Emotions, when talked about in the context of Theory of Knowledge, generally refer to feelings, passions and moods. Knowledge can be defined traditionally as a justified true belief. The different relationships between emotion and knowledge generally fall under categories which contend that emotion is either positive or negative for acquiring different types of knowledge. Different views on emotion and knowledge are supported by differing views in knowledge issues regarding emotion’s effect on knowledge. These include views on to what extent emotion helps knowledge become personal, to what extent emotion is a source of knowledge and to what extent emotions can prevent acquisition of knowledge. I believe emotion plays a more important role in areas of knowledge which are more subjective and open to interpretation, such as English, whereas it plays a lesser role in the acquisition of knowledge in factually or rationally concrete areas of knowledge such as Mathematics. Furthermore, I believe the ‘force of the knowledge’ mentioned in the quote can only be ‘felt’ through emotions, but I disagree with the first part of the quote because I believe knowledge can exist to some extent without emotion. To back up my thesis, I will explore the knowledge questions I have mentioned in the knowledge areas of Mathematics and English. First I will explore the knowledge question “in what way, and to what extent, can emotions be an obstacle to knowledge?”. Since emotions are integrated with our mental state and disposition, they can distort the other ways of knowing. Our perception can be altered by strong emotions to be positively biased towards things we feel positively passionate about, such as by making us perceive that the people we love are the most attractive in the world. Passion can also bias the way we use reason and prevent open-mindedness. Emotions can lead to rationalization of pre-existing prejudices, or of personal shortcomings. For example, when I found out that I was not good enough to take Higher Level Maths at IB, I was disappointed and rationalized my shortcoming by telling myself that I did not need to be good at Maths, that this area of knowledge was not as important as the area of knowledge of English. I admit that I am still biased against the importance of Maths as an area of knowledge and I still consider the humanities more important areas of knowledge. Furthermore, emotive language tends to be caused by strong emotions – this can be a fault in language as a way of knowing because it shows that language is not based on facts or knowledge, but just reflects the subject’s emotional state. This has a knock-on effect on how we regard ethical implications in an area of knowledge. For example, in the area of knowledge of English, when I read a poem which dealt with the issue of abortion, my personal emotive response towards the topic of abortion prevented me from taking an objective stance in analyzing the discussion of the value of life in the poem: my emotions prevented me from acquiring some knowledge about the poem's meaning. Emotions influence, distort and inhibit the acquisition of knowledge through the sources of knowledge of perception, reason and language.
However, emotions rarely totally prevent acquisition of knowledge. Though emotions can influence reason, perception and language as sources of knowledge, they do not totally prevent the acquisition of knowledge in any of these areas unless they do not allow a subject to think about anything apart from the source of their emotion. As long as we pay attention to a source of knowledge in any subject area, we will acquire knowledge. We can also learn to control our emotions when we realize they are inhibiting our acquisition of knowledge. For example, when I first moved to Houston, I was upset that I had moved away from all of my friends and this prevented me from emotionally engaging with other people and with information which I was taught at school. However, I learned to detach myself from the feeling of missing my past and to pay more attention to my current situation. I overcame my emotions and stopped them from inhibiting my acquisition of knowledge. I think that, while emotions can cloud our judgement and override our other ways of knowing, only very strong emotions can be a serious obstacle to knowledge. Also, even these strong emotions can be eventually controlled or overcome in one way or another to the point where they do not prevent the acquisition of knowledge. On the other hand, in the same way that emotions can have a negative effect on the acquisition of knowledge, they can have a positive effect on how we regard different areas of knowledge and can be a source of knowledge themselves.
It seems impossible to imagine human life without emotions. All personal relations would fail without emotional attachment. One way to realize how important emotion is to allow the acquisition of knowledge is to try and think of life without emotion. . Once we do this, we realize that our ways of knowing are very interdependent: we use other ways of knowing such as language to understand emotion, but we need emotion to understand emotionally relevant areas of knowledge. Emotions also seem to contribute to ascribing some form of personal possession to otherwise abstract shared knowledge. I think this is what is meant by Bennett when he says that feeling the force of emotion makes it ours. For example, one can read plenty of literature in English and acquire shared factual knowledge, for example by reading non-fiction, without engaging emotionally with the text. However, for the shared knowledge to have any personal significance and therefore become personal knowledge, one must form some sort of emotional attachment with the shared knowledge. This emotional bond would be the 'force' which allows knowledge to become 'ours', or in other words to have a personal significance rooted in the cognitive framework of someone's mind. An example which comes to mind would be in the difference between reading poetry in English and being able to write poetry. If someone reads a poem and pulls out the factual knowledge, they will acquire some of the shared knowledge within that poem. But if they try and write a poem, they will need to engage emotionally with their piece and add some of their own personal knowledge in order to be creative. This knowledge which founds creation seems to be the knowledge which Bennet is referring to when he says 'there can be no knowledge without emotion'; I agree with him with this definition of knowledge, but I disagree that there can be no justified true belief without emotion.
