Are reason and emotion equally necessary

in justifying moral decisions?

Canic Ng

TOK 12

Word count 1346

Topic 2

Mr.  Vicente


        Everyday we make choices, every choice creates an effect in our world, the effects can be good, or can be bad, “every action creates an equal and opposite reaction.” As observed in nature.  We make choices every day, every second of our existence, from walking around, to what words we chose to express.  In the making of each choice our minds takes in factors of emotion, along with reasons to justify our decision.  Emotions make up whom we are, without emotions we would be nothing more than a machine.  Yet we must not be clouded by our emotions, which would make use do unreasonable things.  

        Although the knowledge that is presented in this essay is only from one mind, there is an obvious limitation in knowledge.  No matter how hard one might try we can’t write out our thoughts without having our own biases in the topic.  This is the thought of one person, objections can’t be eliminated, there is no verification of this topic, only the verification of the existence this essay brings with it.  Which leads to the first issue, no matter how much one might try, our decisions will always be tainted by our emotions.

        Reason or logic is an essential aspect to our everyday lives.  It is set in place by the mind to enforce a restriction on ourselves, and it keeps us from doing irrational actions.  Reason is supported by facts, and from experiences that we get through life.  To justify morals with reasoning is a difficult and hard task, because in life there is no wrong answer, however with reason it is required to figure out what is right and wrong.  Reason acts as an inhibitor to ideas, constricting ones’ thought, as well as ones’ action to prevent anything unnecessary.  When we were young our imagination/emotion run wild, we are upset easily compared to your present self, but as one grows old our reason develop, because of the life experiences we experience.

Join now!

        Reason guides our judgments to selectively justify certain moral things, giving us a tolerance threshold, to what we can morally justify.  Without reason this limit wouldn’t exist, to bring constraint. If wasn’t for reason we would do as our emotion tells us to do, for some it would be to procrastinate, and not do our work.  However not 100% of the time we would not procrastinate as we find ways justify our moral decision of procrastination, we then substitute emotion as a reason, reasoning our way into procrastination as a “break” which it rarely is.

        If we can picture emotion, ...

This is a preview of the whole essay