[MD] William James a wrong track..

[David Thomas]

Bo, Andre,Joe et al

> 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.

You are "profusely happy to agree with" me when I say that it appears that
emotions are BOTH biological and social, but the go on to say that "Emotions
is a purely social level phenomenon." ??? One of the most basic emotions is
the shot of "fear" known as the "startle reflex." Newborn fish, birds,
mammals, and humans all react biologically to loud noises. (without groups
being present or without social learning). But as far as we know fish do not
fall in love. I have, however, heard of cases of fish swimming in the seas
off Norway using SOL logic :-) Guess that's why it sound fishy to me.

Interestingly I'm in the chapter in "Blink, The Power of Thinking Without
Thinking" by Malcolm Gladwell where he talks about the life long work of
Silvan Tomkins and Paul Ekman on the reading of emotions and motivations in
faces.

"Tomkins believes that faces-even faces of horses-held valuable clues to
inner emotions and motivations."

They went on to map all human facial muscles and how they can move
separately and in groups and what interpretations of emotions can be gleaned
from these patterns. They also trained themselves to be able to consciously
move these facial muscle group individually and in groups. Some are so hard
to move consciously they actually had doctors help by electrically
stimulating muscles so they could learn how to control them. Now what is
really interesting is that they found out that by consciously performing
certain facial groups that indicate sadness, fear, anger provoked biological
responses such as increased heart rate, flushing, sweating hands, etc. And
if held long enough elicited the felt emotion in them. By making a "happy
face" and holding it long enough they actually felt happy. Different
research groups around the world have done large scale studies and confirmed
many of their findings.

Dave