Evaluate the ways in which emotion might enhance and/or undermine reasoning as a Way of knowing?

Emotions affect our reasoning either to enhance or undermine it as a mean of knowing. Emotions often influence most of the actions and decisions we make. We get knowledge through several ways, but reasoning is the most commonly used along with the emotions that influence it.
Reason is a logical form of thinking to discover new knowledge. Reasoning is when there are two or more pieces of information that are true used to imply another statement and therefore conclude it is also true. For instance, a friend had been coughing and sneezing quite a few times in the past few days. Now she has been absent for two days. These two statements are both correct and now we might infer she is ill. Another illustration can be I had a chocolate bar on my desk. When I came home, it was gone. The only person that was left alone in the house was my brother; therefore he must have eaten it. It also includes using our minds as drawing boards to make connections between events. We may use our senses to get a piece of information and then imagine what happened. An example may be a person was in their front yard and saw smoke from a house not too far away. At the same moment a firefighter rushed by. Our brain serves as a drawing board where we have put two pieces of information that we perceived from our senses to imagine what happened. Reason is also thinking about what is best in certain circumstances to make the right decisions. It is using our common sense to judge what the best action to take in the situation we’re in. These decisions are often contradicted and influenced by emotions.
Emotions are a major component of human’s lives. They are how we express our feelings towards others and certain subjects. We express our emotions to others through our actions. Our actions are influenced by our feelings. If we’re depressed we don’t talk to anyone or if we love someone we show our affection by giving them a hug. Furthermore, emotions come from feelings. When someone feels sweaty that feeling may cause disgust, or before lunch the feeling of hunger can create the emotion of anxiety. There are many levels of emotions. They can be categorized in many ways and can be a complex mixture of other emotions. There are basic emotions like happy, sad, content, love, fear, anger, jealousy, and anxiety. Complex emotions can be developed by a mixture of other emotions. Nervous, for example, can be a mixture of fear and anxiety. Love is the most complex emotion for there are many kinds of love. There can be friendships, companions, romance, and motherly love. However, these emotions are constantly changing because of certain circumstances that may cause emotional imbalance. A person may be in constant depression because they lack another emotion like love. The things going on in their lives may cause them to feel depressed or unsuccessful. It can become very serious if they begin to commit suicide. Psychological intervention may be required in order to solve the emotional imbalance. Emotions are a component of the affects on reasoning.
Emotions enhance or undermine reasoning as a way of knowing. We may feel we want to do something because it is what we feel like doing but our head says no because it’s wrong. Instead of doing my homework I feel like sleeping or watching TV. I know I have to complete it so I decide to leave my emotions aside. At times we listen to our emotions instead of reasoning. There was a woman that woke up one morning and reason told her she needed to go to work like always, but a feeling told her she had to stay home .She decided to listen to her feeling and stay home. Later she found out the roof of the building where she worked at caved in. We can’t control our emotions it’s like an instinct to feel a certain way in what we consider at a reasonable moment. We tend to have emotions about the things we know but also from the ones we don’t know. We have fear or terror of the unknown but we have that fear because we have never experienced it. Fear is an emotion that can prevent us from knowing and having experience. The fear of rollercoasters will prevent us from getting on thus never knowing what it really feels like. We can feel dizzy after a very twisty rollercoaster because now we know what it’s like. It is reasonable to have our emotions assist us in getting knowledge.
There are several emotions and different ways of reasoning that improve and diminish our way of knowing.