Emotion as a Way of Knowing What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing I’ve given you one of 8 icons, which each represent a subset of Myers-Briggs personality type Each type will tend to strongly prefer their icon to the other 7 (86% in tests) Obviously I don’t know you guys 100% well enough to give you a proper classification, but I reckon I’ve had a good guess for most of you KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing Keep these with you for the moment, as they are a good indicator of how your emotional ‘type’ leads you to decisions KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing Name three decisions you make using emotion as the primary input Remember that emotion is different from Sense, so for example choosing a favourite ice cream flavour would be sense based, choosing a favourite romantic partner might be emotional KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing Some argue that we need emotional stability and comfort to be able to ‘know’ and engage with the external world at all Maslow argued this with his ‘Pyramid of needs’, a diagram showing what needs to be fulfilled before a human can progress KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing This, in a sense, makes Emotion the most important mode of knowing, as we need to understand that our emotional needs are met before we move on to other sources of knowledge. Think of it like this, if every so often I just hurled my stapler randomly at one of your heads, you’d stop focusing on the lesson quite as much, because you felt unsafe KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing What do you think the message in the Star Trek video at the beginning was? What was the director trying to show? KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing Certain people argue that we need to use our emotions to make decisions, otherwise we simply cannot act in some circumstances There have been experiments to prove this, and you are about to see one of them. KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing We acquire emotional connections to events and people far in advance of our cognitive and rational connections Some may phrase this as a sense of ‘prescience’ or just knowing what is right intuitively KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing That is the current top leader in reddit’s list of punchable faces KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing Have you ever had someone you just distrust or dislike instinctively, only to be proven right later on? Many psychologists would argue that this is because you have an emotional connection to something they have or did, that you cannot rationally explain, but simply makes you emotionally negative to them KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing Think about something you react negatively towards despite your better efforts Can you think of a reason behind this? Is there an emotional connection between you and the item? Consider phobias, often they form when we have a bad experience of something whilst young, and therefore form an emotional connection to it KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing There are, however, some problems with using emotion to know. Derren Brown, and B.F. Skinner, claim that emotional knowledge often devolves into ‘superstition’ or blind belief KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing These are all eight of the icons I gave you at the start of the class How right was I? How many of you prefer your icon to the other seven? I’m not expecting to get this 100%, but I think it will be over 50. KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing Obviously I didn’t actually hand out the icons based on personality, I barely know most of your names I just handed them out randomly This is to show, (and many other studies back me up) that the connection works both ways That is to say, if you think something has a connection with you, you are more likely to value it highly despite its actual worth KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?

Emotion as a Way of Knowing Is there anything you think we can be certain of when talking about emotion? Under what circumstances can we ‘know’ emotionally? Do you think emotional knowledge is more or less valid than the other ways of knowing we have looked at? KLQ: What can we know through our emotions, and what dangers are there in this?