Re: LS Ego is biological -- not social

[Stefan Eriksson]

Hi Robert!

I am new to this list and am going to introduce myself by way of
participating in the discussion. I have one plea to all of you: I have
already noticed that you use a very developed "exclusive" language, which
is very hard to get through for newcomers. Please spell out things a bit
more, thanks.

Now, unfortunately I do not think that Robert's thesis holds. Let me explain.

At 23:43 1999-07-21 -0400, you wrote:
>If social values are emotional then they are purely
>biological.  I never thought of it this way, but my recent
>study of William James clarified exactly that emotions are
>entirely physical states of the body.  I will cite on
>example:
>
>"What kind of emotion of fear would be left if the feeling
>neither quickened the heart beats nor of shallow breathing,
>neither of trembling lips nor of awakened limbs, neither of
>goose flesh nor of visual stirrings, were present, it is
>quite impossible for me to think."

Now, this does not show that "all of the great emotions we have as social
beings are
biological relations". All this shows is that it is very hard to imagine
the feeling of fear *without* the acompanying physical reactions. The point
can be expressed as conceptual: it would not be the *same* emotion if these
phenomena weren't present.

This is not the same as *reducing* the fear to bodily states. For example,
you may very well draw another conceptual distinction between the bodily
state and the emotion. As with the expression: "Funny, here I am sitting so
relaxed and comfortable, but anyway I feel this fear inside me".

>One makes us laugh and we feel the physical release of the body.  One
makes us mad
>and we feel ourselves tighten up.  Get my point?

The point is not what you think, I hope to have shown.

>This is another reason why I am skeptical of the MOQ.  Would
>we really care about being social, if there were no
>emotional gains?  If not, what is the intrinsic value of the
>social level?  Is there *really* a social level at all?
>
>The more I think about these things, the more dualism makes
>sense (but not the religious beliefs tagged to dualism).
>There is an external world, which we infer from our
>experiences, and there are points of perception to the
>external world (consciousness).  Reality is fundamentally
>dual -- not four levels.

Oh, I think I'll let someone more into MOQ answer this.

>In other words, there is first the material world (which
>includes our physical body) AND the self which is sensitive
>to the material world.  This is more simple than the MOQ
>without the pitfalls of SOM/materialism.

To be able to draw a distinction between our physical bodies and the self
you must presume a great deal of sophistication. This very dualism enters
only in highly developed  discourse. My point: this distinction actually
presupposes a lot of what Pirsig places under quality (which therefore
still must be considered "first" in a conceptual sense).

Yours

Stefan

P.S. I'm not a native speaker, so please excuse the funny spelling and
strange use of words that I surely employ now and then.
__

Stefan Eriksson

e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production 
deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid." -Frank Zappa



MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org

Re: LS Ego is biological -- not social

[B. Skutvik]

Robert and Squad
Thanks to Robert the unemployment rate of the squad will never be 
high. After three years and a billion messages and this: 

> BTW, Does Pirsig ever address dualism?

He does nothing BUT address dualism. He has even created a new one: 
Dynamic/Static dualism instead of Subject/Object dualism.

Generally I agree with Rich Pretti (if I only knew what his 'ego' 
is): Emotions are social (in my "strong" interpretation they are 
the very social level itself, but let that rest).

Robert cites William James:

> "What kind of emotion of fear would be left if the feeling
> neither quickened the heart beats nor of shallow breathing,
> neither of trembling lips nor of awakened limbs, neither of
> goose flesh nor of visual stirrings, were present, it is
> quite impossible for me to think."

What James describes is biology seen from his Intellect  - 
distorted by his society!  See it this way: The biological repertoire 
is exceedingly simple when it  comes to alert an organism to make it 
ready for fight or flight. A few chemical compounds (adrenalin 
mostly) have these effects (quickened heartbeat etc). A frog, for 
instance, goes through this phase thousand times a day and would have 
been a nervous wreck if it had the emotional quality that James 
indicates. From its biological "point of view" it's not the sickening 
feeling of "fear", merely alertness. 

No, at the biological level the reaction is merely "sensation" (this 
goes if the organism is an amoeba or a human being), but at the  
human level, biology has been overlaid with an emotional layer and 
that with an Intellectual layer, The adrenalin "shot" is highly 
modified and has attained an emotional quality (I believe this goes 
to a certain degree for the primates too). 

The strength of the MOQ is that these phenomena 
(sensation/emotion/reason) for the first time EVER are harmonized 
with experience. And (paraphrasing R.Feynman) Mr Stillwell, you must 
be joking when writing:
  
> The more I think about these things, the more dualism makes
> sense (but not the religious beliefs tagged to dualism).
> There is an external world, which we infer from our
> experiences, and there are points of perception to the
> external world (consciousness).  

I thought those who came to the MOQ  were frustrated with the 
impossibilities of the SOM and in Pirsig's ideas saw a relief, but 
again and again it is shown that very few grasp what the farewell 
with subject-object metaphysics signifies. It's not merely a 
modification, it's REVOLUTION! 

> Reality is fundamentally dual -- not four levels.

If this is your complaint, Robert, no problem. This is the tenet of 
the MOQ too. Dynamic Quality/Static Quality (of which four levels can 
be identified).

Bo




["Quality isn't IN the eye of the beholder. 
 Quality IS the eye of the beholder". 
 (Platt Holden)]


MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org