David (Part 2 of Ham's response to the Pirsig quote) --
Pirsig describes the pressure, sound, warmth, and hunger which stimulate the
fetus as a "generalized something", and he borrows James's term "dim
apprehension" to introduce these stimuli as Dynamic Quality. Totally
missing from this description is the word "feeling", and we are left with
the concept of a human organism whose "attention [is] compelled" by
stimulation of a vague otherness.
Despite the infant's inability to identify the source of its discomfort or
pleasure, there is nothing "dim" or vague about its feelings. By contrast,
you'll see that Fromm's analysis of intra-uterine sensibility is
"feeling-based" throughout, which points up the difference between organic
reaction in the objective sense and proprietary sensibility in the
subjective sense.
My own conjecture is that self-awareness begins as a "disturbance of
equanimity" sensed by the unborn fetus as a "negative" in its nominally
placid maternal environment. At some point in the development of its
central nervous system, the organism is capable of associating a particular
feeling as a change from its holistic tranquility. It may be a pain,
produced by internal or external pressure or the mother's movement, but the
precise source of the feeling is inconsequential. What is significant is
that this feeling is perceived by the organism as a homeostatic interruption
of its former "wholeness". A particular sensation is thus sensibly
distinguished from its holistic continuum. This momentary discomfort, which
has no conscious history for the fetus to draw upon but is sensed as a
"reduction of the whole", marks the beginning of self-awareness. In the
case of pain, the feeling is "awareness-wanting-comfort".
After experiencing a series of distresses that come and go, the fetus begins
to anticipate alleviation of its discomfort in the form of a pacifying
"otherness". The "pacifier" may be the soothing voice of the mother, a
thumb stuck in its mouth to suck on, or the passing of gas to relieve
gastro-intestinal pressure. Such trauma followed by relief ("patterns", if
you will) are integrated into the continuum of conscious awareness to become
the unique reality of a human being.
Split off from its solipsistic environment, where reality and self were one,
the newborn infant will now begin to seek solace in its alienated condition.
Henceforth, the pacifiers will have to come from the external reality of
beingness. Born as a creature in want of its wholeness, the infant enters
the world as a value-sensible agent in search of those particular aspects of
being that will supplant its incompleteness. It quickly learns that it can
exercise some control over its "deprived" condition, starting with a
dependency on the mother who represents its initial "value object". As the
romanticist would say, "she means the world to him", for in the child's
perspective she literally is the world. And, from this point on, the
individual is aware of itself as a being wanting an other. In effect, the
child becomes a self-conscious individual by accepting and categorizing the
"being of otherness" as a token offering for its lack of holistic
equanimity.
Does this introspective "valuistic" analysis spark any comments or
criticisms?
Essentially yours,
Ham
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