RE: MD Emotions revisited.
But language/imagination isn't Quality's Intellect, we may safely assume that cave-dwellers spoke as complex (grammatically) a language as ourselves,... I don't think thats a safe assumption really, what are you basing that assumption on? One experiment i have read about that is interesting on the subject of emotions involved cats that had their brains exposed and certain parts were probed until they found a part that when prodded gave the cat a pleasureable response. When, however the same part was prodded with more pressure the cat did not have a pleasurable response but experienced fear and anxiety (I think it got violent). i'll dig a bit to try and get the name of this research and post it on. I think the problem with emotions is in the trying to tie them down at one level of existence in the MOQ hierarchy only. an emotional state can arise from an intellectual thought process, a sexual activity and sometimes seemingly from nowhere ( I don't like to use the term unconscious). An animal with no knowledge of life and death is immortal. So if i had no knowledge of life or death would i be immortal? imagine i was abandoned as a child on a desert island with a lifetimes supply of rations etc but had no schooling whatsoever, couldn't talk and had not encountered death)? when we feel something do we mean I in the sense of my body or I as in the I in I will? Allready that might imply there is a division opening up as we feel our buns get hot when we sit on a hot stove but the manner of expression in the brain of that sensation is different from that felt by the hot bun. Is there a different meaning connoted to myself, i think to explore these terms (as they are fundamental aspects of appreciating and realising Quality) would be valuable. But the Q evolution is open-ended, a 5th level will modify Intellect. This makes ME shiver and (at times) wish that Pirsig never had opened this Pandora's Box. I agree it is scary, i have a tentative approach to discussing this but cannot find the threads to previous 5th level posts. my tentative approach doesn't try to set out what the 5th level is but rather tries to determine its existence by its effects on the lower levels, and use this approach to 2hunt it and try to get at its meaning. I think meaning is all that we would get as anything else would be further abstracrtion on an intellectual level. _ This message has been checked for all known viruses by Star Internet delivered through the MessageLabs Virus Control Centre. MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at: http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
Re: MD Emotions revisited.
Greetings, This is by way of an aside on the Emotions question, as I must confess to not having had a proper chance to digest everything that has been said so far in this thread, but I feel the following might be of interest (it comes from an essay I wrote a couple of years back): Antonio Damasio, Descartes' Error - Damasio is an American neuro-scientist. Damasio's work began with research into the predicament of patients suffering from anasognosia, which is an inability to experience emotion, although the disorder leaves rationality and linguistic abilities intact. One case is particularly revealing for our purposes. Damasio was discussing with the patient the possibility of a meeting at a later date, and gave the patient the option of choosing between two dates. The patient then began analysing which of the two dates would be preferable and considered the pros and cons of each in considerable detail. In fact, the consideration only stopped - after half an hour of thought - when Damasio himself stated a preference for one of the dates. Through the results from these case studies, and from other experiments, Damasio has formulated what he calls the 'Somatic Marker Hypothesis', which has direct relevance for our discussion of mind-body relations. The argument is that the body, particularly the emotions, play a central part in our reasoning capacity, most importantly when it comes to making decisions. An analogy may make things clearer: in playing chess there are an infinite number of possible moves. A normal player will automatically exclude certain moves from consideration, for example those which lead directly to the loss of a queen, thus winnowing down the number of options that have to be considered. The somatic marker hypothesis is that the emotions play this role within normal human reasoning. When the brain is considering certain courses of action it 'presents' the outcome to the body, and makes decisions based on how the body reacts. There are a number of elements which are central to the hypothesis: a) firstly, it is a serious error to consider the brain separately from the body within which it is placed. In Damasio's terms, 'Nature appears to have built the apparatus of rationality not just on top of the apparatus of biological regulation, but also from it and with it'. Furthermore, the reasoning capacity is not localised to a particular area of the brain but is distributed within it. The way in which the brain and wider body interact is not just neuronal but also chemical, through the operation of the endocrine glands and other hormonal outputs, in a situation of reciprocal feedback; b) secondly, the brain has evolved in such a way that it is able to establish an internal representation of the state of the wider body, both in terms of the internal organs and also in terms of how the body interacts with the wider environment. Damasio considers that this would 'ensure body survival as effectively as possible... representing the outside world in terms of the modifications it causes the body proper'; c) thirdly, the brain is able to hypothesise and consider imaginary scenarios, and represent these to itself 'as if' they were really happening; and d) finally, the body reacts to these scenarios in certain ways and these affect the cognitive evaluation of the scenarios. Damasio sees this as providing a possible basis for a neurological understanding of consciousness. To summarise his argument, he sees the constantly refreshed picture of the internal body state as the original source for a sense of self: 'our experiences have a consistent perspective' rooted in 'a relatively stable, endlessly repeated biological state'. Damasio writes, 'I see self and the subjectivity it begets as necessary for consciousness in general'. This is confirmed by his studies of anasognosiacs, who, uniquely amongst mental patients, are unable to reflect upon their illness - indeed, unless told, many patients are unaware that there is something wrong at all. No anasognosiac is capable of saying 'Something has happened to me' - their capacity for self representation has been removed. According to this model, therefore, the sense of the self arises from the presentation to the brain of the ongoing body state, constructed from both the state of internal organs and also the wider environment (note that this means that the sense of self-identity is not linguistic in origin). The self is constructed by the consideration of two inputs within the brain: this body state, and also an understanding of key events in the past of the biological actor (ie memory and character); and the sense of subjectivity arises when these inputs are processed in a third area of the brain. Damasio's view could be summarised as an advocacy of 'Body-minded brains' and the implications for our philosophical analysis are clear. At one point he considers the cliché of the brain in a vat and writes: 'I believe that this brain would not have a normal
Re: MD Emotions revisited.
