Ian said: .... but I still get left with the recurring problem of what makes intellect discrete or distinct from social. Social over biological is clear, the emotional contagion for example, and most of your de Wall references here focus on that as you say. Do you think de Wall helps with the intellectual / social distinction too?
dmb says: Not directly because de Wall studies primates and wants to "biologize" ethics and morality. But we can extrapolate upward. As Pirsig wrote to Paul, "just as every social level is also biological, although not all biological patterns are social; so every intellectual pattern is social although not all social patterns are intellectual." Likewise, de Wall says, "advanced forms of empathy are preceded by and grow out of more elementary ones" (23). "Empathy encompasses - and could not possibly have arisen without - emotional contagion, but it goes beyond it" (26). He says, "Structures are transformed, modified, co-opted for other functions, or 'tweaked' in another direction - descent with modification, as Darwin called it" and "the old always remains present in the new" (21). "Surely, not all empathy is reducible to emotional contagion, but it never gets around it" (40). Extrapolating upward to see the distinction between social and intellectual levels will naturally require that we first know something about the social level structures. That's what gets tweaked and modified for new purposes. Ever studied history, anthropology, sociology, political science, mythology? Anything like that would help. _________________________________________________________________ Be the filmmaker you always wanted to be—learn how to burn a DVD with Windows®. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/108588797/direct/01/ 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/
