TOK Emotion Notes

TOK Emotion Notes Primary Emotions: The six basic emotions we are born with. -

Happiness

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Sadness

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Fear

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Anger

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Surprise

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Disgust

Social Emotions: Emotions that require other people or stimuli to create. -

Ambition

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Contempt

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Embarrassment

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Envy

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Gratitude

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Guilt

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Shame (and others)

Since emotions are so important in our lives, they are likely to influence the way we see and think about things. Strong emotions can distort perception, reason, and language. -

Perception: Being overly emotional can lead to us being overly aware of certain things and exclude other aspects of it. For example, being overly in love with someone will most likely make you not realize their faults as easily as you would their positives.

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Reason: Holding your beliefs with too much passion can lead you to being close-minded.

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Language: A person in the grip of a powerful emotion is likely to use slanted and emotive language.

Irrational behavior is often caused by emotion. Emotions can not only distort our beliefs but also lead us to make poor decisions. Some emotions are urgent and short sighted and they can blind us to the consequences of our actions; for instance, saying something you immediately regret while being angry. Reason and emotions are intertwined. Rather than being completely different things, reason and emotions play off of each other. If you see a snake, you will most likely reason that it is poisonous; thus creating fear. However, if you realize it’s a rope, not a snake, then your fear leaves and you are back to neutral.

Intuition: Our sudden realizations and “sixth sense” or hunches about a situation. It is based on feelings and reason. -

Core Intuitions: our most fundamental intuitions about life, the universe, and everything

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Subject Specific Intuitions: the intuitions we have in various areas of knowledge such as science and ethics

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Social Intuitions: our intuitions about other people

It is believed that all our knowledge is based on intuition because even though reason and perception are used to gain knowledge, intuition is used to justify our knowledge. For example, we use intuition to rule out the dream hypothesis which makes all our perceptions justified. Also, all our fundamental laws about life are said to be intuitively obvious. How reliable is intuition as a source of knowledge? -

Expert intuition is generally more reliable than natural intuition because experts have more experience and background information on the topic. However, experts aren’t always around to ask, so if your intuitions happen to coincide with reason and experience then most likely the intuition is trust-worthy.

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Be careful though, we tend to blindly trust intuition during our peril.