Any attempt to provide an adequate theory of cognition that ignores Essay

Any attempt to provide an adequate theory of cognition that ignores emotion is probably doomed to failure (Eysenck, 1995). Discuss - Essay Example This paper is dedicated to analysis of relationships between cognitions and emotions in order to find out whether Eysenck's (1995) thesis is right or not. There are now few doubts that cognitions and emotions together constitute the core of personality, its set, and in fact make "what a human is" (Kelly, 1969). The value of emotions and cognitions for personality could hardly be underestimated. Already Aristotle admitted the value of emotions in people's lives (Kafetsios and LaRock, 2003). In the early XVIII century J.Berkeley was one of the first to distinguish emotions and cognitions. J. Berkeley came to the conclusion that people's reactions on the stimuli - the so-called "ideas", are combinations of cognitions (the acts of people's minds) and emotions (the acts of people's soul and fantasy). According to Thomists' ideas, emotions and cognitions are the major characteristics that differentiate human beings from non-humans (Lyons, 1999). Regardless the visible simplicity of the issue, both the nature of emotions and cognitions and their relationships still remain discussable and contestable amidst psychologists and physiologists. There are numbers of approaches and theories that tend to go into two extremes. One of these extremes insists on poor or even no relationship between cognitions and emotions. This extreme reflects metaphysical attitude to affects understood as the antitheses of rationality. Another approach Another approach named "biological" or "physiological" theory of emotions summarizes the findings of Ch. Darwin (psychoevolutionary theory), W. James and C. Lange (organic theory), and W. Cannon (psycho-organic theory) who generally explained emotions as the functions of mind and believed that emotions are unrelated to cognitions. Also this statement is less supported by contemporary psychologists, until now the biological approach has a number of partisans. Modern reinterpretations of this approach still assume that cognitions and emotions are completely different in nature. While cognitions are extremely structured and "personalized", emotions are less individual and, in fact "depersonalized", as most people share the same emotions reacting on the same events (Danes, 1991). The common critique to this point of view usually implies the following statement: if people's emotions are unrelated to their thinking, then our emotional reactions should always be the same and stable regardless the stimuli. However, our emotional reactions, in fact, lie on a certain continuum, where such emotion as "attraction" may range from a "slight interest" to "passion" depending on our rational evaluation of an object. This statement implies psychological relatedness between emotional and rational (cognitive) processes which participate in rational procession of data. Another extreme, widely known as "cognitive approach", implies that emotions and cognitions can not be analyzed and understood separately as they both constitute the joint process of reacting. According to cognitivists, emotions