[MD] Regarding The Fundamental Nature of The Intellectual Level

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Marsha]
When I'm hungry I eat, when I tired I sleep.  When I paint, I 
paint.  I try to keep it all pretty simple.

[Arlo]
Yes, but unless when the hunger bell dings in your head you reach for 
whatever is in arm's reach and grab it and eat it, I bet that you too 
engage in deliberate planning of how to satiate that biological 
craving. Maybe you think "Pizza? No, I had that yesterday. Chinese? 
Other side of town and I'm low on gas. The Burger Emporium? Well the 
waiter there was rude to me last time so that's out.". Or maybe you 
think, "My daughter is having me over for a big dinner tonight, so 
maybe I'll skip lunch of just have a little yogurt"... Point it, we 
manipulate symbols deliberately and purposefully on the social level.

[Marsha]
I imagine there were intellectual patterns before there evolved an 
Intellectual Level.

[Arlo]
I can imagine a time when organic patterns existed but biological 
patterns had not yet emerged. I can also imagine a time when 
biological patterns existed but social patterns had not yet emerged. 
Why not a time when social patterns existed but intellectual patterns 
had not yet emerged? Are you suggesting that social and intellectual 
patterns co-evolved, meaning appeared at the same time?

Indeed, I'd argue that it is the biological level that is 
"automatic", and the social level brought autonomy and the ability to 
plan and enact deliberate plans into everyday activity. Before the 
social level, when an ape was hungry, he ate. He couldn't mediate his 
actions by thinking "let me hold off on eating this banana because 
the other apes are planning a large feast tonight". It is the ability 
to manipulate abstract social symbols (language) that brought freedom 
"from the laws of the jungle" to the fledgling human tribes. With 
language they could plan, debate plans and courses of action, 
determine best routes and optimum strategies, and then negotiate the 
implementation of those decisions. Human tribes could observe in the 
world in a whole new way, a shared social way, that freed them from 
the immediate moment and set them on course of migration, discovery, 
crafting, storytelling, dance, exploration and a myriad of behaviors 
made possible by social language.

[Marsha]
To me social level patterns are ritual and habit.

[Arlo]
Ritual and habit exist at both the social and intellectual level. 
Indeed, said this way I'd say that "ritual and habit" are simply 
other terms for "static patterns", and the intellectual level is, 
too, static patterns. The Dynamic Freedom you mention is outside all 
of these levels, but is manifest on each level by the agency afforded 
by that particular level. The social level brought a great deal of 
agency and freedom to human behavior. And wo/man continues to this 
day to act upon this freedom brought by the social level. In the same 
way, the intellectual level has brought its own freedoms and affordances.

[Marsha]
 From my point of view, reification of any kind is illusion.  Seems 
to be a worldwide convention, but it's illlusion just the same.

[Arlo]
Agree. What I picture here is the analysis of the motorcycle in ZMM. 
We break the world apart in certain ways and then cling to the idea 
that those parts are real in a primary kind of way.