[John] 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.
[Krimel] I do apologize for the frequent references to who said what, when but this conversation has been going on for a pretty long time and if you follow the thread at all, you can see the difficulty. Talking with Dave is like trying to pick up watermelon seeds. [John] 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 [Krimel] Kinda of, but Value in more like a feeling; a kind of 'sense' of what's good and what's bad. I think it is a bit more like The Way of Virtue. Or what Kahneman and Tversky identify in prospect theory as an innate ability to estimate probabilities. [John] 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. [Krimel] First, it is not my equation if is yours. I would not say that Value equals environment plus being. I would say that Value is a function of the interaction of the individual and the environment. But this is where lesser minds would accuse me of SOM as though I am saying that the individual is somehow separate from the environment. I do not think this is the case. The individual is integral to the environment. They are just aspects of the system in question. We arise from processes of the environment both individually and collectively as a species. Many Values are our birth right; aversion to pain and the smell of shit; attraction to the breast and the warmth of our mothers. These are our ancestors memories of what it takes to survive. They are encoded in our genetic structure. They are, as you say, relatively fixed and as Wilson would say, in many ways they set the boundaries and conditions of our social lives and the structures of our communities. But there are also individual values that grow within us organically as a result of our individual trajectories through life. I value my beloved above all others. I value the freedom of a small laptop unfettered by wires, free to access the intellectual level anywhere there is cell phone service. [John] 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. [Krimel] No problem here really. Good and Bad are opposites. Each implies its opposite and the continuum that connects them. The word I, like any good Taoist, would use is harmony. [John] Perhaps it is an on/off switch. [Krimel] Not so much a switch as a rheostat. [John] 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. [Krimel] Right but the point is that your sense of Value from moment to moment is not the result of some intellectual appraisal. It arises as an emotional reaction, a gut feeling. If asked you might be able to specify what "causes" that feeling but your answer is always a secondary and probably inaccurate analysis. [John] 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? [Krimel] I do not always love my beloved. As you point out above, sometimes I fear her, sometimes I loathe her. The environment is always and continuously changing. One of our greatest superpowers is the ability to make estimates of what's coming next. Kahneman and Tversky identify this as an innate ability like our power to estimate distance and time. I suspect what they are getting at is one of Kant's a prioris, an innate sense of probability which I think Kant called causality. It comes to us as a sense of the 'odds' but can be refined with analytical intellectual tools. [John] You: It is our rational, uniquely human powers that helps overcome the limits of being purely and completely guided by Value. Me: 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? [Krimel] I would almost never claim to be with Plato. Even in this case I think the charioteer is deluded in thinking he is holding the reins. I see him as more of a backseat driver who can lay hands on the emergency break. But I think like Robert Solomon that the emotions are rational just not necessarily or primarily verbalizable. Here is an example from "How We Decide": A team of smoke jumpers dropped in to fight a fire. The wind change and started to blow the inferno at them. They are started to run away but one of them stopped in his tracks, turned to face the blaze and set fire to the ground around him. Many in his team died but his seemingly stupid act saved his life. This is now standard procedure but this was Platt's first time and this was the first guy. Asked why he set a fire instead of running the guy didn't really have a rational answer it was just a feeling. But was it irrational? I think not. Rather I think we often confuse rational thinking with verbal thinking. But the fact is it is a whole. To identify parts of processes or to conceptualize processes is to create discrete elements out of a continuous flow. [John] 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. [Krimel] Well yeah, this is what Hume meant in calling reason a slave to the passions. But reason is not the only form of "rationality." Emotions are motivations and they are often felt reactions to our estimates of probability. As I said it is often hard to verbalize reasons and the reasons we verbalize often don't add up. Part of the problem is that often our gut feelings are wrong and following them leads us into the ditch. Reason serves the evolutionary function of refining our estimates of probability and improving our odds of success. If for example our Values guide us into drug addiction it might take an act of reason that steer us in a new direction. 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