[MD] Intellectual and Social

[John Carl]

Ok, Steve, one last dip into the dark waters and then I'm out the door and
down the road for a day or so.

John:

> > I say it can't.  But I conclude that the self is a social pattern.
>  Without
> > some sense of self, there is no emotion possible.
>
> Steve:
> The self, as in a personality, is a social pattern, but I think "a
> sense of self" as in "self-consciousness" or "sentience" is an
> intellectual pattern. The self is an abstraction, an idea about the
> unity of a collection of patterns.
>
>

John:

I remember a quote once in a short story by Ken Kesey, "One should never
talk about the self because it's impolite to discuss somebody who isn't
there."

I don't quite understand that, but it tickles me somehow anyway.   Perhaps
alluding to the dangers in analyzing such an "object".  But as a pattern of
value, a unity of a collection, I feel you make my precise point about the
self as a social entity.  It is in patterned relationship to other that the
unity called the self exists.





> In any case. I don't see how a sense of self would be required for
> emotions. As I understand the subjectivity of animals or human
> infants, there is no "I am scared" there is just the experience of
> fear.
>
>
I don't think infants experience fear.  Cold maybe, hunger maybe, discomfort
maybe, but if I was to hold a babe over an abyss, would it have enough
awareness to fear?

Likewise, I can point a loaded gun at my dog and he just wags his tail, glad
of the attention.  Actual pain and discomfort, administered either to my dog
or my babe will probably produce an emotional reaction, but not dread.  A
slippery slope.

But the infliction of pain upon a being, biologically reinforces it's gowing
sense of separateness from its environment.  Their brains process it.  I
agree that emotions have a biological component, but I do not agree that
they can be separated from a sense of the isolated self  and the isolated
self cannot be realized except through the experience of other.



> Consider Piaget's sensory-motor stage of cognitive development. Babies
> are considered "ego-centric" in that they are completely incapable of
> considerring other's wants, needs, or perspectives. They do not have a
> developed ego or sense of self that is distinct from the environment.
> Fear, distress, annoyance, and anger, like hunger, are physical
> sensations. To a hungry baby the world is hunger.
>
>

Ok, agreed.  In its primordial phase, a baby has no self.  It also has no
emotions.  A baby doesn't have hunger, it is hunger.  The evolving sense of
self is produced through socialization.



>
> Steve:
> >> At any rate, what I've argued as key to distinguishing social and
> >> biological patterns is that biological patterns are "hard-wired"
> >> through DNA while social patterns are learned. Fear seems pretty
> >> clearly to be this sort of "hard-wired" response to biological threats
> >> rather than a behavior copied from one individual to the next through
> >> social learning.
> >>
> >
> John:
> > Young horses don't know what to fear.  They pick this information up from
> > their mothers during the infant nurture phase I've been ranting about.
>
> Steve:
> You probably know more about horses than I do, but I'll weigh in
> anyway. I don't doubt that they can be taught WHAT to fear, but I
> don't think they can be taught TO fear, they either have this
> propensity hard-wired or not. Is there nothing that horses will fear
> without being taught? Loud noises? Heights (will they walk across a
> glass floor over a chasm)? Flashing lights? I suspect that there is
> much that they fear that is hard-wired that they need to be trained
> not to fear.
>
>
>
There is an aspect of this hard-wiredness, I agree.  Scare a colt and it
flees.  Scare a baby cougar and it growls.  There's a strong component of
the biological in the emotional responses, but the socialization of the
young teaches them what to fear, how to react, etc.

I'd like to spend more time, but Lu and Cassi are in the car and I'm off to
Healdsburg for the day.

Take care,

John