Bo, I see a number of points that just seem confused in your response to Matt.
> Matt said: > That's why I don't go for the distinction between intelligence and > intellect as what divides Pirsig's levels. Intelligence is obviously > the biologically linked thing that we share with the animals, [Bo] This I actually agree with. At some point in the biological evolution the neural node called brain enabled animals to store former experience in a Read/Write Memory from where it can be retrieved and change future behavior. OK I won't go in details here. [Krimel] Certainly memory is a critical factor in all of this; perhaps the most critical factor. Beyond the neural node, what society has done is allow the off loading of biological memory into other forms, written, pictorial and now digital. This expansion of our ability to access the past is a key point. > but I think that's all there is. [Bo] Yes, that's all there is - at the biological level. Even if the brain grew to primate and hominid size it was no more than an ever increasing ability to survive. But as the social level established itself on top of biology the said "intelligence" became a social asset (all upper levels exploits the lower levels) but still something totally different from intellect (the level). [Krimel] The social level is a biological strategy for evolutionary survival. Primate social patterns show remarkable similarity across species from monkeys to humans. Dominance hierarchies, feeding patterns, rearing of young, social interaction are as critical to baboons as to people. This is just another example of the rather blurry distinction between Pirsig's levels. Those lines are often so blurry one wonders why they were drawn at all. > "Intellect" is a reification of a set of cultural innovations that > humans were able to create in part through their creation of language. > Language was just a tool we created to help us survive. [Bo] IMO language is the ultimate social pattern. I don't regard - for ex. - wolf packs to be social, yet there may have been pre- language human (Neandertals, Cro Magnons) societies when only facial expressions and body gestures conveyed emotions, but these could not be "broadcasted", only with language did the social reality take off. But even if the individual knew self from other, had language and the grammatical subject/object distinction, this was not INTELLECT in a MOQ sense, only "social intelligence". [Krimel] Certainly most primate species are able to organize themselves into social groups without much in the way of complex symbolic communication. Expressions of emotion and the ability to interpret those responses in others are critical in this regard. But there is no indication that human societies either originated or "took off" as a result of language. While it is difficult to specify when language developed in humans there is every reason to think that it has been with us hundreds of thousands of years. That is hundreds of thousands of years with very little change in cultural patterns. Radical social changes began with agriculture and writing roughly 12,000 years ago. This was a truly significant change in the way people organized and interacted. Its effects have been profound and long lasting. > So were all the other innovations that language made possible. Some of > these innovations took on a life of their own, but how do we tell an > evolutionary story about the creation of "intellect" if it isn't a set > of cultural innovations? We haven't been able to do it for "mind" or > "representations" yet, and that's partly why philosophers of a > pragmatist stripe have been working so hard to retire them. [Bo] I'm not sure what you say here, but it's plain that - in a MOQ context - the intellectual level emerged the way SOM is presented in ZAMM by applying biological-turned-social-turned intellectual intelligence for its own purpose. Fist as a rebellion against the old mythologies (social values) in the form of a search for eternal principles, that ended with the notion of an objective TRUTH independent of subjective OPINION, i.e. the skeptical, scientific attitude was born. Later the subjective side (the equally obvious argument that everything takes place inside the subject mind, i.e. that all is "opinion") emerged, but this is intellectual's eternal see-saw. [Krimel] Again there is no clear line between the biological and social and even less between the social and intellectual. It is not even the least bit clear whether the intellectual grows out of the social or visa versa. But your claim that the Greeks invented the idea that objective truth as independent of subjective opinion is just misguided. The priests of Ra in Egypt proclaimed the facts of life as revealed by the gods and that Truth was objective and independent of any petitioner who tried to advance subjective opinions on the matter. As for rebellion against old mythologies, it is hard to imagine a time when this was not going on. Each new generation has come into the world equipped to question the received wisdom. Amenhotep in Egypt was the first monotheist. This rebellion against the established priesthood was a milestone in human culture that is seldom mentioned. It is significant to note that the Jewish Exodus occurred within a generation of his rule and if one were to draw a direct connection between them Amenhotep's rebellion had as much impact on the development of western civilization as anything the Greeks did. > Matt: > Your point, however, is not my point. We _can_ define intellect, and > all the other levels, and we _should_ define intellect, and all the > other levels. [Bo] Agreement! [Krimel] So what's the hold up? 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