Hello Sam and all, I enjoyed the extract from your essay. From the point of view of the MOQ, any decision is pure quality. A decision is the outcome of DQ interrupting Static patterns, so analysing the where and whys before/after the event is going to lead to confusion? The mind/body split is a non-starter as far as i can see? The split is arbitrary and illusory. All the best, Squonk. In a message dated 7/6/01 11:53:58 AM GMT Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Subj: Re: MD Emotions revisited. Date: 7/6/01 11:53:58 AM GMT Daylight Time From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Elizaphanian) Sender:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Greetings, This is by way of an aside on the Emotions question, as I must confess to not having had a proper chance to digest everything that has been said so far in this thread, but I feel the following might be of interest (it comes from an essay I wrote a couple of years back): Antonio Damasio, Descartes' Error - Damasio is an American neuro-scientist. Damasio's work began with research into the predicament of patients suffering from anasognosia, which is an inability to experience emotion, although the disorder leaves rationality and linguistic abilities intact. One case is particularly revealing for our purposes. Damasio was discussing with the patient the possibility of a meeting at a later date, and gave the patient the option of choosing between two dates. The patient then began analysing which of the two dates would be preferable and considered the pros and cons of each in considerable detail. In fact, the consideration only stopped - after half an hour of thought - when Damasio himself stated a preference for one of the dates. Through the results from these case studies, and from other experiments, Damasio has formulated what he calls the 'Somatic Marker Hypothesis', which has direct relevance for our discussion of mind-body relations. The argument is that the body, particularly the emotions, play a central part in our reasoning capacity, most importantly when it comes to making decisions. An analogy may make things clearer: in playing chess there are an infinite number of possible moves. A normal player will automatically exclude certain moves from consideration, for example those which lead directly to the loss of a queen, thus winnowing down the number of options that have to be considered. The somatic marker hypothesis is that the emotions play this role within normal human reasoning. When the brain is considering certain courses of action it 'presents' the outcome to the body, and makes decisions based on how the body reacts. There are a number of elements which are central to the hypothesis: a) firstly, it is a serious error to consider the brain separately from the body within which it is placed. In Damasio's terms, 'Nature appears to have built the apparatus of rationality not just on top of the apparatus of biological regulation, but also from it and with it'. Furthermore, the reasoning capacity is not localised to a particular area of the brain but is distributed within it. The way in which the brain and wider body interact is not just neuronal but also chemical, through the operation of the endocrine glands and other hormonal outputs, in a situation of reciprocal feedback; b) secondly, the brain has evolved in such a way that it is able to establish an internal representation of the state of the wider body, both in terms of the internal organs and also in terms of how the body interacts with the wider environment. Damasio considers that this would 'ensure body survival as effectively as possible... representing the outside world in terms of the modifications it causes the body proper'; c) thirdly, the brain is able to hypothesise and consider imaginary scenarios, and represent these to itself 'as if' they were really happening; and d) finally, the body reacts to these scenarios in certain ways and these affect the cognitive evaluation of the scenarios. Damasio sees this as providing a possible basis for a neurological understanding of consciousness. To summarise his argument, he sees the constantly refreshed picture of the internal body state as the original source for a sense of self: 'our experiences have a consistent perspective' rooted in 'a relatively stable, endlessly repeated biological state'. Damasio writes, 'I see self and the subjectivity it begets as necessary for consciousness in general'. This is confirmed by his studies of anasognosiacs, who, uniquely amongst mental patients, are unable to reflect upon their illness - indeed, unless told, many patients are unaware that there is something wrong at all. No anasognosiac is capable of saying 'Something has happened to me' - their capacity for self representation has been removed. According to this model, therefore, the sense of the self arises from the presentation
