Hi Bo, thanks for your comments...
M:
> > 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.
Bo:
> I agree that static values arise at a certain level and thereafter
> available as step-stones for the next development.
Marco:
Only for the next one, or forever? My point is that intellect has *everything*
in its availability, as it's the upper level. Matter and energy, brain and
emotions, language and behaviors, rituals and concepts....
Bo:
> 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.
Marco:
Ok; but if we agree on the basic point, the misunderstanding arises when we
don't agree about the *birth* of something, like emotions... It is IMO a
secondary problem. Actually, I also give emotions a great social relevance....
and, why not, intellectual.
M:
> > 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.
[....]
> > 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.
Bo:
> Agreement about "basically biological".
M:
> > 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).
Bo:
> You have a strange way of speaking about society as something
> apart from social value, but we all sin here :-).
Marco:
Well, sorry! Society *is* the social level, of course. [Jonathan convinced me
to drop the Q- prefix] You often bring the *up* and *down* example of the Sun
movement.... I write Society and I mean Culture, Giant... you know.
Bo:
> 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.
[... ]
> 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.
Marco:
I agree about the Hippies. But, drugs or not drugs, their very mistake was
fighting reason.
Actually suggesting medicine as the "more important" intellectual utilization of
drugs I hope I've clarified my position. Intellect is not the human faculty also
known as thought. Of course, intellect empowered brain and uses thought (that
is basically biological) and many other things in order to grow up to
philosophies, science and so on... But of course we can't dismiss the role of
thought in the
intellectual adventure. So I can't deny the possibility of a sort of *thought
doping*, even if I think it is more dangerous than useful.
Just like I can use amphetamine to run faster, win the Olympic games and gain a
social value (celebrity).... in this case, a social pattern (desire of fame)
pushes me to the ingestion of drugs in order to alter my biology. It works,
indeed .. of course the same social level has rightly decided it's immoral.
Bo:
> IMO Q-intellect isn't "thinking" -
> however deep - but the value of seeing existence through the
> subject/object glasses.
Marco:
hmmm... you know that I agree on "intellect is not thinking", but also that I
find reductive your vision of intellect. Intellect is about the emancipation
from the giant, and the S/O thinking has been a good but insufficient attempt.
M:
> > The point is that I don't see a great difference between a
> > drug-induced alteration and an emotional hormone-induced alteration.
[...]
> > Emotions arise as biological answer to
> > value as I can measure the biological alterations induced by an
> > emotion.
Bo:
> 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.
Marco:
Interesting... I think that the difference between a SOM biology and a MOQ
biology is the same difference between SOM and MOQ: value. SOM biology looks at
life as an object to study, while the MOQ looks at life as a layer of evolution.
However even my suggestion of communication as the basic pattern for any social
pattern, seems to be * -er- "abstract" *, as you claim...
Bo:
> 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.
Marco:
A bit tricky. Indeed there's something that goes for protons and molecules
(mass, for example), but also there are differences of behavior and
capabilities. Likewise, the biological human has many points in common with
amoebas, but also different behaviors and capabilities...
Be good,
Marco
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