<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Science and Morality</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> Hello everyone, Kelley wrote a lengthy reply to my objections about her posting to Nathan Newman, and Michael Yates.  It was an amusing posting in parts.  My contention was that strong feelings applied to a rule, represented moralizing.  I contend that a rule must be founded upon something other than strong feelings to be useful to us as lefties.  Feelings are fine by me, but not as a criteria for judging the efficacy of socialist policies.  I reject the rationalist theory that feelings can be withdrawn from thought to make objective judgements of the world.  Like Marx I see consciousness as shaped by feelings (subjective experience), and like Marx I reject the Christian-like method of using strong feelings attached to logically generated rules as the means of creating socialism. Kelley writes Thursday Oct 22/98: <TT>Emotions aren't merely physical responses located in the thalamus or wherever.  Emotions are socially constructed responses to experiences, which is to say--we learn how to feel love, hate, guilt, shame, sadness, happiness, whatever in certain sorts of ways Doyle I agree with this assertion. Kelley You could do same--'unpplugging' the ability to strategize ahead in it's 'self-interest' --to a computer.  Are humans merely number crunching computers Doyle?  Self interest is in scare quotes because it is a culturally prescribed way of interpreting how to play a game and what the goals are.  But anyway.... Doyle I hold connectionist views of consciousness.  So I reject number crunching as fundamentally wrong way to understand consciousness.  I reject mentalese.  I reject Chomskys universal grammar rule inherited in the mind.  Yet I would say that Chomsky was and is capable, using wrong views from my perspective, to make scientific progress concerning understanding "universal" principles embedded in speech acts. Kelley Yes, that would be because SnitgrrRl doesn't buy into the behavioral psychology lark, nor do I think that neurophysiology and neuropsychology are adequate bases upon which to construct an understanding of how society, and people in society, operates.  It's all stimulus and response. Doyle Behavioral psychology collapsed in the fifties with Chomskys' famous attack upon B. F. Skinner.  In essence Chomsky made the point the brain and consciousness could be explored by examining language.  Behavioral psychology represented a taboo in the sciences originally set-up by James at the beginning of the century about speculating about the black-box of consciousness.  When computing emerged in the forties, there were new tools available to consider consciousness.  The military in the U.S. jumped on this, and have directed much of the research in computing and neuro-science.   Doyle I believe neuro-science is moving rapidly toward an adequate basis of understanding the brain.  The meaning of that is still cloudy, but it does help at least to know the anatomy of the brain.  That means it is easier to distinguish certain kinds of claims.  I can much more easily understand what you assert Kelley when you use strong feelings as a basis to understand your consciousness claims.  That is why it looks like an attempt to define moralizing as thinking, when the two processes are different.  I can get that moralizing is historically an outgrowth of Christianity.  And I can get how feelings interact with the neo-cortex better than you seem to. Kelley Give Arlie Hochschild's _The Managed Heart_ a read.  Feelings aren't separate from conscious thought and they surely aren't separate from morality. Doyle I wrote emotions are not separate from consciousness.  You confuse the Christian concept of morality with consciousness.  That leaves you open to rigid and obsessive compulsive behavior since you can't distinguish that strong feelings aren't enough with respect to consciousness to guide our behavior.  This is a primary source of dogmatism in the left.  Dogma is the rules, and the strong feelings you associate with them make them morally right.  You can't account for different value systems arising from different life experiences giving strong feelings to incommensurate sets of rules.  Therefore your position is profoundly untenable with respect to even that you and I have incommensurate theories.  How do you resolve such differences?  What does your theory of morality have to say about resolving this conflict? Kelley In her study (Hochschild, added by Doyle here), she talked with people who'd undergone intense experiences--like the death of a loved one--and found that they didn't always feel sadness and, in fact, had to consciously think about and mobilize themselves to feel sadness because they had *learned* that they should feel sad. Doyle This statement acknowledges that feelings aren't attached to events in the way you understand them from other statements you have made in this thread of postings.  It complies with my statement just above.  So I am trying to sort through various kinds of contradictory understandings in you.  You can't both assert that shame is a tool to use in building working class consciousness and assert that feeling sad when death happens is contingent.  You have lost a sense of where contingent conditions shape feelings.  And you both say strong feelings, and a moral purpose are what is required to boycott Gallo, and strong feelings have contingent and unpredictable associations with thoughts.  You can't discern how feelings and rules are not consciousness.  You can't then understand moralizing apart from a Marxist sense of a dialectical process. Kelley You've attributed something to me  above that's just not the case:  that I think it all 'feeling' and then have assumed that I buy into some neuro-pysch explanation of feelings that are somehow outside of society and in some physical place in the body dominated by brain functions outside of our control.  Not the case.  Worse, you think that neuropsych is the only way to explain feelings and the capacity for reason.   Not the case, for me. Doyle You reject neuro-science.  Do you reject science?  How do you propose to discuss the mind except from a material basis?  Is that not Marxism?  You make the phrase, "Worse, you think that neuropsych is the only way to explain feelings and the capacity for reason.  Not the case, for me."  Worse in this case is a value judgement in a moral sense.  You ascribe the feelings of being at odds as worse.  It is not worse that we don't agree.  You confuse your morality with a dialectical fact of life.  It is as they say just the facts ma'am. Kelley Shame and guilt don't reside within the brain. Physical responses may occur there --and how exactly do you *really* know what you're studying in neuropsych research anyway Doyle. Doyle The scientific method is meant to reproduce research in material conditions.  We can all debate the meaning, and the debate produces understandings which advance human choices.  Roughly spoken.   Kelley But anyway, feeling/emotion doesn't reside in the brain or any other part of the physical body.    They are culturally defined responses that are "learned"  I drew on these terms as hueristic devices because I figured that Nathan could understand what I mean since they are culturally shared categories. Doyle Feeling/emotion doesn't reside in the body is absurd.  Try again.   Kelley If feelings resided exclusively w/in the brain, then we'd see shame and guilt exhibited by three year olds in this society.  We don't see that.   Doyle That is the purpose of a connectionist account of thinking.  To understand how the mind interconnects with the external world.  To end the absurd Cartesian mind body religio cultural shibolath.  So what is your point prove concerning my thinking? Doyle I will end here to keep this to manageable proportions.  Kelley if you want to continue this dialogue I will.  If you want me to finish answering the last posting I will.  I will of course respond to your remarks on this posting. regards, Doyle</TT> </BODY> </HTML>