Tok Essay -- Emotions vs Reason
TOK Essay
Reasoning and Emotions and the quest for Knowledge
19th century English philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge claimed that “deep thinking is attainable only by a person of deep feeling”, thereby implying that emotions, or “deep feeling”, play a key role in the quest for knowledge and the ability to reason, or, the ability to think deeply. However, day after day I am confronted with evidence contradicting his statement, and, although I do my best not to have biased perception, I do not see much in support. Emotions cause me, day after day, to make poor decisions while a little voice in my head – a voice I like to call reason – urges me to act differently. The first example that comes to mind is the fact that I am currently working on this essay late at night while I did spend considerable time busying myself with other activities, activities that include the infamous wasting-my-time-in-front-of-the-television. But Coleridge must have been aware that such a case was possible, and a reality, for countless many people: the plump who says she will go to the gym tomorrow, the middle-aged man who says he’ll go back to school, and he who could not resist the fruit. Still Coleridge believed that the positive effects of emotions on the quest for knowledge outweighed the negative, raising the questions: what role do emotions play in the pursuit of knowledge? And would our pursuit be better off without them or are they beneficial? This essay shall investigate the contributions of emotions – if any – to the pursuit of knowledge.
First of all it is necessary to draw a clear distinction between the individual purposes of reason and emotions. If knowledge would be a physical object, we would need to add a new element to the periodic table: reason, not emotion, for reason is what knowledge is composed of and emotion is – arguably but not certainly – what fuels the process of reasoning. I therefore find it a given that reason is heavily more significant than emotions when
Reasoning and Emotions and the quest for Knowledge
19th century English philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge claimed that “deep thinking is attainable only by a person of deep feeling”, thereby implying that emotions, or “deep feeling”, play a key role in the quest for knowledge and the ability to reason, or, the ability to think deeply. However, day after day I am confronted with evidence contradicting his statement, and, although I do my best not to have biased perception, I do not see much in support. Emotions cause me, day after day, to make poor decisions while a little voice in my head – a voice I like to call reason – urges me to act differently. The first example that comes to mind is the fact that I am currently working on this essay late at night while I did spend considerable time busying myself with other activities, activities that include the infamous wasting-my-time-in-front-of-the-television. But Coleridge must have been aware that such a case was possible, and a reality, for countless many people: the plump who says she will go to the gym tomorrow, the middle-aged man who says he’ll go back to school, and he who could not resist the fruit. Still Coleridge believed that the positive effects of emotions on the quest for knowledge outweighed the negative, raising the questions: what role do emotions play in the pursuit of knowledge? And would our pursuit be better off without them or are they beneficial? This essay shall investigate the contributions of emotions – if any – to the pursuit of knowledge.
First of all it is necessary to draw a clear distinction between the individual purposes of reason and emotions. If knowledge would be a physical object, we would need to add a new element to the periodic table: reason, not emotion, for reason is what knowledge is composed of and emotion is – arguably but not certainly – what fuels the process of reasoning. I therefore find it a given that reason is heavily more significant than emotions when