Archive for the ‘Evaluceptology’ Category
Entry 1638 — Choice of Ethotactic, Part 3
Friday, November 21st, 2014
A Note to the Fore:
Please, Dear Reader, I implore thee: when you have read as much of this entry as you feel like reading, let me know whether you have found it worth reading in full or not by clicking “YES” or “NO” below. You would help me a great deal, and might even get me to make my entries more reader-friendly. (And for the love of Jayzuz, please don’t try to spare my feelings by politely declining to click the NO although you think the entry Vile Beyond Imagination. Oh, some of you may need to know that I am not asking you whether you agree with me or not!)
Note: I will be repeating this request in some of my entries to come. Feel free to click one of my buttons each time I do, but please don’t click either more than once a day.
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A new start. What I think I think now is that an ethotactic is any choice of action that is made fully or to a great extent on the basis of anthreval- uceptual input. Do I need to say more? Surely that clarifies the subject satisfactorily? (I’m exercising my wit here because I’m scared that if I go on, I’ll horribly bungle the amplification what I’ve just said requires. But my verboceptual awareness—along perhaps with some part of my scienceptual awareness—has convinced my socioceptual awareness, that I have a verosophical moral duty to expose my full thinking on this in spite of how bad my egoceptual awareness, trying to stop me, will feel about my exposing the lameness of my brain. More exactly, my evaluceptual awareness, which right now I think has offices in each of the rest of the cerebrum’s awarenesses as well as a brain area all to itself where it collects the votes pro and con about all the choices available to the behavraceptual awareness, where a final choice of action will generate the action the person involved takes.
You know, I truly do not know whether I’m making sense at all. I’m fairly sure that I have a good idea what I’m saying, but am also certain that I am over-simplifying what I think is occurring. Which may not be. Not that it matters, since I don’t think I can make any headway toward a reasonably intelligent rough description doing anything other than taking a series of very simple steps of description.
Note: it is at this point that I thought of constructing the YES/NO buttons above.
Okay, what happens in slightly more detail is that (1) a person experiences instacon A (i.e., “instant of consciousness A”), or the contents thereof, which I probably have a name for but can’t now recall. (2) Instacon A activates a number of possible actions out of the awarenesses participating in it. Let us say, for instance, that it contains data depicting an ant on his kitchen counter that activate cells in his visioceptual awareness (a sub-awareness of his protoceptual or fundaceptual awareness [whose name I haven’t permanently chosen], data activating cells representing “me, innocently going about my daily business, in the egoceptual sub-awareness of my anthroceptual awareness (I’m going into detail to try to keep things straight for myself), data activating cells in the socioceptual sub-awareness of my anthroceptual awareness representing “enemy deleteriously approaching my food,” data activating cells representing the word, “ant,” in the verboceptual sub-awareness of the linguiceptual sub-awareness of my reducticeptual awareness, and maybe data activating cells causing a barely perceptible reaction to fear of the sting of a fire ant.
All these active cells will send attempt to activate behavraceptual cells capable of causing appropriate behavioral responses like moving a hand that’s near the ant, carefully sliding a piece of paper under the ant and removing it from the house without injuring it, splotting the damned thing, or singing a song about “Aunt Delores,” if I knew one. Meanwhile, instacon A would probably have continuing sequences of information in it with nothing to do with the ant—something to do with why I’d come into the kitchen, for instance. Behavraceptual cells responsible for various appropriate behavioral responses (or behavioral responses that seem appropriate to me) would activate those responses.
