[MD] Consciousness a la Platt

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Platt, hi Ron

27 Aug. Platt wrote:

Ron (to Bo?):
> > > What I have difficulty with is that you use our western definition
> > > of intellect as a universal blanket definition of intelligence
> > > across the board. What this does is place our definition of
> > > intellect as THE definition of intellect and it places SOLAQI as
> > > evolutionarily superior with you being the pinnacle by virtue of
> > > the fact that you are the only one who subscribes.

Bo now:
I have difficulties with Ron's newfangled "universalism". Western 
definition of intellect?? Anyway it looks (to me) as if he accuses 
ME of confusing intellect with intelligence? If so it's upside-down, I 
am the one who claim that this confusion makes the MOQ's 4th. 
level so difficult to sort out.  

Platt commented:
> > Count me in as one who subscribes to SOLAQI as the Intellectual
> > Level of  
> > the MOQ, at least in so far as I understand SOLAQI to be. I view all
> > levels as defined by what is dominant in them. For me what dominates
> > the Intellectual Level is the S/O division and the assumption of
> > determinism.

Ron then asked Platt
> > Do you agree that the highest social values define intellectual
> > patterns?

Bo now:
I guess the relevance is that Ron wonders what social pattern 
gave rise to a S/O intellect.  

Platt replied:
> If that means the highest social values are languages, then I agree.
> If it means the highest social values are conformity and consensus,
> then I disagree. Thanks for asking.

Bo thinks hard: 
Language is definitely a social pattern, but if the 3rd. level solely 
pertains to the human race then language has been with 
humankind always (arrived with the Cro-Magnons) and for tens of 
thousand of years mankind communicated without triggering 
intellect (provided the S/O kind).   

I think we must look to how the 4th. level (IMO) emerged (in the 
West) and this is described in ZAMM.           

    Early Greek philosophy represented the first conscious 
    search for what was imperishable in the affairs of men. Up 
    to then what was imperishable was within the domain of 
    the Gods, the myths. But now, as a result of the growing 
    impartiality of the Greeks to the world around them, there 
    was an increasing power of abstraction which permitted 
    them to regard the old Greek mythos not as revealed truth 
    but as imaginative creations of art. This consciousness, 
    which had never existed anywhere before in the world, 
    spelled a whole new level of transcendence for the Greek 
    civilization.  

"Imperishable" is the root of "objective" and in the process of this 
search the mythological past was degraded to "imagination"  which 
is the root of "subjective". 

What triggered this process was "a growing impartiality to the 
world around them" that resulted in "an increasing power of 
abstraction". Impartiality is the detached (objective) attitude while 
abstract spells "in our mind" i.e. "subjective" (the latter has its 
siamese twin concrete that means "out there") See the outline of 
SOM . 

However, ZAMM starts with- Thales (585 BC)  and we must take 
another ZAMM observation into consideration

    To understand how Phædrus arrives at this requires some 
    explanation: One must first get over the idea that the time 
    span between the last caveman and the first Greek 
    philosophers was short [...]  before the Greek philosophers 
    arrived on the scene, for a period of at least five times all 
    our recorded history.  

Thus it was not directly out of the caves and on to the City Square, 
the said "impartiality to the world around them" may have been 
brewing for millenniums and would correspond to "intellect in 
society's service"  while Thales & Co represent the crucial point 
where intellect "took on a purpose of its own"  

Bo