[From Bruce Gregory (2000.08.18.1120)]
Bill Powers (2000.08.18.0643 MDT)
Bruce Abbott (2000.08.17.2110 EST)--
Bruce Gregory (2000.0815.0515) --
Why should I be aware of anything?
Good question. Do you have an answer?
Perhaps one should start with a more basic question: _Am_ I aware of anything?
I'm almost convinced that not everyone has a specific experience of being
aware.
It is not clear to me that this statement means anything. (Not a hostile comment.
I'm just trying to understand your position.)
If one's experience does not include a sense of being an
experiencer,
I don't think one necessarily experiences one self as an experiencer. One
realizes that one's experiences are unique (as far as one knows) and realizes
that there must be a "one who experiences". It may be that the "one who
experiences" is the same in all "sentient beings". This is the position, as I
understand it, at the heart of Mahayana Buddhism.
then it must seem that the world exists Out There and one
simply reacts to it, directly.
And unconsciously? As when one "loses track" of where one is because one's
attention is elsewhere?
If this were the case, then certain ways of
talking about human experience would make more sense to me, and seem less
deliberately obtuse.
For example, B. F. Skinner spoke of _deducing_ what he was doing by
watching his own behavior. I forget just how he put it, but it was
something like this: if I see my hands raising a letter to the slot of a
mailbox and dropping it in, I can deduce that my purpose is to mail a letter.
That point of view is consistent with some of the split-brain studies and studies
based on post hypnotic suggestion that I've alluded to in the past.
Now that I write that, I see that it's not really an example of what I
mean. Skinner is clearly observing his own actions and reasoning about
them. On the other hand, maybe it is an example, for he seems not to notice
that he is observing and deducing. While he is doing the act, he seems
unaware that he is reporting thoughts of his own about experiences of his
own. The Reporter remains unmentioned and, apparently, invisible to
Skinner. The world is simply what he sees it to be, and he assumes that is
what any "objective observer" would see.
It is always possible that everyone else experiences the world differently that
we do, but I'm not betting on it.
On the other hand, it may be that this is a case of theory dominating
obnservation.
I can get behind that! It sure wouldn't be the first time (or the last).
There isn't supposed to be any little (or big) man in the
head, and internal processes are not supposed to have any causal influence
on real physical phenomena. Therefore no matter what one experiences, one
should never accept as real any experience that goes against these
theoretical concepts. Or at least one should never _say_ anything that goes
against them.
If you hear voices, learn to keep it to yourself!
-----------------------
If you are old enough to wear reading glasses, try threading
a needle without them. Notice what emotions, if any, you experience. If you
are anything like me, you experience frustration. Possibly mounting
frustration.
Are you saying that everyone who has trouble threading a needle because of
poor vision experiences the same emotion, an emotion called "frustration?"
No. Just that many of us have similar reactions to the experience of being unable
to thread a needle.
I think that different people would give different names to the emotion; a
seamstress too poor to afford glasses might experience fear as she sees her
ability to make a living threatened; an aging grandmother might experience
sorrow as she realizes she may not be able to finish her gift to a
grandchild; a shild with a low opinion of himself might experience
depression at this latest evidence of his own incompetence. Depending on
circumstances and indivdiual organization, failure to thread a needle might
give rise to cognitions and sensations that are called by any emotion-name
at all.
Agreed.
It might be useful to examine this emotion you call frustration and say
what its components are. There is surely a somatic component that you can
feel, a set of sensations or possibly changes in sensations from the body.
And there is surely some goal involved that is not being matched by
perception, quite likely at more than one level (as I intended to indicate
by the above examples: the fact that the thread is not in the eye of the
needle is not necessarily the only error).
Agreed.
I think the term "frustration" is an example of naming an emotion after the
circumstance in which it is felt. Frustration is the circumstance of being
prevented from achieving some end. I just looked in my dictionary, in fact,
and found that the first meaning of "frustrate" is "to prevent from
attaining a purpose." So to say that you feel frustrated is to say that you
feel prevented from attaining some purpose -- but that leaves undescribed
what it is that you actually feel, and what your highest-level frustrated
desire actually is. If a person in an MOL session were to tell me "I feel
frustrated," I would ask "How does it feel to be frustrated? Are there any
thoughts about it? Any physical sensations?" I would ask similar questions
about any report that an emotion was occurring: simply naming the emotion
is not the end of the matter. "You say you feel angry with John. Do you
feel an urge to do something to John? Are there any physical feelings that
go with this anger?"
One can ceratainly take this approach, but it is not clear to me what one learns
from it. Nevertheless, clarity may be its own reward.
"Emotion," at least as I see it, is not a primitive term. It's an informal
way of referring to what people feel and think when they need to act but
are unable to act successfully -- without saying what it is they acdtually
feel and think.
I cried at my father's funeral, but I'm not sure that I needed to act and was
unable to act successfully. I think Gerard Manley Hopkins may be right in this
case:
Spring and Fall
(to a young child)
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
BG
