Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.psychology,sci.cognitive,sci.philosophy.meta
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!udel!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!crash!snodgras.cts.com!snodgras
From: snodgras@cts.com (John E. Snodgrass)
Subject: Re: Values & Emotions
Organization: Thot-Speed
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 21:41:06 GMT
Message-ID: <snodgras.112.2F369771@cts.com>
X-Newsreader: Trumpet for Windows [Version 1.0 Rev B]
References:  <buchanan-040295160756@buchanan.tor.hookup.net>
Sender: news@crash.cts.com (news subsystem)
Nntp-Posting-Host: snodgras.cts.com
Lines: 195
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai.philosophy:25248 sci.psychology:35765 sci.cognitive:6426 sci.philosophy.meta:16306

In article <buchanan-040295160756@buchanan.tor.hookup.net> buchanan@hookup.net (Bruce Buchanan) writes:


[del]

>>. . . it is circular to suggest that free or rational thought
>>exist only under certain conditions. A stable organism is stable through
>>the effect of successful prediction and analysis of the environment and
>>through efficient and adaptive functioning at all levels of the system.
>>This is as much an effect as a cause.

>O.K. I would agree with this, although an expository approach must start
>somewhat, and work with words in a linear mode, in order to describe an
>overall pattern and relationships. The conditions posited also depend
>somewhat upon the intended meaning of rationality. I have in mind, for
>instance, the notion that neuronal reserves not incapacitated by vicious
>cycles of anxiety must be available if information is to be processed
>adequately.  It is the business of free and rational thought to cope with
>as much variety as possible, and physiological conditions that support this
>also assist rationality as I understand it.

      What I meant to say was that, in understanding "free and rational
thought" simply as high-level thought, one must recognize that the goal
of this thought 1) is still the stability of the self and 2) is the
end product of successful struggle for stability of the self. The quality
of one's thinking is dependent largely on the stability of one's life,
which is also the subject of one's contemplations. One does not prize free
and rational thought for itself, one prizes it for the degree of stability
it represents. This circularity is benign -- I didn't mean to imply otherwise 
--it is the way it is. The recursive structure of systems is fundamental to
how they work. What is the purpose of organic growth? To make more organic
growth possible. The fittest struggle to reproduce, because reproduction
is the ultimate survival strategy -- but why struggle to survive? Isn't this
the same thing as saying we exist because we struggle to exist? I.e. we
think because we struggle to think. I accept these as facts. They may be
metaphysical notions, but I accept them as facts. If someone argues against
them, he only ends up with an enigma -- why should free and rational 
thought be good?

>>Emotions can be no more stable than
>>vision or hearing, since they are related to the organisms situation: it
>>is the instability of emotions -- their sensitivity -- that makes them
>>useful perceptuals systems.

>O.K. although one might distinguish between normal sensitivity and an 
>instability which is off the charts, as it were, and threatens the
>integrity of the system(s) involved.

      Exactly. The development of a perceptual system is a tradeoff for
the organism. Senses, while providing "information" to better predict
the environment, are also a window through which the environment can attack
and destabilize the organism. The problem of stability then becomes how
to use one's senses, without allowing one's senses to work against oneself. 

>>      Emotions are perceptions. Just as vision is a highly processed
>>sense in which assumptions about the outside world are mixed with
>>experience in forming the visual image, so emotions involve assumptions
>>about the world (values) and remembered experience. Our emotions tell
>>us the meaning of our context, our situation. . . .

>O.K. I would understand, then a distinction between feelings, which are
>simpler, lower level perceptions, while emotions are more complex and
>higher level, although both are obviously related to values etc.

       Sure, I would agree, or rather accept that distinction as useful;
a similar distinction would be between sensation and perception --
but there's alot further one can profitably go.

       The categorization of emotions and their causes, (and hence how to
cause them) is the ultimate question if you seek stability as a social
being. How to cause feelings in others (because you understand their
operation) is the most sought-after knowledge there is, for when you
control another's feelings, you control all the actions and interactions
that proceed from those feelings -- you control your relationship
at the deepest possible level. Unfortunately, this requires profound knowledge
first of one's own feelings, so that one may achieve "free and rational
thought" and then of the mechanisms of emotion in general, so that one
may deduce those mechanisms in particular cases of other people. No
pursuit of knowledge is more complex or more bewildering -- none requires
more self-control or more perceptive and cognitive subtlety. 

>>IMO positive emotions are really the release of emotion rather than actual
>>emotions themselves. Emotions indicate imbalances which we need to correct.

>I am not sure that I understand this. Does positive mean active and
>aroused?
>Or does it refer to quality - love in comparison to envy or anger,etc.?  
>My interpretation might be that positive emotions involve the attitudes,
>feelings and dispositions that go along with the successful pursuit of
>ones goals and values and are manifest in total overall activity, and that
>the irruption or release of emotion into awareness may be, in this context,
>something of a distraction from attention to the activity in hand,
>indicative of problems or blocks, hence the need for correction.

