[MD] Reading & Comprehension

[david buchanan]

Krimel said:
... I think any belief or position someone holds is derived from the interaction of reason and emotion. Damasio's research is primarily in the area of emotion. He claims what without the ability to experience emotion people find it very difficult if not impossible to make decisions. Our commitment to ideas is likewise a function of right brain emotional commitment reinforced, balanced and guided by rational left brain functions. Emotion is almost always what guides us in the final analysis. That’s why commercials are about sex and status and not about the chemistry of your tooth paste. But in a philosophical discussion, it is one thing to express emotion for rhetorical purposes but what really should be important is reason. In reading your stuff it is often hard for me tell whether you know the difference...



dmb says:

I think the work of guys like Dimasio lends support to Pirsig's aim of expanding rationality at its roots. It's not just that reason and emotion interact or that emotion plays an important role in the overall cognitive process, although that's certainly true too. The interesting thing is that rationality is paralyzed without these underlying unconscious processes. There is a case wherein a dude had brain damage in such a way that all he had was rationality but no ability to feel the situation. As a result, he couldn't make the simplest decisions. He'd stand in the cereal isle in the grocery store for hours trying to rationally evaluate the relative merits of each kind and there was just no end to this process.

I mean, this complaint about only using emotion for rhetorical purposes misses Pirsig's central idea. The idea is to make rationality subordinate to Quality. Like Plato, you're asserting the opposite. See? 



 		 	   		  
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