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ajqtrz
Chef - loquacious Old Dog
I'm not sure from where this originally came, but @Iyapo quoted it in another thread and I thought it interesting enough to address it.
"Do these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are they the result of previous study?"
The thing is, as many philosophers have said, one can arrive at the same state of mind via several paths. One can arrive at a pleasant state because one just ate a nice meal and the more or less physical satisfaction of that meal is pleasant, one can arrive at a pleasant state because one has engaged in a nice social exchange (in words, generally speaking) and is satisfied with the interaction, and one can arrive a pleasant state by the discovery of new perspectives through contemplation. In other words, whatever "pleasing attentions" one gets, can come from many places. And, thus, those pleasing attentions can be delivered in many ways as well.
The quote, to me, is about a person's desire to please. The one questioning wonders about the depth of the attentions being given. Implied, I think, is a distinction between the immediacy of emotional response (the "impulse of the moment"), and the "previous study." The first, I think, may not be as permanent as the latter and thus, since one assumes the speaker values long term "pleasing attentions" over short term ones, is not to be preferred over the latter. And, in this, it would seem to me, the speaker is right. All of which is related to how we think.
When we respond to our environment we have a couple of things we do within our minds. First, we scan the environment not looking for things which we expect, but for what we don't expect. We live in anticipation of the next moments and expect them to be a certain way. We ignore anything and everything which is as we expect it, and focus on anything we don't expect. This is true of our physical environment, our social environment, and even our mental environment. The unexpected always gets first dibs on our attention.
Now, of course, this is necessary as the unexpected is probably from where harm is most likely to come. I'm walking down a path in a dark jungle and suddenly, and unexpectedly, I spot a long orange vertical stripe in the bushes. I had better pay attention as that long, unexpected orange stripe may be a tiger! So I pay attention. I find out it's a new plant with an orange stem. I am, thus, not afraid of it and go about my way. Now, the interesting thing is that the next time I walk this path I expect that plant to still be there and if it is, and if it's still orange, I hardly notice it because I anticipated it being there. We pay attention to what we don't anticipate.
So what the speaker is asking is if the "pleasing attentions" are the result of a sudden, probably unexpected, response, or if they are a part of a more permanent response based upon a longer history. Taking our tiger/flower example we find that if the one walking notices the plant at the first he/she might briefly consider it to be a tiger. But after passing it many times and observing it more closely, the walker may discover it has properties the walker might need. Like it is long, stiff, and useful as a walking stick. The walker's response and appreciation of the orange stripe grows as he/she encounters and studies it. The speaker quoted above is obviously wondering if the one providing the pleasing attentions is in the "might be a tiger mode" or the "studied" mode.
In the end then, thought is about experience and that which we experience becomes expected pretty fast. Walking through a new room you "map" that room without giving it a thought. Your mind does this and if you then, having passed through to another room, go back you have an expectation that the couch that was on the right as you entered will be on the left as your leave. Experiments have been done which moved the couch while the person was in the second room (and unable to see what was going on in the room with the couch, of course). When the person returned, depending on if the couch was moved or not, they would pause. They would pause and a look of confusion would cross their face if it was moved, but not if it wasn't. In other words, they had mapped the room the first time and upon re-entry, anticipated where the couch would be. When it was not, they attended to the unexpected change.
It has been found, in the same set of studies, that the more you change the room, the more the person will pause and become confused. And if you change it enough, they will actually stop and ask if they are leaving the same way they came in...even if the second room contained only one door!
Thus, the nature of thought is at least two fold. It is anticipatory and it is reactive. It anticipates and then reacts to the unanticipated. The reaction to the unanticipated is conscious thought. (There's also thought that attends to rehearsal, which is the recalling and remembering of things, but that is a minor group compared to what we usually are doing). The reactions we give to conscious thought, though, are usually based upon either our immediate impulses (which reflect, for the most part, our flight/fight instinct) or our personality -- how we categorize what we encounter.
The categorization and analysis of what we encounter is first survival. We attend to the unexpected and evaluate them as to our basic survival. Once that is past, if we find our survival is not in danger (this includes things like loss of income, prestige, etc, as well as physical survival), we move to place the encounter into our general matrix of understanding. The greater the surprise the greater the impact upon our matrix. Thus, the first course of action is to minimize the surprise and to account for it in the simplest of terms.
I sneeze. My first response is to ignore it. My experience is that sometimes we sneeze and there is nothing to worry about. Again, the surprise is minimized because I can easily account for it and it poses no real danger to my existence. If I sneeze a second time, though, I might look around and consider my environment. Are there flowers in the room? I am allergic to pollen. If there are flowers I move them to another room. If I continue to sneeze I might take a pill to lower my reaction. But if I keep sneezing I might seek medical help. In other words, we incorporate what we don't expect into our understanding with the least satisfactory explanation first, and only escalate our attention to it as the lower explanations/reactions fail to remove the dissonance.
