[MD] Some historical perspective

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Arlo previously]
"One of the ways, I think, you can frame the social-intellectual 
division is to consider that the intellectual level began the process 
of examining the symbols used on the social level as entities in and 
of themselves."

[Bo]
Yours sounds as if there was an "intellect" in beforehand that "began 
the process"

[Arlo]
Sorry for the delay in response. Maybe some of this has been covered. 
This was a little sloppy shorthand on my part. I'd rewrite it as "One 
of the ways, I think, you can frame the social-intellectual division 
is to consider that the intellectual level began with the examination 
of the symbols used on the social level as entities in and of 
themselves." That is, symbolic manipulation on the *intellectual* 
level is the activity that considers those symbols apart from the 
experience they were created to represent on the social level.

I think this is very clear when one considers numerical symbols. 
Archeologists trace early evidence of using "number-symbols" to 
represent quantities/tallys as far back as 30,000BCE, thought to be 
used by early tribes to mark the passing of days, the frequency of 
animals, etc. Here, there symbol mediated some aspect of social life, 
it gave these tribes the ability to symbolically represent how many 
large animals were in an area (for example). But (as far as we can 
tell) the "mark" (be it a slash-groove carved into a bone, a scratch 
on a tree, or some other "symbol") was nothing more than this agreed 
upon symbol for passing information pertaining to "tally".

Flash forward many years to Egypt and Mesopotamia circa 3400BCE and 
you start to see an emerging transition to the idea that these 
numerical symbols represent something abstract beyond "the tally of 
cows in a valley", something like "twoness" for example. By the time 
of the Greeks, around 400BCE, you see powerful systems of 
"mathematics" developed via a consideration of "numbers" as "things 
in and of themselves". While those tribes of early man used a symbol, 
say "//" to mark a quantity of beasts, later humans exemplified the 
idea that "//" was itself a symbol that other symbols could then 
examine. Thus the "//" for early man never existed apart from the 
"tally" it symbolically represented.

[Bo]
while you at least regard "intellect" as something that began a 
re-evaluation of language . A great leap forward.

[Arlo]
Language is too often taken to be solely the 
textual-word-alphabetic-sound symbols of human activity, so I would 
say instead that I regard "intellect as something that began with a 
re-evaluation of the symbols used in the social activity of biological man."

[Arlo previously]
The intellectual level could very well be characterized as that which 
turns language onto itself, that which uses symbols to examine 
symbols. This necessitates a certain self-referential loop that, 
invariably, leads to paradox (a la the Godel-Hofstadter line of thought).

[Bo]
But here you wander back into SOM's self-conscious "intellect" . 
However below you point to the paradoxes this engender. All in all 
signs of progress.

[Arlo]
Just sloppy shorthand. I don't think there is a pre-existent 
"intellectual level" that "turns language onto itself", which is I 
take it how you are reading this. So let me try again at better wording.

"The intellectual level could very well be characterized as the 
emergent patterns of human activity which turns language onto itself, 
that which uses symbols to examine symbols. This necessitates a 
certain self-referential loop that, invariably, leads to paradox (a 
la the Godel-Hofstadter line of thought)."