[MD] What is SOM?

[Krimel]

[Bo] 
...sensation and emotion. These must be kept apart. I 
have this list of the respective level's "expressions" (I call)

Interaction - Sensation - Emotion - Reason

If senses are more hardwired than the rest  is not an issue in the 
MOQ, the impulse to run (or follow other strategies) confronted with a 
threat, along with sexual reactions, hunger when the body needs 
nourishment, pain when damaged  and a billion other biological 
patterns are NOT emotions. An animal would become a nervous 
wreck if it becomes "afraid" in the emotional sense. Once the threat 
situation is gone they are as calm as before. 

[Krimel]
First to sensation, which actually implies interaction. Sensation involves
the transduction of energy in the environment into electro-chemical energy
in the nervous system. We have receptors that can make this conversion with
light, heat, chemical and kinetic energy. Each of these sensory pathways is
different within the nervous system. Oddly the sense of smell is the only
one that is conveyed directly from the sensory receptors to the brain. The
other sensory pathways are a bit more convoluted and reflect the complexity
of processing devoted to them. These multiple pathways are ultimately
integrated and assembled into the "perception" of the event.

Emotions are added to sensation as part of this processing. They come to us
mainly through the limbic system or as it has sometimes been called the
"mammalian brain." Emotions typically can be reduced to simply "good" or
"bad". And these Qualities of good and bad are highly correlated with
survival; food and sex are Good, pain and stinky are Bad.

Human emotions are almost instantly converted into muscular contractions
especially in the face. We can instantly tell when others are happy or sad
or fearful but looking at their faces. Conversely, we can alter our
emotional responses simply by changing our facial expressions. If you smile
you will become happy.

Reason kicks in after the fact. Humans use it to label and describe their
internal states to others. But reason can do little to alter the moment to
moment flow of emotion. As I said before reason functions to inhibit emotion
driven behavior.

[Bo]
Yes, in the moqish the social level beings shares the biological level 
with all critters, but the 3rd. level has risen on top of it and emotions 
are sensation brought to a new  refinement. No longer just hormonal 
rush "out of sight out of mind" but something that can be recalled and 
shared and makes for the social glue.There are of course primates 
that live in tribes, care for their offsprings, react to death of other, 

[Krimel]
Exactly, social interaction among mammals can be entirely mediated by
emotional expression. Each member of the group can intuit the internal state
of others by sensing their emotional responses. No reasons need be given.

[Bo] 
just one example - no animal weep, it's a most powerful social signal 
as are facial expressions and reading thereof. With language - the 
ultimate social tool - emotions could be teleported. "God is angry with 
you" instilled fear in a possible rebel. As said: If this is hardwired or 
learned is not an issue. Emotions are social values full stop! 

[Krimel]
If you mean what I think you mean then yes. If you define intellect as the
doing of what humans do. We have evolved structures in our brains that allow
us to store information gained through past experience in the form of
memory. We can use remembered past experiences to alter our current
perceptions of the moment. It is this feature that ultimately results in
'reason'. The first phase of metaphor or language is the representation of
the past in the nervous system as memory. 

I like to think of this as slurring time. We can stretch the instant by
comparing each new experience with those we remember. We can use this
extended access of the past to predict the likely flow of events in the
future. This has great selective advance in our niche of the woods.

[Bo]
The software/hardware model is intellect's S/O and we are definitely 
not transferring "awareness" (if you mean the intellectual 
consciousness variety) We may imitate biological processes, f.ex. 
memory storage, its retrieval and manipulation - computation - and 
programs may theoretically be written that imitates all biological 
functions, one for every chemical signal substance, it may result in an 
artificial body and corresponding intelligence, but here the buck stops, 
the social patterns are too complex to be imitated .... for now at least   

[Krimel]
When you say "'awareness' (if you mean the intellectual consciousness
variety)" you hit a real problem. I have a hard time proving that kind of
thing exists in you much less in a machine. I think the difficulties in
doing so are about the same. This kind of awareness I know that I have. It
is subjective. I infer that you have it. I believe that you have it. But
whether you do or a machine does not I will never know in the same way I
know that I do.

Still my garage door responds when I talk to it through my garage door
opener. Motion detectors are aware of movement in a room. Airports have
machine that can sniff out bombs in your clothing. These are not that
sophisticated in biological terms but consider that biological forms have
been under development for about 4 billion years. Machine intelligence has
been evolving for only about 75 years. Machines are doing pretty well given
their short history.

[Bo]
Yepp, SOM will never come to grips with the matter/mind relationship. 
How "raw sense impressions" that - according to the empiricist don't 
contain qualities (colors are just different light frequencies, sound just 
air pressure waves, smell just molecular configurations .etc.) can 
become the said qualities in "our mind". This enigma is what the Q-
level system solves - dissolves perhaps.

[Krimel]
You lost me here. Our senses transduce energy from the environment into
nervous impulses. We process that information and integrate it into what we
know. We sense frequencies of light but we see "red". We sense kinetic
vibration of the air but we hear The Ramones. We detect ammonia and methane
but smell excrement. We do not just detect energy from the environment we
process it, we analyze it, we integrate it. This is the difference between
sensation and perception.

The Q level value comes primarily from that ancient emotional layer of
processing.

[Bo]
Likewise with the consciousness paradox, that of a humunculus inside 
our heads that surveys reality out there. These thing are all intellect's 
S/Os which are very useful, but when examined in a deeper 
philosophical way leads to confusion and paradoxes. 

[Krimel]
Oddly there is a sort of homunculus that has been mapped onto the motor
cortex. The various body parts are represented oddly though. The face has
lots of space and the legs just a little for example.

I think some of the paradox you allude to comes from Descartes' notion that
the pineal gland at the center of the brain transduced the perception of
material substance into mental substance. 
   
> [Krimel] 
> My problem here is with assigning the qualities of personhood too yours 
> abstractions. The levels desire nothing. They exploit nothing. They are
> explanatory tools not autonomous agents.

[Bo]
Assigning qualities is the very issue in the MOQ, personhood is 
another, but because we use language with its analogies and allusions 
and such it's difficult to avoid it. Moreover the abstract/concrete 
dichotomy is an intellectual S/O and does not apply. A social pattern 
like a country for instance is no "abstract" entity but - as said - a social

pattern where emotions is the basic attraction. And phrases like love of 
country and that the country appreciates, likes ...etc. are as real as 
real comes. A country may be overlaid by intellectual value that scoffs 
at these terms as humbug and abstractions, but if the bell tolls ... the 
social level is the safe latch below intellect. As is biology below society.


[Krimel]
I see what you are saying, this is a kind of short hand method of speech.
The "country appreciates" is short hand for the "people of the country
appreciate." Still I think it si a bad habit and came lead to confusion.