The Second Apocalypse

Earwa => General Earwa => Topic started by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:31:40 pm

Title: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:31:40 pm
Quote from: Bakker User
Bakker frequently has recommended Cordelia Fine's A Mind of its Own. One of the vignettes presented therein is of a patient known as EVR. This EVR suffered brain damage that hindered his ability to process and feel emotion. The result was a near-incapacity to make practical decisions.

The implication, explored in this (http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/Pages/Emot.Decis.html) essay, is that emotion is vital to decision-making, not least because emotion is strongly tied to value; without emotion, all items suddenly acquire the same value - null. So, to concretize it, if all items have the same value, then when choosing a restaurant to eat at, how could one weigh cost, atmosphere, proximity, cuisine, health-and-cleanliness, etc.? If it's all the same to you, rationality leads to everything and nothing...

So Bakker must be aware of all this, yes?
*****
We've all noted that the Dunyain have history and culture, I think.

We've noted Kellhus' confusion during his Wilderness Trek and his daddy issues.

So let's make it explicit. Do the Dunyain feel emotion?

There are four instances in the PoN I can recall in which it is (potentially) implied that Kellhus feels emotion:

*Possibly when Kellhus spares Cnaiur - I  think this has been touched upon by others
*The crucifixion/circumfixion and Serwe's death - could be delirium
*Momentarily, when Aurax nearly seduces him (with pheremones?) in the guise of Esmenet
*This is the most telling, I believe: when Esmi is pregnant and the Holy War is in Caraskand, she nearly falls down a chasm; Kellhus notes that the fall would have been fatal and, just before he saves her, feels lightheaded

******

Now, for Neil and Sam in Neuropath: they've supposedly had the capacity to feel emotion excised from them, yet we see many outbursts and expressions of passion and excitement from them. Should we really take all this as an act (which could possibly rquire emotion anyway, in the terms outlined earlier)?

Why would Neil pursue this Argument if he didn't possess some strong attachment to it? To make a point to the world? Well, then that has some value to him.

Not least: when

(click to show/hide)


Could Bakker be getting at something here?
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:31:51 pm
Quote from: Curethan
Can't really coment on Fine or Neuropath cuz I aint read them.
But Kellhus' whelming illustrated to me that it was about mastering emotions (because they are a product of the darkness) in place of eliminating them.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:31:56 pm
Quote from: Bakker User
Alright, I hadn't considered that. I can't locate the passage on his training, but it seemed to me as though it's meant to Condition numbness into them, make them insensate to pains and fears and by extension anything else.

But I could see your point reflected in the children of Kellhus and Esmenet: though Theliopa's interesting, and Cayutas we don't see beyond the facade of, the emotional volatility of the loony and the twins makes more sense as a portrayal of the consequences of a lack of control in Dunyain...

Though the biggest counter, as I see it, is that in Earwa the non-physical soul actually exists. That certainly throws a wrench into the neuroscience.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:32:02 pm
Quote from: Madness
Some thoughts, Bakker User.

From my old Emotion & Motivation notes:

"1. Actions. Emotions are actions commonly deemed "emotional," such as defending or attacking in response to a threat. This aspect of emotion is especially relevant to Darwin's view of the functional roles of emotion. He suggested that emotions have an important survival role because they aid in generating appropriate reactions to "emergency" events in the environment, such as the sudden appearance of a predator.

2. Physiological arousal. Emotion is a state of physiological arousal--an expression or display of distinctive somatic and autonomic responses. This emphasis suggests that emotional states can be defined by particular constellations of bodily responses. The physiological arousal that accompanies emotion allows us to examine emotion in nonhuman animals as well as in human beings.

3.  Feeling/Cognition. Emotion is a representation of an internal state (feeling - type of percept) that is private and subjective. Humans can report an extraordinary range of states, which they say they "feel" or experience. These reports of subjective experience - cognitions - may or may not have overt (behavioural) indicators."

The idea is that our emotional expression (internal and external) communicate things about our biological state to our selves and those around us. It's why Kellhus can assume people's thoughts from their circumstances and emotive facial, linguistic, and kinetic expressive behaviours so easily.

