[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[John Carl]

Geez Krimel,

You sure make good sense sometimes:


[Krimel]
> I am tempted to say emphatically NEVER! Intellectual and social patterns
> have ALWAYS coexisted in Homo Sapiens.
>

But what are the demonstrable, empirical facts of the matter?

Depends, I guess, on what you call facts,   What  your criteria are.  The
weak link of pragmatisms since day one, imho.

Otherwise, without going into the philosophical depths of definitions of
reality, whenever we see humans, we see forms of society, evolving, driven
by intellectual thinking of a special kind not seen in other animals.
 Intellectual patterns coexisting with social - relatively speaking, DQ - as
intellect and sq - as rituals, myths, and cohesive stories.  Always.  And
things haven't really changed that much that I can see.

Other than elaborate complications, like the sheer arrogance of modern
humanism, of course.

If you insist on a "when" and a "how", I would say, When the first large
> brained hairless ape emerged from the womb and by means of adaptation to
> selection pressures in the early environment our ancestors called home.
>
>
What makes primate research fascinating, there's a very close analogue to
the way chimp troops feed and use tools in a tribal way, passing down a
learned culture almost.

So close, you can barely slip the sharpest analytical knife into the divide.




> [Mati:]
> I have read the "The Element" and likely written after Aristotle
> but I doubt that it had a direct impact based on s/o split given it's
> relative closness to time. But I could be wrong on this.  The question
> is to what end does the story serve? The social level or intellectual?
>
>
John:  Yes!



> [Krimel]
> Euclid consolidated the mathematics of the Greeks into a textbook. But note
> that above Plato's academy was inscribed, "Let on one ignorant of geometry
> enter here."
>
> "What end does the story serve?". Both, neither what difference does it
> make?
>
>
John:  Yeah?  Who cares?  There's no such thing as Quality anyway!

Ok, I actually disagree with that one.  Stick with "both" while you're
ahead, Krimel.

And Geometry as the basis of thinking always seemed kinda weird to me, but
recent readings in Royce have given me an idea of what all the excitement is
about.


 > [Krimel]
> > OK, look this "domination of social level" is not going to end. Not now,
> > not ever. We are primates. Social patterns are encoded in our DNA. We may
> > be able to intellectually identify our social patterns and try to modify
> > them intelligently. But the best we can do is exchange one set of social
> > patterns for another.
>
>
John:  Yes.  This is the way in which intellectual patterns, which include
intellect and systems of thought, examine, evaluate, reflect upon, social
patterns and change them.
There's no such thing as a social pattern evolving into an intellectual
pattern.  Who came up with that idea? Or is it a residue of a hierarchical
thinking being applied to the MoQ? something to which I've objected
before...




> [Mati:]
> Social patterns are encoded in our DNA?
>
> [Krimel]
> Yes, they are. From the production of oxitocin in Mom, Dad and infant
> during
> the birth process, to the newborn's ability to imitate facial expressions
> at
> birth. From our innate ability to acquire language to social emotions like
> pride and shame; social patterns are biologically encoded.
>
>
John:  Well, I don't know what the "truth" is, but it seems more logical to
me to think that DNA encodes the "registers" for socialization, which have
to be filled by others; specifically the mother/infant bonding process in
mammals, the basis of subject/object consciousness and emotions and
socialization.

It's all about the boobs, Krimel.  Think of 'em as handy mnemonic devices.



> [Mati:]
> If a child is raised in
> the wild we clearly see a being that only beholded the biological
> level, there are no conventional social values.  He may be a social
> creature but he must learn those social patterns through some kind of
> communication/language that are beyound the biological level.
>
>
John:

"Is raised" by whom, Mati.  That is the question.  He will be socialized by
the one that raises him.  Mowgli follows the rules too, you know.



> [Krimel]
> First of all I am not at all convinced that there are such children. But
> the
> examples that are commonly used for this, all show children exhibiting deep
> and profound pathology. It's called Reactive Attachment Disorder. Ask Lu
> about it.
>
>
John:

Krimel discounts tails of Mowgli, Romulus, Remus and them all.  Krimel is a
rational westernized gentleman who cares nothing for the cultural evidence
of "lower peoples".


[Mati:]
> Just so you understand my background in education has provided me the
> experiences that reienforce the idea that we need to be able to communicate
> our social values in order for them to learn.  Without this communication
> bridge, conventional social patterns cannot have a chance to take hold.
>
> [Krimel]
> All biological organisms are programmed genetically to interact with their
> environments. Learning is the process that allows past experience to
> determine present behavior. This happens in humans and it happens in fish.
>

John:

Fish react, but humans think.  It's why fish are catchable and people are
not.

Well...

I take it back.  It is possible to program people into fish-like existence.
 But it takes time and effort.


Krimel:

In humans the ability to encode and decode experience greatly facilitates
> this process. It allows us to learn not solely on the basis of our
> individual experience but from the experience of others. This ability
> arises
> as an extension of the social level just as social living arises as a
> biological strategy from the biological level.
>
>
John:  Harumph.  I don't think so.  The levels are discrete.  They don't
evolve INTO one another.  If we're lucky, we can find the dividing line
between them, in our lifetime, but you gonna preach to me about spontaneous
generation and the monkeys at the keyboards, Mr. atheistic evolutionists?  I
thought atheists didn't believe in preaching unverifiable ideas.



