[MD] William James a wrong track..

[skutvik at online.no]

Wavedave

11 Mar. you  wrote:

> 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.

Your have a weird notion of what "social value" is, almost as weird as 
Andre's "public", and also a weird notion of what emotions are. "Startle 
reflex" is just what it says, a  reflex or instinct, part of the countless 
biological survival strategies. Nothing "mere" about biology it is as high 
above "inorgany" as the social is above biology.  

> 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."

A horse is a mammal organism with a well developed brain and neural 
apparatus, we all know the fantastic things a horse can do, it even has 
the capacity to become neurotic what we call being "afraid", but it is a 
reflex that occurs as at the sight of, hearing ..., smelling ... i.e. released 
by some sense impression. It's not capable of standing in the stable 
imagining situations and becoming mentally ill. Nor of love, regret, 
blame, remorse ...and the host of true human social emotions.  

> 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.

Very interesting, but it does not go against "emotions as the social 
expression", it only disproves SOM in which view emotions are mental 
and not supposed to have any effect on the material body. In the MOQ 
the levels interact freely upwards and downwards, no material/mental 
border to be crossed  .... BTW another proof that Pirsig's about 
inorgany and biology = material and society and intellect = mental is 
faulty .       


Bodvar