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Bluewing thinks Feeling has cooties

TrueHeart

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Interesting input from the Ambassador from the planet Vulcan.
 

Night

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The problem is that with disciplines like game or chaos theory, one always comes up against the the asymptote of infinite variability. It becomes easier to resort to Dao De Jing-like apothegms which glibly pronounce on whole fields of inquiry with cutely-phrased aporias or insoluble dilemmas.

Exactly.

Less isn't always more. ;)
 
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I don't think Bluewing's 'fighting' emotions or feelings. He's trying to cope with their frequent unmanageability by understanding them better.... he's not a robot, and neither are Night or I or Sunshine or anyone....

The point Bluewing was making was that dispassionate thinking can often rid our discussions and dialogues of a lot of unnecessary dross and clear the way for more important thinking. So, for instance, the issue of weasel-words is a good example:

Weasel word - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 

Sunshine

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Am I going to have to quote the dictionary again? I don't care if people want to talk about how useful logic and impersonal analysis is but I do care when people start spreading incorrect information. This is a learning community, the point is to learn not to be confused. Perhaps I'll start a thread where I really dive into what Feeling is and how it works and have feelers comment.
 

Nocapszy

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You people make me sad.



Why do you cooperate with BlueWing?
 
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Instead of lambasting Bluewing why don't you all just provide an alternative definition of the Feeling function? He's basing much of his original post on the idea that Feeling function can be boiled down to placing value-judgments on percepts. Much of what he's saying does follow, though I myself have argued with other points, or attempted to qualify his argument...

So... instead of lamenting how sad this thread is, why don't you make all of us happy and tell us what feeling is and how it can be defended from a radical policy mounted against it?
 

Nocapszy

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Nicely theorized.

Reason is not a singular intellectual tree - neither is emotion. Our brains cannot clinically divorce one from the other, as one would select an apple from a pear. Conscious efforts to magnify either for a sustained period are not without infection - emotion is but evolved instinct; logic but a mechanical description of falsifiable event. The fusion of these schools is what we commonly describe as one's psychological makeup and is impossibly linked the inherent sustainability of the individual to use both accurately and appropriately.

Laying values aside for the purpose of mutual gain presuposes that reason is inherently able to generate the best-fitting solution to any paradigm; that emotion will create summary failure.

This isn't the case.

Surely we can put emotions aside long enough to figure out what's truly going on...

Just because we can't permanently escape emotional reactions doesn't mean every logical architecture is to be ruined by the intrusion of emotion.

We can't escape gravity, but we can leave the earth.
 
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I am most in agreement with Night's (biologically-inspired?) definition of emotion as evolved instinct... I interpret this to mean that feeling can be seen as an adaptive mechanism, a means of dealing with the world... our manner of responding to the world. But in light of our self-reflexive thinking, emotion/feeling means more to us than adaptation... it gives us a raison d'etre.

I'm not a believer in Genesis, but I love how in it God creates the elements of our cosmos and then pronounces them 'Good.' Without a feeling function, we couldn't enjoy our successes or mourn our failures, or feel inspired to go through hours and weeks and years and centuries of drudgery when trying to solve infinite series or figure out just what the hell relativity means for our physical universe... or quantum mechanics, how it could change computing and our standard of living.
 

Night

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Surely we can put emotions aside long enough to figure out what's truly going on...

Just because we can't permanently escape emotional reactions doesn't mean every logical architecture is to be ruined by the intrusion of emotion.

We can't escape gravity, but we can leave the earth.

This is very true, Nocapszy. Very true indeed.

The thing with gravity is that it is a digit; an extension of interdimensionality.

1 is a point
2 is a line
3 is a cube
4 is spacetime
5 is gravitometric energy

5 depends on 1-4 for atoms; cells; volume and location.

It just wouldn't be the same without them.
 

reason

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I disagree, Bluewing... for the simple reason that in every logical argument there must be premises, axioms, which govern the inferential steps which ensue. These foundational statements of accepted truths and governing principles, the premises/axioms which undergird all logical thinking thereafter, must be based in some part on a value judgment.
How can that which undergrids all be based upon anything?
 
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I think a problem here is that we're confusing monotonic and non-monotonic logics... the Feeling function is imperative in a non-monotonic logic, where one new proposition can overturn an entire system and affect the truth-values of the other propositions at hand... also, we're dealing with non-monotonic systems because we have to accept best-fit hypotheses and provisional conclusions in an attempt to further our knowledge. We don't have a monotonic, foundational progression into new knowledge.
 
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Okaaayyy.

I'll take that as gladsome assent. I'll also point out I edited my post, so instead of simply reading:

"Because it's a primitive value." it now reads "If it's a primitive value then it's self-supporting."

That should make my point clearer. Primitive values are the unmoved movers of logic.
 

Orangey

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I think a problem here is that we're confusing monotonic and non-monotonic logics... the Feeling function is imperative in a non-monotonic logic, where one new proposition can overturn an entire system and affect the truth-values of the other propositions at hand... also, we're dealing with non-monotonic systems because we have to accept best-fit hypotheses and provisional conclusions in an attempt to further our knowledge. We don't have a monotonic, foundational progression into new knowledge.

Why would non-monotonic logic involve the feeling function any more than monotonic logic? The fact that gaining new information can reduce the set of what is known in a non-monotonic logic system doesn't really have anything to do with judgments of value, which to my knowledge is the domain of the feeling function.
 

reason

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I think a problem here is that we're confusing monotonic and non-monotonic logics...
There are many problems here and many causes of confusion. This is not one of them, or at least it wasn't until wrote a message about it.
 

Little Linguist

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My biggest fear, Bluewing, is that the sort of dispassionate thinking you are forwarding is found only in the domain of a handful of people... higher academics, yogis, people with a deep understanding of themselves...

Meaning, imagine that I had great difficulty divorcing myself from many of the prejudices of my society until I developed deeper emotional understanding of myself.... this deeper emotional understanding of myself allowed me to more fully embrace and/or explore philosophies and thought-systems that thitherto would have been alien or downright noxious to my own. Contrariwise, most people are very grounded in their beliefs and haven't even the inclination to attempt such a revolution of understanding in themselves.

I mean, we have as much proof as one could possibly need for a landing on the moon, and there are disbelievers. There has been so much research done on animal emotion, and yet many people persist in believing that animals don't have feelings (they remind me of those Medieval 'scientists' who would lacerate and torture dogs and marvel at the mechanical complexity of the anatomy which produced sounds which resembled cries of pain with such verisimilitude...)

People believe what they want to believe?

I see Plato attempting to run a nation-state and quickly running for his life...

Very, VERY good point! That's exactly what I was thinking and attempting to illustrate. :D
 
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