> > [Krimel]
> > Look around the world and you will find that every primitive culture had
> > arrowheads.  Snip.......
>
>
John:  Australian Abos didn't.  But then, they could argue that nobody else
in the world came up with an aerodynamic stick and once they perfected it,
they didn't need to chip away at flints.




> [Mati:]
> And I quote Pirsig...."  But if one studies the early books of
> the Bible or if one studies the sayings of primitive tribes today, the
> intellectual level is conspicuously absent."
>
>
John:

I don't agree with Pirsig on this one.  What primitive tribes?  How many
tribes that never bothered with writing, nevertheless had their own Plato?
 Their own Aristotles?   They get encoded into the mythos as "sages of old"
and only in our values-defunct culture do we think of them as the
"simpletons of old".

Thats cuz we dwell in the land of arrogant humanism, where there are no
values so self is everything.


> [Krimel]
> I do not regard blindly following Pirsig as a virtue. It's the one thing I
> agree with Bo about. If Pirsig had meant to monopolize the MoQ he would not
> have kept referring to it in the third person.
>
>
John:  Include me, in your roll call of heretics, Krimel.  Just remember in
ZAMM that what befuddled Phaedrus so much was that his favorites in the
classroom were the malcontents.



> In this instance he seems to be appealing to Julian Jaynes in a kind of
> mixed up way. Jaynes said that we do not find evidence of "consciousness"
> in
> ancient writings. He is not talking about intellect. Still, I think the
> best
> one can say about Jaynes is, "my, that's interesting."
>
>
John:  Some people couldn't even  find their own brains, much less any
others.



> > [Krimel]
> > SOM is an intellectual tool.
>
> [Mati:]
> We agree, and more so it was a tool that was able to deliver us
> from the social level like no other tool we had before.
>

John:

Ok, I've really only inflicted this theory once on this forum, and so I will
impose it again.

SOM is the least common denominator philosophy that works across cultural
boundaries because it takes the self/other realization, created in mammalian
nurture, as the absolute basis of thinking.

Self/other is the basis of society, right?  You can't have a society without
selves interacting, and the realization of self arises in context of social
programming.  Taking this self/other dichotomy as fundamental, as the
metaphysical basis of being, is the first objectivists step into
intellectualism.  SOM is the kindergarten of intellectual values.

SOM took over as a values-free metaphysics because of the rise of pragmatism
in the late 19th century, wherein society needed to free itself from the
confines of the priestly cubicle, and used SOMish argumentation to do so.



> [Krimel]
> The only way to be delivered from the social level is to be stranded like
> Robinson Crusoe.
>
>
John:

Ah, but there is a form of transcendance available by being objective about
society.  Intellectual analysis does, in a sense, free one from social
constraint.

Which means Hannibal Lectre, unless Quality is real.  But that's another
thread.



> > [Krimel]
> > But paintings and tools are intellectual patterns regardless of the
> > function they serve.
>
> Mati:
> I once wondered the same thing. But that doesn't make sense
> related to timing and the dawn of intellect as a seperate level not
> beholden to the social level. So Art itself is not a litmus test for
> intellect.  Art is great, it is important and I believe that intellect
> perhaps can be conveyed through Art, but Art itself is not by it
> existence a default for intellect.
>
>
John:

I disagree.  First, "Art" is more than decoration.  The very term itself
implies a sort of thinking about reality and communication of that thought
which is the very heart of intellect.   However, we usually associate the
classicalist rigors of logics, spatial math, programming, to intellect and
ignore the even more profound depths of artistic endeavors to relate
non-linguistic realizations.  I'm with Platt on the Aesthetic as the
highest, realizable Values and that makes Art the best use of intellect.

Especially the art of cookery!


> [Krimel]
> When you see that intellect "dawned" with Homo Sapiens and is an outgrowth
> of primate social patterns it's not so hard.
>
> Art is just a particular type of intellectual pattern.
>
> > [Mati:]
> > MoQ is perhaps the first major metaphysical breakthrough in 2500 years,
> > time will tell.
> >
> > [Krimel]
> > The MoQ is merely a restatement and refinement of Taoism which has been
> > around for 2500 years. I think the clock has spoken.
>
> John:

I guess that's sort of true in a way.  A Taoists view would be that when
society was in a stuck place, Tao opened up a way.  It always does.

What is more significant?  Coming up with a brand new way of thinking?  Or
refining a very old one?

I'd say the latter.  Everybody that's born comes up with a new way of
thinking, but very, very few are qualified to refine old ways.



> [Mati:]
> In 2005 in Liverpool Pirsig was very gracious in saying that his
> ideas, MoQ are based on ideas that were not new.  But give him credit
> for uliminating SOM and giving us a formal metaphysical construct with
> MOQ. As to when it takes hold within society and we can point to
> changes accredited to it, well the clock just started ticking again
> .... :-)
>
>
John:

All I know is, he sure changed my thinking.  I think for the better now.

I think.