[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[John Carl]

Good topic, David T.,   I just picked up an old book I'd bought a long time
ago, but never finished -  The Emperors' New Mind by Roger Penrose.  His
thinking is probably outmoded by now, but he's a good refresher in math and
physics and how consciousness is modeled by physics.  I'm enjoying him.

I believe the question, "Where do you draw the line?" is a good one.  I
agree that ants and bees are not social, in the way I think of "social".
 For social consciousness, I think you need the brain development that
occurs during infant nurture in mammals.  Mammals are the beginning of the
Social patterns, with man being the most social of the mammals, and
indulging his young with the longest period of nurture and training.  But
elephants, whales and apes also exhibit those behaviors that we term "social
patterns".


According to my view then, the biological/social split is easy to define -
its mammals.  Then everything falls neatly into proper categories except
that old bugaboo, the platypus.


Based on his work and others doing similar work I'm suggesting that small
> snips of social behavior first seen separately in animals on the biological
> level have overtime shown up collectively in humans until at some point in
> time they were present in sufficient number to tip humans over the MoQ's
> biological/social divide.
>

Group co-operation, altruism in the face of danger, hunting for the young,
all occur in non-human animals, but humans have intellect alone.  It is the
defining characteristic of the species.  This mind, that you mention, isn't
a "biological given" but must develop a  realization of the
self/other dichotomy naturally in the process of caring, nursing, weaning
and upbringing.

Its a somewhat tentative hypothesis to prove because nobody wants to give us
large enough group of babies upon which to experiment, but there's I think
there is evidence enough that humans raised with no social nurture either
die or end up retarded.

It is not a very big step to guess that the emergence of the human "MIND"
> was the biological/social tipping point between the two levels. As long as
> we keep this in MIND:
>




>
> "The brain and the mind constitute a unity, and we may leave to the
> philosophers who have separated them in thought, the task of putting them
> back again" Quoted from in Zen and the Brain (by how appropriately) Sir
> Russell Brain (1895-1966)
>
> But at this tipping point evolution and the science supporting it get more
> interesting. To date the bulk of science's work has been focused on the
> "more easily" explored earlier levels colloquially known as nature. Most
> explored physical, less biological, a little bit social, almost none
> intellectual and integrated study and understanding of the whole almost
> nonexistent. This in part is the difficulty we here have in understanding
> the MoQ. So slow is our understanding that as a general public we still
> view
> and treat them as four domains instead of one.
>
> At the emergence of the social level not only do you have groups with a
> wide
> range of social characteristics,  but groups of humans with minds,
> intellects, and quite probably the ability to communicate better if only by
> more expressive grunts and pointing.
>
> It is at this point that Dawkins as he closes " The Ancestor's Tale" with
> two sections titled "Value-Free and Value-Laden Progress" and
> "Evolvability"
> introduces the phenomena of "watershed events" where it seems that at
> certain points "evolution evolves."  A point at which evolvability suddenly
> improves. I'm suggesting that biological/social divide is one of those
> points. I also guess that the intellect is an integral part of the
> evolvability of the social level and the eventual emergence of the
> intellectual one.
>
>
I say it just the opposite of you.  The social is THE integral part of
intellectual emergence.

I'm warming up to the idea of fully fleshing these ideas for the group's
perusal, as I've alluded to the "m"oQ before.

Thanks for putting forth this interesting topic.  Hopefully it will be a
fruitful area of discussion.

John