Those basic or universal emotions that seem to be shared by all humans, regardless of culture, are the expression of evolved traits. Possibly easier to change than your opposable thumb but just as aquired - though I guess we can break both quite easily.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:32:08 pm
Quote from: Bakker User
1 & 2 seem inextricable, right? And from a reductionistic perspective, 2 & 3 would be as well?

So, I'm confused: did this EVR lack the capacity for 2, for 3, or for both? It's not clear to me from my reading on him.

Kellhus: 2. Seems to have learned to generally suppress these.

3. Exercises superhuman "self-control".

Neil: 2. Not clear.

3. Disabled through neuromanipulation.

So if I have this right... wait, so what permits Neil to formulate objectives beyond "piss", "get food", and reflexive actions?

***

Kellhus and Emotion

Even if my position on Kellhus turns out to have been muddled, I'm still interested in perspectives on this scene:

Quote
This is the most telling, I believe: when Esmi is pregnant and the Holy War is in Caraskand, she nearly falls down a chasm; Kellhus notes that the fall would have been fatal and, just before he saves her, feels lightheaded

A rare burst of #2 activity that nearly hinders him?
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:32:14 pm
Quote from: Madness
The above notes are kind of the synthesis of all the previously dominant theories, Bakker User.

I'll have to revisit the relevant parts of A Mind of Its Own.

"With additional studies, the researchers conclude that EVR had no internal goal representation. In order for goals to remain stable for EVR, they had to be represented externally and repeatedly. Otherwise, '...it was as if he forgot to remember short- and intermediate- term goals.... He couldn't keep a problem in perspective in relation to other goals.'(1985, p.1737).

The somatic marker hypothesis is presented by Damasio to explain these experimental findings. The hypothesis is that bodily feelings normally accompany our representations of the anticipated outcomes of options. In other words, feelings mark response options to real or simulated decisions. Somatic markers serve as an automatic device to speed one to select biologically advantageous options. Those options that are left unmarked are omitted in the decision-making process. (2) Damasio suggests that patients with frontal lobe damage fail to activate these somatic markers which are directly linked to punishment and reward, and originate in previously experienced social situations. EVR's decision making defect is explained by an inability to activate somatic states when ordinary decisions arise; by an inability to mark the implications of a social situation with a signal that would separate good and bad options. (3) EVR was therefore trapped in a never-ending cost-benefit analysis of numerous and conflicting options. In the absence of emotional markers, decision making is virtually impossible" http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/Pages/Emot.Decis.html

I'd hazard that EVR symptoms are consistent with damage in the connections between cortical divisions. Perhaps, a disconnect between 1, 2 & 3, so that EVR never experiences 3.

As a segue; modern research pretty much focuses on affective valence when shop-talking emotions.

EDIT: Also, Bakker User, you missed when Cnaiur rapes Serwe in TDTCB before Kellhus.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:32:20 pm
Quote from: Bakker User
Quote
(3) EVR was therefore trapped in a never-ending cost-benefit analysis of numerous and conflicting options. In the absence of emotional markers, decision making is virtually impossible

I 'love' those lines.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:32:27 pm
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote from: Bakker User
*Possibly when Kellhus spares Cnaiur - I  think this has been touched upon by others
*The crucifixion/circumfixion and Serwe's death - could be delirium
*Momentarily, when Aurax nearly seduces him (with pheremones?) in the guise of Esmenet
*This is the most telling, I believe: when Esmi is pregnant and the Holy War is in Caraskand, she nearly falls down a chasm; Kellhus notes that the fall would have been fatal and, just before he saves her, feels lightheaded
There's also the scene where he has his eyes closed but didn't notice.