In effect, they would vote for the action begun, or continued—make that actions, because we generally carry out more than one action during each instacon. Each activated cell or cell-group would try to send energy to the muscles or glands responsible for carrying out its desire. But much of that energy would be blocked by the greater energy another cell or cell-groups responsible for a behavior in conflict with the behavior the first cell or group was trying to cause. In other words, a lot of votes would be cast, and the evaluceptual awareness, where they were being cast, would determine which candidates receiving votes would win, and succeed in causing action. If any. For I may take no action, no cell or cell-group’s transmission being strong enough to cause me to do anything.I suspect that in this case, the word, “ant,” would make me say to myself, “Damned ants.” This would be an ethotactical response based on my perception of the ant as an intruder, and—possibly—my empathy for the robotic damned thing. Perhaps my laziness would be a factor, too. Would it have any ethical component? I think not. I think I would have a musclaceptual reaction of “don’t squash, too much work” that would be purely, amorally, protoceptual—i.e., having to do with my desire not to exert myself, nothing else.
Which suggests a question to me: can something a person does with no ethical intentions be ethotactical?
TO BE CONTINUED
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Entry 1599 — Evaluceptology Update
Monday, October 13th, 2014
Almost fifty years ago, I thought I’d worked out a first-rate theory of pain and pleasure. I believed there were just one kind of pleasure, caused by anything familiar but not too familiar, and two kinds of pain, caused either by that which was too unfamiliar or that which was too familiar. There was also that which caused nothing in particular which I didn’t bother with.
My theory was simple, but I worked out actual brain mechanisms that would monitor what we were aware of and tag it pleasurable, painful or neither.
I’m not sure when I finally accepted two other kinds of pain and pleasure: physical pain and pleasure. Ten or fifteen years later, I guess. I have bias for maximal simplicity, so had worked out ways of considering a bee-sting, for example, “unfamiliar,” so not causing a special kind of pain. Absurd. It caused reflexive, physical pain. So now I had five “evaluceptual” sensations (i.e., sensations of our body’s “evaluation” its stimulus’s place on the pain-to-pleasure continuum): physical pleasure and pain, and cerebral pleasure, pain and boredom.
I’m writing about this now (Columbus Day) because a day or two ago I realized my theory didn’t explain certain kinds of pleasure and pain. Today I’m adding them to my list as the pleasure one gets as one closes in on and attains the goal of one of the hum drives like the hunger drive, or the exploratory drive, and the pain one gets as one failing to close in on and attain such a goal. My Columbus Day discovery, 2014. What’s most interesting about it, it seems to me, is that it took me so long to realize the need for it. Not very encouraging. What other huge holes are there in my theory I’ve been oblivious to?
Note: this is a serious entry . . . but it is also a joke since I know no one will have any interest in it. Meanwhile, I will be in (and out of, I hope) a surgical clinic today (13 October) Urinary bladder stone.
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Entry 1435 — Exaltation
Saturday, April 26th, 2014
I’ve been thinking about exaltation this morning–because I seem unable to achieve it, even by taking a hydrocodone! Aside from that, I was wondering about how different it is from most other human pleasures–so different that I can’t compare it to any other. I guess that’s because it’s cerebral rather than physical. Is it the only cerebral pleasure? I consider it to be a sense of ultimate satisfaction that feels pretty much the same regardless of its source, which may be beauty, triumphancy, kincognition, verity–basically a feeling that one is king of some important domain (with or without subjects). Mini-megalomania. (Hey, my spell-check program didn’t tag that an error. And I thought no one whoever writes spell-check programs would know would think in terms of degrees of megalomania, or anything else.)
I continue to believe that, evaluceptually speaking, there are only pain and pleasure, albeit in a wide range of intensities. But each physical evalucept comes flavored by its source–to make a sexual evalucept extremely different from a gustatory evalucept, and a gustatory evalucept caused by strawberry ice cream quite different from a gustatory evalucept caused by an equally pleasurable (or unpleasant) roast beef sandwich.
I tend to think exaltation lasts longer and involves more of the brain that any other pleasure–but is not as intense as sexual pleasure, say, or the pleasure of a simple glass of water to someone close to dying of thirst.
I just thought of love, which I would consider a combination of kincognition and sexual pleasure. Probably many of the highest forms of pleasure are combinations of two or more different pleasures.
Just a few beginning explorations of the subject to get this entry out of the way, so I can concentrate on My Final Adventure.
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