Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tdatirv!sarima
From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Of sex and philosophy (was: emergent properties)
Keywords: pleasure, stoicism, self
Message-ID: <8@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 5 Oct 90 16:17:13 GMT
References: <3499@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <13197@cs.utexas.edu>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 55

In article <13197@cs.utexas.edu> turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>-----
>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. 

In fact I would even go further.  The stoics are dangerous because they
are trying to suppress the human alert signals which tell us about our
basic operational needs.  The raw emotions of the proto-mammalian centers
are all signal fundamental, survival-related needs.  Fear is what makes us
pay attention to, and deal with, that which could harm us.  If it is
occasionally triggered by something that is not truly dangerous, this does
not make it any less vital to survival.  The man who truly *has* no fear is
the man who will be killed quite young.

>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.

A very good point.  This is why I like to distinguish between primary (or raw)
emotions and composite or secondary emotions.  The basic sex drive of the
proto-mammalian pleasure center is a primary emotion.  It ensures that all
humans have a fundamental drive to reproduce, however it is actually manifest
in behavior.  [That is it is what ensures that *all* humans are interested in
sex in some form, and to some degree - even those who loathe it].  However,
the sexual desires and responses we are conscious of are much more complex
then a simple reproductive urge.  I, for instance, am particularly responsive
to the styles of clothing that were current just as I entered puberty in the
mid 1960's [i.e. I like mini-skirts].  This is clearly a cognitive level
response, since it is based on prior experience, and requires recognition of
complex relationships (like what clothing is, and how it relates to sexual
identity, and so on).

This kind of interection between cognition and primary emotions is nearly
universal.  It is the source of phobias, and many other complex social
interactions.  It also seems to me that this is the basis of what we call
personality.  I am a unique person, with my own unique style because my
cognitive skills interact with my emotions a different way than do yours.
Thus to deny emotions, and emotional responses is to deny individuality.


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uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)