And in regard to the subject, there's the scene where he finds a twig in his sandal and stares at it blankly for hours before it falls from his fingers -
(click to show/hide)

Your point is one of the big issues I have with the booksas to what remains that drives a Dunyain? Through the book I almost continually rage that we don't get into this meat!!!! GRRRRRR!!!! Like the most teasing flag ever! Grrr!
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:32:32 pm
Quote from: bbaztek
Isn't what drives a dunyain their mission to become a self-moving soul? Everything else is a step in that direction, tools to help facilitate that state of being. As for what a dunyain might want to do after attaining the Absolute, it's folly to try and comprehend what might make a being that has mastered causality tick. It is so far beyond our frame of reference as human beings it's like trying to teach calculus to a frog.

edit: also it was aurang that possessed esmi in TTT. i can feel my neckbeard thickening just posting this
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:32:38 pm
Quote from: Callan S.
That describes the intellectual outline of the goal. It does not describe the passion behind it.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:32:43 pm
Quote from: bbaztek
A dunyain that has mastered the flow of causality is existing in a spontaneous state of being. It's something like being one with the Tao in Taoism and many eastern traditions. There is no emotional impetus in this mode of consciousness, or at least there are no emotional attachments. I'm not saying eastern philosophy will make you a dunyain, but it is possible to train the mind to perceive from a non-emotional vantage. Add 2,000 years of selective breeding and specialized training and Kellhus & Moe don't seem that far-fetched. I recall Bakker describing Kellhus in terms of an AI in one interview, actually.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:32:47 pm
Quote from: Curethan
There are some extra quotes I added to the Currated Sayings Of Cu'jara Cinmoi thread (under Dunyain) that seem pertinent.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:32:52 pm
Quote from: Callan S.
Earwa already seems to percieve from a non emotional perspective, in as much as it is indifferent to the pleas of men (unless they happen to be sorcerers, then it begins to listen)
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:32:57 pm
Quote from: Auriga
Quote from: Bakker User
*Possibly when Kellhus spares Cnaiur - I  think this has been touched upon by others
*The crucifixion/circumfixion and Serwe's death - could be delirium
*Momentarily, when Aurax nearly seduces him (with pheremones?) in the guise of Esmenet
*This is the most telling, I believe: when Esmi is pregnant and the Holy War is in Caraskand, she nearly falls down a chasm; Kellhus notes that the fall would have been fatal and, just before he saves her, feels lightheaded

You forgot the first scene where he feels emotion, when Serwë is raped by Cnaiur in front of him. He feels something move inside him, although he's not sure what it is. Father, what is this I am feeling? He's never felt empathy before, so he can't quite place it. After a while, the strange feeling - or rather a spark of feeling, a rough approximation of empathy that hasn't been fully bred out of the Dûnyain - is gone, and everything is like normal again.

I haven't read Neuropath, so I can't comment on that.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:33:03 pm
Quote from: bbaztek
Quote from: Callan S.
Earwa already seems to percieve from a non emotional perspective, in as much as it is indifferent to the pleas of men (unless they happen to be sorcerers, then it begins to listen)

You can say the same about our own objective reality, which is why Tao comparisons are so appropriate. Except Taoists are more concerned with harmonizing oneself with the ebb and flow of circumstance, as opposed to forcibly controlling it like a Dunyain. Perhaps the Dunyain are the logical endpoint of man's evolution; ie a rational creature that can upend and manipulate the natural order that birthed it.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:33:09 pm
Quote from: Madness
+1 Auriga.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:33:14 pm
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote from: Auriga
Quote from: Bakker User
*Possibly when Kellhus spares Cnaiur - I  think this has been touched upon by others
*The crucifixion/circumfixion and Serwe's death - could be delirium
*Momentarily, when Aurax nearly seduces him (with pheremones?) in the guise of Esmenet
*This is the most telling, I believe: when Esmi is pregnant and the Holy War is in Caraskand, she nearly falls down a chasm; Kellhus notes that the fall would have been fatal and, just before he saves her, feels lightheaded

You forgot the first scene where he feels emotion, when Serwë is raped by Cnaiur in front of him. He feels something move inside him, although he's not sure what it is. Father, what is this I am feeling? He's never felt empathy before, so he can't quite place it. After a while, the strange feeling - or rather a spark of feeling, a rough approximation of empathy that hasn't been fully bred out of the Dûnyain - is gone, and everything is like normal again.

I haven't read Neuropath, so I can't comment on that.
It's probably his feeling, but I read that part as him actually detecting the worlds feeling about the event. The world does feel this crime - his empathy is to have detected the worlds responce. Perhaps ignoring human emotion simply let the signal that is the worlds emotion slip through.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:33:19 pm
Quote from: bbaztek
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote from: Auriga
It's probably his feeling, but I read that part as him actually detecting the worlds feeling about the event. The world does feel this crime - his empathy is to have detected the worlds responce. Perhaps ignoring human emotion simply let the signal that is the worlds emotion slip through.

Perhaps this also has to do with blindness, and how it makes one more receptive to the soul, or passion, of God. In the prologue when the creepy bard priest guy was touching that kid it even says "tears only fell from his blind eye".
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:33:24 pm
Quote from: Callan S.
I think alot may have been given away in that prologue somehow, so probably indeed!

Might be off topic, but I remember Akka paying off his child messenger runner, and an unaccountable sadness occurs when his hand brushes the childs hand in passing the coin to him.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:33:28 pm
Quote from: lockesnow
Is he feeling emotion? or is he identifying a third party that is outraged?
Quote
Kellhus watched while the Scylvendi took her again. With her whimpers, her suffocated cries, it seemed the ground beneath slowly spun, as though stars had stopped their cycle and the earth had begun to wheel instead.
There was something . . . something here, he could sense. Something outraged. From what darkness had this come?
Something is happening to me, Father.

Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 383). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

But as always we should remember how much Kellhus' self-deceptions go.

Quote
Kellhus had refashioned himself over the past several weeks. The forest was no longer the stupefying cacophony it had once been. Sobel was a land of winter caribou, sable, beaver, and marten. Amber slumbered in her ground. Bare stone lay clean beneath her sky, and her lakes were silver with fish. There was nothing more, nothing worthy of awe or dread.

Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 19). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Quote
From the heights, Kellhus looked south across the winter forests. Ishuäl lay somewhere behind him, hidden in the glacial mountains. Before him lay a pilgrimage through a world of men bound by arbitrary custom, by the endless repetition of tribal lies. He would come to them as one awake. He would shelter in the hollows of their ignorance, and through truth he would make them his instruments. He was Dûnyain, one of the Conditioned, and he would possess all peoples, all circumstances. He would come before.

Bakker, R. Scott (2008-09-02). The Darkness that Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing) (p. 20). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Kellhus is aware of how he has blinded and deafened himself to the world, and sleep through all its meanings, and the very next page he brags to himself how awake he is--one page after he's bragged about making himself asleep he brags about being awake.  Very deceived, he is. Which is it?
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:33:33 pm
Quote from: bbaztek
Quote from: lockesnow
Kellhus is aware of how he has blinded and deafened himself to the world, and sleep through all its meanings, and the very next page he brags to himself how awake he is--one page after he's bragged about making himself asleep he brags about being awake.  Very deceived, he is. Which is it?

I believe those passages indicate Kellhus had acclimated himself to the barrage of stimuli that overpowered his dunyain training when he first entered the wilderness around Ishual. Too lazy to look now but there's a line very early in about all that dunyain hoo-ha evaporating as he takes in the scenery and becomes engrossed in his surroundings. Curiously, this is also where he spends half a day looking at an innocuous twig (?) before resuming his course. WHAT DOES IT MEAN BAKKER YOU SLY DOG
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:33:38 pm
Quote from: Madness
Lol.

I too read Kellhus' emotional spontaneity as novel interactions with the world.

But as Callan and lockesnow have suggested, in light of, TAE, it's likely a third party, Fate/World, or God's objection.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:33:42 pm
Quote from: Callan S.
I kind of read it as an autism he had to find a way around - but why? Why not be entrenched in a branching, infinite analysis web? What makes one path more green?

