Professor Lisa Bortolotti

A recent article in the Guardian warned against the long-term health costs of loneliness. According to a survey conducted by the Campaign to End Loneliness in 2013, one in ten GPs see between six and ten patients a day who have come in primarily because they are lonely. Only 13% of GPs feel well equipped to help their lonely patients. The effects of loneliness are reasons for concern.

Traditional philosophical accounts of decision making assume that conscious rational thinking leads to wise choices. But recent psychological evidence suggests that we should trust our intuitions instead and ‘go with the flow’. Do these views conflict? If so, which one is correct? Or are both rational thinking and intuition ways of choosing for a reason?

Recorded on 18 January 2016 at Sheikh Zayed Theatre, New Academic Building From financial decisions to medical choices and political beliefs, emotion plays a crucial role. What is emotion and what is it good for? How is it represented in the brain and do human emotions differ from other animals? We will discuss the notion that emotion is the primary factor that controls our every action. Lisa Bortolotti (@lisabortolotti) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham.