Emotion

​ **Emotion** Emotion has the advantage of being open to all, the weak and the lowly, the illiterate and the scholar. It is seen to be as efficacious as any other method and is sometimes said to be stronger than the others, since it is its own fruition, while other methods are means to some other ends. //Bhagavad Git //

Emotions play a powerful role in shaping thoughts, influencing behaviour, and steering the pursuit of knowledge. While emotions may be a key to self-understanding and to understanding the world, the extent to which they contribute to both can be explored through a discussion of questions like those that follow, probing the nature, value, and limits of emotion as a way of knowing. [|Teaching modules which cover all aspects of emotion] [|Podcast which discusses how biology, feelings, emotion and cognition give rise to our sense of self.] [|Evoked emotions gallery]

​ **Nature of Emotion** [|Wikipedia site on culture and emotion] [|Damasio's feelings on emotions] [|Some looks just don't translate] [|How can our emotions be exploited? The advertising industry, Emotion and Reason.] [|Article about bilingualism, emotion and culture]  Primatologist Frans Waal traces the evolutionary roots of our empathic instincts.
 * Can we ever know anything purely through emotions? How do emotions interact with reason, sense perception and language?
 * To what degree is emotion biological or “hard-wired”, and hence universal to all human beings? To what extent is it shaped by culture and hence displayed differently in different societies?

Anthropologist Helen Fisher talks about the evolutionary origins of love

media type="custom" key="5072767" [|Feeling grumpy is good for you - about research which shows you think more clearly when grumpy] [|Article which claims that lust is a virtue] [|The ways in which humans exhibit basic emotions are universal - Eckman] [|The big 5 personality traits?] [|What are emotions?] How emotions influence decision making: media type="custom" key="5100671"
 * What sorts of things count as emotions? Are emotions and feelings the same thing?
 * Can feelings have a rational basis? Is “emotional intelligence” an oxymoron? Robert Solomon says that emotions are “systems of judgments”, and that “virtually all of our experience is to some degree ‘affective’, and even our most dispassionate judgments…can be adequately understood only within some larger emotional context”. Is he correct in claiming that virtually all sense perception, and reasoning, must involve emotion?
 * Is it possible to experience an emotion, a feeling, an attitude or sensibility that cannot be expressed in language? Can an emotion, such as love or grief, have its origins in, or be shaped by, language?
 * Can emotions be trained? To what extent can we control our emotions, not in terms of how we act on them, but what we actually feel? Do cultures select emotions to foster and use?
 * Are concepts such as solidarity, patriotism and racism examples of collective emotions?
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Is faith an emotion, a feeling, or neither?

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 110%;">**Emotion and knowledge**
<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">[|Discussion of whether knowledge can be attained through emotion] <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">[|Music and the role of emotion]
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Does emotion reside in the realm of private knowledge in the sense that it cannot be verified by others? Can people be mistaken about their own emotions? Can others lead them to recognize previously unknown emotions?
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Is there any kind of knowledge that can be attained solely through emotion? Is the answer to the question dependent on factors such as gender, age, culture, and/or socio-economic group?
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Is emotion an essential ingredient of the pursuit or validation of scientific or artistic knowledge? Can there be creativity without emotion?
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Why has emotion sometimes been seen as a less valuable way of knowing than, say, reason? Or does the value of emotion as a way of knowing depend on the kind of knowledge that is being pursued?
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">Susan Stebbing says, “I do not in the least wish to suggest that it is undesirable for us to be set on thinking by emotional considerations. On the contrary, nothing else will suffice to make us think to some purpose.” David Hume claims that, “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions.” Is it true that emotions are an essential driver of any purposeful activity?