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

[Platt Holden]

> [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".

Weren't humans "living socially" from their earliest caveperson days?.

> 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.

Well, somebody was first to figure out that planting seeds would result in 
producing plants bearing more seeds. You think it was a committee maybe?

> 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.

Now I think you're talking about chimps, not humans.

> Since this time spans million of years, it is fairly evident to me that
> outside the Mythos, no agriculture was possible.

It's evident to me that agriculture began with one individual having an 
idea. Similarly, fire, the wheel, the spear, the bow and arrow, etc., etc.
Others copied and built on the original idea.

> 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."

First of all, the adorable DIHI is no child. Second, experiments with apes 
and chimps have shown they are able in certain circumstances to put 2 and 
2 together. One experiment I recall showed a gorilla (I think) in a cage 
with bananas hung out of reach. A long stick was put in the cage, and 
after awhile, the gorilla got the "idea" to use the stick to bring down 
the bananas. No "social mediation" around anywhere. DIHI has the same 
ability as the gorilla times 100, plus she's a helluva lot more 
attractive. :-)

Platt