      Emotion is like a perception -- one wishes to dispense with it and
go on to the next, one wishes to understand its relationship to the 
context of perceptions and hence be able to forget it. The release of
emotion is the recognition that the problem is no longer important. 
When watching a movie, we feel the release of emotion when the bad guy
gets killed, when the separated lovers are reunited, when justice, fairness,
order, love triumph (after being sorely tested, for that was the source
of our emotion, the fear that they would not triumph). We feel persistent
emotion about threats we don't understand: why was I rejected for that
job? Why did my girlfriend dump me? Why did that person dislike me? 
We would like to live in a state of tranquility, but we swing toward and
away from it constantly -- swings away from it are increases of emotion and
are bad -- toward it decreases of emotion and are good. You spoke of
love. One of our strongest drives is to reproduce. If that drive seems to
be deflected, we feel bad: when we break down the barriers that prevent it
we feel sexual "love", i.e. the release of that terrible emotion of the
threat of failing to reproduce (we may then feel tremendous fear of losing
the other person -- hence the painful aspect of love). 
People associate sex and need for companionship with love -- but although 
those are tensions too, I suggest that they are not as strong. Love as in 
friendship is the release of general insecurities having to do with the value 
of friends in remaining emotionally (and physically) stable.

>>This is why a state of intoxication, for example, is so pleasant -- our
>>emotions are deadened, and we experience freedom not just from gross
>>fear, but from all levels of uneasiness without having to solve the
>>associated problems. Art is another area where our emotions are manipulated:
>>we are persuaded temporarily to respond emotionally to something unimportant,
>>thus freeing us from our habitual concerns. 

>This is very interesting. I accept the point about intoxication e.g. as a
>relaxation of tensions regardless of cause.  And I can see many forms of
>art as highly seductive manipulations of feelings, more or less
>successfully embodied in the work and so communicated by the artist. 
>However I perceive some higher level works of art  - e.g. Beethovens 9th
>symphony - as such magnificent integrations of diverse feelings and implied
>values into a satisfying unity that they have an inspirational and
>revitalizing effect.
>This emotional response can attach to any complex activity really well
>done.
>Indeed it is not a new or original thought that sex can allow some
>reintegration also. Much depends upon the individual and the circumstances,
>and of course respite and change in themselves  may have considerable
>importance. Perhaps the implied question of the importance or unimportance
>of art attaches to quality, and how it fits the needs and circumstances
>i.e. how it is perceived?

      Certainly, but again, there are alot of ins-and-outs in the matter
which are worth considering. Art is a communal endeavor, one doesn't
make a piece of art only for appreciation of a single individual
(usually). Great (or at least successful) art embodies the knowledge 
of the artist of how emotional response occurs in the target audience as
a whole.

      "Really well done" simply means done with the understanding of how
emotional perception occurs. I have done some work in computer composition
of music, for the reason that it is an easy way to test some of these
ideas regarding emotions and cybernetics. One can incorporate into a 
music generating program the ability to stimulate emotion by understanding
the levels of imbalance perceived by the ear-mind in the sound. Sound
itself is meaningless. When sound is organized in such a way that it
becomes imbalanced and then balanced again, it gains meaning. For example,
it requires only a simple algorithm to create a melody (a recursive
algorithm works best) because the melody is a sequence of notes where the
sum of time * frequency-distance-from-key can be made to move across
zero. If this motion is adjusted so that it can be perceived easily (and
sums zero at the end) you have a melody. Of course, gifted musicians may
understand this subjectively in non-mathematical ways, and certainly
take it to superb and subtle heights -- but IMO the principle is the
same. We are creatures to whom stability and balance are the central
truth of existence -- and where we perceive similar processes at work
we are subject to emotional reactions -- even if they are only "artiface",
i.e. art.

[del]

>> ...One thing I dislike is the attempt to make a systematic view of
>>ourselves and nature "scientific". Science is mechanistic. It is based
>>on a model of the universe which is externally controlled by "physical
>>law". What you are calling the cybernetic and holistic view is not
>>compatible with this view. 

>Well it is different, and perhaps compatible as long as any particular
>scientific disciple does not claim to be the source of all truth.

      Theoretical physicists and physical cosmologists make all sorts of
claims which arise out of a mechanistic model of the universe --
claims such as that the universe began 15 B years ago, that the 2nd law
of thermodynamics is universal, etc. Out of these claims, which form the
basis of other mechanistic science, we have derivative notions such that
the origin of life was mechanical and accidental. These notions are not
only unsupported by evidence, they are destabilizing, creating social
problems by trivializing and de-meaning human existence. Even the suggestion
that human existence has meaning and purpose is considered "unscientific".
Fine, forget science then: it is the less valuable if one must make a 
choice (of course, one needn't -- I myself love science, just not
mechanism and its nonsensical derivatives).

      JES

      "The situation is hopeless but not serious" (from old Russian joke)
