From: "Chris Lofting" <ddiamond@ozemail.com.au>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Information basics 1 (revisited) - emotions
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 1999 18:11:59 +1000
Robin..
just had a quick scan of your website and, SHOCK HORROR, find NO explicit,
detailed reference to emotions and the source of information processing in
life forms.
The fundamental dichotomy for emotion is positive/negative. Apply this
recursively (and use wave metaphors since emotion allows for entanglements)
and you find the source of all 'meaning' in that you get a set of
fundamental 'markers' that when fed back onto each other gives you very
complex emotional patterns of 'meaning'.
The most fundamental is 'correct'/'incorrect' (syntax bias). From this has
emerged all else. If we look at the object/relationships dichotomy applied
through three levels (2^3) of recursion we get:
Whole -- a feeling of blending (contractive + expansive)
Parts -- a feeling of bounding ( ditto)
Static Relationships -- a feeling of bonding (ditto)
Dynamic Relationships -- a feeling of binding (ditto)
The contract/expand dichotomy reflect context influences (and so blending
moving outwards and blending moving inwards.)
We thus have, in the eight fundamentals discussed previously, BOTH object
representations (the words of 'whole' 'part' etc) as well as relational
patterns, the patterns of emotion the words point to....
BTW the comment re semiotics is valid but Peirce was a little too 'general'
and so did not see the complexity process, the bifurcations, taking place.
He lumped relationships into one rather than making the static/dynamic
distinctions that are needed to get more precise.. but then he did do his
work 100 years ago so he was ahead of his time.
best,
Chris.
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~ddiamond
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