Some would argue that there are some areas of knowledge in which there is little difference between shared knowledge and personal knowledge. In Mathematics, all theorems are generally considered to be part of shared knowledge. Anyone who discovers new mathematical knowledge is considered to contribute their personal knowledge to add to the sum shared knowledge, but shared knowledge does not become personal knowledge since everyone has access to it; no one needs to engage emotionally with mathematical thorems to understand them. One can have justified true belief about whether 2+2 really does equal 4 without having to feel an emotion to understand the equation. Therefore, Mathematical knowledge is objective and derived from a priori reasoning: there is therefore no room for subjective interpretation which would distinguish personal knowledge from shared knowledge.
On the other hand, some would disagree with this account of Mathematics and support the statement at the start of this essay. In Mathematics, when I solve a problem, I gain a sense of achievement which motivates me to do other problems. When I learn a general theorem, I interpret it and attach some sort of feeling towards it in the process of understanding. I prefer trigonometry to statistics, and this effects my results in this area because of my differing levels of personal knowledge regarding these two topics. I am better at trigonometry than at statistics. Mathematicians who excel in their area of expertise feel an emotion which allows them to strive and add to the shared knowledge of Mathematics. They need to engage with the area of knowledge and attach their personal feelings to Maths for this to happen.
However, Mathematical knowledge is not underpinned by emotion in the same way as any a posteriori knowledge, such as that of the English language. Without emotion we would not understand literature at all. In addition, English is an area of knowledge in which emotion plays a major role in turning shared knowledge into personal knowledge. For example, when I read '1984' by George Orwell, my emotional response to the totalitarian dystopia depicted in the novel was essential for my understanding of the author's message. Without emotions, I would treat the novel as an objectively true, non-fiction description and remember only facts about the plot. With emotion, the shared knowledge created by the text is interpreted by me both factually and emotionally to create a wholesome understanding of the novel which is unique to my way of acquiring knowledge.
In conclusion, I partially agree with the statement: I believe we cannot have any personal knowledge without emotion. But we can acquire shared knowledge without emotionally engaging with it, as exemplified by Mathematics. We therefore need emotions to truly understand anything which we can know through perception or language, since emotions are contextually continuous with these ways of knowing. But pure reason, founded on a priori propositional knowledge such as that of basic Maths, can be detached from emotions without losing validity as a way of knowing. Emotions are therefore necessary to convert shared knowledge into personal knowledge, which is the most in-depth and prolific type of knowledge, but Bennett is wrong in saying that justified true belief cannot exist without emotion.
First I will explore the knowledge question “in what way, and to what extent, can emotions be an obstacle to knowledge?”. Since emotions are integrated with our mental state and disposition, they can distort the other ways of knowing. Our perception can be altered by strong emotions to be positively biased towards things we feel positively passionate about, such as by making us perceive that the people we love are the most attractive in the world. Passion can also bias the way we use reason and prevent open-mindedness. Emotions can lead to rationalization of pre-existing prejudices, or of personal shortcomings. For example, when I found out that I was not good enough to take Higher Level Maths at IB, I was disappointed and rationalized my shortcoming by telling myself that I did not need to be good at Maths, that this area of knowledge was not as important as the area of knowledge of English. I admit that I am still biased against the importance of Maths as an area of knowledge and I still consider the humanities more important areas of knowledge. Furthermore, emotive language tends to be caused by strong emotions – this can be a fault in language as a way of knowing because it shows that language is not based on facts or knowledge, but just reflects the subject’s emotional state. This has a knock-on effect on how we regard ethical implications in an area of knowledge. For example, in the area of knowledge of English, when I read a poem which dealt with the issue of abortion, my personal emotive response towards the topic of abortion prevented me from taking an objective stance in analyzing the discussion of the value of life in the poem: my emotions prevented me from acquiring some knowledge about the poem's meaning. Emotions influence, distort and inhibit the acquisition of knowledge through the sources of knowledge of perception, reason and language.
