[MD] Tit's

[Ham Priday]

[Krimel]:
> Thanks for sharing your first impressions about [Paiget's] work....
> Three generations of researchers have a worked to show that
> much of what Piaget thought was wrong. But his approach to
> the problem, the questions he asked and the research he
> conducted still have an enormous impact on even the man on
> the street's understanding of childhood and children. ...
> You really should acquaint yourself with his work before
> second guessing him.

I am not second-guessing Piaget, or any other psychologist.  In fact, my 
interest in psychology has exposed me to Freud, Jung, James, Fromm, B.F. 
Skinner, Viktor Frankl, and Rollo May.  Piaget discovered that children pass 
through four stages of intellectual development, from sensory-motor (first 
two years) through concrete (relational and symbolic), to abstract thinking. 
He maintained that the child learns spontaneously by interracting with the 
environment, rather than by rote learning.  I associate Piaget with the 
Montesorri method, and my son spent some kindergarden time in one of those 
schools.

I have no quarrel with this developmental breakdown as a heuristic model for 
educators.  However, by defining learning as a biological process, he misses 
the motivational factors that trigger it.  The curiosity which leads to 
discovery, for example, or the desire to control one's environment by 
mastering its known principles and reasoning out the unknown.  These motives 
have a valuistic basis, as does everything we learn in the life experience. 
Intellection is a psycho-organic process, the result of which is the 
individual's cognizant "being in the world".  To equate awareness, 
intellect, or thinking with neuro-physiology is like equating your computer 
with the program that runs it.

> I was going for a simplicity and brevity. But there is no special
> meaning attached to any of the terms. The energy is transduced
> when it changes form.  When gasoline burns chemical energy is
> transduced into heat. When a rock rolls down a hill potential
> energy is tranduced into kinetic energy. When a photon hits the
> leaf of a plant light energy is tranduced into chemical energy.
> [snip]
> As Jill Bolte-Taylor said in her TED presentation we are
> energy beings exchanging energy in our environment.

So, I gather that you consider the human mind an energy transducer.  Is it 
your theory, then, that physical energy is transformed to mental energy in 
the process of thinking?   This would imply that reality in its primary or 
pre-intellectual state is energy of some kind, which I assume must be 
created.

[Krimel, previously]:
> "Values" I am afraid are mostly inherited. They are the emotional
> valances programmed into our genetic code and modified or
> made specific through experience.

 [Ham]:
> And is the suggestion that "Values are mostly inherited"
> another assertion that you can't justify?

[Krimel]:
> Who said I can't justify this assertion?  Values are what we
> like and dislike. They are positive or negative, good or bad.

That much we agree on.

> All of our emotional responses are hardwired. They are
> expressed autonomically as well as through movement of
> various muscles.

Not sure what you mean by "hardwired" in this context.  We show our feelings 
by smiling, frowning, laughing, or gesturing, some of which may be autonomic 
responses, although the autonomic system is usually associated with 
proprioceptive stimuli, such as sitting on a hot stove.  I'm not hardwired 
to enjoy a woman's beauty or a favorite symphony, nor is my expression of 
this joy necessarily autonomic.  If I were hardwired to respond in a certain 
way, I wouldn't need value as a stimulus.  What I "like" or "dislike" would 
be meaningless in such an epistemology.

> They are nearly impossible to hide or to fake. They are
> expressed identically by most people everywhere on earth
> and can be identified in others everywhere on earth. Infants
> enter the world with an impressive range of values and they
> are equipped to communicate themselves valuistically to any
> adult in earshot.

Could you elaborate on this "impressive range of values" that the newborn 
infant
possesses or expresses?  They certainly can't be aesthetic, moral, 
conceptual, or intellectual in nature, which would seem to leave only 
proprioception (e.g., pain, pressure, hunger, tactile-sensibility, etc.)

> In addition to that, the closer we are to other primates on the phylogenic
> tree the more similar are our emotional expressions. We do _learn_ which
> stimuli in the environment are most likely to evoke what kind of valuistic
> response. But we are genetically programmed to value food, warmth and
> companionship; we learn what is good to eat, where it is safe to sleep and
> who it is safe to sleep with. We are not free to enjoy being ignored or to
> be hungry or to like being smacked on the butt or to enjoy eating our
> offspring.

Apparently, there is no such thing as an "acquired taste" or individual 
preference in your worldview, and we're all programmed to react to our 
environment non-valuistically.  How in this automatic world can Quality or 
Value have any meaning?
(I'll defer the demands stemming from your "vigorous disagreement" with my 
ontology until I have a clearer understanding of your epistemology.)

--Ham