On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 4:17 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 24 Feb 2012, at 21:51, Terren Suydam wrote: > >> On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 3:30 PM, Terren Suydam <[email protected]> >> wrote: >>> >>> On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 2:27 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>> On 2/24/2012 10:26 AM, Terren Suydam wrote: >>>> >>>> I certainly will. In the meantime, do you have an example from Damasio >>>> (or any other source) that could shed light on the pain/pleasure >>>> phenomenon? >>>> >>>> Terren >>>> >>>> http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/damasioreview.html >>> >>> >>> I think emotions represent something above and beyond the more >>> fundamental feelings of pleasure and pain. Fear, for example, is >>> explainable using Damasio's framework as such, and I can translate it >>> to the way I am asking the question as above: >>> >>> Question: What kind of organization arose during the evolutionary >>> process that led directly to the subjective experience of fear? >>> Answer: A cognitive architecture in which internal body states are >>> modeled and integrated using the same representational apparatus that >>> models the external world, so that one's adaptive responses >>> (fight/flight/freeze) to threatening stimuli become integrated into >>> the organism's cognitive state of affairs. In short, fear is what it >>> feels like to have a fear response (as manifest in the body by various >>> hormonal responses) to some real or imagined stimuli. >>> >>> You can substitute any emotion for fear, so long as you can identify >>> the way that emotion manifests in the body/brain in terms of hormonal >>> or other mechanisms. But when it comes to pain and pleasure, I don't >>> think that it is necessary to have such an advanced cognitive >>> architecture, I think. So on a more fundamental level, the question >>> remains: >>> >>> What kind of organization arose during the evolutionary process that >>> led directly to the subjective experience of pain and pleasure? >>> >>> Or put another way, what kind of mechanism feels pleasurable or >>> painful from the inside? >>> >>> Presumably the answer to this question occurred earlier in the >>> evolutionary process than the emergence of fear, surprise, hunger, and >>> so on. >>> >>> Terren >> >> >> To go a little further with this, take sexual orgasm. What is >> happening during orgasm that makes it so pleasurable? >> >> Presumably there are special circuits in the brain that get activated, >> which correlate to the flush of orgasmic pleasure. But what is special >> about those circuits? From a 3p perspective, how is one brain circuit >> differentiated from another? It can't be as simple as the >> neurotransmitters involved; what would make one neurotransmitter be >> causative of pain and another of pleasure? It's shape? That seems >> absurd. >> >> It seems that the consequence of that neural circuit firing would have >> to achieve some kind of systemic effect that is characterized... how? >> >> Pain is just as mysterious. It's not as simple as "what it feels like >> for a system to become damaged". Phantom limbs, for example, are often >> excruciatingly painful. Pain is clearly in the mind. What cognitive >> mechanism could you characterize as feeling painful from the inside? >> >> Failure to account for this in mechanistic terms, for me, is a direct >> threat to the legitimacy of mechanism. > > > Failure to account for this in *any* 3p sense would be a direct threat to > the legitimacy of science. > > I am not sure only mechanism is in difficulty here, unless you have a reason > to believe that "infinities" could explain the pain quale. > > On the contrary mechanism explains that there is an unavoidable clash > between the 1p view and the 3p view. The 1p view (Bp & p, say) is the same > as the 3p view (Bp), but this is only "known" by the divine intellect (G*). > It cannot be known by the correct machine itself. So mechanism (or weaker) > *can* explain why the 1p seems non mechanical, and in some sense is not > 1p-mechanical, which explains why we feel something like a dualism. This > dualism really exist epistemologically, even if the divine intellect (G*) > knows that is an illusion. It is a real self-referentially correct > "illusion". > > Bruno >
Hi Bruno, I'm with you... See my response to acw... I need to think some more on it. Thanks for your replies. Terren -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
