Emotions are a critical source of information for learning.
One of the main jobs of conciousness is to keep our life tied together into a coherent story, a self-concept. It does this by generating explanations of behaviors on the basis of our self image, images, memories of the past, expectations of the future, the present social situation, and the physical environment in which behavior is produced.
Everything we think and feel (and keep thinking and feeling) creates, deep within, the brain we have.
