[MD] William James a wrong track..

[skutvik at online.no]

David T. Joe, Andre ...All

10 Mar. :

Joe said
> > > Imho emotions are DQ.  There is no individual organ to receive
> > > emotions. I perceive emotions as a level in evolution.  The whole
> > > organic being changes like from happy to sad, and emotions can change
> > > ideas from positive to negative etc..

 Everything is Quality - separate static levels of quality that is. I guess 
Joe means that

Andre:
> > Dear Joe. Emotions are a biological response to Quality and not
> > Quality itself. Please read the LC annotations. Suggestions as you
> > make them only confuse.

Dave T. 
> Something about this call just doesn't sit right with me. So I Googled
> "emotions,biological" and the top hit was this.

> http://www.evoyage.com/BiologicalApproach.htm
 
> The lead sentence says: "The biological origins of emotion seem to
> have originated with the suggestion by the philosopher William James
> in 1884 that emotions are a function of sensory and motor areas of the
> neocortex."

Profusely happy to agree with you Dave and just as disappointed by 
the suddenly-turned-fundamentalist Andre, who coughs up Pirsig's 
most impossible "annotations". However this article is SOM-based (as 
everything still is) and its "biology" may loosely correspond to the 2nd. 
Q-level, but "our" social level is not known, if  emotions aren't physical  
they are mental. 

It seems that Pirsig - by allocating emotions to the biological realm - is 
a SOM-focussed as any. He seems to think that the REAL source of 
emotions is substances in brain, i.e. when we (f.ex) feel happy some 
happy-stuff is released in the brain, and it surely is, but MOQ's point is 
that the social level is a new INTERPRETATION of the biological, like 
the biological is of the inorganic.

As said before: The purely biological creatures  - an animal in the wild 
f.ex. - cannot "have emotions", it would not dare out in the open to 
graze if feared death, or have offsprings if it mourned the previous 
litter that was eaten ... and so on, it's embarrassing to have to remind 
you about these obvious things. Emotion is a  purely social level 
phenomenon , but as society have "commandeered" biology, emotions 
release the appropriate signs, we pale by fear, blush from shame, 
laugh with joy ...etc.           

> This is brief introduction written in 2001 but a lot has happened in
> brain science and psychology in the last 115 years. I won't bore you
> with trying to recap this page but my initial response was "Oh shit"
> another of those level straddles. Emotions appear to be both
> biological and social and different locations in the brain that seem
> to be involved in different emotions but science is not sure exactly
> of the relationships yet.

As said SOM operates with emotions either physical or mindish and 
never finds which one is real. The fact that a drink (or heavier stuff) 
alters our minds and that thoughts move matter is SOM's constant 
enigma, theoretically those two realms are isolated. The MOQ 
resolves all this hadn't it been for those who superimpose SOM on the 
MOQ. 

Bodvar