For emotions, reasons neglect emotions like anger, fear, frustration and amazement. For example, when you are angry, you will entirely ignore all reason and do whatever is right for you. Emotions have a great impact on our lives which should not be ignore by reason. Reasons miss out an important role in our life and reasons also created huge gap of weaknesses. Reasoning can be used to understand certain beliefs as well as eliminate superstitions which are not believable. When believing in superstition reasoning might also pose a problem in certain cases. One example from superstition is that sings while eating at dinner. In Thai culture, sings while eating at dinner will cause you to have an older wife than yourself. Though, it cannot be seen as plausible in science as it cannot be proven by any of scientific method. In addition, reason can be used as an advantage to explain a certain superstition. Sings while eating, could cause suffocation due to rice slip through your throat.
Language as a way of knowing is however not 100% reliable when translated. Is it important to know what the words actually mean? Or what the dictionary says it means. People would claim that without language knowing would be impossible, that only language could create reality. Without it, how can we communicate and thus obtain knowledge and though knowledge we reason things. We often acquire knowledge from books, actions and teachings. With that in mind, let us yourselves: What would we understand if there were no languages in the world?
The answer is nothing. Language is not restricted to merely words, but it encompasses actions as well, and for example, language controlling emotions when we are able to derive sorrow from the phase “I’m sorry for your loss”. However, language is biased. Who is to say whether a person is a terrorist or freedom fighter, after all, the definitions of these two words are similar which they fight for themselves, but their connotations are different. It may be argued that language is only one of the four ways of knowing, however, I would like to emphasize that language is the basis of emotion, reason and perception. People may say that we can infer happiness from a smile and sadness from frown; however, as mentioned earlier, language controlled emotions.
In addition, emotions could have control over language, when we are angry, we would use certain different words as compared to when we are happy. This means that our emotions control the use of words, in contrast to the earlier view that we use words to express different emotions. Language is used to perceive emotions. For example, people are shown three pictures, 1) one of a man about to punch a punching bag, 2) one of the same man having just punched a punching bag, 3) and a different man who is about to punch a punching bag. They were asked which two of the three are the most similar.
Thai people would choose the first two pictures which is the same man while other country would choose a punching bag that is about to be punched. This is an emphasis on the chronological, rather than the position of the punching bag. To be able to reason, we need to think, thus we need a medium to think, language provides it. For example, in mathematics, we use symbols to logic out the problem and deduce the result. These symbols are forms of language.
However, the divides between colours may be different, for example yellow and orange, but this does not imply that people speaking different languages do not perceive the difference between a darker orange and a lighter orange. Through this, we can see that people are capable to perceive the “object” overcoming the biases that language may impose. Languages form strengths as a way of knowing by including emotions. Conversely, though perceptions, language are biased and we may preference one thing to another, such as colours.
It seems clear that reason has strengths and weaknesses as a way of knowing because knowledge is obtained from the nature, language, emotion and logic where all these aspects have different conclusion on each aspect. As a way of knowing, reason can partly help us understand way we know things better though reason where strengths and weaknesses have only just fulfilled a probability to improve our knowledge through reason.
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