Quote from: bbaztek
Curiously, this is also where he spends half a day looking at an innocuous twig (?) before resuming his course. WHAT DOES IT MEAN BAKKER YOU SLY DOG
When he gets to Shimeh, the twig returns!
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:33:47 pm
Quote from: bbaztek
perhaps as kellhus strips away at his own personal darkness that comes before, or in other words the "local" movers of his soul, he is able to more clearly comprehend the prime mover, ie God. Because dunyain principle does not accommodate the existence of supernatural agencies, they might have underestimated the effect novel stimuli would have on a prodigy like Kellhus, and so Kellhus goes beyond just grasping the Absolute and actually enters a kind of communion with the God of Gods.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:33:51 pm
Quote from: lockesnow
except he discards it all as lacking meaning, rather explicitly.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:33:58 pm
Quote from: Madness
This passage always makes me share Curethan's thoughts that Kellhus could grasp the God of Gods as coming before everything:

"He saw not ceilings but distributions of hanging weights. He saw not walls but fears, a pageant of real and imagined enemies. He saw not a villa but a long-dead Imperial favor, the relic of a moribund race. Everywhere he turned, he apprehended the pillars among the pilasters, the ground beneath the scuffled floors...

Everywhere he looked, he saw what came before" (TTT, p307).
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:34:06 pm
Quote from: Wilshire
From that passage and a bit of interpolation I could see that conclusion.

Floor under the dirt -> Nonmen behind their creation -> -> God before his creation.


That which proceeds all creation would be that which comes before all the darkness... Grasping the Absolute would be the same as understanding the creator(s).
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:34:11 pm
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote from: lockesnow
except he discards it all as lacking meaning, rather explicitly.
The first, yes. The second twig - well, there was the mention of the dead branch of the twig - and its green branch. Also the rather heavy note that all trees in that area were dead.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:34:16 pm
Quote from: bbaztek
Quote from: lockesnow
except he discards it all as lacking meaning, rather explicitly.

the prologue cracks the door open just a tad, the circumfix breakdown blows it wide open, and by book 3 he's talking to rocks and twigs.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:34:20 pm
Quote from: Madness
Quote from: bbaztek
They might have underestimated the effect novel stimuli would have on a prodigy like Kellhus, and so Kellhus goes beyond just grasping the Absolute and actually enters a kind of communion with the God of Gods.

Didn't see this before when I was playing keep up before. +1

Though, I'm with Curethan, in that, WLW suggests that Kellhus believes or, at least, wants those around him to believe that that communion and grasping the Absolute are one in the same.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:34:27 pm
Quote from: bbaztek
Bear with me on this, but I believe the dunyain experience of reality is analogous to sorcery, in that members of both groups are born with a latent ability to perceive reality-as-it-is (the onta is described in the glossary as seeing "creation-as-created"), which eventually allows them to exercise considerable influence over their environment. Except the dunyain inhabit causality and shape events from within the system, sorcery is a direct influence on the onta without any intermediary step. Sort of fixing the engine in your car all by yourself vs. having some really good but batshit mechanic do it who plasters the hood of your car with ugly decals.

Maybe to escape damnation, the proto-dunyain needed to divorce all sorcerous connotation from the experience of the onta, so they retreated to Ishual and burned everything that had a whiff a sorcery on it. I don't know exactly what I'm trying to say here and how it plays into the overall themes of the series, but it's interesting to see how the desire to control reality can take such divergent and effective paths.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:34:34 pm
Quote from: Madness
I definitely feel like there is a proper pose to harness that perception, bbaztek.

As well the College of Luthymae would add to your metaphor - they probably share similar philosophies, cultivating their relationship with God's perception.
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:34:39 pm
Quote from: Duskweaver
Quote from: Madness
Luthymae
Anyone know where that name comes from, BTW?
Title: Re: Bakker and Emotion
Post by: What Came Before on May 14, 2013, 11:34:45 pm
Quote from: Madness
Nope. They're an interesting aspect of the books that is never really explored - they use their perception of the onta and its bruises to persecute the Few :shock: . Too cool. Fuck, I'm going to work on my Wizard hunting story :P.