Feelings are expensive, but effective cognitive mechanisms to direct our Attention, experienced via Interoception as bodily sensations.
[F]eelings are how our mental models communicate. A “gut feeling” is a mental model at work. Feelings tell us whether the prediction produced by a mental model is positive (feels good) or negative (feel bad), so that’s the most important information to be encapsulated in the model.Glazkov (2022)
Being effective but costly, feelings have likely evolved to mark relevance and salience: The predictions and (dis)confirmations we feel strongly about are important to our purpose(s) as a System (survive, replicate, contribute, thrive), and derived from or connected to salient features of our Models.
We construct Emotions based, amongst other things, on the interoception of our feelings.
References
- Glazkov (2022): “Mental Models”