Now think about this in terms of ideas you might encounter. You have some strongly held belief. You encounter somebody who believes the opposite. Depending on your circumstances you may be surprised that anybody could hold the opposite opinion, or you may have encountered it many times before. In either case if you enter into the discussion you'll probably begin with some simple, common, statements. I call them "mantras" and "memes" about the subject. This is mostly establishing the ground game of the discussion as it's about stating your opinion and he/she stating his/hers. Now if both parties are pretty sure of themselves they might go beyond the basic repetition of mantras and memes. Why do they do this? Because, in general we believe that we think the way all persons should think and being in the presence of one who does not think what we think can only mean he/she is either morally corrupt or needs good reasons to change his/her mind. The problem though, isn't the other person, it's the dissonance they cause within us by holding to a different position. So, in an effort to reduce our own dissonance, we engage, seeking to convince them, or to at least find some reasonable position that both of us can accept (and thus remove the dissonance for both of us). So now we are engaged. Depending on how strongly we hold our beliefs, we can arrive at a resolution or not. If both parties are quite certain of their beliefs and are equally matched in terms of their knowledge and ability to argue the subject, the dissonance will continue for a long, long time, and will drive the argument into a third stage, the one where emotions begin to take over. A stubborn dissonance escalates our response, as noted above.
Eventually, one of three things happen. If one or both sides hold their position less strongly, they might find some formulation of the answer that satisfies (removes the dissonance from them). If both sides hold their position very strongly the usual response is to either "agree to disagree" (which means the dissonance in both remains but they that the dissonance of an unexpectedly unpleasant encounter is greater than the dissonance of a different opinion. This leads them to take the easier path of enduring the dissonance of disagreement over the dissonance of continuing an unpleasant encounter). Or, they abandon the subject and re-evaluate the assumption (i.e. what they anticipated) that the other person is a rational/moral person. In other words, they resolve the dissonance by agreement, by ignoring it in favor of resolving a greater dissonance, or by casting the cause of their dissonance into a different type of disagreement -- where the other person is the cause of their dissonance, not the ideas he/she brings to the table.
All of this, is, of course, why an impulsive response to things is less wise than a more thoughtful one. A more thoughtful approach to everything puts the life into a wider set of experiences and, as we all know, the wider the set of experience we have with something, the more likely it will be we can responde in a manner that anticipates a more pleasant outcome.
AJ
"Do these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are they the result of previous study?"
The thing is, as many philosophers have said, one can arrive at the same state of mind via several paths. One can arrive at a pleasant state because one just ate a nice meal and the more or less physical satisfaction of that meal is pleasant, one can arrive at a pleasant state because one has engaged in a nice social exchange (in words, generally speaking) and is satisfied with the interaction, and one can arrive a pleasant state by the discovery of new perspectives through contemplation. In other words, whatever "pleasing attentions" one gets, can come from many places. And, thus, those pleasing attentions can be delivered in many ways as well.
The quote, to me, is about a person's desire to please. The one questioning wonders about the depth of the attentions being given. Implied, I think, is a distinction between the immediacy of emotional response (the "impulse of the moment"), and the "previous study." The first, I think, may not be as permanent as the latter and thus, since one assumes the speaker values long term "pleasing attentions" over short term ones, is not to be preferred over the latter. And, in this, it would seem to me, the speaker is right. All of which is related to how we think.
When we respond to our environment we have a couple of things we do within our minds. First, we scan the environment not looking for things which we expect, but for what we don't expect. We live in anticipation of the next moments and expect them to be a certain way. We ignore anything and everything which is as we expect it, and focus on anything we don't expect. This is true of our physical environment, our social environment, and even our mental environment. The unexpected always gets first dibs on our attention.
Now, of course, this is necessary as the unexpected is probably from where harm is most likely to come. I'm walking down a path in a dark jungle and suddenly, and unexpectedly, I spot a long orange vertical stripe in the bushes. I had better pay attention as that long, unexpected orange stripe may be a tiger! So I pay attention. I find out it's a new plant with an orange stem. I am, thus, not afraid of it and go about my way. Now, the interesting thing is that the next time I walk this path I expect that plant to still be there and if it is, and if it's still orange, I hardly notice it because I anticipated it being there. We pay attention to what we don't anticipate.
So what the speaker is asking is if the "pleasing attentions" are the result of a sudden, probably unexpected, response, or if they are a part of a more permanent response based upon a longer history. Taking our tiger/flower example we find that if the one walking notices the plant at the first he/she might briefly consider it to be a tiger. But after passing it many times and observing it more closely, the walker may discover it has properties the walker might need. Like it is long, stiff, and useful as a walking stick. The walker's response and appreciation of the orange stripe grows as he/she encounters and studies it. The speaker quoted above is obviously wondering if the one providing the pleasing attentions is in the "might be a tiger mode" or the "studied" mode.
