Hi Krimel, Ron: > [Krimel] > I don't know if it is a logic trap but you are jumping a bit ahead of what I > had in mind. I was questioning how we decide what is meaningful. Is it > purely a matter of intellect or is intellect really just icing on the cake, > the tail wagging the dog, frou frou on a head boat? > > If we look at the example of the hot stove and the direct apprehension of > Quality, we see that intellect is not really involved at all. When you touch > a hot stove you do not pull away because you "understand" that the situation > is low Quality. You pull away because your nervous system is constructed in > such as way as to withdraw from pain. Defining painful stimulation as "low > Quality" is an intellectual luxury that we engage in after the fact, while > soaking our fried digits in cold beer.
[Platt] I think your interpretation is supported by Pirsig in his SODV paper: [Pirsig] "The Metaphysics of Quality follows the empirical tradition here in saying that the senses are the starting point of reality, but -- all importantly -- it includes a sense of value. Values are phenomena. To ignore them is to misread the world. It says this sense of value, of liking or disliking, is a primary sense that is a kind of gatekeeper for everything else an infant learns. At birth this sense of value is extremely Dynamic but as the infant grows up this sense of value becomes more and more influenced by accumulated static patterns. In the past this biological sense of value has been called the "subjective" because there values cannot be located in an external physical object. But quantum theory has destroyed the idea that only properties located in external physical objects have reality." (SODV) [Krimel] > I raised the issue of emotion because emotions tend to be autonomic > activities that encode experiences as being positive or negative. It is this > "valence" property that helps us establish Quality as we reflect on our > experiences. This valance is hard to over come. It helps to establish our > attitudes and influences our perception of experiences. Intellect becomes a > process of reconciling logic and emotional valence. > > This should not be terribly surprising since emotional valence is common to > mammals. It forms heuristics that tell even tree sloths that something good > happened under similar circumstances in the past and may do so again when > they occur again. > > Certainly intellect is not a property of tree sloths. It seems to be a > property exclusive to humans. It involves the use of language and > intersubjective agreement. [Platt] Agree. I would even go further and suggest emotion, understood as intensity of feeling, is part and parcel of intellectual processes. Many science types are passionate logical positivists. [Krimel] > As to the chicken and egg business of the MoQ level; I am not a fan. I have > said many times they are a misleading distraction. [Platt] If by "valence" you mean the dictionary definition: "the degree of attractiveness an individual, activity, or thing possesses as a behavioral goal," then I would suggest that the levels reflect the "valence" of the evolution of Quality. Maybe a bit of a stretch, but Pirsig's moral hierarchy encompasses the notions of "degree" and "goal." Regards, Platt Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
