[Ian] .... but I still get left with the recurring problem of what makes intellect discrete or distinct from social.
[Arlo] An ape may have a symbol for "three", a sound or gesture perhaps, that communicates "quantity" to and from his fellow apes. He may know that if he sets "three" bananas down, turns his back, and then sees "two" bananas on the ground, that "what is there now" is "less than before". But his use of this symbol is strictly social, in that it is forever tied to negotiating his social activity with his fellow apes. My argument is that the intellectual level emerges when primates began thinking about "three" not as an experiential quantifer for materials in their surround, but as an abstract "thing in itself". Thus, the ape lacks a concept for "threeness", for a "number" that can be manipulated and examined apart from "real-world" quantifications. In the same way, primates have a symbol (likely) for "my body", that is they know (to bring in a point I was making with Craig) what "is them and what is not them", but what they lack is a consideration for this "self" as a thing-in-itself. An ape may know "his body", and is capable of distinguishing via symbolic gesture and sound "me" and "not me", but he lacks a gesture for a unique "me-ness" such as a self-given name, that would indicate (to me) the ability to reflect on the "self" as a reality independent of its utility to navigate social pathways with his fellow apes. Of course I reveal here my break with Pirsig in placing apes (along with certain other species) into the social level, and may even (as I said before) agree that some higher primates species do, in fact, evidence rudimentary (if not crude by human standards) intellectual patterns. By suggesting that the "boundary" between the biological and social levels is an ability for "shared attention" (what we could say are the simplest and most primary social patterns) which require a certain high-degree of neurobiological complexity (we could say are among the highest and most evolved biological patterns), we allow certain non-human primates and species into the social level, while discluding the possibility that the social level can spring from atoms or even simple cells. I think, and correct me if I am wrong (and how), this jives better with our experience. We DO see dolphins and apes evidence social words. This also ties in with evolutionary tree, because if we do (despite the aversion by the resident theists) travel back in time to the era where social patterns first emerged and ask, "what do we see happening that are the first, primitive, social patterns" we'd be hard pressed to deny that these same social behaviors are evidenced by certain other species. Tomasello enters here and says that the "human" brain of the time was not enormously more complex than the other primates, so we should see some overlap and little difference initially. But the difference that was there, little though it was, set up an evolutionary feedback loop, where (like muscles exercised in the body) the human biological brain was transformed by the symbolic activity it allowed and so since this time the human brain has evolved in response needs of symbolic activity placed on it. That is, human social activity has, over time, transformed the biological brain underneath it (like a weightlifter targeting certain muscles). (In the same way, intellectual activity transforms the social world underneath it). This is a little longer than I intended to be, but I believe this is a good way to start disentangling our understandings of social and intellectual patterns. 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/
