From: Chris Lofting (chrislofting@ozemail.com.au)
Date: Sat 17 Jun 2006 - 13:57:59 GMT
Hi John,
My perspective on categories has been on what you get out of
self-referencing of WHAT/WHERE, aka differentiating/integrating, where that
self-referencing is manifest in basic neural dynamics.
Thus the categories I gave came from Plutchik where they 'fit' the
WHAT/WHERE template that comes out of self-referencing. My own perspective
is on the categories of the dichotomy where specialist perspectives, such as
emotional perspectives, have categories isomorphic to all other sets of
categories derived from self-referencing in that the methodology introduces
artefacts that are used by relabelling in all unique contexts. (Plutchik and
others START with emotions whereas my focus is on the origins of meaning and
so go 'deeper' and so 'vaguer' a la issues of generic context management and
so communication of intent etc)
Thus from a primate perspective, and so spanning the whole species, we have
hard-coded categories (invasive work on the amygdala have shown the
'interdigitation' of the elements of fight/flight 'across' the amygdala
where that interdigitation comes out of self-referencing a dichotomy). The
reference to your islanders would refer to the customisation of emotions by
local context through one's sense of self. Thus emotions extend into the
language in the form of 'untranslatable' expressions (e.g. compare
Finnish/Hungarian with indo-european expressions)
The scale of expressions reflect the regulation of expressions by
context-sensitivity so I can understand the claim of anger as 'rage' - a
snake for example will strike with the same intensity regardless of context;
the strike focus as such is 'universal'. Move into mammals and we are more
context-sensitive. E.g. in control of hot/cold issues, so the reptile has to
move whereas the mammal sweats or shivers; move into us and we build
reverse-cycle air conditioning.
IOW there is a cybernetics element at work re control/regulation that is
expressed in us (and other primates etc or those with some degree of frontal
lobe development) through the use of reason to regulate emotion (and so we
and other mammals can 'play', we learn to pull our punches).
With singular consciousness comes the skill of refined manipulation of
emotions for social benefits (charismatics have this skill where their
nature can disarm quickly and allow for light 'trance' elicitation etc). All
of that said, the invasive work indicates the 'hard coding' of fight/flight
and so that is a property of our species-nature, our particular/general
nature. The issue of anger/rage then becomes one of regulation and so of
degree.
Chris.
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