[MD] Emotions' place?

[Ham Priday]

Hi Krimel --

> Bo, Ham, ml and dmb,
>
> This is a subject I have attempted to address several times
> in the past and I have really had to exercise restraint in jumping
> in here. ...

I'm not sure why you invited me into this discussion, as I don't have the 
reductionist view of consciousness that you all seem to infer from Pirsig's 
writings.  The neurophysical speculations you've made as an argument for 
localizing the "seat of emotions" are beyond the scope of traditional 
philosophy, and I think your conclusions severely limit the concept of 
value, even as Pirsig intended it.  I also take exception to what I assume 
is your interpretation of Ham's "proprietary sensibility":

> Some here claim that human nature is fundamentally about
> individuals seeking personal gratification. But the presence
> [of] social emotions, at least to me, suggests that our dependence
> on others is much more fundamental than pure selfishness.

This totally misrepresents the essentialist perspective of man as a 
being-aware.  All sensibility (i.e., sentience) relates to the organism with 
which it is identified.  In cerebrates, self-awareness is the fundamental 
locus of sensibility.  In human consciousness, fundamental awareness is 
value-sensibility, from which the brain and sympathetic nervous system 
differentiate value as the experience of reality, along with emotional 
feelings, intellectual concepts, and moral judgments.  Thus, for every 
individual, being-in-the-world is a "personal" experience expressing his/her 
values.  I don't know how an emotion can be "social", but to characterize 
this structuring of value into finite beingness as "personal gratification" 
and "pure selfishness" demeans man's role in existence, whether you 
subscribe to my philosophy of Essence or Pirsig's MoQ.

But since you're intent on treating emotions as "biological patterns", I'd 
like to comment on your response to a statement made by Chris.

[Chris]:
> When I was talking about greed, I meant that greed was
> one thing at the biological level (and there it can't really be
> called greed meaningfully) that social structures can then use,
> and build upon in order to maintain the social values that
> has been set up. Greed then becomes a powerful social tool,
> and the balance between social and biological can work
> quite well, because only with the intellectual level do things
> like human worth (människovärde) arise as an idea of Quality.

[Krimel]:
> There is a lot of confusion to unpack in this paragraph.
> While emotions can be mediated by social patterns they
> are still purely biological. One can not will to "feel" happy
> or sad or fearful. Nor can we wish these emotions away
> when they occur. We can attempt to create conditions that
> draw out or suppress emotions but they remain inherently
> biological. It is not clear to me what you are throwing
> sensation and reason in here for.

When you say "mediated by social patterns", do you mean "experienced by the 
individual"?
If so, we're talking about "feeling" value emotionally.  I don't know that 
emotions can't be controlled by the will, as you claim, since Buddhists put 
much effort into eliminating desire which they believe to be the source of 
man's emotional angst.  But regarding your question to Chris about including 
reason with the emotions, this reference may be of interest:

"The amygdala is a central processing station in the brain for emotions, but 
Yale researchers report that the amygdala also plays a role in working 
memory, a higher cognitive function critical for reasoning and problem 
solving.  In two different functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) 
studies with a total of 74 participants, individual differences in amygdala 
activity predicted behavioral performance on a working memory task, 
according to the report in the Journal of Neuroscience.

"'People with stronger amygdala responses during the working memory task 
also had faster response times,' said Jeremy Gray, senior author of the 
study and assistant professor of psychology. 'This effect held even when 
people were responding to neutral words, which can hardly be called 
emotional'."      --[Medical News Today: Seat Of Emotions In Brain May Also 
Contribute To Higher Cognition]

If I may elevate this discussion from the brain cell level of emotion to 
human awareness, I'll conclude with a statement by Robert Lanza, vice 
president of research and scientific development at Advanced Cell Technology 
and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.  Dr,. Lanza 
has written extensively on the relationship of biology to philosophy, and 
this quote from his essay "A New Theory of the Universe" may offer 
additional food for thought from an essentialist perspective:

"Without perception, there is in effect no reality.  Nothing has existence 
unless you, I, or some living creature perceives it, and how it is perceived 
further influences that reality.  Even time itself is not exempted from 
biocentrism."

Essentially yours,
Ham