Arlo to John:
Even more interesting was that I was agreeing with you. I was saying
that "sadness" would seem to me to be more social than physiological in
origin, which is NOT to say that emotions do not effect physiology.
Stress amps up your blood pressure, for example, and I think some forms
of depression can actually change your brain chemistry.
Andre:
'[James] challenges the usual way of thinking about standard emotions
-surprise, curiosity, rapture, fear, anger, lust, greed etc- which is that 'the
mental perception of some facts excites the mental affection called the
emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily
expression'. James says its the other way around: 'My thesis on the contrary is
that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact,
and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion...Some
modern psychologists argue for at least a cognitive component in the process,
but as late a 1984 James' theory (which was independently brought forward by
the Danish psychologist Carl Lange the following year and which has since been
known as the James-Lange theory) was regarded as the starting point for most
contemporary theories of emotion' ( Richardson, William James, In the Maelstrom
of American Modernism', (p 242-3)
In your example Arlo, James would argue that BECAUSE 'your blood pressure amps
up' you feel stress and not the other way around. The physiological change IS
the emotion. You do not have the perception, then the emotion and then the
physiological reaction/expression. Which is good too.
In the case of meeting the bear, the (interference of)a 'cognitive component'
may make the difference between life or death.
I am sure that this is the reason why Pirsig argues that (standard) emotions
are a biological response to quality.
Imho of course.
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