Emotions and Reason in Relation to Ethics

It is often hard to understand how one could acquire knowledge through emotions since we are used to rationality and logic as ways of knowing. However, in the production of knowledge, emotions are crucial in order for our reason to work. Many believe that emotions hinder our rational thoughts and prevent us from making a decision purely based on logic. If we look at this relationship from an ethics perspective we can clearly discern the importance of emotions in making the right decisions. Naturally, it is normal to feel bad after murder or after doing a wrong act. Therefore, you are relying on your emotions before acting. Furthermore, we cannot neglect our moral intuitions that certain actions are wrong and others are right when making a decision. This is the reason why sociopaths are often very good liars. In fact they do not feel any remorse after deliberately lying to someone. They can also murder a person or commit a horrible crime without feeling any emotion after. As a result, their rational thoughts are not enough to prevent them from doing something wrong. Even though I am aware that we should not adopt the prevalent assumption that reason and emotions are opposites, I still believe that we should try to control and conceal our emotions. Although emotions can be very powerful, they are often too short. For this reason, I constantly try to hide my emotions when making a decision because acting based on emotions may have a long-term consequence. However, what distinguishes me from a sociopath is that as much as I try to mask my emotions, they still manage to emerge at the last moment whether consciously or not and affect my decisions. Other theories suggest that emotions are simply physical states and responses. For example, happiness is merely an elevated heart rate, accompanied with a smile and an illuminated facial expression. Then each emotion is distinguished from another by the set of bodily responses associated with it. I think that this concept does is irrational because emotions such as hope, love, happiness or excitement all have similar bodily responses. Therefore emotions are far more complex than we think they are and play a very important role in our daily lives. Let us now imagine a world without emotions. You would not feel any love towards your parents, you would not have any friends, and you would not see any purpose in life. You will be able to live a successful life based on rational decisions but your world would be meaningless. There would be nothing to stop criminals from committing crimes and if a person was able to justify a wrong act he would just carry it through. On the other hand, a world without reason would lead to complete anarchy. In fact, life will not be possible if people only felt emotions and were not able to think logically. There would be no justice to stop wrong doings, wars would erupt at any occasions and you would not be able to think and solve problems. When combined, emotion and reason work together in order to ensure a meaning to our lives and guide us towards the right decisions. Once a person is able to control the power of his emotions and create a fine balance between these two concepts, he/she will be able to recognize his emotions, monitor his actions, nurture a positive attitude or even achieve goals he has set himself. Thus, it is essential to think of emotions and reason as a unified way of knowing instead of two opposite ways of knowing.