According to Merriem
Webster, emotion is a conscious mental reaction (such as anger or fear) subjectively
experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and
typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body. Notice
how this definition depicts emotion as an internal feeling that occurs within
one's consciousness. Emotion therefore, contains no instrumental value and
therefore I believe is not a legitimate path to knowledge.
This blog focuses on
knowledge about the real world such as the motion of atoms and scientific
theories. Knowledge about the world around us relies on our perception of the
world, not our interpretation of our world. I believe that knowledge should be
absolute and I also believe that emotion contains a factor of relativism, which
hinders the knowledge obtained through it. This relativism derives from the
fact that some people react with different emotions to the same cause. For
example, an 80% on an exam could excite a slacking student, while it may
disappoint another. Knowledge of whether or not that was a good grade could be
obtained through emotions, yet the truth is relative. On the other hand,
perception is almost the same for everyone; grass appears green for everyone and
therefore knowledge on the color is not dependent on the individual.
Emotion is also easily manipulated and therefore isn’t
reliable. Individuals can change other people’s emotions through use of
deception and propaganda. During Hitler’s reign, he utilized language to
transform peoples’ emotions towards the Jewish race, and therefore their
knowledge of Jewish people was false. Emotion’s susceptibility to manipulation
adds to this factor of relativism. Past emotional experiences could also impact
your current emotions. For example, an individual who was traumatized by the
horrors of war will view it as abominable as a result of his past emotional
experience. On the other hand, an individual who hasn’t experienced the
situation emotionally will view it to be less abominable, which once again adds
to its relativism. The other ways of knowing such as reason and perception are
legitimate because the majority of individuals use them in the same fashion and
obtain a similar result.
Ali, I respectfully disagree with your point that emotion is not a way of knowing. First of all, as an example someone who fears a certain animal it should only mean that the animal is dangerous and lief threatening. I believe that emotions do not come consciously but they come to us as instincts. We were born and made to have emotions such as fear and happiness so that we know what good for us and what is bad. The simple fact that emotions can tell us what feels great or not, is by itself a way of knowing. If emotions to you have no instrumental value to you well I disagree by saying they an instrumental value. They have a usage in making us more knowledgeable about the world we live. They make us more knowledgeable on dangers and pleasures, therefore giving it an instrumental value to human beings and also being a way of knowing.
ReplyDeleteAchraf, you brought up an example of someone who fears a certain animal, and then proceeded to state that this emotion does not come consciously but rather by instinct. Although my viewpoint on the importance has changed through my peers' insight, I am going to disagree on this point. Fear, I believe is the most logical of all emotions. Fear is a result of logical process involving several premises:
DeleteHumans must strive to survive
Dangerous and life-threatening animals could end our lives
Humans must avoid such animals
Through this cognitive process, humans have evolved the emotion of fear in order to ensure the last step. Emotion has been regarded as illogical, however I would have to disagree with this claim as a result of my prior explanation. I believe the emotion is intertwined with reason at a subconscious level, and that is why I wrote that post. Emotion on its own will not and could not lead to knowledge, however upon realizing that emotion contains logical attributes, I know realize that it is indeed a legitimate path.
Ali, although you had a very interesting response as to wether emotion is a legitimate path to knowledge, I have to say that I agree with Achraf on his response. The dictionary definition of Knowledge is "facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education". Through your response you seem to have thoroughly analysed how knowledge can be acquired through education however you have been completely oblivious to the second part of the definition, the one regarding knowledge through experience.
ReplyDeleteEveryone's experiences are different depending on the emotions that they feel during their experience. For instance when I was younger my parents took my and my sister to disneyland. Upon our arrival my sister and I got in a fight which ruined my mood for the rest of the trip. I was so blinded by my anger that I refused to participate in any ride. Up to this day, I perceive Disneyland as a dull and sad place I would never want to return while my sister describes it as her best childhood memory. As seen during the perception unit, all humans are entitled to their own reality therefore creating knowledge which will satisfy their reality.
Although your point is completely valid Ali you have based your argument on only part of the definition of knowledge. Yes, our emotions can result as anomalies by the mixing of our own thoughts and true evidence, making it hard for us to obtain true knowledge but they also play a key role in obtaining knowledge is based on experience.
Ali, there are some points that I agree with and some that I am forced to disagree with. I agree that emotion is a hinderance to the path to achieve absolute truth and knowledge in a scientific manner. I agree that it does not have an instrumental value however when you say "Knowledge about the world around us relies on our perception of the world, not our interpretation of our world" you are contradicting yourself because we interpret the world through our perception and therefore absolute truth cannot be ever fully reached. Emotion is a hinderance for the reasons you stated for example how easy it is to manipulate and how relative it is. The central core of your argument is that: because emotion has no instrumental value it is not a legitimate way of knowing. As you may or may not have seen in a blog post of mine I defended emotion as the most important way of knowing. The knowledge I speak of is different than yours, it is not scientific knowledge, but personal knowledge. I believe that everyone's purpose in life is to be happy and do things that please them, and this can only be done through the expression and exploration of our emotions. I think that this type of knowledge, knowing what pleases us and what does not supersedes any other type of knowledge including theories and laws. When you are depressed, the last thing you think about is absolute truth and all you want to do is be happy and enjoy existence. I completely disagree with your claim that emotion is not a legitimate way of knowing and instead say it is the most legitimate. Of course we are speaking of different types of knowledges and that's why we can disagree because had the topic in discussion been "Scientific Knowledge" then there would have been no argument from my part. Feel free to disagree with me
ReplyDeleteAli, you raised an interesting viewpoint about the incompability between emotion and (as Tito clearly outlined), scientific knowledge. However, I must disagree on some of the points you raised. You said in your introduction that emotion contained no instrumental value and therefore was not a legitimate path to knowledge. I understand from this and the rest of your argument that your definition of "knowledge" is based on exact sciences, such as mathematics and natural sciences (to some degree). However, I think that emotion is actually at the very heart of how humanity has reached those scientific prowesses. Emotions like ambition for example, are what gives scientists the courage and discipline to conduct experiments which can take multiple decades to accomplish. Had it not been for a burning feeling of ambition, scientists would not have spent years in the past to try to learn and discover what we know today. Since, according to you, perception is the same for almost everybody (which is also something I disagree with), then there would be no need to look for the cause of things, and we would just continue living as we are, our specie never evolving. I like to use the example of the first airplane when debating this question. What was it that over a century ago, made the Wright brothers so eager to develop the first flying machine ever? Knowing that this first machine would never had been able to be used as a mean of transportation, and would therefore have no "instrumental" utility, we can not use the argument of scientific knowledge, or practicality to answer this question. I think that it was a strong desire (which is also an emotion) to be able to fly, and an ardent ambition to give human beings the ability to immitate birds. It was not a matter of perception, but of pure emotionally fulfilling goal. My point is that emotion is one of, if not the most important way to access knowledge, even scientific knowledge, even though it might very well be the most indirect one as well. For me, a world without emotion would be a world without passion and ambition, resulting in the elimination of all sense of human development.
ReplyDelete