Greetings, David --
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.
I appreciate your reply, David, although your Hobbesian worldview is
diametrically opposed to mine.
Behaviorists, like Watson and Skinner, and philosophically objectivists. You
can train a dog or a monkey or a child to behave in a certain way, and
"prove" the effectiveness of this training by measuring their responses.
But behavior is not emotion or feeling; it's the objective manifestation of
fear that the action will be unaceptable. Behaviorism is a method for
controlling subjects, and has this in common with communism and fascism.
When you "socialize" a child's behavior, you preempt his values with
punishments and rewards, thereby taking away his innate freedom and
autonomy. This is victimization by authority, and is precisely the kind of
"mind control" that Essentialism opposes.
I stand by my statement that feelings and emotions are valuistic responses,
not biological or intellectual
"reflexes". Pirsig's "hot stove" (pain) analogy demonstrates synaptic
response (neuro-physicists refer to it as "proproception") and is an
ill-chosen example of value. As beings-aware, we are dependent on our
physical (organic/inorganic) apparatus for such automatic reflexes, and
adrenaline and sympathetic neural connections are of course involved in the
emotional process. But they are not the "cause" or "source" of emotion, any
more than tears are the cause of weeping or laughter the cause of joy.
Having been trained in science, I understand the reasons for your
conclusions, but they dismiss the psycho-emotional nature of human being,
replacing it with a cause-and-effect hypotheses that reduces subjectivity to
a biological or social pattern of evolution. Valuation is neither
biological nor sociological, nor is value-sensibility programmed into human
beings. I have long since abandoned this mechanistic view of man for an
ontology that offers meaning and an appreciation of man's role in existence.
This I see as the proper domain of philosophy rather than science.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Regards,
Ham
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