scuze me for buttin' in boys and girl, but Krimel, I'm here reading along and following you pretty ok, altho not too involved in the whole "dave said this, dave said that" aspect of your dialogue, looking for truth here rather than right, and something you said really caught my eye and I have to pick it apart a bit. Try a little bit of that reductionist thing.
You: Values are not things or substances that reside in the brain or anywhere else. They are processes that arise from interactions of mind/body and the environment. Me: So if I sum it up simply as possible: Value=process arising from enviro-being interaction You: If the environment changes our Values change; Me: Well not necessarily... Maybe not even at all. Maybe quite the opposite in fact. Look at your equation again. Enviro is on one side of the equal sign and Value is way over on the other. The environment changing is an element of a process. Part of that process includes the being (you for instance) and that being's reaction to the environmental change. Value remains the same because of the interactivity of being and environment. Value is fixed. You: I have already addressed much of this but I would like to point out that our first impression of anything carries with it some kind of emotional assessment. This is good or this is bad. Me: Or this is neutral. If you are going to use a term as broad as "first impression of anything" then you have to admit possibility of the third option. My first impression of a dirt clod in my path is not going to excite much enthusiasm or antipathy. It's just there. And an emotional assessment that is neutral? What's a word for that? Unemotional. Non emotional. I don't have any emotion about that. Perhaps it is an on/off switch. Our impressions of things either carry emotional baggage or they don't. If they do have an emotional assessment, then that assessment can be either positive, negative, or as often happens, a confused conflagration. Like when my beloved enters a room with a frown on her face and I don't know yet if she's angry at the dog, or me. you: But those Values are analyzed and questioned by the higher brain functions. I see a woman who looks like my beloved and my heart leaps. She turns out to be someone else and I chose to turn away from her. Immediately felt Values are sometimes right and good and other times dead wrong. Me: The value - beloved - means something that stays the same regardless of the permutations of being-environment which allow for the being to be mistaken and the environment to be deceptive. Your term "Immediately Felt Values" is really a different way of saying, "emotional assessment" is it not? You: It is our rational, uniquely human powers that helps overcome the limits of being purely and completely guided by Value. Me: Splutter. Gasp. Cough. Hack. It was this last sentence which completely floored me and caused me to snip your snippet and ask to the heavens, WTF??? I am going to have to pause now, and read some more and see if there is anything in the world which you might write to redeem this ridiculous verbiage. But that's just an emotional reaction. I haven't even used my unique rational human powers on that statement yet. I just saw it and barfed all these words all over my keyboard. Let me try chew it again. Dogs return to their vomit. "It is our rational, uniquely human powers that helps overcome the limits of being purely and completely guided by Value." Ok, I've chewed on it a minute. I ain't gonna swallow tho. I'll address some of its problems and hand it back to you and see if you wanna reformulate. As it is, well it's just ridiculous. I have a feeling that its not going to get any better. Sigh. First, let's hand off the term Value to "immediate emotional assessment". That's what you really meant, right Krimel? That makes quasi-sense anyway. You'd be with Plato on that one, anyway, with the rational horse keeping the emotional one in check. But that sorta contradicts your assertions that rationality has an emotional basis in the brain. So perhaps to avoid losing a point you're slipping a synonym through on dave? Even if your uniquely human powers held the key to all truth and enlightenment, I don't see how that would change being guided by Value. It would just place the source of Value squarely within your human uniquiosity. Yay you. But it would still and always be Value guiding choice. That is no kind of limit; it is liberation. But enough. You mispoke, no doubt. I'll wait and see. 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/
