[MD] a view

[John Carl]

On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 9:41 AM, Arlo Bensinger <ajb102 at psu.edu> wrote:

> [Jon]
>
> The idea that they just evolved socially is wrong on its face.  Social
> patterns do not arise spontaneously anymore than chemistry professors do.
>  Somebody had to think this stuff up.
>
> [Arlo]
> The mythos is dialogically created, it is created over social-historical
> space via a social dialogue. No one "thinks this stuff up" in isolation. A
> feral child surviving in total isolation from other social beings will not
> create a mythos, indeed will not have an "intellectual" thought at all. The
> mythos arises from the shared understandings of mutual cognition. And of
> course they do not arise "spontaneously", they evolve and are shaped over
> historical time, they "latch" as others in the dialogue appropriate these
> meanings and pass them on (via a shared symbolic code) to others.
>
>
John Carl:

My point, Arlo, is that the creation of a new idea or explanation is an act
of genius - or genesis - an intellectual process of playing with concepts.
 That the mythos is dependent upon this intellectual achievement in order
for the static latching to take place.

In fact, that intellectual reformulation is DQ to the society it serves.

Of course I agree completely that you have to have both.  Which is why I
think it's so silly for Bo to keep asserting that 4th level intellect didn't
arise till the Greeks (or Descartes- I don't think he can make up his mind)



> If you try to flip-flop the MOQs upper two levels
> (inorganic-biological-intellectual-social), you propose that a biological
> human, left in isolation from other humans, has the potential to develop
> calculus or pen the Norse Sagas. Pirsig denies this, and I agree with him
> wholeheartedly. In other words, a biological being MUST be social
> (appropriate a collective consciousness) before s/he is capable of
> intellectual abstractions.
>
>
JC)

"humans in isolation" is a thought-experiment that doesn't exist in "the
wild".  But yeah, you do have to have a society in order for intellect to
evolve.  As well as inorganic material and biological continuance.  Duh?

Arlo)

Intellectuality arises from the social milieu when the dialogic/shared
> symbols people use to mediate their biological existence become areas of
> inquiry in themselves.
>
>
JC)  Intellectuality arises with the big brain that some poor woman had to
pop out of her womb.  Intellectualism arises with societies devoted to
intellectuality as the center of their existence like in academia where too
many big-brained apes have too much time on their hands and think up overly
complicated explanations of the simple and obvious.






> [Jon]
>
> That's intellectual activity, that is.  No other animal does it, only
> humanity.
>
> [Arlo]
> This is where I disagree with Pirsig, and I think such a statement becomes
> very problematic when examined. I would certainly say that humans evidence
> the most robust, complex and sophisticated "intellectual activity" of all
> the species we've observed, but I do think that some non-human species
> evidence very crude, or simplistic, or early, signs of intellectual
> activity. I am thinking of certain ape species, and perhaps the rather
> involved language of dolphins. This is not to say I'd expect an ape to
> develop a new general theory of relativity, but if we really zoom in on the
> distinction we find more of a fractal boundary than a hard line.
>
>
JC)

You're buying into what Bo calls the "intellect-intelligence" fallacy.  And
there I agree with him.  Intellect is a special kind of intelligence that
conceptualizes (objectifies) patterns of thought in a manner that no animal
displays.

Is it absolutely impossible for animals?  Maybe not.  But it's such a degree
of difference between coyote's howling in the night and people typing out
ideas on keyboards, that we should keep the useful distinctions in mind.