On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 10:59 AM, Arlo Bensinger <[email protected]> wrote:
[John] > ... whereas my dog simply IS and has no problems with his feelings. > > [Arlo] > Basically you are saying that human feelings and dog feelings are the same, > except that humans get all caught up with that junk in their heads, you know > metaphor and intellect and the like? > [John] It is probably impossible to prove Arlo, one way or the other. But the intuitive feeling I get when I observe the dog's reactions and demeanor is that yes, the basic emotion he expresses is equivalent to mine. I object to the human assigning lesser value to the dog's emotional state because it lacks intellect. [Arlo] > > I disagree. John] Yes, I noticed. Arlo] > Apart from the anthropomorphizing, your dog's feelings are not as deep and > nuanced and rich as those experienced by humans. John] You keep saying that and I keep asking "How do you know?" Arlo] > Or rather, the set of responses to experience your dog is limited to is > quite less than the range of responses possible to humans (per their social > and intellectual.. and aesthetic beingness). John] Now this I will definitely concede. Arlo] > This doesn't translate to "same feeling, different responses", but the > feeling is richer and more complex. In the same way that social animals, > such as dogs, possess a richer and more complex set of "feelings" than less > social (or asocial) animals. I'd wager it also has to do with the complexity > of the brain in certain animals that affords greater experiences (richer, > more nuanced, more complex) of "feeling" than even social animals with less > complex "brains". This is why, I'd argue, we see a greater depth of feeling > in dogs and dolphins than in worms or bees. John] Well I appreciate the hedging "wager" as opposed to the arrogance of humanistic pronouncement. I would just like to offer you this: For simple and commonly held emotions like fear of death, complexity adds nothing to the basic emotional state. Even a worm wants to live and will try and dig itself into the dirt if exposed. This will to live is total and can't be improved with complex intellection. What can be improved is the response to the emotion - as a man, I've got a lot more options than digging myself a deeper hole. But the basic emotion is the same. > > [John] > To a dog, this social reality is pretty much everything... > > [Arlo] > I disagree. I think that for dogs biological reality is pretty much > everything. On top of that, I argue against Pirsig, that dogs do indeed have > a "social reality", but one that is not nearly as comprehensive or > ubiquitous as "man's". > John] Its just that a dog's very biological survival depends more on it's place in the group than just about any animal. They are constantly checking themselves in the social mirror and testing their place in the pack. It's the main point of a dog's life, whereas man can abstract himself apart from the group, choose which group to join, decide to become a "lone wolf" or a myriad of other alternatives, a dog's primary beingness is as part of a pack. Specialization in nothing but social reality makes dogs better at being social, I'd say, even than man. Arlo] > > I kind of agree and kind of disagree with your sentiment here, but that's > probably because I agree with a conclusion but not the premises. We are "too > distracted" these days to appreciate "frivolities", love, art, riding > motorcycles, constructing rotisseries... or rather to appreciate "Quality". > But we fill this with a boatload of biological and low-social experiences of > "love"... often love of "things". One of the problems is that "love" itself > is an almost meaningless concept that applies to everything. I love burgers. > I love watching Seinfeld. I love it when a team from Pittsburgh wins a > championship game. Maybe the Greeks were right, we do need a wider choice of > terms to apply to our experiences. Think about snow. It makes sense to me > that the Inuit would have multiple words for "snow", since they have a more > varied, and more necessary, need to distinguish among variances of snow than > we-of-the-temperate-zones do. But why do we have but one word for "love"? > You think we'd have a much better lexicon of words to describe a very > nuanced set of "feelings". John] Love, exactly as with Quality, is a simple enough word but carries a whole lot of baggage. ------------ Self is simply Choice, so choose good ------------ 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/
