[lit-ideas] Re: "many of the usual marks of emotion were present in their beh...
- From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 16:33:02 -0500
As JL points out, there's the problem of anthropomorphizing emotion in
animals (non-human animals, of course -- since human animals have already
been anthropomorphed). Humans, in fact are capable of "aping" a very wide
range of emotions -- the implicature being that humans are capable of
insincere emotional displays. Are any other animals? Is it possible for
animals to dissemble? I don't know. Could be. We tend to believe that
animals have no choice but to be honest in their behaviors, and in the
expressions accompanying such behaviors. Maybe. I wonder if animals
always take our motives at face value as we do them. One contrary to all
this is the fact that opossums can "play" dead -- the implicature here is
that they cannot "play" alive -- I call it an implicature, don't know what
Grice would call it. Don't care either. How about them apples, JL? Never
has anyone ever seen a dead opossum "play" alive. In fact, never has any
animal (including humans) ever fooled anyone by playing alive. However, I
know a guy down the street who once came upon was a huge "dead rat", "Lord
God" he says he said, "I'll be damned if that ain't the biggest damn rat I
ever seen." Being of a Whitmanian religious bent, he naturally raised his
hands and prayed to God to bless the poor, dead, giant rat's soul.
Whereupon the "dead rat" stood up and sauntered off. To this day he swears
he raised that rat from the dead. Most claim it was just an old opossum.
His running rumming buddy Bo dismisses it all. "Naw," he says, "that rat
was just playing alive."
Mike Geary
who, playing the Play Maker in Memphis,
is taking time off from human contact to
finish a play.
Later Dudesses and Dudes
On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 9:53 PM, <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> In a message dated 3/10/2014 5:31:11 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
> In Russell's Analysis of Mind, Chapter XIV, we encounter this passage:
> Sherrington, by experiments on dogs, showed that many of the usual marks
> of emotion were present in their behaviour even when, by severing the
> spinal
> cord in the lower cervical region, the viscera were cut off from all
> communication with the brain, except that existing through certain cranial
> nerves. He mentions the various signs which "contributed to indicate the
> existence of an emotion as lively as the animal had ever shown us before
> the
> spinal operation had been made."* He infers that the physiological
> condition of
> the viscera cannot be the cause of the emotion displayed under such
> circumstances, and concludes: "We are forced back toward the likelihood
> that the
> visceral expression of emotion is SECONDARY to the cerebral action
> occurring
> with the psychical state.... We may with James accept visceral and organic
> sensations and the memories and associations of them as contributory to
> primitive emotion, but we must regard them as re-enforcing rather than as
> initiating the psychosis."*
> *I am more into cats than into dogs, but I wonder what were 'the usual
> marks of emotion' ? Did the dog still appear to love his benevolent
> master ?
> Would Russell and Sherrignton still exhibit 'many of the usual marks of
> emotion' in similar circumstances ?
>
> ---
>
> I believe Russell should have quote from Darwin,
>
> "The expression of emotion in man and animal"
>
> The title has a curious implicature: that man is not an animal, but still.
>
> It has nice illustrations.
>
> So I think it's EXPRESSION of emotion we need, not 'mark' of it.
>
> Mitchell Green has discussed this with regard to Grice as man/animal.
> Green's concern is Grice's frown (on occasion). If designed, it means x, if
> undesigned, it means y.
>
> And so on.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Speranza
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
> digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
>
Other related posts:
