[MD] William James a wrong track..

[KAYE PALM-LEIS]

Bodvar,

> A touching story Mati, but would a purely biological being - an animal
> - grieve the death of a parent, and it must if emotions origin is in
> biology. Grief, mourning .. etc. are genuinely human and as such
> social patterns. >That the social level has biology "at its disposal" and
> causes (in this case)  tears, sobs, face grimaces and so on is plain.

Perhaps this is one of those semantic issues.  What I consider is fact
that there are behaviors such as grieving a loss which is shared at
both the social and biological level.  A better behavior to more
precisely illustrate the point is fear.  It is a biological response
to the environment as part of the fight or flight response.  Both
animal and human do is exhibit it in the same manner.  What is
different is our ability to reflect and seek out the meaning of such
experience, and in doing so can preservative on the experience and
fear things that are not real such as ghosts under the bed.  The
social level with the behaviors functions of responses, was able to
manipulate those functions for its own purpose.  Again it might be a
matter of semantics but there are behaviors that are used in paraelle
for the purposes of each respective level.  It seem clear to me than
animal, though they are social creatures by describing various
behavior, they in fact do not function/live by social values of the
social level.

> The fact that you could control the feelings by suppressing the
> biological expression I would think was was your intellectl's objective
> realization that the funeral speech would turn into a farce if you gave
> in to emotions and thus took control of both society and biology.

I believe that I was able to find a biological cue that started a
series of emotions.  I remember when I was able to get through the
entire talk I was practicing in the car.  I was thinking to myself,
gee I got through the speech without losing it, hmmm... what does that
mean? Am I grieving him any less?  No, it was important for me to
share my story about him, and I figured out how. Though I think that
animal time for grieving is less both in time and meaning I think, I
think the biological purpose was to deal with the stress of loss.

Mati previously
>> Your point is interesting as well.  However as the social world,
>> through language, would define the world around it, including emotions.
>> Hence we in turn able to anthropomorphize our human understanding of
>> emotions onto them which never works because as you point out animal
>> don't have the capacity to understand emotion,

Bo
> You speak from the premises that emotions are biological, i.e. that
> animals have emotions, but only with the social level and language
> did the humans (organism) become able understand its mute
> sensations as emotions.

Mati: Sensation, perceptions, and behaviors responding to the
environment.  In my thinking that relates to biological sphere.

Bo
>I am emotionally sorry (!!) but this is wrong
> IMO. You treat language as some "objective understanding"  - as
> intellect while it for ages was just a social communication tool.

Mati: First "objective understaning", hmmm... no.  Emotions existed
long before SOM.  And I would suggest before the social level as well.
 Depression is an emotional state that is treated by various drugs.
It has been linked to various bio chemical imbalances. No matter how
you try to cheer up a depressed person they are still depressed.  In
the good ole days people would suggest depress people were possess by
the devil or other crazy ideas. That was how depression was defined
socially.  Our "objective understanding" through intellect help use
understand the biological functions and creates Prozac to address it.

Social communication tool.  Not really it was a biological tool.  Any
social capacity resulted from it interpretation of what emotions were,
and the rules that they should function by.  Real men don't cry for
one.

>> however I would suggest that they experience them very similar.  On the
>> farm as a kid when a calf was born there was a instinctual bonding of
>> cow and calf.  Once you took the calf away from it's mother, it would
>> get stressed and try to search out the calf and respond to the loss of
>> the calf.  Take away a baby from a human mother, I would suggest you
>> would find a very similar response.

Bo:
> Yes, yes, biological instincts are immensely strong, and these are
> common for all organisms (self-preservation f.ex) - the human
> included - but emotions are something that lingers and would not only
> include missing the young, but be extended to hatred of the person
> who took it away and the need for revenge.

Mati:  Ahh... I see that I believe emotions exist as behavior
responses to the environment. As you suggest that the lingering of
emotions is a likely phenomon from the social level.  I could by that.
 Emotions in animals linger only as long as they serve biological
purpose and then, I believe, usually extinguish relatively quickly.
The social level, by creating meaning for emotions they can in some
cases linger indefinitely.

Mati:
>> Understanding emotions is I would agree a social phenomenon, but
>> experiencing them is originally a biological one.
Bo:
> The social level employs the biological to convey its emotions. Like
> Pirsig says about all upper levels do the lower.

Mati: I take no issue with this.  However it is 60 degrees and sunny
out and emotionally I am going to go for a thrilling motorcyle ride.
:-)

Take care,
Mati