In the end then, thought is about experience and that which we experience becomes expected pretty fast. Walking through a new room you "map" that room without giving it a thought. Your mind does this and if you then, having passed through to another room, go back you have an expectation that the couch that was on the right as you entered will be on the left as your leave. Experiments have been done which moved the couch while the person was in the second room (and unable to see what was going on in the room with the couch, of course). When the person returned, depending on if the couch was moved or not, they would pause. They would pause and a look of confusion would cross their face if it was moved, but not if it wasn't. In other words, they had mapped the room the first time and upon re-entry, anticipated where the couch would be. When it was not, they attended to the unexpected change.
It has been found, in the same set of studies, that the more you change the room, the more the person will pause and become confused. And if you change it enough, they will actually stop and ask if they are leaving the same way they came in...even if the second room contained only one door!
Thus, the nature of thought is at least two fold. It is anticipatory and it is reactive. It anticipates and then reacts to the unanticipated. The reaction to the unanticipated is conscious thought. (There's also thought that attends to rehearsal, which is the recalling and remembering of things, but that is a minor group compared to what we usually are doing). The reactions we give to conscious thought, though, are usually based upon either our immediate impulses (which reflect, for the most part, our flight/fight instinct) or our personality -- how we categorize what we encounter.
The categorization and analysis of what we encounter is first survival. We attend to the unexpected and evaluate them as to our basic survival. Once that is past, if we find our survival is not in danger (this includes things like loss of income, prestige, etc, as well as physical survival), we move to place the encounter into our general matrix of understanding. The greater the surprise the greater the impact upon our matrix. Thus, the first course of action is to minimize the surprise and to account for it in the simplest of terms.
I sneeze. My first response is to ignore it. My experience is that sometimes we sneeze and there is nothing to worry about. Again, the surprise is minimized because I can easily account for it and it poses no real danger to my existence. If I sneeze a second time, though, I might look around and consider my environment. Are there flowers in the room? I am allergic to pollen. If there are flowers I move them to another room. If I continue to sneeze I might take a pill to lower my reaction. But if I keep sneezing I might seek medical help. In other words, we incorporate what we don't expect into our understanding with the least satisfactory explanation first, and only escalate our attention to it as the lower explanations/reactions fail to remove the dissonance.
Now think about this in terms of ideas you might encounter. You have some strongly held belief. You encounter somebody who believes the opposite. Depending on your circumstances you may be surprised that anybody could hold the opposite opinion, or you may have encountered it many times before. In either case if you enter into the discussion you'll probably begin with some simple, common, statements. I call them "mantras" and "memes" about the subject. This is mostly establishing the ground game of the discussion as it's about stating your opinion and he/she stating his/hers. Now if both parties are pretty sure of themselves they might go beyond the basic repetition of mantras and memes. Why do they do this? Because, in general we believe that we think the way all persons should think and being in the presence of one who does not think what we think can only mean he/she is either morally corrupt or needs good reasons to change his/her mind. The problem though, isn't the other person, it's the dissonance they cause within us by holding to a different position. So, in an effort to reduce our own dissonance, we engage, seeking to convince them, or to at least find some reasonable position that both of us can accept (and thus remove the dissonance for both of us). So now we are engaged. Depending on how strongly we hold our beliefs, we can arrive at a resolution or not. If both parties are quite certain of their beliefs and are equally matched in terms of their knowledge and ability to argue the subject, the dissonance will continue for a long, long time, and will drive the argument into a third stage, the one where emotions begin to take over. A stubborn dissonance escalates our response, as noted above.
Eventually, one of three things happen. If one or both sides hold their position less strongly, they might find some formulation of the answer that satisfies (removes the dissonance from them). If both sides hold their position very strongly the usual response is to either "agree to disagree" (which means the dissonance in both remains but they that the dissonance of an unexpectedly unpleasant encounter is greater than the dissonance of a different opinion. This leads them to take the easier path of enduring the dissonance of disagreement over the dissonance of continuing an unpleasant encounter). Or, they abandon the subject and re-evaluate the assumption (i.e. what they anticipated) that the other person is a rational/moral person. In other words, they resolve the dissonance by agreement, by ignoring it in favor of resolving a greater dissonance, or by casting the cause of their dissonance into a different type of disagreement -- where the other person is the cause of their dissonance, not the ideas he/she brings to the table.
All of this, is, of course, why an impulsive response to things is less wise than a more thoughtful one. A more thoughtful approach to everything puts the life into a wider set of experiences and, as we all know, the wider the set of experience we have with something, the more likely it will be we can responde in a manner that anticipates a more pleasant outcome.
AJ
