Marco and Groppo. Rob D. mentioned.
You said:
> My original message was not merely about emotions (actually the
> subject is "Things and levels") and the very heart of the matter is
> that IMO all "things", emotions included, arise in a certain level,
> then they are in the availability of the upper levels' purposes. While
> it is an immoral nonsense to describe them from the lower level
> viewpoint.
I agree that static values arise at a certain level and thereafter
available as step-stones for the next development. Emotions are
social value on top of biology. Reason another value layer on
emotions ....and tongue in cheek ....this way to see evolution the
last layer :-).
Also agreement about ..."while it is an immoral nonsense..." I think
that's what you do by implying that biology "emote" (is that a
verb?). The proverbial amoeba does not get afraid or envious, nor do
we ...AS ORGANISMS only as social beings.
> A good example of what I'm meaning is (in order to shift -just a bit-
> the focus away from emotions) in the recent threads about drugs. I
> showed that drugs have a good social value (the example of red wine in
> Italy). Someone guessed the intellectual value of drugs (Pirsig and
> the peyote ceremony, Freud and cocaine, LSD and the sixties....). It
> is IMO another example of how the levels can use all what's below for
> their purposes. Let's face it: drugs are molecules that, when
> interacting with a biological organism, trigger a biological answer.
Of course "stuff" starts at the biological level. Opiates prevents
certain signals to cross the nerve synapses and stops the
sensation of pain. This will get an added (abstract) value at the
next level, the victim will feel "relief", "happy" or "euphoric".
You will possibly protest calling "relief" an emotion, or that it is
"social" and the connection is thin in the border regions, but
otherwise we have to impose all kinds of complicated mentality
onto BIOLOGY. (Like SOM must. The last curiosity here in Norway
is that fishes "suffer" when hooked.)
> So the alteration induced by drugs is IMO basically biological
> (actually It is very meaningful to measure the alterations of heart
> beats and so on...); while it is not inorganic, as It has no sense to
> measure the weight, so to say, of an altered perception: of course you
> can describe the inorganic properties of the body and the molecules
> involved, but it has no great meaning.
Agreement about "basically biological".
> Then, society has been able to use drugs for its purposes (actually
> the very disaster of drugs like alcohol and opium happens when people
> use them out of their cultural context). And intellect seems to be
> able to use drugs for its own purposes (not merely to "open the doors
> of perception", but, IMHO more important, as medicine).
You have a strange way of speaking about society as something
apart from social value, but we all sin here :-). Most people use
alcohol as an easer of tension, but a hobo is as much using it
socially, he drinks to forget his emotions (sorrow, shame ..etc.).
The Intellect's use of drugs! As medicine? Hmmm. Well, OK. The
"doors of perception" however makes me rear (as usual :-) It
smacks of the dreaded mind-intellect of SOM. Blurring of the
bio/socio border creates trouble, and so does the socio/intellect
one because it becomes SOM-like: Humankind as a thinking
creature living together with other. IMO Q-intellect isn't "thinking" -
however deep - but the value of seeing existence through the
subject/object glasses.
Rob D, whose message of July 31 contained the brain layers' map
that reflects the MoQ hierarchy (as well as backing up the emotion-
as-social interpretation), also sees the 5th level implication.
Looking favourably on drugs (a shortcut to "altered states") is some
protest against intellect's REASON. Look to what Pirsig says
ablout the Hippie movement and insanity in LILA.
> The point is that I don't see a great difference between a
> drug-induced alteration and an emotional hormone-induced alteration.
Neither do I. This IS the very SOM paradox that the MoQ solves.
SOM postulate only two "levels" - body and mind and no-one has
found the mechanism by which stuff influences mind or how mind
moves the body.
> The mechanism is very similar. Emotions arise as biological answer to
> value as I can measure the biological alterations induced by an
> emotion.
My objection is that your biological level comes dangerously close
to SOM's "biology". According to Pirsig the inorganic and biological
levels conforms to SOM's "matter" and social and intellectual to
"mind". Consequently, there must me an introduction of an - er -
"abstract" element at this point. This is what I hope to have
obtained by the sensation-emotion distinction.
> Even Bo admits that emotions play a role in the biological
> health of the individual.... so I don't see what's wrong in my point.
That the social level influences the biological level (emotions cause
illness or sanity) is a MoQ tenet.
One final argument: There is no "molecular inorganic level", what
goes for the proton and electron must go for the most complex
molecule. Likewise is there no "human biological level" in the MoQ,
so what goes for an amoeba must go for a human being ...as
biological organisms that is ....humans as social organisms is
something different.
Enough said.
Bo
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:01:27 BST