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Damasios: Professors of Creativity
Press Release from USC on the Damasios' latest job ...
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Re: Damasios: Professors of Creativity
How very cool.
It was reading Descarte's Error for the first time about three years ago that I first started wondering about the possibility that emotions were the directing force in our minds - and intellect a newly evolved resource that ocassionally gets called upon in decision-making. The story of Phinneus Gage blew me away. Thanks for posting this, Margaret Last edited by Margaret McGhee; May 8th, 2006 at 03:40 PM.. |
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Re: Damasios: Professors of Creativity
"I first started wondering about the possibility that emotions were the directing force in our minds - and intellect a newly evolved resource that ocassionally gets called upon in decision-making."
Pinker beat you to it....but the limbic system is NOT our elevator's ground floor. JB |
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Re: Damasios: Professors of Creativity
JB: Your post seems to saying that I claimed first knowledge. My full statement was ,
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I have not found it yet in his writings or in Robert Wright's interview of him. I am on Chapter 14 of Blank Slate. I skimmed through How the Mind Works but found no chapter headings or anything that seems headed in that direction. Do you have a cite? It would be very cool if, as you say, Pinker had this same insight. BTW - I am enjoying The Blank Slate immensely. Thanks for recommending it. I am finding some things in Chapters 11 thru 14 that I don't feel completely comfortable with. But I need to re-read those chapters carefully before I'd be ready to say that I agreed or disagreed. You said, Quote:
Margaret Last edited by Margaret McGhee; May 14th, 2006 at 08:57 PM.. |
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Re: Damasios: Professors of Creativity
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Regarding the “ground floor,†at the risk of rehash, if Max (father of quantum theory) Planck’s POV—that “All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force [and that we] must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind [and that this] Mind is the matrix of all matterâ€â€”has any validity, then at bottom is mind—take the elevator down far enough, past the brain stem, and past the neurons, the molecules and atoms, and into the mysterious quantum world of wave-particles, timelessness, and non-locality, and maybe you end up where you started, full circle, although pi remains infinite . . . and maybe the world isn’t flat after all . . . but I digress…. |
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Re: Damasios: Professors of Creativity
JB, After thinking longer about your post . . . a couple of additional thoughts came to mind.
First you say that my idea is not original . . . even though I've never claimed it was. You say that Master Pinker himself was the originator of this concept. When I ask for a cite you give no response. Then you say that the limbic system is not the elevator's ground floor. For someone so free with the metaphors you seem curiously unwilling to flesh out their meaning and eliminate the ambiguity they bring to the discussion. Are you saying that emotions are not the data type that the limbic system was designed by evolution to process? Are you implying that cognition or something else is on the elevator's ground floor? In the other thread Carey accused me of offering a throw-away comment about my cat. Within an hour of reading that I backed it up with an explanation that could be challenged and a link to further data. Simply saying that I am wrong, even though Pinker seems to have had a similar idea about this, with no explanation as to why I am wrong - is the ultimate throw away comment. Was Pinker wrong too? Margaret Last edited by Margaret McGhee; May 16th, 2006 at 09:55 AM.. |
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Re: Damasios: Professors of Creativity
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Although, Margaret, you rarely seem to be appreciative whenever I’ve gone out of my way to provide you with useful info in your quest, here again, caring guy that I am, is more of what you’re asking about from an exchange in early 2003 where JimB briefly discusses this area in response to a “Glenn,†and I also comment (And wouldn’t you agree that I’ve provided you with far more meaningful info than say TomJ ever has, except that I don’t sugarcoat my evaluations of your various “hypotheses ?â€)— Quote:
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Re: Damasios: Professors of Creativity
Fred, I have said before that you are a smart person. I enjoy discussing ideas with others who are respectful and honest in their motivation. I don't worry too much about their IQ as long as they meet those requirements. I'd say every one in this forum is smart enough to have valuable ideas worth considering.
