Emotion versus reason

5/26/2013

Emotion versus reason
Traditionally, they have been seen as mutually exclusive, and interfering. However, the Somatic Marker hypothesis, "a mechanism by which emotional processes can bias behavior, particularly decision-making", states that this is not necessarily true, and perhaps they can even compliment each other.

In your opinion, how closely are reason and emotion linked?

Please provide reasons and examples. Need some more info? Refer to the Section "Ethics" in your ToK textbook. You can also watch this video about Phineas Gage, the man whose case led scientists to study the relationship between the brain and emotions.

350-400 words

13 Comments

Tu Hoang

6/2/2013 09:28:12 am

Reason versus Emotion,
How closely are reason and emotion connected?
We should start with a example to answer this question. Imagine you are a relative brother or sister mother or father of a person that has been killed by nobody knows who it was but someone but there is a suspicious who could have done it because he was found next to your relative, with the weapon that killed your relative.
Now there is some evidence that say that the suspicious is guilty because he did not have a idea what happend and he did not have a idea why he had this weapon.
As a relative you would act with emotion because you loved the person that was killed and you would do everything that the suspicious get the highest punishment that he could get because you feel anger and hate for this person you would not reason rational and would not care about details just as other finger prints on the weapon.
Reasoning is a progress of bringing arguments together. Emotions such as love, hate or anger could blend your reasoning but if you could control your emotion and use them right for you reasoning your reasoning will become much more stronger.
Emotions and Reasoning are really close and I think Ethics is based on this 2. Ethics is the area of right and wrong to be really brought but is what is right or wrong? Is everything right what a law says or is everything wrong what the gov´t forbids?
In my opinion every person could has another definition of right and wrong because every human being works different in their reasoning because every human being has his of hers own mix of reasoning connected with emotion,

Alicia Ordóñez Bárez

6/5/2013 12:52:45 am

Reason and emotion are very closely related. In a lot of cases we need an objective opinion that is not affected by emotions. However, it is sometimes hard to find it, and when we find it, it is usually an oppinion of someone else who doesn’t know you at all. For example, there is a boy in your school you have class with. You also have class with this boy’s mother. Moreover, you three have a class together. What would you come to your mind at first? I am pretty sure that you would think that it would be unfair. Why would you think that? Here is where emotion and reason appear. In this case you are assuming that his mother will be affected by her emotions and won’t be reasonable with his son. This is the first thought that comes to your mind because at the end you know that emotions and reason are closely related. But, there are also cases that the fact of mixting emotions with reason doesn’t occur. It is difficult, but it is possible.
The reason why this occurs is because the relationship between mother and son has lots of emotions in it, so when they interactuate with each other, they are doing it with the side of the brain in which we “sabe” these emotions. This is why in competitions or quizes where there is a jury that judges the concursants, the jury cannnot have any relationship with the concursants.

Another example that I would like to name is about abortion. Since I did my TOK presentation about this topic, I identified two ways of analazying the question wether abortion is justifiable or not. For instance, the religions which aren’t on favour of abortion analyze it from the emotions side rather than from the reason. However, the scientists evaluate it from the reason side. Both of them are correct because their arguments are coherent baising on their way of knowing. Why do they analyze from two different ways of knowing? Becasue religion doesn’t refer to any kind of scientific research to consider wether the embry is alive when the abortion takes places. It refers to quotes of the Bible and God which are based on emotion. On the other hand, scientists provide their arguments basing their thoughts on investigations and researches. They state that the embry isn’t alive so they are on favour of abortion.

Evseeva Elena

6/5/2013 09:10:08 am

In my opinion, reason and emotion are not very close related but definetly have some common things. Both can rule one's behavior and impact views, decisions, perception. Yet, the way each of them work is different from each other simply because those are two different ways of knowing. At the same time, one of them can cause each other, vice versa.

Reason makes people think and analyze. As a simple example, I live in Moscow, Moscow is in Russia, therefore, I live in Russia. We evaluate the situation, thinking about a decision making according to the reason we have. For some people it is important to have a reason in order to do something while some of us do not use reason due to the lack of knowledge, indifference, laziness etc. Reason is a very powerful weapon that can rule not only one’s opinion but also the opinions of others that listen. Reason in many ways is based on knowledge, evidence, analyze but is it the only sources? Can emotion be a part of reason?

