Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 08:54:46 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: about Hugh vs Justin


Yo Thaxalites!

Briefly:

Jukka writes:

>> With humans it's different. We can not only be aware of our emotional
>> states but also articulate them conceptually. But surely you aren't
>> saying that this (in a loose sense) cognitive surplus is somehow part
>> of the emotion?
>
>Absolutely. As Rousseau points out, it's a peculiarly human ability to be
>able to have emotions about things that we could even grasp without
>language, such as, the worry about gloabl warming leading to ecodisaster
>or the concern that one's spouse will find out about one's lover.

Justin is meaningless here unless we insert a NOT for him before the even,
in which case he wrote:

>Absolutely. As Rousseau points out, it's a peculiarly human ability to be
>able to have emotions about things that we could NOT even grasp without
>language, such as, the worry about gloabl warming leading to ecodisaster
>or the concern that one's spouse will find out about one's lover.

This is interesting. The Swedish poet Gunnar Ekel=F6f writes that people are
"ett taenkande kaensloliv" -- a thinking emotional organism. So we're into
priorities. Justin forces the thought together with the emotion. I'm
inclined to start more from Jukka's position here, and give emotions the
same status as the process of thinking, rather than the thought or concept
which is the product of thinking. When we are aware of en emotion we can
begin to conceptualize it, make it into a perceptible object that we can
process consciously using language and logic, but this is an *image* of the
emotion, not the emotion itself. hence the unconscious becomes a very real
possibility, and the well-known difficulties of first recognizing and
acknowledging our emotions, and second doing something about the ones we
consider harmful follow as sure as sunset follows sunrise (unless of course
you're going west very fast indeed...)


> And besides, what about emotional states that we
>> 'repress' into 'unconscious' and let their energy or force enter
>> consciousness only as modified or transformed? How the original "real"
>> emotion can be conceptual if we cannot be aware of it?
>
>Therea rea  lot of difficulties with the notion of the unconscious. How
>can be have mental states at all of which we cannot be aware?

Well, as I said above, the problem is how you see emotions, as product
states or as processes. Justin is somehow very very hung up about being
aware of everything happening to him. This is utopian, even if it's
understandable. It's the kind of anxiety I'd immediately associate with
death anxiety -- the fear is, that if you let conscious control slip for
even an instant, you disappear into the void. There are many ramifications
to this, including class positions, that I'll save for another time.
Suffice it to say that Justin's view of the mind tends towards the narrow
and to end up a strange mish-mash of behaviourist and rationalist.

>>>The issue between H and myself here was whether I can know
>>> the contents of my own mind. "
>>
>> And my concern are the questions: Is it really *knowledge* and
>> *knowing* when we are *aware* of the contents of our minds?
>
>Why not? Maybe your thought is that it's different to havea  thought than
>to know I have a thought. But I am aware taht I have a thought, I have
>that much self-consciousness about my inner state, what's the problemw ith
>saying that I know I have it, if I do have it?

Jukka is on the classic ground here when he asks "Is it *really* knowledge"
when we are aware of the contents of our minds?" And Justin's answer is
pretty vulgar (begging the queston of differentiation between various kinds
of knowledge).


> How
>> it can be proved to be true?
>
>Normally that sort of belief is self-verifying. ASk more pertinently, how
>can it be proved _false_? Here's an example. Say I think I love my work.
>But it's pointed out tome that I shirk, come in late, leave early, spend
>all my time at work reading the mail and playing computer games, etc. It
>can be reasonbaly inferred taht my belief about my love for my work is false.

Another thing Justin hates is contradiction, as this passage shows. If I
claim to love my work, and do all the things Justin lists, maybe I have a
contradictory attitude towards it. Like a dose of masochism. I love my
work, but I love more the thrill of disobeying and provoking the risk of
punishment. But this brings in the idea of the unconscious, which the
behaviourist in Justin recoils from, and the inchoate and inarticulate
nature of the emotions, which the rationalist in Justin recoils from. Let
all good Thaxalites search their inner selves and ransack their consciences
on this one.

To round off -- Justin thinks the notion of the transcendental in Kant is
weird, but Jukka doesn't. I'd like a short explanation from Jukka about
this.

ciao4now,

Hugh




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