Can We Know When to Trust Our Emotions in the Pursuit of Knowledge? Essay Example
Can we know when to trust our emotions in the pursuit of knowledge? Consider history and one other area of knowledge.
1. Intro:
a. Emotion as a way of knowing
b. Pursuit of Knowledge → Gaining insight and into something
2. When DO we trust emotions? Can we ever NOT trust them?
a. Instincts – things we do automatically without thinking about → they feel right/normal → Taking care of a baby. Every normal person would pick up a baby if they found it in the woods somewhere, crying and obviously abandoned.
b. Intuition → my Mom running over a little boy and stopping → emotional reaction; not reason or language or sense perception
c. When do we not/ should we not trust emotions? → when we have time to think about it – in situations where reason, sense perception or language conflicts with emotion
i. Eg. When you feel that someone is having difficulties by the way they act, yet appear to manage things perfectly well (they have good grades, their friendships appear to be intact, etc.) ii. Eg. When you’re afraid of a test, even though your reasoning tells you that you studied everything on the syllabus.
3. Trusting Emotions based on History
a. From past experiences, we can learn to see patterns of when our emotions were correct (ie. it was confirmed later on through other WOK)
b. Example: my Dad is much better at judging a situation (and what is going on behind the scenes) than I am, because he has more experience and can trust his emotions that point him in a certain direction.
c. Example: Propaganda in History
i. Mao Zedong and Hitler used propaganda to emotionally bias people
1. Situation where one should not have trusted emotions, but many people did
2. On the other hand, it was useful to Mao/Hitler → from their perspective, people where right to trust their emotions → Who judges when we should or shouldn’t trust our emotions
3. We can now learn from evidence of the past and recognize propaganda nowadays. → However, this is limited to the amount of
1. Intro:
a. Emotion as a way of knowing
b. Pursuit of Knowledge → Gaining insight and into something
2. When DO we trust emotions? Can we ever NOT trust them?
a. Instincts – things we do automatically without thinking about → they feel right/normal → Taking care of a baby. Every normal person would pick up a baby if they found it in the woods somewhere, crying and obviously abandoned.
b. Intuition → my Mom running over a little boy and stopping → emotional reaction; not reason or language or sense perception
c. When do we not/ should we not trust emotions? → when we have time to think about it – in situations where reason, sense perception or language conflicts with emotion
i. Eg. When you feel that someone is having difficulties by the way they act, yet appear to manage things perfectly well (they have good grades, their friendships appear to be intact, etc.) ii. Eg. When you’re afraid of a test, even though your reasoning tells you that you studied everything on the syllabus.
3. Trusting Emotions based on History
a. From past experiences, we can learn to see patterns of when our emotions were correct (ie. it was confirmed later on through other WOK)
b. Example: my Dad is much better at judging a situation (and what is going on behind the scenes) than I am, because he has more experience and can trust his emotions that point him in a certain direction.
c. Example: Propaganda in History
i. Mao Zedong and Hitler used propaganda to emotionally bias people
1. Situation where one should not have trusted emotions, but many people did
2. On the other hand, it was useful to Mao/Hitler → from their perspective, people where right to trust their emotions → Who judges when we should or shouldn’t trust our emotions
3. We can now learn from evidence of the past and recognize propaganda nowadays. → However, this is limited to the amount of