In my opinion, yes. Emotion by itself can cause many decisions and views. As well as reason, emotion is a very powerful weapon. For example, love. Love can exist without a reason and be much more powerful. For example, a child who was born in a “bad” family loves his mother even though she hits him, doesn’t take care and treats him very bad. He loves her for nothing basically, she didn’t do anything for him besides she gave him a life and that’s what he appreciates her for. Yet, in this particular situation, a child at the age of 3-4 cannot really distinguish between those emotions and the basic emotion he has is love. Later on, he is going to appreciate her for life and this is going to be a reason why he loves her. At this point, reason can take part in emotion, vice versa. Emotion can be so powerful that it blurs one’s mind and one doesn’t see the reality. His reason will be based on his emotions. For example, hate for a person. One hates another so much that decides to kill him. His reason is that he hates him. He doesn’t look at the personality or some individual characteristics.

To conclude, obviously emotion and reason have a connection. They can cause each other but also can exist individually.

Saperthan Sivasuthan

6/5/2013 03:08:31 pm

In my opinion emotion and reason are not closely related when both of these cases are totally different, but for instance they have something in common.

We perceive things and with that we can try to reason it with ethics. Ethics tells us about the right and the wrong about something, and with that we can perceive it with reason. For example, why we shouldn’t kill a person could be an ethical issue, and we can use ethics to reasoning why we shouldn’t kill a person. In spite of the fact that reason and emotion are not related, in which way could we perceive that emotion and reason has something in common?

Emotion is most likely linked into what’s going on your mind and your feelings. For example, love can make you that you will change your opinion, and you could have a different reason for something. In this case, I want to use an example to explain it.

A father and a son have a closely related relationship, and they have love for each other. The father is known to be one of the richest guy in the county. Once from a mistake his son cheated on his test, and his teacher caught him. In addition to this, his entire future was threatened on the test, so the father decided to pay the teacher to accept his son’s failure.

From the ethics side, is it right that a student cheat on his test?
-We can try to reason that it is wrong to cheat on the test, and therefore it is crucial that the student get punished for his mistake, but when the father decides to pay the teacher for letting his son to pass his test, is it right?
What about the teacher who accepts the money from him? Is it right in his side?

Therefore I can deduce that emotion and reason has something in common when you can change your opinion based on the emotion you feel for something, even though we know if it is right or wrong.

Saperthan Sivasuthan

6/5/2013 03:10:50 pm

In my opinion emotion and reason are not closely related when both of these cases are totally different, but for instance they have something in common.

We perceive things and with that we can try to reason it with ethics. Ethics tells us about the right and the wrong about something, and with that we can perceive it with reason. For example, why we shouldn’t kill a person could be an ethical issue, and we can use ethics to reasoning why we shouldn’t kill a person. In spite of the fact that reason and emotion are not related, in which way could we perceive that emotion and reason has something in common?

Emotion is most likely linked into what’s going on your mind and your feelings. For example, love can make you that you will change your opinion, and you could have a different reason for something. In this case, I want to use an example to explain it.

A father and a son have a closely related relationship, and they have love for each other. The father is known to be one of the richest guy in the county.
Once from a mistake his son cheated on his test, and his teacher caught him. In addition to this, his entire future was threatened on the test, so the father decided to pay the teacher to accept his son’s failure.

From the ethics side, is it right that a student cheat on his test?
-We can try to reason that it is wrong to cheat on the test, and therefore it is crucial that the student get punished for his mistake, but when the father decides to pay the teacher for letting his son to pass his test, is it right?
What about the teacher who accepts the money from him? Is it right in his side?

Therefore I can deduce that emotion and reason has something in common when you can change your opinion based on the emotion you feel for something, even though we know if it is right or wrong.

Claudia Rey

6/7/2013 02:01:42 am

In my opinion reason and emotion have nothing in common. They both work differently from each other.
First, reason is a justification of an action or event, when emotion is basically what’s going on in our minds and our feelings, how we feel about an action.
For example, in the case of love, we put our feelings and our emotions first, than making a reasonable thinking of the situation and think if it’s a good decision or a wrong decision. Emotions usually are powerful experiences, which do not last long. They can make us do things we later regret. Plato described emotion and reason as ‘’ two horses pulling us in opposite directions ‘’, which I agree, but even though they are different, both take part in one’s perception and behavior and at the same time we need emotion to have a reason.
We need to feel and perceive to make a final conclusion, a final justification of what we have perceived.
So, having analyzed the similarities and differences of both, I change the first opinion I had, when I was agreeing they are completely opposite. Now I think reason and emotion are closely related and without emotion we cannot have reason.

