Greetings Bo,
David:
> I once wrote a whole chapter (The Epicurean Concept of Mind, Meaning
> and Knowledge) arguing that feelings (using David Hume's definition
> that all perceptions are feelings) are the basic biological level of
> symbol:
Bo:
Feelings (can we use "emotion"?) Why biological? and why symbols? I once
made a list of "expressions" (I called) that correspond to each the Quality
levels
Interaction - Sensation - Emotion - Reason
(inorganic) (biology) (social) (intellect)
that places emotion=social, but I have noticed that so many want emotions to
be biological and wonder why? It's just obvious that animals don't "emote",
it's jus us who extrapolate our experience on to the animal world. .
David:
First, emotions and feelings are different for me. A feeling is a simple
perception: a sound, a sight, a smell etc.(as for Hume) An emotion is a
complex combination of feelings that must include at least one DQ
experience. Anger would be an example. It commonly includes feelings of
sudden energy, rapid breathing and heart rate and always includes (in
Pirsig's terms) a low level of value. I would call it pain or negative
value.
Secondly, I misspoke. I should have said biological basis for all levels of
symbol because I believe that the only way we can experience DQ is through
feelings and therefore all other spovs (verbalization, intellectualization)
are symbols that stand in for feelings.
Thirdly, like others, I disagree with your emotion=social and place emotion
squarely in the biological spov. Here's why: emotions are the basic
motivation of all creatures that can learn. I think that, that's pretty well
established science. Have you never experienced an angry dog? As a
scientific experiment just try and take a bone or piece of meat away from a
hungry dog. Notice how the dog does emote and I predict that s/he will be
pretty pissed.
David:
> the only level used by babies and other nonverbal animals to
> understand meaning.
Bo:
Human babies smile and cry (tears) before they have learned to speak and
these are the most powerful social-emotional signals there are, and no
animals do that.
David:
Wow you pack a lot into a sentence!
Firstly, yes babies convey their emotional state by means of uniquely human
actions: smiles, frowns, crying etc. These actions normally create an
emotional state in parents or other care givers that motivate them to meet
the baby's expressed needs.
Secondly, I don't think that you can say that they are social-emotional
signals since babies perform the same actions whether parents are present or
not. That would indicate they are biologically produced signals that
communicate (become social) if and only if some is there to hear/see them.
And thirdly, I think you need to watch one of those National Geographic
Specials. Just about every animal capable of learning has a caregiver role
towards their young and each species has a unique set of actions that
communicate the young's emotional state to their parents. Mostly that state
is hunger. Birds chirp, lions whimper and pigs grunt but they're all
indicating hunger.
David:
> And that words are the same meaning translated to a social level. I
> argued that although the verbal level overwhelms the feeling level in
> the consciousness (especially in white males) the ability to read and
> write words is the ability to make this translation back and forth.
Bo:
I have trouble with your levels compared to the MOQ. What are the "verbal"
and "feeling" levels?. OK, "feeling" is biology (to you)
and then "verbal" may be social?
> I would now argue you are correct, the word Zebra is a social level
> symbol ....
In the MOQ language emerged as a social pattern and while that level ruled
people did not regard words as "symbols". The animal and the name were one
and the same. In song & dance rituals animals could be forced to obey their
names and - f.ex. be brought to the hunting grounds ..etc.
David:
OK, call me stupid. I'm missing something here; please give me your
reference. I may need to take another brief sabbatical to get up to speed. I
don't want to waste your time.
Bo:
Then enter the intellectual level where language became subjective symbols
just having a rudimentary connection with the object-phenomenon they
symbolized The Zebra could have been called "Arbez" without the animal
"knowing". Language and nature
were now two separate worlds.
David:
> .. but the interesting part for me is that either feelings or words
> can be used on the intellectual level.
Bo:
I'm not sure what you say, but after language entered "man not only gave
name to all the animals", but to all aspects of existence including
emotions, and as the next Q-level grew on top of the social, the names
followed into the intellectual level.
David:
> As anyone who has had a thought that they couldn't verbalize can tell
> you.
Bo:
One surely can have subtle ideas that are difficult to "put in words"
and mixed feelings, but .... what was the point? ;-)
David:
The point is that words and feelings are interchangeable beyond the
biological spov. Words are symbols representing the feelings; and while
feelings are biological, social and intellectual, words are limited to the
social and intellectual.
Bo:
Regarding Pirsig's "symbol manipulation" definition of intellect
> I spotted the same fallacy in his computer metaphor (Lila) of course
> the meaning of the novel being written on the computer exists in all
> levels of the computer (electrical charge, binary, number and letter
> symbol levels). One only needs to learn how to read the specific
> symbol level to be able to read the words which are actually just
> symbols for the biological level feelings -david swift.
This I haven't thought about, but you may be correct, Pirsig used the said
metaphor to show how two realities (levels) can exist without interacting: a
word as a magnetic charges (or whatever the modern memory devices uses) a
different world from the meaning of the word. But - if I understand you
correctly - the written world to an analphabetic is just as inaccessible.
Hmm. I liked that
David:
That gives me a warm fuzzy.
Bo:
However my complaint regarding Pirsig's "symbol manipulation"
definition
Intellectuality occurs when these customs as well as
biological and inorganic patterns are designated with a sign
that stands for them and these signs are manipulated
independently of the patterns they stand for. "Intellect" can
then be defined very loosely as the level of independently
manipulable signs. Grammar, logic and mathematics can
be described as the rules of this sign manipulation.
is that it sounds as if "inorganic, biological and social patterns
designated with signs" means that intellect occurred with language
- that the two are identical - and that makes intellect a "subjective"
level while the three lower are "objective". In a metaphysics that rejects
the SOM!! It grates my MOQ nerve.
Bo
David:
I'm thinking and thinking about this and I'm thinking I don't really
understand you. Are we confusing "what a thing is" with " how we do it"? For
me, intellectuality is any metalevel analysis of DQ. For instance B. F.
Skinner would say that this forum is motivated by partial reinforcement.
That's a metalevel analysis of what draws us to communicate with each other.
How we do it is by language. For me, to say that grammar, logic and
mathematics can be independently manipulated is nonsense. You can say the
number ten has no referent but you're just kidding yourself. Numbers are
modifiers. It's always ten something: ten bears, ten worlds, ten chances.
The number ten by itself is as meaningless as the colour brown without a
referent. It has to be a brown something; brown cannot exist by itself. I
don't feel I'm engaging you on this, please respond and I'll try to take
another swing at it.
Hello Marsha,
If you're reading this, please be patient I'm printing your response off to
study at work tomorrow. By the way you do smell science in my answers, but I
think it's the metaphysics preceding science and I'm not at all sure it's
the MoQ. That's what I'm here to explore.
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/
