Re: virus: Religion, Zen, post-structuralism, and the failure

Chitren Nursinghdass (Chitren.Nursinghdass@ens.insa-rennes.fr)
Fri, 13 Jun 1997 13:51:17 +0200


At 10:08 13/06/97 +0200, vous avez écrit:
>On Thu, 12 Jun 1997, David McFadzean wrote:
>
>> I fully realize that rationality is "just" a world view. It is "only"
>> good for understanding the world and making decisions. I also consider
>> rationality to be the unspoken rules of the game of mailing list discussions
>> (which is why I get rather frustrated when the other side feels free
>> to break the rules whenever they find it useful; imagine how long you
>> would play chess with someone like that).
>>
>> If you want to use some other worldview for anything at all, be my guest.
>> If you find faith useful, that's fine with me too. If you're insulted
because
>> I find faith fundamentally flawed and express those opinions (without
attacking
>> anyone, BTW), then maybe you should ask yourself why you are so defensive.
>

There are some interesting ideas to be had from Antonio D'amasio's
"Descartes' Error" and Joseph (?) LeDoux's biology of emotion article
or "The Emotional Brain" I think.

You can have a review of the first by none other than Dennett himself
on the Tufts University site and the second I read about on the site
known as "The Edge".

Basically, emotions and rational thinking are linked, the emotions
are a way to reduce the time spent in thinking before acting out.

You can consciously procrastinate the resort to emotions by rational
thinking.

Some psychopaths have a problem of linkage between the amygdala and the
hypothalamus which can explain their rational, methodical and logical
coherence and lack of (good) emotional feelings.

Yash.