Emotions

Emotion might enhance and/or undermine reasoning as a Way of Knowing because everything we do is based on how we feel. Everything we do is based on what emotion we are feeling at that moment, and that can change at any moment. It is what we base everything on. Mood, feeling, and emotion are just synonyms of each other. All three categorize what you, well, feel. When the emotion you are feeling is anxious, then you have this feeling in your stomach, and you it is because you are anticipating something. If you are sad then you can tell because you are frowning and you just do not feel right. When you are happy you just cannot stop smiling. Anger is when you are so upset that all you really want to do is throw a chair at someone. No matter what it emotion it is, you are still feeling something, and that can enhance, undermine, or even both, your reasoning.

Happy is a really bland way of putting an emotion, but it goes along with being excited, cheerful, and ecstatic, etc. All these emotions make you get up and do something. When someone is in a good mood they are mostly in good reasoning. It will probably be easier to make decisions, and make a good one, because they are feeling happy, and because the reasoning behind your choice is strong. Plus, if you are having a great day you will want to get out of the house with some friends and go to the mall, or shopping, or something like that. This emotion of feeling cheerful and excited, or however you want to describe it, might enhance a way of knowing.

This is different from when you are sad and just want to lie in bed all day, be alone, and do absolutely nothing. This feeling makes you miserable and not care about anything. That influences the way you think. You do not care so you are not really thinking about it, so you are not going to make the best decision. The best chance is that you are making the wrong one. You will probably regret it. Sadness and depression undermine anything that will do with reasoning and knowledge.

Anger is one of these emotions that will be undermining, and it is an important one. This can really cloud your judgment. It is very common because people always find things to get angry about, and there is really not a good reason. It is mostly for something small. Obviously anger makes you very upset. The usual case is that this causes you, most of the time, to make bad decisions. You do whatever will screw everyone over and make them as upset as you. The next day, after you had time to cool down, you are over it and you regret whatever you did. Anger, alongside sadness, undermines the reasoning you need to obtain knowledge. You can even think about frustration, anger, and aggravation as a good thing. To me, in some cases being this mad about something shows how much you care about it. That can push to obtain as much knowledge as you can about it. It is not even just that one emotion. Any emotion, whether it is happy, sad, mad, can help you become smarter and attract more knowledge.

Your mood also determines how you think about things. A certain subject can make you feel happy, sad, angry, depressed, so on and so on. Emotions can either enhance or undermine reasoning as a Way of Knowing. Emotions can be a good thing because I think you should sometimes follow what you feel. Like the saying, "follow your gut feeling." If you feel that something will turn out terrible than you should listen to what you feel and stop doing whatever it is. That gut feeling is your emotion. It can also be catagorized as your intuition. That is what it is called when you have a bad feeling and think that something bad is about to happen. This is an important feeling to trust and mostly follow. Intuition can also be bad. You can have this feeling for almost everything you do. If you always follow what you feel than your always going to worry.

It really just depends on who you are. I can say that being happy, joyous, cheerfull, angry, are enhancing emotions. I might also say that emotions that are connected to being sad are undermining. To another person it can be reversed, and they can think happy in an emotion that might undermine reasoning. I think it just depends on how the person thinks about that emotion. All in all, any emotion, feeling, or mood you can think of, can either enhance and or undermine reasoning in a way of knowing.