings. Once you show respect, you get respect, and then the door is open to changing minds. Who knows, maybe the other guy will change yours.