[MD] seeing beyond the mirror (was: Heads or tails?)

[ralp manfred]

 quoting...
> [Platt] 
> > > > Perhaps the rationale is that the MOQ defines
> > emotions as more biological
> > > > than social or intellectual. "The MOQ sees
> > emotions as a biological responses
> > > > to quality and not the same thing as quality."
> > (Note 141, Lila's Child)
> > 
> > Lots of theories about the source and mechanisms of
> > human emotions, but I would
> > guess Pirsig is going along with them as remnants
> > "of our pre-sapient inheritance"
> > and thus primarily biological. In other words, our
> > responses to quality are 
> > visceral rather than intellectual, aesthetic rather
> > than rational. That's my
> > interpretation anyway.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Platt  
   
       i think that some important aspects of emotion have been pointed out by some contemporary cats, such as e.o. wilson, and robert wright. the idea (i will put this into context of the moq) is that rationality is a general utility of the mind, which can be used in the face of dq and sq, in the realms of both emotional reasoning (often referred to as irrational thought, or rationalization), as well as intellectual thought. the mode of rational thought is the active reaction to quality across the spectrum. for instance, consider a contrived emotional reaction, perhaps someone deciding to threaten suicide in order to make an emotional point to someone else. is this an intellectual reaction? is this an emotional reaction? my vote is nondiscrete, with roughly fifteen percent to the former, and eighty-five to the latter. but regardless, any reaction which is a response to stimuli, condition, whatever modes of dq and sq might arouse it, this reaction requires rational thought;
 if only to string the reaction together, making the correlation between action and outcome, and yet this does not imply that the response is intellectual(unless one defines intellectual responses only as having to be based on abstractions, which then denotes all responses intellectual). one need not look to deeply within the "self", to find instances of irrational rationality. in the case of preintellectual phenomena (fauna drama), effectively rational constructions were selected through natural selection, and slowly became more and more based on the emergent dynamic qualities of intention and explicit autonomy...
 that is my interpretation anyway...
ralph

       
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