However, emotions rarely totally prevent acquisition of knowledge. Though emotions can influence reason, perception and language as sources of knowledge, they do not totally prevent the acquisition of knowledge in any of these areas unless they do not allow a subject to think about anything apart from the source of their emotion. As long as we pay attention to a source of knowledge in any subject area, we will acquire knowledge. We can also learn to control our emotions when we realize they are inhibiting our acquisition of knowledge. For example, when I first moved to Houston, I was upset that I had moved away from all of my friends and this prevented me from emotionally engaging with other people and with information which I was taught at school. However, I learned to detach myself from the feeling of missing my past and to pay more attention to my current situation. I overcame my emotions and stopped them from inhibiting my acquisition of knowledge. I think that, while emotions can cloud our judgement and override our other ways of knowing, only very strong emotions can be a serious obstacle to knowledge. Also, even these strong emotions can be eventually controlled or overcome in one way or another to the point where they do not prevent the acquisition of knowledge. On the other hand, in the same way that emotions can have a negative effect on the acquisition of knowledge, they can have a positive effect on how we regard different areas of knowledge and can be a source of knowledge themselves.
It seems impossible to imagine human life without emotions. All personal relations would fail without emotional attachment. One way to realize how important emotion is to allow the acquisition of knowledge is to try and think of life without emotion. . Once we do this, we realize that our ways of knowing are very interdependent: we use other ways of knowing such as language to understand emotion, but we need emotion to understand emotionally relevant areas of knowledge. Emotions also seem to contribute to ascribing some form of personal possession to otherwise abstract shared knowledge. I think this is what is meant by Bennett when he says that feeling the force of emotion makes it ours. For example, one can read plenty of literature in English and acquire shared factual knowledge, for example by reading non-fiction, without engaging emotionally with the text. However, for the shared knowledge to have any personal significance and therefore become personal knowledge, one must form some sort of emotional attachment with the shared knowledge. This emotional bond would be the 'force' which allows knowledge to become 'ours', or in other words to have a personal significance rooted in the cognitive framework of someone's mind. An example which comes to mind would be in the difference between reading poetry in English and being able to write poetry. If someone reads a poem and pulls out the factual knowledge, they will acquire some of the shared knowledge within that poem. But if they try and write a poem, they will need to engage emotionally with their piece and add some of their own personal knowledge in order to be creative. This knowledge which founds creation seems to be the knowledge which Bennet is referring to when he says 'there can be no knowledge without emotion'; I agree with him with this definition of knowledge, but I disagree that there can be no justified true belief without emotion.
Some would argue that there are some areas of knowledge in which there is little difference between shared knowledge and personal knowledge. In Mathematics, all theorems are generally considered to be part of shared knowledge. Anyone who discovers new mathematical knowledge is considered to contribute their personal knowledge to add to the sum shared knowledge, but shared knowledge does not become personal knowledge since everyone has access to it; no one needs to engage emotionally with mathematical thorems to understand them. One can have justified true belief about whether 2+2 really does equal 4 without having to feel an emotion to understand the equation. Therefore, Mathematical knowledge is objective and derived from a priori reasoning: there is therefore no room for subjective interpretation which would distinguish personal knowledge from shared knowledge.
On the other hand, some would disagree with this account of Mathematics and support the statement at the start of this essay. In Mathematics, when I solve a problem, I gain a sense of achievement which motivates me to do other problems. When I learn a general theorem, I interpret it and attach some sort of feeling towards it in the process of understanding. I prefer trigonometry to statistics, and this effects my results in this area because of my differing levels of personal knowledge regarding these two topics. I am better at trigonometry than at statistics. Mathematicians who excel in their area of expertise feel an emotion which allows them to strive and add to the shared knowledge of Mathematics. They need to engage with the area of knowledge and attach their personal feelings to Maths for this to happen.
However, Mathematical knowledge is not underpinned by emotion in the same way as any a posteriori knowledge, such as that of the English language. Without emotion we would not understand literature at all. In addition, English is an area of knowledge in which emotion plays a major role in turning shared knowledge into personal knowledge. For example, when I read '1984' by George Orwell, my emotional response to the totalitarian dystopia depicted in the novel was essential for my understanding of the author's message. Without emotions, I would treat the novel as an objectively true, non-fiction description and remember only facts about the plot. With emotion, the shared knowledge created by the text is interpreted by me both factually and emotionally to create a wholesome understanding of the novel which is unique to my way of acquiring knowledge.
In conclusion, I partially agree with the statement: I believe we cannot have any personal knowledge without emotion.
But we can acquire shared knowledge without emotionally engaging with it, as exemplified by Mathematics. We therefore need emotions to truly understand anything which we can know through perception or language, since emotions are contextually continuous with these ways of knowing. But pure reason, founded on a priori propositional knowledge such as that of basic Maths, can be detached from emotions without losing validity as a way of knowing. Emotions are therefore necessary to convert shared knowledge into personal knowledge, which is the most in-depth and prolific type of knowledge, but Bennett is wrong in saying that justified true belief cannot exist without emotion.