Does Emotion help make gaining knowledge easier?

Emotion is defined as emotion, a strong feeling, such as joy or anger or instinctive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge. I do not really like Spanish, or the class. With this emotional bias/emotion towards that class I find it harder to gain information/pay attention and sometimes even take the work seriously. On the other hand, I love biology. The strong emotion expressed helps me grasp any new concepts easily and studying for biology seems like it’s a breeze.

Our emotions are more complex – with more research into this WOK, more discoveries are being made. Like how emotions are also connected to our brain. For example we release hormones such as adrenaline when we are excited or extremely scared. Also dopamine is released when you feel pleasure. This is like a reward for the brain. ‘The sweet spot’ as the brain feels more rewarded for doing something you like, in this case me studying biology. So the brain feels rewarded for that hence the increase in productivity.

On the other hand doing something like Spanish does not stimulate the production of dopamine – as I have strong feeling against the subject. This makes it extremely hard to gain knowledge and it is really hard to study for that subject.

A quote Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." – Confucius also highlights a similar idea. When you have strong emotions of love toward your job, the work does not seem hard or even like it is work. Thus resulting in more productivity at work and it makes life easier. On the other hand, when you do not love your job it is very hard for you to be productive. Every day you have very little motivation to go to work and do your best.

Overall, it is harder to do well in something if you do not like it. Positive emotion towards a subject/area/work makes it easier to be productive and generally it is easier to succeed. While having negative emotions towards a subject/area/work makes it very hard to be productive and it is harder to succeed in my opinion.

http://visual.ly/we-feel-fine?view=true

Opening my eyes to fallacies

There are many common fallacies that are used in any argument. As I went over some examples, I realized that many people use fallacies to win arguments or just to mess with me. It was shocking when I started labeling the fallacies when people started using silly reasoning.

Last week I was discussing the company Microsoft- I said “wow IB is quite challenging.” Tom (this is not his/her real name) said “| want to drop out of school…just like how Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg did, if they did that, I can become a billionaire too. The result is that the conclusion of the argument is not concerned with the same thing as the premise. They dropped out of Harvard not ISL!

Another example is when someone said, if you are do not pray to god you are against him. It is an example of false dilemma where some people do not believe in god to even pray to him. It does not give any other options it is just the absolute. This is an example of a false dilemma where you have two choices. It is really funny how people use this so often. As Obi Wan Kenobi puts it in Star Wars episode III, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes!” 

Overall, learning about fallacies has been interesting. I have started noticing teachers and my parents even using similar fallacies! It has been an eye opener, I am definitely more conscious when presenting an argument to make sure I avoid fallacies.

Reference: "False Dilemma." False Dilemma. Archieboy Holdings, LLC. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.

http://www.trulyfallacious.com/logic/logical-fallacies/presumption/hasty-generalization/attachment/equivocation-2

Is reason the most reliable WOK? Why or Why not?

Reason as a way of knowing can give us certainty. Although this belief is open to serious doubt. Reason is only as certain as the premises on which it is based. Furthermore reason is not appropriate in every situation, as there is no emotion in reasoning, it can be very ‘cold’. Reason needs to be balanced by emotion.

Reliable can be defined as something consistently good in quality or performance; able to be trusted, which is not very specific. Although reason can be trusted, but once again it depends on the situation. When reason works in tandem with another WOK, it can be more reliable than just on its own. Measuring reliability can also be difficult, although the key is in the premise the knowledge claim is based on. For example, in Biology we are studying about nucleic acids – Deoxyribonucleic Acid and Ribonucleic Acid. The base pairs are arranged as follows in DNA: A:T and C:G but for RNA you have uracil (U), instead of thymine(T) and C:G so for example, one DNA strand has a sequence of ATCGCGTTTAAA. After transcription, the RNA strand produced will have a base sequence of UAGCGCAAAUUU.  I used reason to come to that conclusion. As it is an RNA strand it will have uracil instead of thymine.

Reason often uses logic. The biggest problem with logic is that your conclusion can be valid but not true. For example, your syllogism could be: Socrates is a man- all men are mortal- therefore, Socrates is mortal. The conclusion "Socrates is mortal" is true and valid in this case. However, something like: When Mitch eats a burger he is happy- Mitch is always happy- Mitch is eating burger all the time, is unacceptable as it is a poor conclusion. This is a weakness with reason as logic isn't always reliable. Also, you can never be 100% sure about anything. Even though every extra example that you find that supports your theory makes you more certain that it's correct, you can never hit 100% because you can't try out an infinite number of possibilities that tests your theory.

Another weakness that is associated with reason is that it is often associated with your personal opinions and beliefs. Your conclusion that you draw is personal and based on your environment and your personal feelings. For example, you may say gay marriage is not morally correct, but other people can have other opinions and feelings about it, so it is based on your feelings and not from a unbiased viewpoint.

Although reason as a way of knowing has many disadvantages associated with it, it also has many advantages, which is why it is widely used on a daily basis. It can be really easy to gain information by using all three types of reasoning (informal, deductive and inductive). Reason is also a strong way of knowing as it is in a sense the way that is most based on our common sense, although some may argue common sense is not very common. Another advantage is that it allows for us to build upon previous information and back up our arguments or thoughts on something.

In conclusion, reason, can be unreliable and reliable like many of the other WOK, although it is often used every day. Although the user must be aware of the uncertainty of reasoning and the emotional disconnection one may feel. I feel like reason can be reliable although I cannot say it is the most reliable. I find it hard to say any one WOK is reliable. I feel like they are more reliable when you combine multiple WOK.

Reference used:

Al-ansari, Maha. "QA Tok Maha.": Evaluate the Strengths and Weaknesses of Reason as a Way of Knowing. Blogspot, 11 May 2010. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.