Evaluate the ways in which emotion might enhance and or undermine reasoning as a way of knowing

“Evaluate the ways in which emotion might enhance and or undermine reasoning as a way of knowing”

Psychologist/scientists now-a-days increasingly view emotion as a safeguard of survival and an enrichment of experience throughout development. Emotional expression provides a powerful communication system, one that is especially important in the early childhood stage of life before language has been developed. An infant's cry of distress brings a caregiver running; a baby's joyful smile invites love and care in its surrounding. As these developments proceeds, voice, face, gesture, and posture continue to communicate feelings to others and to influence their behavior. A scream of fear can cause a crowd to panic; a smile can sometimes defuse the most dangerous of situations and create instant bonding among strangers. Yet at times our emotions can get out of control and defeat our best interests. Emotion gives us experience and we learn from the different forms of emotion in which we encounter but can this change our direction and ways of knowing? What are the ways in which emotion might enhance and/or undermine reasoning as a way of knowing? can both help and hurt the process of .

Since emotions are automated responses to previously formed value judgments, they can mistakenly be used as a replacement for reason. Often when someone feels an emotion, they accept it as some kind of trustworthy insight, and act upon it without further evaluation. One’s emotion would replace their reasoning and therefore he/or she would see a biased picture of reality. For instance, two people might have a crush one another. Let’s say that both had realized that they had a crush and decided to come forth and form a relationship. The couple has been dating for a while a now, and both believe they are madly in love with one another, that is until one sees another affectingly being with another spouse. The partner viewing this affectionate activity suddenly feels emotionally betrayed with his/her partner. Through absorbed thinking a conclusion was made, he/she interpreted that what the couple shared together was only based on lust. Thinking that his/her now “ex” is an immoral person, he/she takes this emotion/belief as some kind of trustworthy insight and decided to act upon it without knowing the full truth. This act of envy of the other spouse replaces reasoning and eventually ends their once healthy relationship. Sadly, unaware that because of his/her envy the “other” person in the picture was not trying to demolish their relationship, but instead was a long unseen family member who just came back form a year of traveling.

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Another way emotion can undermine reason is by making you want to believe something that isn't true. Not that emotions can force you to view the world incorrectly, but because they make you feel a particular way about certain idea or fact, you may decide not to think things through all the way. Or you will only focus on the knowledge that supports your position. This can be seen through anti-Semitism shown throughout history with the hostility/discrimination against the Jewish people as a religious/racial group. As European commerce grew during the late Middle Ages, many Jews became prominent in trade, banking, and money lending, and Jews' economic and cultural successes tended to arouse the envy of the populace. This economic resentment, allied with traditional religious prejudice, prompted the forced expulsion of Jews from several regions including England (1290), Germany (1350’s) and France (during the 14th century). But where they were needed, Jews were tolerated. Living as they did at the margins of society, Jews performed economic functions that were vital to trade and commerce. Wherever Jews were permitted to participate in society, they thrived both culturally and financially until the envy of a leader of which seized power in Germany. Adolf Hitler, the fascist leader of the German Nazi party was able to manipulate his own citizens for his own personal interest of eliminating the Jews through his book Mein Kampf. His ideology made a person believe something that isn’t true: the murder of all Jews was essential for the purification and the salvation of the German people. Many German citizens must have truly felt that the Jewish people were the blame for all there troubles, focusing on the knowledge that supports only their position and therefore emotion, once again undermined reasoning by making you want to believe something that isn't true.

Emotions can also enhance our ability to reason. First, emotions are motivating. They can motivate you to concentrate on particular topics that are important to you. They work well to encourage thinking in the areas that are important and impact your life. For example, the way we feel about ourselves greatly influences the way we perceive the world around us. If you are feeling down and worthless, you may perceive a comment as evidence of this belief. Thus, results you to hear the comment as an attack or put-down. You may in spur-of-the-moment, get angry at the person because of this perception. Though, on the other hand if you had been feeling good and happy with yourself and the world around you, the statement would have been perceived as something less attacking. This perception of an attack becomes a self-fulfilling, confirming your worse fears of actually being worthless, useless and unlikable.

Emotions are also useful in allowing you to focus on specific details. As automatic responses, they bring to your attention to details that are relevant or important. They give you hints at what to focus on in order to understand or improve ones knowledge. It is interesting to note that while we’re learning, it is easier to remember all that you learned if you get back into the same mood you were in when you first learned it. The reason is that when you learn something, it is laid down in your memory linked to the emotions you were experiencing at the time. This emotion can be used as a trigger to help with recalling all of what it is that you learnt. For instance, your attitude towards a certain subject is low; the overall achievement in that class would as well. For example, when some people walk into a math session, a gloomy thought thinking that he/she could be possibly be doing something better with his/her life then solving a boring mathematical equation. For every thought follows an action to carry out that thought. With this emotion of dreadfully hating math is the followed up act of that person not completing assignments therefore, not fully preparing for upcoming test/quizzes resulting in a poor letter grade. This scenario applies to me. Through recalling previous math classes from earlier grads my overall results where reasonable as a result of me having a good adittude towards math but as the years went by, I like many others have “stumped” somewhere on the line and got lazy. William Glasser describes in his Control Theory that we have basic needs. They are "those powerful forces that are built into our genetic structure" [Glasser 1986]. He goes on to say, "behavior is always our best attempt at the time to satisfy the urge to meet at least some of these needs." Therefore, depending on how our needs are being satisfied in our present life situation, we will behave accordingly. Obviously, seeing a poor mark on a report card may make one feel bad about him/her self. The emotion of embarrassment allowed me, for example to focus on my pass mistakes, and gave me hints on what to focus on in the future in order to understand/improve on to gain a better sense of knowing.

Last but not least, emotions act as a companion to your reasoning. As pre-programmed evaluations, they give you access to past reasoning. This acts like a second opinion. If your emotions and your reasoning differ in the evaluations (for instance, you like someone even though you can't think of anything positive about them), it can be a flaw in either of them. It may be that there are things you are overlooking in your current reasoning. Or it may be that your previous reasoning was flawed in some respect (for instance, you lacked important information), and so your programmed responses are incorrect. In this way, emotions can help you to double-check your reasoning.

To conclude: “[Emotion] has the advantage of being open to all, the weak and the lowly, the illiterate and the scholar. It is seen to be as efficacious as any other method and is sometimes said to be stronger than the others, since it is its own fruition, while other methods are means to some other ends.”

(Bhagavad Gita)

Although emotions play a key role in aiding our ability to understand human actions and feelings, many people argue that emotions also cloud our perception and create biased images of the occurrences that take place in peoples’ lives. Emotions are very useful tools in aiding the human pursuit of knowledge, but at the same time care must be taken because this emotion that allows us to understand deeper meanings in life can also destroy our ability to see objectively. This can lead to misunderstanding of gaining knowledge. There must be a balance between subjective and objective reasoning before absolute truths can be uncovered.

Bibliography

Books used:

Plotnik, R. Introduction to Psychology. Brooks/Cole Publishing Co, 1993, California
Susan, Ratcliffe (editor). Oxford Quotations. Oxford University Press, New York, 1999

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