Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!turpin From: turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Of sex and philosophy (was: emergent properties) Summary: Why the two are linked. Keywords: pleasure, stoicism, self Message-ID: <13197@cs.utexas.edu> Date: 4 Oct 90 18:53:10 GMT References: <3499@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas Lines: 57 ----- kirlik@chmsr.UUCP (Alex Kirlik) says, >> Now here's where I have problems. What measure are we going to use >> to measure success, that is, who has got the inside track on what I >> should value, what the "utilities" in my choice engine should be? In article <3565@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>, minsky@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky) writes: > I actually had a point to make that illuminates this problem, though > it doesn't solve it. I wasn't telling you what to do. I was saying > something quite different: that maybe you might say to yourself, "Am I > really liking this? What am "I", indeed? When one part of my brain > "likes" something very much, is it possible that there are other parts > of my brain -- maybe much you think>> that are being suppressed, put out of it, deprived of life > and liberty etc. Ask yourself (as some stoic philosophers did, I > suspect) -- "Who are those little proto-mammalian pleasure centers in > my brain to tell me what I really *should* like. Those larger, more evolved parts of the brain do not themselves care that much about life and liberty, the value of which lies partly in those proto-mammalian pleasure centers. A lizard knows to flee or fight when its life is in danger, and will struggle against what it views as confinement, but DeepThought does not care whether it is ever allowed to play another game of chess. Mr Minsky does well to point out that a person is many things, even at the level of what makes us persons. But I don't think he stays faithful to his vision, that personal identity lies in the composite, and is not to be identified with any of the parts separately. Ironically, he worries that the proto-mammalian pleasure center will kick around the more evolved part of his brain, as if "he" is more the latter than the former. But that there is a worry, that he can attach to it the emotional phrase "life and liberty", shows that his proto-mammalian brain is involved in bringing this caution against itself! The stoics are wrong because the fears and hopes that make them want to suppress certain emotions and drives are themselves part of what they want to suppress. Man has always worried about that which drives him, but that worry is wrongly attached to thinking man, because the part that thinks has no need to worry. Philosophy sooner or later comes down to sex. Mr Minsky thinks that it is only the proto-mammalian pleasure center that fixates a man on certain curves, and then by turning off the more evolved parts of his brain. Not so. Were we like lizards, many of the things that people look for in their partners -- social ability, intelligence, wealth, religious compatibility, political correctness, sexual sophistication, whatever -- would not matter. It is likely that one role the larger parts of the brain evolved to serve was the more sophisticated selection of a mate. When one looks at the variety and occasional sophistication of human sexual behavior, it is clear that the more evolved parts of the brain have not been turned off, but are playing a full role in it. (Doubters should begin their investigation by adding alt.sex.bondage to their reading list.) Russell