Sunday, March 4, 2012
Integrating Reason and Emotion
One of the concepts that I found was interesting from Chapter 2 in THINK by Judith A. Boss was “Integrating Reason and Emotion.” The text says that the education process tends to undervalue emotion and is instead geared towards encouraging us to be rational at all times. (45) I have always thought that when reasoning you should separate your emotions so they do not cloud your decision making even though it’s super hard to do so. Boss later goes on to point out that by combining emotion with reasoning, you can actually use that as an advantage, “The combination of feeling and reason gives us a double-prolonged tool in critical thinking. Emotion alerts us to problems and to other people’s perspectives. Emotions also motivate us to take action and resolve problems.” (45) I thought this was interesting because it goes against the original thought I had that emotion should be separated from reasoning.
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It is very true that growing up in the United States we are taught to separate emotion from reasoning and decision making. It wasn't until reading this section of the text that I realized how important it is to integrate emotions into reasoning. Just like the text mentions, without emotion, we would not be able to identify or empathize with others problems. Although we are taught to separate our emotions from our decision making, it is very difficult to do so. I always feel kind of cold when I try ignoring all emotion when making decisions. If separating emotion from reasoning is so difficult, maybe we should instead embrace our emotions rather than devaluing them.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with you. The concept, “Integrating Reasons and Emotion” was very interesting to read about. I always thought that emotions should be left out of your reasoning when things are being settled, but to my surprise, Boss indicates otherwise. When I read that emotions and reasons combined gives us a better sense of how to resolve or go about things I was slightly puzzled. After I thought more about this concept I did come to realize that Boss was right. Emotions do motivate us to take action like you said. They also permit us to view other peoples feeling so that we can consider everything and everyone when making a decision.
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