Krimel said:
... I think any belief or position someone holds is derived from the
interaction of reason and emotion. Damasio's research is primarily in the area
of emotion. He claims what without the ability to experience emotion people
find it very difficult if not impossible to make decisions. Our commitment to
ideas is likewise a function of right brain emotional commitment reinforced,
balanced and guided by rational left brain functions. Emotion is almost always
what guides us in the final analysis. That’s why commercials are about sex and
status and not about the chemistry of your tooth paste. But in a philosophical
discussion, it is one thing to express emotion for rhetorical purposes but what
really should be important is reason. In reading your stuff it is often hard
for me tell whether you know the difference...
dmb says:
I think the work of guys like Dimasio lends support to Pirsig's aim of
expanding rationality at its roots. It's not just that reason and emotion
interact or that emotion plays an important role in the overall cognitive
process, although that's certainly true too. The interesting thing is that
rationality is paralyzed without these underlying unconscious processes. There
is a case wherein a dude had brain damage in such a way that all he had was
rationality but no ability to feel the situation. As a result, he couldn't make
the simplest decisions. He'd stand in the cereal isle in the grocery store for
hours trying to rationally evaluate the relative merits of each kind and there
was just no end to this process.
I mean, this complaint about only using emotion for rhetorical purposes misses
Pirsig's central idea. The idea is to make rationality subordinate to Quality.
Like Plato, you're asserting the opposite. See?
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