From: Roderick A. Carder-Russell (rodc@shore.net)
Date: Fri Dec 13 1996 - 18:12:17 MST
On Fri, 13 Dec 1996, Romana Machado wrote:
> > But, do feelings and emotions not have a logical and reasonable
> >basis? Are they not designed to direct us towards goals? Procreation?
> >Self-preservation? Attainment of wealth? I maintain that emotions ARE
> >designed logically, just designed generally on an unconscious level hence
> >we are sometimes unable to see the reasoning behind them.
>
> What do you mean by "designed logically"?
>
> Are you conflating evolution with logical design?
Not at all. Perhaps I should have said that they have evolved, on
the most part, for practicle purposes. Emotions serve a variety of
functions and are not the mystical entities that David Musick makes them
out to be. He states "How about feelings? Logic is not the only thing
that drives us.", giving the impression that he views feelings as
something "beyond" logic and reason and not subject to the same rules. If
I misinterpreted you David, I apologize, but I'm not certain that I did.
Emotions and "feeling" are based on goal oriented drives, they help to
push us in the correct directions (of course the meaning of "correct" can
be debated. What we view as our goal may not be consistent with what
goals our emotions evolved to drive us to.). I believe that both physical
sensation and mental emotion are design to do this. Take for instance the
simple feeling of pain one feels while being burned, I'm sure you can
reason out why we feel this. But more on the subject at hand, mainly our
mental "feelings". When one "loves" a person, what one may experience on
the conscious level is simply the joyous sensation, but could it be that
one is so strongly drawn to the person it "loves" because they can provide
benefit to the individual? Aid in bearing offspring? Maybe the person
being loved has an area of expertise that the lover does not possess, and
is crucial to his/her survival. My point is, emotions have REASONS, they
are not mystical in any sense, they ARE reasonable, they work on the
principles of logic (we won't discuss WHAT logic *grin*), you may just
have to step out and analyze it from the outside to discover it's true
purpose.
> "...Our policies and intentions are not to be based upon the supposition
> that Nature knows best; that we are at the mercy of natural laws, and flout
> them at our peril. It is a profound truth ... that Nature does not know
> best; that
> genetical evolution, if we choose to look at it liverishly instead of with
> fatuous good humor, is a story of waste, makeshift, compromise and
> blunder."
Much agreed, but you can not deny that evolution, whether it has
failed in spots or not, has been goal oriented. Everything happens for a
reason. Keep in mind that I am not insisting that it is being directed in
any sense, because I am not.
______________________________________________________________________________
>H >H
Roderick A. Carder-Russell
Transhumanist/Immortalist/Cryonicist
Suspension Member - Alcor Foundation
specializing in man-machine symbiosis
e-mail: rodc@shore.net WWW: http://www.shore.net/~rodc/home.html
>H >H
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