"If you do not feel emotion, you do not know what you like or not like, and you do not know what you want.....you couldn't set a goal...and this is what happens with people with such brain injuries. They act randomly. They don't know how to plan. They don't know how to structure their lives or set rational goals, because rationality requires emotions."
This is a hugely profound statement that Lakoff talks about. Without emotions, we cannot make choices, and without choices we cannot set goals and without goals there can be no intentionality behind actions.Can one imagine a human life without setting goals? We take this so much for granted as a normative human behavior, but our social lives would be profoundly different without this intimate connection between emotion and rationality.