Can Feelings Have An Rational Basis Philosophy Essay

Can Feelings Have An Rational Basis Philosophy Essay Emotions are part of our everyday life, every moment of our life we are feeling an emotion, whether its happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, or disgust. Emotions are expressed in three ways: 1. Emotions as an obstacle to knowledge, 2. Emotions as a source of knowledge and, 3. Intuition. Our emotions are very powerful and do have a rational basis. Emotional intelligence is not an oxymoron because with emotions we wouldnt have any intelligence. I agree with what Robert Solomon stated. He is completely correct by claiming that virtually all sense perception, and reasoning, must involve emotion. Emotions are an integral part of us and when strong enough they can sometimes distort the three other ways of knowing. Our perception of things can be colored by strong emotions, and there is doubtless some truth in sayings like love is blind and fear has many eyes. ( van de Lagemaat pg.151). This emotional coloring makes us aware of aspects of reality to the exclusion of others. For example when we love a person we think they are perfect and have no flaws as to when you loathe them you see only their faults. Our emotions can also negatively affect our reasoning causing to not have open minds. A person with powerful emotions is likely to use more emotive language. Our emotions also serve as a source of knowledge; it is difficult to live life without emotion. Our emotions help us reason through things. For example if you look down a cliff you know not to jump because you are scared and your fear helps you reason to not jump because you will die. So with what was mentioned previously w e can conclude that our feelings do have a rational basis because they help reason through things that go on during our everyday lives. Reason and emotion although are usually thought of as opposite things they are more on a continuum of some sort. Most of the time were somewhere along the middle of the continuum with our thoughts and feeling floating around our mind. For example if we are doing mathematical problems we will use less of our emotions and steer more to the other side of the continuum. Another way to think of reason and emotion is to think of our emotions being more or less rational. (van de lagemaat pg.156). The main problem with the previously mentioned idea is that sometimes our emotions are irrational such as fear and disgust. Although we know that it is safer to fly in a plane than to drive in a car most of us are terrified to get on planes. The last way emotion is a way of knowing is through intuition. The word intuition is typically associated with the aha momen t of insight when you suddenly see the solution to a problem without going through any conscious process of reasoning. (van de lagemaat pg.158) There are three types of intuition; core intuitions, subject-specific intuitions, and social intuitions. Core intuitions are our most fundamental intuitions about life, the universe and everything. For although reason and perception are usually said to give us knowledge they ultimately depend on intuition. According to core intuitions, the laws of logic are the starting point for all our reasoning, but we cannot prove them in terms of any more fundamental laws. If asked to justify them, most people would say that they are intuitively obvious. (van de lagemaat pg. 158). As for perception, it is an important source of knowledge, but we cannot be sure on the evidence of our senses alon that life is not a dream. Yet we have an overwhelmingly strong intuition that the dream hypothesis is false and that what we are experiencing is reality. A good way to explain why our knowledge is intuitive is by playing the why? game. If you were to ask a friend to claim something that she knows and then ask her why she believes that this is true and then ask her again why she believes that what she explained is true eventually she will say that it is intuitively obvious. We cant take these intuitions for granted but we cant just reject them either. As for subject specific intuition we sometimes appeal to intuition to justify our knowledge claims in various areas of knowledge. There is a wealth of evidence to suggest that our uneducated intuitions in subjects as logic, mathematics, physics, biology, history, economics and ethics are at best confused and at worst false. As for social intuitions we tend to be over confident about our own intuitions.( van de lagemaat pg 162). For example men always think they know it all and never need help in anything, we think we can fix anything and that we know how to get anywhere. The reason for this is our pride so we intuitively believe that what we think is right. As for emotional intelligence it is definitely not an oxymoron in some cases taking into account what was mentioned before. With our emotions we acquire much knowledge. Although in some cases we tend to put our pride before everything else and stop ourselves from acquiring any knowledge. Our intelligence of the world helps manipulate our emotions. We know that a cliff is tall and that jumping from heights hurts so our fear kicks in stopping us from ever attempting to jump off a cliff unless one day we find out that nothing harmful comes from jumping off a cliff. When Robert Solomon says that emotions are systems of judgments and that virtually all of our experiences is to some degree affective, and even our most dispassionate judgmentsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ can be adequately understood only within some larger emotional context he basically claims that all sense perception, and reasoning, must involve emotion. I agree with this statement because everything that we do has a emotional reaction. For example if someone dies youll feel sad, if you win the lottery youll be happy, if you see a scary movie you will have fear. In other words all incoming sensory perception will have an emotional reaction. As for reason as mentioned before reason and emotion are closely related and are on the same continuum. A persons reasoning and emotions are close together but may vary depending on the task you are doing. To sum up what was previously mentioned, emotions as a way of knowing is explained in three ways: 1 as an obstacle to knowledge, 2 as a source of knowledge and, 3 as intuition. Emotions and reason are usually thought of as opposing forces when in fact they go together. Emotion and reason are on the same continuum. Without emotions we cant reason and with reason we can block emotions. It may be confusing but for example without fear how can we reason that jumping off a cliff is bad. Another thing is that with enough reason we can block emotion or come to our senses for example after we watch a scary movie we might be scared but with reason we can stop ourselves and conclude that it is impossible for what occurred in the movie to happen in real life. Emotional intelligence is not an oxymoron because with intelligence with have emotions. Finally what Robert Solomon stated makes perfect sense because without emotion how can we interpret what we perceive or how could we reason? Work cited Van de Lagemaat, Richard. Theory of knowledge: for the ib diploma. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge university Press, 2005.

