[MD] William James a wrong track..

[John Carl]

Strange situations are my forte, Bo.  Rest assured.

On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 9:49 AM, <skutvik at online.no> wrote:
>
>
> Strange situation this: Most people insist of emotions being biological.
> You agree with me that they are social, but then your "social" is far
> down into the biological, so confusion remains.



It seems so simple a concept to convey, I don't know why it's not
universally understood.
Self is a socially created concept.  Self is born of infant nurture.  Those
biological beings that engage in infant nurture, have a social sense and
create and protect and perpetuate further biological being through social
interaction.

The more complex the social patterns flow from the longer period of infant
nurture, with Mankind way, way at the top of the scale.  This confuses
people I guess, but obviously dogs are social creatures.  We socially bond
with them all the time.



> IMO emotions in the
> true sense are the Q-SOCIAL "expression",



In order to have an emotion, you must care about the self, biological or
projected.  People get upset over insults to their intellectual ideas and
heros!  This egoistic reaction is obviously a socially generated pattern.

duh.


> As said horses are an highly complex mammal organism capable of a
> rich biological repertoire. They are also very intelligent and live in
> herds in the wild, but their intelligence is in biology's service, their
> quasi-social  behavior has nothing to do with the Q-social value.
>
>

"intelligence is in biology's service"  So is yours Bo.  Do you know how to
feed, clothe and shelter yourself?

Of course you do.  You also know how to get along with others, sense when
the others close to you are in a pissy mood, or happy, or hungry or horny.
 All these realizations of other's moods are also shared by horses in a
herd, whether their herds are other horses, or cowboys, or indians.    And
when you experience them empirically, you realize this fully.




>
> Well there certainly is a biological self as there is a social and
> intellectual, but "ego" is an intellectual construct - the subject.
>
>
Perhaps I am using a faulty term, definitionally speaking.  I am speaking
about that aspect of self that feels wounded when slighted, elated when
praised.  Pissed when misunderstood.

What do you call that thing?  I call it social, whatever term you want to
use for it.




> > Biological threat.  God I'm tired of that term.  What is a
> > biological threat, anyways?  Is starvation?  Drowning? Eaten by a
> > bear?  Is it just a term for "fear of biological death?"  It doesn't
> > make sense to me, the way it's used on this forum, as if "biology"
> > was out there lurking, ready to kill us.   Biology is the life
> > force, not the death force.  That's as bad as those christians with
> > their doctrine of "fallen nature".
>
> Used by who? No need to be coy Roy?
>


 Pirsig.  I guess I'm taking my complaint to the top on that one.  But I'd
accept any intellectual defense by a lackey.


John