Hi Krimel --
Bo, Ham, ml and dmb, This is a subject I have attempted to address several times in the past and I have really had to exercise restraint in jumping in here. ...
I'm not sure why you invited me into this discussion, as I don't have the reductionist view of consciousness that you all seem to infer from Pirsig's writings. The neurophysical speculations you've made as an argument for localizing the "seat of emotions" are beyond the scope of traditional philosophy, and I think your conclusions severely limit the concept of value, even as Pirsig intended it. I also take exception to what I assume is your interpretation of Ham's "proprietary sensibility":
Some here claim that human nature is fundamentally about individuals seeking personal gratification. But the presence [of] social emotions, at least to me, suggests that our dependence on others is much more fundamental than pure selfishness.
This totally misrepresents the essentialist perspective of man as a being-aware. All sensibility (i.e., sentience) relates to the organism with which it is identified. In cerebrates, self-awareness is the fundamental locus of sensibility. In human consciousness, fundamental awareness is value-sensibility, from which the brain and sympathetic nervous system differentiate value as the experience of reality, along with emotional feelings, intellectual concepts, and moral judgments. Thus, for every individual, being-in-the-world is a "personal" experience expressing his/her values. I don't know how an emotion can be "social", but to characterize this structuring of value into finite beingness as "personal gratification" and "pure selfishness" demeans man's role in existence, whether you subscribe to my philosophy of Essence or Pirsig's MoQ.
But since you're intent on treating emotions as "biological patterns", I'd like to comment on your response to a statement made by Chris.
[Chris]:
When I was talking about greed, I meant that greed was one thing at the biological level (and there it can't really be called greed meaningfully) that social structures can then use, and build upon in order to maintain the social values that has been set up. Greed then becomes a powerful social tool, and the balance between social and biological can work quite well, because only with the intellectual level do things like human worth (människovärde) arise as an idea of Quality.
[Krimel]:
There is a lot of confusion to unpack in this paragraph. While emotions can be mediated by social patterns they are still purely biological. One can not will to "feel" happy or sad or fearful. Nor can we wish these emotions away when they occur. We can attempt to create conditions that draw out or suppress emotions but they remain inherently biological. It is not clear to me what you are throwing sensation and reason in here for.
When you say "mediated by social patterns", do you mean "experienced by the individual"? If so, we're talking about "feeling" value emotionally. I don't know that emotions can't be controlled by the will, as you claim, since Buddhists put much effort into eliminating desire which they believe to be the source of man's emotional angst. But regarding your question to Chris about including reason with the emotions, this reference may be of interest:
"The amygdala is a central processing station in the brain for emotions, but Yale researchers report that the amygdala also plays a role in working memory, a higher cognitive function critical for reasoning and problem solving. In two different functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies with a total of 74 participants, individual differences in amygdala activity predicted behavioral performance on a working memory task, according to the report in the Journal of Neuroscience.
"'People with stronger amygdala responses during the working memory task also had faster response times,' said Jeremy Gray, senior author of the study and assistant professor of psychology. 'This effect held even when people were responding to neutral words, which can hardly be called emotional'." --[Medical News Today: Seat Of Emotions In Brain May Also Contribute To Higher Cognition]
If I may elevate this discussion from the brain cell level of emotion to human awareness, I'll conclude with a statement by Robert Lanza, vice president of research and scientific development at Advanced Cell Technology and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Dr,. Lanza has written extensively on the relationship of biology to philosophy, and this quote from his essay "A New Theory of the Universe" may offer additional food for thought from an essentialist perspective:
"Without perception, there is in effect no reality. Nothing has existence unless you, I, or some living creature perceives it, and how it is perceived further influences that reality. Even time itself is not exempted from biocentrism."
Essentially yours, Ham 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/
