Hi Khaled, On Thursday, February 14, 2008, at 10:27AM, "Arlo Bensinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >[Khaled] >So where does that squirrel fit in the scheme of things? Is preening, >nesting, and storing goods for winter a biological pattern or a social one? > >[Arlo] >Pirsig reserves the social and intellectual levels for "man", so a >strict MOQ answer would be that these are biological patterns. > >Personally, I think such an exclusion hurts the MOQ's explanatory >power, and I do allow "non-man" creatures into my understanding of >social and intellectual patterns. To the examples you provide, my >inclination is to answer "if the behavior is learned, then it is >likely a social pattern. if even a lone squirrel who never encounters >another squirrel would do this, then it is likely biological".
Steve: I think of the distinction in pretty much the same way, Arlo. Another test is to see if this is part of some specific "squirel culture." Does one isolated group of squirels behave one way while another behaves differently? I don't think so. I'm open to the idea of such a thing as "squirel culture" but I don't think it exists. I have heard of different behavior patterns developing between different groups of primates and think this could be evidence of non-human social patterns. Regards, Steve Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
