[MD] the meaning Hobbes's meaning

[Ham Priday]

Greetings, David --


> I had to reply if only to see your beautiful synopsis of Hobbes'
> thought from Spark Notes again. Hobbes was the first philosopher
> that I know of to do a detailed analysis of psychology based on a
> materialistic metaphysics, and while others have added to his insights
> I can't see where many of them have been replaced. That is, his
> limited explanations of the basic nature of perception, meaning and
> behaviour remain largely unchallenged today. He does talk about
> intuitions but doesn't mean what we, today, mean by the term.
> IMO intuitions are simply nonverbal memories. While I agree that
> the pain response to a hot stove is not an intellectual response I don't
> see "intellectual feeling" as an oxymoron. Marsha's recent definition of
> "self" evoked both esthetic and intellectual responses as recorded here
> by many in the past few days.
>
> I have to disagree with your point about the feelings often called 
> emotions.
> You say that they are not "programmed into" sensory perception, and
> if what you mean by that is, the value (low, high, negative or positive) 
> is
> not pre-programmed I would agree, but I think you mean that we do not
> automatically evaluate perceptions: which would mean not noting their 
> value
> context along with their places in space and time. This leads you to
> conclude that such evaluations are not reflexive which also seems partly
> based on a belief that, contradicting the rock hard scientific evidence of
> Pavlov and Skinner, reflexes cannot be learned. ??? Then you state the
> most basic and truest idea I can imagine, "emotional feeling is the
> value-sensibility of proprietary (individual) awareness itself." ANIMO
> ERGO SUM. (Please correct the conjugation, if I'm wrong.) IMO all
> thought starts with emotional evaluation. It is our reason for noticing 
> one
> pattern from the continuum and linking it with others, and if that isn't a
> reflexive response, what is it? Surely you're not looking for everything
> you find?
> Surely you realize that your mind continuously and compulsively cuts
> valuable snips from the continuous patterns of reality in time? Your note
> that "DMB's suggestion that 'feelings and instincts would probably be a
> static biological response to DQ' does not do justice to value" is, IMO,
> right on. They must be dynamic biological responses to DQ or we
> couldn't change our minds about value. While IMO all responses are
> reflexive, current reflexes supersede previous reflexes in the dynamic
> process of experiencing reality and recording that experience in memory.
> That's how we remember that we've changed our minds. Finally, IMO
> value appreciation cannot be free of biological and social influences.
> Our minds, the organs of evaluation, are biological, Hobbes is right
> about that, so evaluation must be a biological process and to say that
> evaluation is free of social influences ignores the negotiated component
> of value.

I appreciate your reply, David, although your Hobbesian worldview is 
diametrically opposed to mine.

Behaviorists, like Watson and Skinner, and philosophically objectivists. You 
can train a dog or a monkey or a child to behave in a certain way, and 
"prove" the effectiveness of this training by measuring their responses. 
But behavior is not emotion or feeling; it's the objective manifestation of 
fear that the action will be unaceptable.  Behaviorism is a method for 
controlling subjects, and has this in common with communism and fascism. 
When you "socialize" a child's behavior, you preempt his values with 
punishments and rewards, thereby taking away his innate freedom and 
autonomy.  This is victimization by authority, and is precisely the kind of 
"mind control" that Essentialism opposes.

I stand by my statement that feelings and emotions are valuistic responses, 
not biological or intellectual
"reflexes".  Pirsig's "hot stove" (pain) analogy demonstrates synaptic 
response (neuro-physicists refer to it as "proproception") and is an 
ill-chosen example of value.  As beings-aware, we are dependent on our
physical (organic/inorganic) apparatus for such automatic reflexes, and 
adrenaline and sympathetic neural connections are of course involved in the 
emotional process.  But they are not the "cause" or "source" of emotion, any 
more than tears are the cause of weeping or laughter the cause of joy.

Having been trained in science, I understand the reasons for your 
conclusions, but they dismiss the psycho-emotional nature of human being, 
replacing it with a cause-and-effect hypotheses that reduces subjectivity to 
a biological or social pattern of evolution.  Valuation is neither 
biological nor sociological, nor is value-sensibility programmed into human 
beings.  I have long since abandoned this mechanistic view of man for an 
ontology that offers meaning and an appreciation of man's role in existence. 
This I see as the proper domain of  philosophy rather than science.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Regards,
Ham