[MD] a view

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Jon]
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.

[Arlo]
And my point, and Pirsig's, is that this process occurs only embedded in a
socio-historical dialogue; only after a biological organism has appropriated
the shared culture of her/his social world, and only in the context of
response/anticipation to others in this dialogue.

[Jon]
That the mythos is dependent upon this intellectual achievement in order for
the static latching to take place.

[Arlo]
Well you mention below about "Bo's Fallacy", and while I find most of what Bo
says to be mired in problems, yes, I do think symbol manipulation is behind the
creation (and reproduction) of the mythos. 

For what its worth, I find symbolic mediation underscores both the social and
intellectual level, for me I separate the levels as occurring when the shared
symbols of a culture become objects to inquire about themselves. One sees the
intellectual level then as a sort of "literary criticism" atop a strata of
"storytelling". I've mentioned this before, but one analogy would be to
consider that on the social level we see evidence of using number-symbols to
represent cows (or chickens, or wheat bushels, etc.), and we see a symbolic
mapping of something like "II then II gives us IIII cows". But it is not until
the "concept" of "twoness" is freed from its very particular social usage do we
see "theoretical mathematics" take hold. That is, "two" as a symbolic marker is
used and manipulated on the social level, but "twoness" as an abstract concept
gives rise to the intellectual level.

For the mythos, we have very illustrative and remarkable story-weaving, we see
elaborate and intricate sagas developed over many generations to explain and
transmit the moral code of the social group. But with the logos we see people
starting to ask "what is a 'god'?, what evidence do we see of this? does it
make sense that we are saying this, but seeing this other thing?" etc. Social
level = religion, intellectual level = religious criticism. Or, concretely,
social level = norse sagas, intellectual level = Joseph Campbell's work on
mythology.

[Jon]
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]
Well, it should be "duh", but it still confounds people, witness Platt's
perennial confusion. Intellect does not emerge from biology, it emerges from
the social world. Without that very clear aspect of the MOQ, you have a
hierarchy that goes something like "inorganic-biological-intellectual (with
social around screwing things up)".

[Jon]
Intellectuality arises with the big brain that some poor woman had to pop out
of her womb.

[Arlo]
Here even you seem to propose that intellectual thinking is simply a direct
function of a neural mass. Intellect from biology. I'd say that the human brain
has evolved to enable the organism to readily appropriate a shared
consciousness, but that without that social appropriation all that big brain
will do is enable the organism to function biologically. Like a big empty
building that could function as a library.

[Jon]
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.

[Arlo]
Alright, so you're using the Bo Fallacy here, and tossing in some gratuitous
academic bashing for good measure.

I'd say that the big brain (biology) enables the organism to appropriate the
shared consciousness of her/his society and then partake in the
socio-historical dialogue (social), and THAT participation prepares the social
organism for the meta-analysis of those social symbols as objects-in-themselves
which sets the social organism on the path of theoretical mathematics,
metaphysics, and critical inquiry (intellectual).

[Jon]
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.

[Arlo]
Well, duh. Right?

By the way I don't know if I'd consider the coyote's howl "intellectual" at
all. Maybe a very crude social pattern (if its mediating the activity of other
coyotes). Probably mostly biological. As I said, I would posit very few species
that MAY be considered to involve very crude intellectual activity, and
certainly none as robust and sophisticated as humans. Even on the social level,
we see maybe more animal species evidencing social patterns, but still very
crude compared to those of humans.