There can be no knowledge without emotion.... Discuss the relationship between knowledge and emotion. Compare emotion with on other way of knowing.

Authors Avatar

“There can be no knowledge without emotion...”. Discuss the relationship between knowledge and emotion. Compare emotion with on other way of knowing.

In general, 'knowledge' means generally accepted ideas, justified beliefs or the know-how for performing a task-like knowing how to play the flute. An 'emotion' is what one mentally feels, e.g. love, hate, happiness, sadness, excitement, curiosity, doubt, longing, desire...These feelings may have physiological correlates, like tears for sadness, heart racing for fear. Emotions also affect our thoughts and actions; thoughts and actions also affect emotions.

Knowledge and emotion are one and inseparable; this is because of our limitations, both personally and those shared by all mankind. If humans were unlimited, all knowledge could be spread out in our mind’s blue print devoid of ambiguities, objective clarity would permeate the schoolroom. However because man is in fact quite limited both mentally and otherwise, he cannot prove that any piece of experience or evidence, any information gained, is without subjectivity, due to these very limitations that check him. Therefore it is unwise to ignore the emotional portion of our knowledge, and even less advisable to discard its credibility completely. Emotion may be merely the crutch that allows the lame man to walk, yet without it he could not explore the world.

A simple description of the neurology of the brain’s memory retention process will indicate that emotion is already subconsciously implemented every day. There are two stages: first, a “fact,” whether true or false, believed or not believed, is temporarily stored in the short-term hippocampus. Then, every time it is purposely recalled, or repeated by outside sources, the brain re-records and reprocesses the information. Eventually the information is deigned repetitive, long-term, and thus important enough to be moved to the cerebral cortex for long-term memory. There the memory is separated from its original context, in source amnesia: this is when you remember something, but don’t remember when or where you read, saw, or heard it. That, coupled with the fact that people also tend to remember news that already fits with their worldview, is where emotion most permanently has a hold on our synthesis on reality. Campaign propagandists utilise this by repeating falsehoods often enough that even if it is initially believed to be untrue, once source amnesia sets in and especially if it does not contradict the strong opinions of the listener, it is finally accepted as a fact. Polls and studies have shown that once such a “fact” is set in the cortex, it is often “remembered”, assumed, to have come from a more authoritative source than it actually had originated from. As professional strategists know, it only takes time, via repetition. In fact, in political runs a person attempting to refute such a falsehood or exaggeration is in fact only emphasising and assisting in this process if it includes the repetition of the “fact.” Thus humans have severe limitations in observing objective reality and instead of denying the part emotion inevitably plays, should embrace it, learn its dangers and virtues, discover how to use it.

Join now!

An extreme case of a debate among the learned concerning the validity of emotion in one individual’s approach towards acquiring knowledge of the world around her is perfectly embodied in Helen Keller, the famous deaf and blind woman who made history as the first most successful case of moderate independence of mind in the full use of language and communication through the teaching of Annie Sullivan. Anybody who reads her autobiographical works will find sentences full of imagination and grandiose vocabulary. However, many also noticed her extensive usage of terms unfamiliar to her direct experience, such as sound and ...

This is a preview of the whole essay