Is it possible to separate them, really, thought and feeling?

Does it matter what we "feel about" what we think?

Have a look at Robert C Solomon for the importance of emotion in thought processes.

Hi, emotions can be very influential over some forms of information processing I believe. For example, emotive content can prevent (especially teens) from disengaging attention in order to orientate towards a goal-related target.

Think this is quite a broad, yet very interesting question. What exactly are you hoping to measure?

Kevanne, I wonder what you mean by 'disengaging attention' in the context of emotion and cognition? To my way of thinking, emotion is a very important guide for me to know where I need to engage my thoughts and possibly my actions. I must admit, I wouldn't think of measuring anything very much in that department, and neither, I suspect, would Merleau Ponty. Perhaps the poser of this question could enlighten us on why it is being asked?

Emotion can be a great way to quickly identify where to engage attention, I agree. What I meant is that affective stimuli can lead to rumination and take up attentional resources, it can reduce attention switiching abilities. I think I'm going a bit far from the original question with this though, some clarification from Merleau would be beneficial.

Even there I would want to stop you and say something about the difference between rumination and reflection. It all depends on whether you basically see emotion as serving positive, life-enhancing functions, ones that support cognition in the long run, or whether you see it as something that threatens our capacity to be rational. As an existential philosopher, Merleau Ponty questioned our habit of placing consciousness as a source of knowledge, I think he thought bodily perception (which is where emotion originates, in the body) needs to be given more importance. I can't go on from there though! So come on Leland P.G. what is your question about?

Would it be proper to say that the question of thinking about x is a feedback of the information gathered by representative and affective dimensions. That is, there is no value in information unless there is a affective dimension of of feeling in it. So if "thinking" means having a conscious information, I would say that it is an emergent property of a affective, memory and representational systems of processing.

The psychological literature on deception and scams has shown that deceptive ploys eschew direct, rational argumentation and instead employ 'peripheral-route' persuasion. In turn Langenderfer & Shimp (2001), drawing on Loewenstein (1996), emphasise the role of 'visceral influences' -- greed, pity, lust, fear, anxiety -- on the effectiveness of deceptive ploys. Of course perfectly legal forms of marketing and deal-making draw from the same menu of techniques.

So yes, emotions do have a heavy bearing on how humans process information.

Langenderfer J, Shimp TA. Consumer vulnerability to scams, swindles, and fraud: A new theory of visceral influences on persuasion. Psychology and Marketing, 2001; 18:763--783.

Loewenstein G. Out of control: Visceral influences on economic behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 1996; 65:272--292.

I forgot about this - the comments are interesting. For whatever reason, I was reading Pinker at the time and thought about his comment: "...the mind 'is not the brain, but...a special thing the brain does, which makes us see, think, feel, choose, and act. That special thing is information processing, or computation." I was sort of thinking about a different "sequence": from sensation, perception, to cognition/computation. 'Being in the world' seems crucial - the crux of 'computation.' Really, I felt that dismissing the notion of desire is a mistake. The mind, as a function of body-perception, makes decisions based on our desires: moving/maneuvering towards pleasure/safety, and away from pain/suffering.