[MD] MD 4th level - The more autonomous level

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Platt]
Gee, did I forget to tell you? Guess I did. It wasn't long before the 
stunningly beautiful DIHI, after looking at the plant the seeds came from 
that she found so delicious, suddenly in a flash of creative understanding, 
realized that the plant grew from the seeds, and that if she planted the 
seeds as well as ate them, she would have a plentiful supply of seeds in 
the future, making it unnecessary to keep hunting all over the island for 
that particular plant with the delicious seeds. And thus, agriculture was 
born.

[Arlo]
This is a tenuous statement for you to make. Agriculture does not appear in 
the archeological record until after "individuals" were "living socially". 
So, whether or not a DIHI, would have the ability to construct and 
manipulate the appropriate symbols to lead her to "create" agriculture in 
the absence of social mediation is unlikely. Cavemen, who Pirsig likens a 
human individual without access to the Mythos, did not grow seeds. Indeed, 
it is evident that until they lived socially, they never even modified 
tools, instead used whatever preformed object they happened to pick up.

Since this time spans million of years, it is fairly evident to me that 
outside the Mythos, no agriculture was possible. Only following the 
emergence of social patterns, was such symbolic manipulation possible. In 
short, cavemen lacked the symbols required to conceive of, and actively 
create, agriculture. These symbols became available as social patterns 
emerged and individuals began manipulating these social symbols, in ways 
not possible for one individual, a DIHI, to have ever done alone.

 From a summation of Tomasello I wrote last year, "Having thus identified 
the foundational difference between human and primate cognition (Tomasello 
is firm in pointing out that human cognitive ontogeny is not merely primate 
cognitive ontology plus one, but is in fact qualitatively different from 
early infancy on (p.212)), Tomasello emphasizes both the differences and 
similarities in cognition between the groups by theorizing about the 
cognitive skills of a feral child. This child, he supposes, “would know not 
much more than zero” (p.165) 
 “something other than a fully human 
intentional and moral agent” (p.215). And this is thus a key point 
Tomasello articulates, that although there exists this foundational, 
biological adaptation, without the processes of sociogenesis (cultural 
inheritance) and ontogenesis (cultural learning) this singular difference 
alone does not predetermine human cognition as we know it. This point is 
further emphasized by his and his colleague’s work with enculturated apes, 
who after being raised and/or spending years in a human cultural 
environment do not partake of qualitatively different forms of cognition as 
they evidence in the wild. The feral child, as hypothesized above, would, 
however, begin to evidence cognitive skills in line with humans raised in a 
cultural milieu. Thus, Tomasello avoids the pitfalls of genetic determinism 
by turning to what Steven Johnson (2002) calls “emergence theory”, namely 
that while consciousness necessarily depends upon neurobiological states, 
consciousness is not reducible to neurobiological states. “Emergence”, for 
either Johnson or Tomasello does not occur in vacuo, however in the 
sociocultural framework guiding Tomasello’s ideas the processes that enable 
this emergence have been clearly articulated."

On that note, the clock on the wall says time to run.

Arlo