Stephen Devlin (>) remarked to my (>>)
> > 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?
This assumption I base on the fact that however primitive or remote
the culture or tribe, no "rudimentary" language has ever been
detected. The vocabulary may be richer or poorer dependent upon
the environment - and not at all based on the Indo-European
substantive-predicate-object frame - but nevetheless ...
> 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.
Interesting. I''ve heard about an experiment with laboratory rats that
had electric probes connected to (the brain) pleasure centre and a
lever they could pull to give themselves a "shot". They operated the
lever until they starved to death. If the current (this was an electric
probe) was increased it may well have changed the pleasure into
pain, but this is sensation not emotion.
> I think the
> problem with emotions is in the trying to tie them down at one level
> of existence in the MOQ hierarchy only.
But are there any problems except for the ambiguity of the term
"feeling" which indicate both sensation and emotion? There was
once a French participant who said that my idea that emotions
were sensations revalued was justified in French where - if my
memory serves me - the former is "SENSIR" and the latter
"RESENSIR".
> 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).
Yes, and I said so. Imagination can (retro-)activate the body to
produce biological sensations which give rise to emotions in a
closed loop. But I see by one single glance what our difference is.
You believe that any "thought process" is Intellect and this wrong
IMO. What is subjective or mind (in the SOM) is not (solely) MoQ's
static intellectual level. Pirsig says that the social and intellectual
levels conform to "mind", but - alas - people continue to recirculate
the SOM.
> 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?
I know it sounds outrageous, but the MoQ IS outrageous .
> 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)?
An interesting "thought experiment". There are a few known cases
of children raised among animals and they were said to behave
like animals; no language and thereby no Intellect that "knew that
objectively...etc."
A solitaire child on an desert island however? Honestly, I don't
think it would survive at all - food or not. We so easily fall prey to
the SOM notion of an independent mind that can live independently
...even as a free-floating brain in a jar.
> when we "feel" something do we mean "I" in the sense of my body or "I"
> as in the "I" in "I will"?
Well, the question of self has been much discussed, I haven't got
the time here to pursue the different threads. You distinguish only
between a body and "will", but according to the MoQ the social self
comes in between.
> 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.
The "hot-stove" example is often seen as something about the
autonomous nerve system, but it's the opening argument by Pirsig
in LILA to demonstrate the preeminence of value ... maybe that's
what you say.
> > 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.
I greatly agree with this approach, only a little comment. Your
"....further abstraction on an itellectual level" indicates that [you
regard] the Q-intellect as ABSTRACTION ITSELF and that
evolution hereafter can't escape the "mere thinking" realm, but in
my first entry I said that the social level introduces abstraction.
I wish that somone someday would understand that the MoQ does
away with the mind/matter division. It was ONE SOCIAL PATTERN
which "went off on a purpose of its own" and became Q-Intellect
(not the usual awakening to awareness) and further that a 5th level
will be an AN INTELLECTUAL pattern that will go off on a purpose
of its own.
Bo
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