Re: Plea (was ExI: Cognitive Extropians)

Eric Watt Forste (arkuat@pobox.com)
Fri, 24 Jan 1997 16:56:04 -0800

I should have thought more before my reply to Mark Grant. I had
been talking about the value of our emotions, and I insisted that
they had survival value to our ancestors. Mark replied that they
had survival value to our ancestors' genes. This presumes that our
passions are entirely genetic in origin, and not memetic, and this
is the point that I take issue with. I think that there is a lot
of stuff that we learn from one another (without necessarily being
aware of the learning process, since most of this takes place in
childhood) that shapes and builds upon the basic motivation structures
in the amygdala. The passions are a combination of nature and
nurture, like everything else human, and not pure nature.

This doesn't blow away Mark's point, of course, but I hope it muddies
the waters somewhat. ;)

--
Eric Watt Forste ++ arkuat@pobox.com ++ http://www.pobox.com/~arkuat/