Hi Bo,
When I referred to the Bowlby study I wasn't trying to show love/attachment as
an instinct or trying to prove love to be biology in disguise. I was trying to
figure out whether the emotion "love" which I always considered as social was
based on/stemmed from whatever from an emotion in the biological level. And if
it is then does emotion belong in biologal or social level or what. Your
explanation of pain (sensation) and unpleasantness (emotion) I think helped me
clear up on how I needed to distinguish the two a little better.
But I think I need more distinguishing done.
GAVIN
> 'emotions are biological patterns that are mediated by social
> patterns'. that was my understanding until you guys shook my
> confidence?!?!
BO:
Please Gavin. This is exactly what I claim, but they are not
emotions UNTIL mediated by the social level. Pain hurts, but the
social level can transform the sensation to something worse or
even "better". F.ex. A person undergoing plastic surgery to meet
the beauty criteria of society will perceive it as almost pleasant as
will the hunger from slimming exercises :-).
Marco:
I know that Pirsig puts it more likely as if patterns "belong to" a level, but
IMO by dropping "belong" and replacing it with "have birth" we can better
explain why (according to Pirsig himself) an upper pattern should not *kill*
the lower patterns. It is in fact much much better to consider them a great
possible resource.
ERIN: So Bo I feel you are saying that we have to have the social level to
have an emotion (transforms pain into unpleasantness). The birth of emotion
than would involve both biological and social levels. So where I am not clear
is that the idea of transforming seems like A first then B but the birth idea
seems AB- c? Well this is where I am still unclear. Your last email helped a
lot in getting a better picture of emotion so I was wondering if you go at it
again.
P.S.
But just to defend the attachment studies a little I think the majority of
people who do attachement studies (if not all) never try to pit nature vs.
nurture, it is widely (if not completely) accepted as an interaction. When
they look at the infant attachment they do look at parenting styles to see the
effect (and it does) because they do understand that nurture and nature
interactivley play in a role of attachment development.
BO:
Either the monkeys are biologically
programmed to "feel for" the feeding or the furry "mother", or some
social (learned) trait influence their choice . Bowlby and Lorentz
idea is that if this question is resolved for animals it goes for
humans too.
ERIN:
Again I am not sure of Bowlby and Lorenz particular goal but most people who
study infant attachment are studying the effect of nature and nurture on
development of attachment and this approach is not the same as trying labebl
it as programming or social.
Cheers,
Erin
.
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