Anmol Patel

6/14/2013 12:23:38 am

t is a saying that reasoning comes from the brain and emotions come from the heart. But the fact is that the plays no role in controlling emotions. Emotion and reason are both the part of our brain. So we know that emotion and reason are a part of one process but it is not proved that both of them are connected. An example can be of the movie 12 angry men, in which the jurors have to decide whether the kid had murdered his father or not. Some might see the kid and think he is innocent because of their emotion but the reasoning behind the murder tells them that the kid was the murdered. In this case we can see that reason and emotions work at the same time so find a rational response. I think that both of them are connected to each other as to they both combine to find a response.

Benjamin Oh

6/18/2013 03:40:35 am

We cannot say that the emotion and reason are totally connected, but they are the related to each other in some extent.
At first, they both are ways of knowing in Theory of Knowledge, which means that they are two different ways to lead people to know something.
Reason is the way of knowing that uses justification of subject. As we perceive an object, we start to have reasoning process and justify it. The ethics, the study of determine whether something is right or wrong, is one of the most related study with the reason because we can determine the behaviors whether it’s right or wrong based on the reason. For example, all people know that murder is considered as the illegal and wrong behaviors to do while they all know that they have to help and respect elder people. Usually the reason is ideal in the condition without the emotion because reason has to be objective and there are chances to be subjective when the emotion affects to the reasoning process.
Emotion is the feeling that the viewer has on the object that he or she is watching. Unlike reason, the emotion can be different depending on who the viewers are and what perspectives on the object they have even if the objects they observe are the same. Therefore, it can interrupt people to think radically. Despite its subjectivity, emotion is necessary for people to justify the reasoning process.
For example, a lot of lawyers often narrate the stories of the suspects in order to provoke their emotion. This method actually works in plenty of cases. By stimulating the emotions of juries, lawyers make them feel empathy to the suspected, and this is so helpful for the suspected who are not actually committed the crime but are accused of wrongdoing that he or she does not.

Yuri

6/18/2013 10:11:11 am

In my opinion, although reason and emotions can be perceived as completely opposite human traits, they are in fact very closely related. These two traits influence each other, and in one way or another help shape each other. Reason is often related to the brain while emotions are related more to the heart. Reason comes from the logical part of the human, reasonable things are things that makes sense in an individual's mind, things that are logical. Emotions on the other hand, tend to be much less logical; they are inner feelings which in many cases are very unreasonable, and inexplicable. Yet, it is common that the emotions of a person influence that person's reason. Both reason and emotion are necessary in justifying moral decisions. Moral decisions are simple decisions where each individual makes the distinction between what is right and what is wrong. Since emotions are very often unreasonable the ideal would be that people justify their moral decisions by reason and reason alone. The reality is however that total different.

Yuri

6/18/2013 10:13:18 am

For example I got an example form internet A father and a son have a closely related relationship, and they have love for each other. The father is known to be one of the richest guy in the county.
Once from a mistake his son cheated on his test, and his teacher caught him. In addition to this, his entire future was threatened on the test, so the father decided to pay the teacher to accept his son’s failure.
From reason and emotion both side, its so hard for his father to disguinsh whether his son is right or wrong

simon berry

6/18/2013 10:05:33 pm

Emotion and reason always exist together, they could be exclusive and interfering or compliment each other, have the close relationship. People usually use emotion to affect their perception to think bout truth and it may not be the real reason. For example, a person believes the chess cake uses real sugar from the emotion for his grandmother and in fact the chess cake uses chemical additive. Sometimes, the emotion can help us to know the real reason easily because everyone will have their subconsciously thinking before they get the reason. Even they get the reason, their emotion also will be used. For example, during the World Cup, every soccer fan has their favorite team and want their favorite team become the winner. If their team becomes the winner they will think it is naturally and they have the real ability to get it. If their favorite team lose they will think it is unfair or because other team is lucky, usually ignore the real reason.

bobby fisher

3/1/2016 07:19:07 pm

I'm too stupid to comment here

nicoleydari

6/6/2016 03:56:52 pm

i feel u

Emotion versus reason

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