Ham, on Fri, 06 Mar 2009 at 17:08:15 -0500 you posted:
>Marsha, Platt, DMB [David Swift mentioned) -- >On Wed, 04 Mar 2009 Marsha said (to David Swift): >> Philosophizing indeed, and with such a distinguished list as Hobbes, >> Hume, Locke and Kant. It's hard to believe there would be exact >> agreement between these philosophers, especially in regards to a word >> like 'feeling' with its many definitions and multiple layers of connotation. >> Maybe you can offer some quotes as evidence to establish their >> agreement of usage and definition. ...'Feeling' like all sq is >> sometimes conventionally useful and has a beauty of its own. >This led David into a query about the existence of 'TiTs' which has little, if any, relevance to Marsha's statement. >However, DMB chimed in with a comment that does: >> I think that's right. Feelings and instincts would probably be a >> static biological response to DQ. Hume was an empiricist and so is >> Pirsig but there is an important distinction between the traditional >> forms of empiricism and the radical empiricism of the MOQ. The former >> is also called sensory empiricism because it holds that the external >> objective world comes to us through the senses, through the sense >> organs, and it does so from within the assumptions of subject-object >> metaphysics. The radical empiricism of William James, which is adopted >> by the MOQ, differs from this by both rejecting the metaphysical >> assumptions and by expanding the notion of what counts as empirical >> evidence. In traditional empiricism we experience reality through the >> senses but in radical empiricism experience is reality. Ham: >Thomas Hobbes was not only an empiricist but a "monarchist" who advocated total submission of the individual to >the authority of the state. Since his writing is formidable, I've quoted this paragraph from SparkNotes to summarize >his mechanistic philosophy: >"Hobbes believed that all phenomena in the universe, without exception, can be explained in terms of the motions and >interactions of material bodies. >He did not believe in the soul, or in the mind as separate from the body, or in any of the other incorporeal and >metaphysical entities in which other writers have believed. Instead, he saw human beings as essentially machines, with >even their thoughts and emotions operating according to physical laws and chains of cause and effect, action and >reaction. As machines, human beings pursue their own self-interest relentlessly, mechanically avoiding pain and >pursuing pleasure. Hobbes saw the commonwealth, or society, as a similar machine, larger than the human body and >artificial but nevertheless operating according to the laws governing motion and collision." >The statement that caught my attention in the MercuryNews.com review of Denis Dutton's "The Art Instinct: Beauty, >Pleasure, and Human Evolution" is this one which quotes the author: >"'A lot of what counts as philosophy is explaining and justifying fundamental human intuitions', including 'intuitions >about the beautiful and the ugly.' The problem has been that philosophy 'doesn't ask where the intuitions come from.'" >I don't particularly like the term "intuitive" in reference to esthetic realization, as it conveys the idea that >"feelings" are intellectually conceived formulations, whereas they are emotional in nature and "intellectual feeling" >is an oxymoron. The feeling of pain, as described in Pirsig's legendary "hot stove" analogy, for example, is anything >but an intellectual experience. >Platt, who has actually read Dutton's book, was a bit lukewarm in his appraisal of it: Platt:>> Interesting if somewhat pedantic. To a Darwinian everything is >> explained by evolution, just as to an MOQian everything is explained >> by Quality. But, I think anyone interested in the arts will find the >> book worthwhile Ham: >The point I'd like to make is that the emotional response we call "feeling" >is not in any way deterministic or "programmed into" sensory perception. >Rather than a reflex action, emotional feeling is the value-sensibility of proprietary (individual) awareness itself. >DMB's suggestion that "feelings and instincts would probably be a static biological response to DQ" does not do justice >to value, while "instinct" is the wrong connotation for value-sensibility which, above all human attributes, is what >makes value appreciation free of biological and social influences. >Again, this epistemology is foreign to MoQists who refuse to accept the integrity of the individual subject. Instead, >they continue to think of "subjects" as interacting patterns, "feelings" being among them. As a consequence, although >the fact that we are all value-sensible agents is self-evident to the rest of mankind, the absurdity of "unrealized >value" is lost on the Pirsigians. Perhaps someone will be bold enough to address this issue which strangely runs >counter to the Quality thesis. DS: I had to reply if only to see your beautiful synopsis of Hobbes' thought from Spark Notes again. Hobbes was the first philosopher that I know of to do a detailed analysis of psychology based on a materialistic metaphysics, and while others have added to his insights I can't see where many of them have been replaced. That is, his limited explanations of the basic nature of perception, meaning and behaviour remain largely unchallenged today. He does talk about intuitions but doesn't mean what we, today, mean by the term. IMO intuitions are simply nonverbal memories. While I agree that the pain response to a hot stove is not an intellectual response I don't see "intellectual feeling" as an oxymoron. Marsha's recent definition of "self" evoked both esthetic and intellectual responses as recorded here by many in the past few days. I have to disagree with your point about the feelings often called emotions. You say that they are not "programmed into" sensory perception, and if what you mean by that is, the value (low, high, negative or positive) is not pre-programmed I would agree, but I think you mean that we do not automatically evaluate perceptions: which would mean not noting their value context along with their places in space and time. This leads you to conclude that such evaluations are not reflexive which also seems partly based on a belief that, contradicting the rock hard scientific evidence of Pavlov and Skinner, reflexes cannot be learned. ??? Then you state the most basic and truest idea I can imagine, "emotional feeling is the value-sensibility of proprietary (individual) awareness itself." ANIMO ERGO SUM. (Please correct the conjugation, if I'm wrong.) IMO all thought starts with emotional evaluation. It is our reason for noticing one pattern from the continuum and linking it with others, and if that isn't a reflexive response, what is it? Surely you're not looking for everything you find? Surely you realize that your mind continuously and compulsively cuts valuable snips from the continuous patterns of reality in time? Your note that "DMB's suggestion that 'feelings and instincts would probably be a static biological response to DQ' does not do justice to value" is, IMO, right on. They must be dynamic biological responses to DQ or we couldn't change our minds about value. While IMO all responses are reflexive, current reflexes supersede previous reflexes in the dynamic process of experiencing reality and recording that experience in memory. That's how we remember that we've changed our minds. Finally, IMO value appreciation cannot be free of biological and social influences. Our minds, the organs of evaluation, are biological, Hobbes is right about that, so evaluation must be a biological process and to say that evaluation is free of social influences ignores the negotiated component of value. -david swift 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/
