[Bo] ...sensation and emotion. These must be kept apart. I have this list of the respective level's "expressions" (I call)
Interaction - Sensation - Emotion - Reason If senses are more hardwired than the rest is not an issue in the MOQ, the impulse to run (or follow other strategies) confronted with a threat, along with sexual reactions, hunger when the body needs nourishment, pain when damaged and a billion other biological patterns are NOT emotions. An animal would become a nervous wreck if it becomes "afraid" in the emotional sense. Once the threat situation is gone they are as calm as before. [Krimel] First to sensation, which actually implies interaction. Sensation involves the transduction of energy in the environment into electro-chemical energy in the nervous system. We have receptors that can make this conversion with light, heat, chemical and kinetic energy. Each of these sensory pathways is different within the nervous system. Oddly the sense of smell is the only one that is conveyed directly from the sensory receptors to the brain. The other sensory pathways are a bit more convoluted and reflect the complexity of processing devoted to them. These multiple pathways are ultimately integrated and assembled into the "perception" of the event. Emotions are added to sensation as part of this processing. They come to us mainly through the limbic system or as it has sometimes been called the "mammalian brain." Emotions typically can be reduced to simply "good" or "bad". And these Qualities of good and bad are highly correlated with survival; food and sex are Good, pain and stinky are Bad. Human emotions are almost instantly converted into muscular contractions especially in the face. We can instantly tell when others are happy or sad or fearful but looking at their faces. Conversely, we can alter our emotional responses simply by changing our facial expressions. If you smile you will become happy. Reason kicks in after the fact. Humans use it to label and describe their internal states to others. But reason can do little to alter the moment to moment flow of emotion. As I said before reason functions to inhibit emotion driven behavior. [Bo] Yes, in the moqish the social level beings shares the biological level with all critters, but the 3rd. level has risen on top of it and emotions are sensation brought to a new refinement. No longer just hormonal rush "out of sight out of mind" but something that can be recalled and shared and makes for the social glue.There are of course primates that live in tribes, care for their offsprings, react to death of other, [Krimel] Exactly, social interaction among mammals can be entirely mediated by emotional expression. Each member of the group can intuit the internal state of others by sensing their emotional responses. No reasons need be given. [Bo] just one example - no animal weep, it's a most powerful social signal as are facial expressions and reading thereof. With language - the ultimate social tool - emotions could be teleported. "God is angry with you" instilled fear in a possible rebel. As said: If this is hardwired or learned is not an issue. Emotions are social values full stop! [Krimel] If you mean what I think you mean then yes. If you define intellect as the doing of what humans do. We have evolved structures in our brains that allow us to store information gained through past experience in the form of memory. We can use remembered past experiences to alter our current perceptions of the moment. It is this feature that ultimately results in 'reason'. The first phase of metaphor or language is the representation of the past in the nervous system as memory. I like to think of this as slurring time. We can stretch the instant by comparing each new experience with those we remember. We can use this extended access of the past to predict the likely flow of events in the future. This has great selective advance in our niche of the woods. [Bo] The software/hardware model is intellect's S/O and we are definitely not transferring "awareness" (if you mean the intellectual consciousness variety) We may imitate biological processes, f.ex. memory storage, its retrieval and manipulation - computation - and programs may theoretically be written that imitates all biological functions, one for every chemical signal substance, it may result in an artificial body and corresponding intelligence, but here the buck stops, the social patterns are too complex to be imitated .... for now at least [Krimel] When you say "'awareness' (if you mean the intellectual consciousness variety)" you hit a real problem. I have a hard time proving that kind of thing exists in you much less in a machine. I think the difficulties in doing so are about the same. This kind of awareness I know that I have. It is subjective. I infer that you have it. I believe that you have it. But whether you do or a machine does not I will never know in the same way I know that I do. Still my garage door responds when I talk to it through my garage door opener. Motion detectors are aware of movement in a room. Airports have machine that can sniff out bombs in your clothing. These are not that sophisticated in biological terms but consider that biological forms have been under development for about 4 billion years. Machine intelligence has been evolving for only about 75 years. Machines are doing pretty well given their short history. [Bo] Yepp, SOM will never come to grips with the matter/mind relationship. How "raw sense impressions" that - according to the empiricist don't contain qualities (colors are just different light frequencies, sound just air pressure waves, smell just molecular configurations .etc.) can become the said qualities in "our mind". This enigma is what the Q- level system solves - dissolves perhaps. [Krimel] You lost me here. Our senses transduce energy from the environment into nervous impulses. We process that information and integrate it into what we know. We sense frequencies of light but we see "red". We sense kinetic vibration of the air but we hear The Ramones. We detect ammonia and methane but smell excrement. We do not just detect energy from the environment we process it, we analyze it, we integrate it. This is the difference between sensation and perception. The Q level value comes primarily from that ancient emotional layer of processing. [Bo] Likewise with the consciousness paradox, that of a humunculus inside our heads that surveys reality out there. These thing are all intellect's S/Os which are very useful, but when examined in a deeper philosophical way leads to confusion and paradoxes. [Krimel] Oddly there is a sort of homunculus that has been mapped onto the motor cortex. The various body parts are represented oddly though. The face has lots of space and the legs just a little for example. I think some of the paradox you allude to comes from Descartes' notion that the pineal gland at the center of the brain transduced the perception of material substance into mental substance. > [Krimel] > My problem here is with assigning the qualities of personhood too yours > abstractions. The levels desire nothing. They exploit nothing. They are > explanatory tools not autonomous agents. [Bo] Assigning qualities is the very issue in the MOQ, personhood is another, but because we use language with its analogies and allusions and such it's difficult to avoid it. Moreover the abstract/concrete dichotomy is an intellectual S/O and does not apply. A social pattern like a country for instance is no "abstract" entity but - as said - a social pattern where emotions is the basic attraction. And phrases like love of country and that the country appreciates, likes ...etc. are as real as real comes. A country may be overlaid by intellectual value that scoffs at these terms as humbug and abstractions, but if the bell tolls ... the social level is the safe latch below intellect. As is biology below society. [Krimel] I see what you are saying, this is a kind of short hand method of speech. The "country appreciates" is short hand for the "people of the country appreciate." Still I think it si a bad habit and came lead to confusion. 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/