Unfortunately, your smart mind is largely controlled by the strong emotions of your ideology regarding atheism and morality. Your personality has formed around those strong emotions of ideological identity. You can not have a discussion that you can not eventually turn toward affirming your ideology and / or falsifying competing ones. You are compelled to see every person in a discussion as either an ally, whom you will exhalt - or a bitter enemy, to be humiliated for their heresy. Ideology is not the same as ideas. Ideology is identity beliefs that are attached to very strong emotions and that have no inherent requirement to correspond to reality. The only value of non-ideological ideas is the relatively cool emotional value of their ability to accurately represent some reality. Having any discussion with you requires either feeding your strong ideological emotions - or being attacked by them. Every time I have tried (discussing) I always end up with knots in my stomach. The ideas that I was interested in always become trampled in the dirt of your ideological battlefield. I wish it was different - but I choose where in my life I compete. I do not compete with ideologues. I like ideas too much to debase them by using them to prove that I am more moral than someone else. Morality is exhibited with deeds, not words. My sense of morality requires that I respect others in a discussion, especially when I disagree with them. You make that impossible. Therefore you make discussion impossible. I wish you luck on your mission but you need to find another enabler. Margaret Last edited by Margaret McGhee; May 16th, 2006 at 08:52 PM.. |
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Re: Damasios: Professors of Creativity
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Try not to think of all this in terms of competition, or in terms of winning and losing. From what I know of your history, I can perhaps understand why you’re as sensitive as you are, but then we all have had our tribulations. The flaw in your “morality†is that in practice it’s exceedingly conditional—you say that you “respect others in a discussion [even when you] disagree with them,†but from what I’ve observed, whenever you feel that your own ideology/beliefs are being the least bit challenged/threatened, or you perceive that someone is behaving contrary to the dictates of that ideology, you automatically go into attack/accusation mode. Objectively review your posts and perhaps you’ll see the truth in what I’m saying . . . but then of course I may be completely wrong about all of this. |
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Re: Damasios: Professors of Creativity
Yes, the expected response. When someone get's called on being a bigot the most clever defense is to say, "See, by calling me a bigot aren't you being bigoted?" It's the same with ideologues (another form of bigotry), as you so well demonstrate - they will interpret any disagreement with them (or even an objection to bringing ideology into the discussion) as being equally ideological. After all, I am complaining about your ideology and participating in a argument with you that is ideological - and so you win either way.
And that's why I get angry with ideologues injecting their mission into a discussion- there's really no way to prevent that from wrecking the discussion. It will always lead to a raising of the emotional stakes until everyone is compelled to either leave (like Alexandra) or become ideological themselves in defense. But, I understand. You are psychologically compelled to do that. You are addicted to the neorotransmitters generated by the public discussion of your ideology. You can not live for a day without getting that chemical hit - and the angrier you can make any detractors, the stronger that hit is. You said, Quote:
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And, here we are again discussing who said what and why that was so nasty and, "doesn't that prove that your ideology is wrong". I imagine you're quite satisfied. As anyone can see, there is no defense from ideological attack in a discussion that doesn't hihjack the discussion - and that's why I get angry. As far as what you know about my history I assure you you have no idea what you're talking about. I have no problem discussing it. I'd invite you to flesh out your innuendos to expose your ignorance but then we'd again be doing anything but discussing EP and you win again. Your willingness to bring my gender identity in as a weapon for your mission is proof enough of the lengths that ideologues are willing to go, to campaign for their ideology. Perhaps you thought your clever google search had given you some kind of napalm to use on me. Did it not occur to you that if I didn't want anyone to know about my gender identity I could have simply used a fictitious name here? Gender identity does make for interesting discussions on its own (it is also part of evolutionary psychology) but it is definitely not a conversation I'd have with an ideologue. It's becoming obvious that you have driven away anyone who has interesting things to say in this forum and wants to say them in a non-confrontational way. After this last exchange I can see that my days here are running short - so you will have eliminated yet another heretic. Too bad, the idea for this forum was a good one - and there were so many things I wanted to discuss. But, enjoy your neurotransmitter hit, Fred. This is all about you now, as you so need it to be. Let's see what wonders your next post holds for us all - wonders that will show the world how clever you are and how your ideology represents ultimate truth in the universe. Margaret |
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