Mark Tuvelle Case

Heart's Reason Paper

Mark Tuvelle

Hondros College of Nursing

Pascal said "the heart has its reasons that reason knows not" (Waller, 2011, p. 42). So what is Pascal saying? I interpret it to mean the heart is emotional and bases it desires as such. Reason on the other had is rational with no understanding of emotion. The two seem to be polar opposites of each other. I tend to agree with Pascal's opinion here.

I often look at things for sale on e-bay. Ninety-nine percent of the time I am there just to browse with no plans of purchasing anything. I have noticed that when I am looking at items that people have bid on I want to bid on the item too. For whatever reason my emotion has manifested itself and said "I want it I don't want you to have it". Now from the point of view of reason I typically have no need for the item I viewing. So why would I bid on an item I don't need or want?

During an earlier period in my life I sold insurance. The training for sales is design to teach salesman to illicit an emotional response from a perspective client. Why is this? It is well document that if a salesman can create an emotional desire for the product their sales rate will greatly increase. We were taught to be empathetic and to match their tone and rate of speech. All this is done to produce a reaction from the client that causes them to think "hey this person is just like me I must be able to trust him". All this is design to happen on the subconscious level where reason is missing.

If I may I use one more illustration. We have all (most) seen beer commercials on television. I'm going to offer an assumption here, but I might be wrong, and that is that it is men who primarily drink beer. The beer companies always have beautiful, sexy women in their ads. So the question is why? Well I believe they are exploiting the desire of men to be attractive to women they view as sexy, beautiful. After seeing the commercial men may subconsciously come to the conclusion that if I drink "x" beer then I will be able to sexy, beautiful women will be attracted to me. Obliviously reason leads us to the truth. That is that the type of beer I drink has nothing to do with the type of woman that will date me.

"Enemy soldiers stalk your village. You hide in a cellar with some neighbors and your baby, who starts to cry. Unless you keep his mouth covered, the soldiers will find you and kill everyone. Do you smother him to save yourself and your neighbors? (Aaronson, 2009)" This question poses an agonizing dilemma of emotion verses reason. If we apply Kant's reasoning theory then the only option is to not kill the baby. If we kill the baby are we not treating the baby as a means to our end? This of course would violate Kant's second categorical imperative which