Philosophical Questions about Education; Clip 2 Video Lecture | Philosophy of Education: Introductory Course - Self Help Learning

what other way we can distinguish
ourselves is in terms of our emotional
capacity again there's a lively debate
in animal psychology circles over
whether some other animal species have
emotions
I am tentatively on the side of saying
that some animal species do have
emotions but I'm not an expert in this
area so I'm not going to pronounce
definitively here but I think the most
gung-ho advocate of animal emotional
experience would at most say that dogs
or dolphins and so forth have say a half
a dozen or ten at the most emotions that
they are capable of experiencing certain
kinds of affection certain kinds of fear
certain kinds of anger right and so
forth we then would be able to count on
this on the fingers of one or two hands
the number of emotions that are are
experienceable by by any other animal
species now if we look at human beings
in that light an obvious fact about
ourselves that we know introspectively
and certainly from observing other human
beings is that the range of emotions
that we are capable experiencing and the
intensity of those emotions that we are
capable experiencing seems to vastly
outstrip the emotional experience of any
other type of animal we can experience
joy and pride right in humility and
schadenfreude and nostalgia and
melancholy and so forth you go to any
standard emotions chapter in a
psychology textbook and just start to
count the number of emotions that that
the psychologist there will be talking
about the the number really is
staggering or without having to do that
kind of research music I think is an
important phenomenon here if you were to
consider your own musical collection and
just to pick out of that say 100 songs
and play all of those songs and then
make careful note of the number of
emotions that you experienced in the
course of listening to those songs the
list of emotions would run to several
pages I am quite sure so one thing that
we can then say is another possible
answer to this question is that
important to our identity
as human beings is our emotions that
what we want adult human beings to be
able to do to live a full life to live
the best cop possible kind of life is to
experience the full range of intense
emotional experience that makes human
life life life possible and we also want
human beings to be able to have the
emotional resilience and the emotional
strength to be able to live right that's
sort of a sort of a life so we want to
to achieve happiness we want to
experience all of the intense emotion
allottee that our family relationships
can bring to us our business
achievements can bring to us our
friendships conferring to us our
romantic lives can bring to us our
accomplishments in sporting activities
and so forth literature is intentionally
emotional and certainly music as I've
just mentioned is as well so that then
if we give that as a key answer to the
question what it is that makes a human
beings the importantly the kinds of
beings that they are that we focus on
our emotional capacities that then will
have implications for what we're doing
in education we then would give a
different emphasis to our educational
system arguing that what we should be
doing is preparing human beings to
experience the full range of human
emotion and to have the full emotional
resilience to be able to have the right
kinds of best emotional experiences that
human life can can offer okay so every
reason emotions we might come up with
other things that we think are
importantly here but I'm going to pause
just on on that at this point here and
Sarah I suppose we then say well fine I
can understand both of these answers and
there are some truth to both of them
certainly reason is important to us as
human beings our emotions are important
to us as human beings there have been
some follow-up questions here we might
then say all right if we are rational
beings and we are emotional beings
what's the relationship between these
two
is it the case that our rational life
has a life of its own or our emotional
side also has a life of its own and that
these two proceeded on independent
tracks or is it the case that we think
there's an intimate connection between
reason and emotions we say things for
example like love is blind that I think
in its somewhat metaphorical but what
we're saying is that love has a life of
its own the reason we fall in love with
people is for reasons that are blind to
us or they're we're not aware of the
reasons why that we fall in love with
people so reason and thinking and facts
don't really have anything to do with it
and so that's then a position that says
our emotional life international life
are somewhat separated for various
reasons of course there's also the other
phenomenon that we might be very
infatuated with someone but as a result
of coming to know the person we get
there gather various facts and and the
data presents itself to us we fall out
of love with that person we're no longer
interested in some cases we might be
repulsed by the mere thought of that
person but what's going on in that case
in that case it doesn't seem that our
emotional life has a life independent of
our reason but rather our emotional
transformation as a result of our reason
coming up with and processing new facts
and new data so is our reason and our
emotion integrated do they work together
or do they they do work separately now
this of course is an important issue in
psychology it's an important issue in in
philosophy but again it's an issue that
has important educational implication
because if we want to say our job is to
Train human reason or to Train human
emotions whether we think that those two
are two separate entities to separate
animals that we are dealing with or
whether we think that they are
integrated and should be taught in
tandem with each other that's going to
take very different educational
strategies when we're approaching just
this one issue here we might then say
suppose there is a connection between
the two is it the case that that reason
really is the legislator here and our
emotions follow along or is it the case
that we think our emotions are our
legislature and our
right is the is the tag along is it for
example that we come to think say
certain things about capital punishment
right as an example we form certain
beliefs and then as a result we have
certain emotions positive or negative
when we think about capital punishment
or is it the case that we come to have a
strong feeling a strong urge right so
the belief or a strong felt experience
when we think about capital punishment
and on the basis of that we've a tional
eyes or construct arguments to to
justify something that we've already
made an emotional commitment to does
this one have priority or does that one
have priority
so again when we're educators and we're
teaching things that are rationally
important and even emotionally
significant or actually we would be
approaching them primarily through the
educational side or the emotional side
of things or through the rational side
of things okay so that's just to focus
on two words here the human being and
raise them one question that's a
philosophically charged question with
important educational implications
I suppose we come back to the question
we say all right what is it to be a
human being what's important what's
distinctive to our identity here and we
focus on issues other than these two
important capacities say we have the
reason Envy the emotional capacity