African Americans In The Post Essays -- essays research papers

Jefferson Davis stated in the pre-Civil War years to a Northern audience, “You say you are opposed to the expansion of slavery... Is the slave to be benefited by it? Not at all. It is not humanity that influences you in the position which you now occupy before the country,'; (Davis, The Irrepressible Conflict, 447). The Northerners had not freed the slaves for moral issues; the white majority did not have anything but its own economic prosperity on its mind. The African Americans gained their emancipation and new rights through the battling Northern and Southern factions of the United States, not because a majority of the country felt that slavery possessed a ‘moral urgency’. As the years passed and the whites began to reconcile, their economic goals rose to the forefront of their policy, while racism spread throughout the country and deepened in the South. Even with all of the good intentions and ideals expressed in the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, blacks watche d as their freedom disintegrated through the late 19th Century as a result of the Supreme Court decisions that limited the implications of the new amendments.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  After the passage of these amendments, two of the three branches of government disconnected themselves with the issue of black civil rights. Following Grant’s unenthusiastic approach to protecting blacks in the South, the executive branch gradually made its position on the issue clear in 1876. (Zinn, 199) When Hayes beat Tilden in the presidential election by promising to end the Reconstruction in the South, it was evident that the White House would no longer support any calls for the protection of blacks. The compromise of 1877 brought Hayes to office, but “doomed the black man to a second class citizenship that was to be his lot for nearly a century afterward,'; (Davis, 160). The Radical Republican’s in Congress, who were responsible for freeing the blacks, were also responsible for letting their voices become silenced. This occurred as the other, more industrial, interests of the broad based party dominated their platform; leaving the blacks t o face the wrath of the Southerners. A final blow to the hopes for national protection of African American civil rights was dealt with The Force Bill of 1890. In this bill, the Senate objected to the idea of... ...e Radical Republicans had embarked on a costly Reconstruction plan and set up legislation meant to protect black civil rights, the blacks did not thrive. The Supreme Court successfully chipped away at any progress made by the Republicans. Rulings made in the later half of the 19th Century reduced the scope of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, and lead to the further subordination of the Black race by Southern State governments. Southern whites were allowed to set up a system that kept blacks as prisoners without any say on their future. The social practices, including segregation, curfews, violence and disfranchisement that the Blacks suffered left them anything but free as the 20th Century dawned. The amendments to the Constitution had been made, but the whites did not take the time after 1866 to abolish the prejudice that came with slavery, giving testimony to theory that the North engaged in the Civil War for economic, not moral reasons. The application of racism after the C ivil War was just as rampant, but much more subtle than before the Civil War, making it much more difficult to confront, and resulting in a century of unequal education, inferior treatment and segregation.

Intellectual Property Right Essay

1. Do you think that the international business community is being too lax about the abuse of intellectual property right? Are international companies simply afraid to speak out for fear of jeopardizing access to attractive markets? In our opinion, the international business community is not being too lax about the abuse of intellectual property right. It is because there is a great incentive to abuse intellectual property rights since it provided legal right to the inventor of the product. Those countries are not neglecting the anti-piracy regulations and any other legal rules related to intellectual property rights but they cannot control the increase of production and distribution of counterfeit products that spread widely especially in Asian nations. Because of that, local governments of those countries are having difficulty to handle and manage the actual infringement situations. Actually, it is hard for a country that lax antipiracy rules to fight against the piracy cases since it can damage the business relations with others. We do not think that they afraid to speak out for fear of jeopardizing access to attractive markets but it is due the fact that sufficient safeguards and proper actions for piracy have not been taken so far and some areas of law need to be reinforced. Based on many cases regarding piracy, intellectual property laws and regulations are fine but poor enforcement is to blame for high rates of piracy and some nation’s regulatory body allow a counterfeiter to remove an infringing trademark and still sell the substandard goods. This proves that some countries take it lightly as they find the situation is common and they have no advantage to against it.

The Theory Of Child Development - 878 Words

Urie Bronfenbrenner was a developmental psychologist whose theory of child development really spoke to me. Relating to the microsystem and mesosystem was extremely natural for me. The microsystem is made up of the people or groups you have direct contact with, such as a professor or family member. The mesosystem is the interactions that occur between the microsystems, such as there being a family issue but that issue effecting not only yourself but causing you to have trouble at school or work place. My microsystem contains a lot of relationships including my boss, my coworkers, my classmates, my family and my professors. I am in direct contact with these groups on a daily basis. Every one of these people that I interact with has a different outlook on life. They all have their own beliefs, values, and goals which help us connect and learn from each other in so many different ways. When you work with the same people every day you talk and learn things about each other that you did not know about. I learn of different struggles that each individual is having based on their life and what they go through outside of work. Knowing things about others that you can relate to really help open your eyes to what really matters in life. Everyone you know is fighting a battle that you know nothing about so it’s most important to be kind but also try to learn from other’s experiences. I learn from the traits of my professors that hard work pays off in the end. 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