Greetings Great-Uncle Bo,
The
> point where intelligence starts at the biological level I have harped
> much on, but shows how superficially people read, OK me, no
> exception.
Well you'll have to remember, I haven't been around forever.
It just probably seems that way!
> A particular species is impossible to pinpoint, but according
> to Carl Sagan ("The Dragons of Eden") the most basic "neural
> chassis" - he calls - is the spinal chord, pons, hind - and midbrain. This
> "reptilian complex" can be compared with ROM (read only memory)
> the basic immutable program. OK I know this is tedious, so very
> shortly: Some layer of RAM overlaid this and also the "chache system"
> where portions of retrieved memory (stored experience) can be
> recalled and - with animals - without language guided through logical
> gates and solutions to problems found. My proverbial crow found a
> way to get to the food balls. It's not brain mass in kilograms but the
> biological Central Processing Unit (CPU). With the human neocortex
> all this increased manifold and is IMO the biological pattern that "...DQ
> rode to a higher (social) level.
>
>
Well I don't like your CPU machine analogies much... too mechanistic for my
taste.
I see the mechanism evolving to meet the needs of intelligence, not the
other way around.
But I do like you positing your crow. My hypothesis of mammalian nurturing
at the base of self/other consciousness and thus at the root of intelligence
evolution is refuted by the plainly self-evident high intelligence of crows
and parrots.
But even though they do not nurse, they do nurture they're young and really
it's that infant nurturing that I see at the heart of developing those
neural pathways and complexity that you point to as the cause of
intelligence and I see as the effect.
Animals which nurture their young demonstrate some intelligence, animals
that don't, don't.
That's why fish, reptiles and simple life forms exhibit almost no
intelligence but people, horses and wolves (and parrots and crows) do.
This self/other dichotomy created by the developing infant's response to
other nurturing would be the dividing line between the biological and the
social.
> The intellectual level is definitely human because the social level is,
> but not all mankind has reached - "valued" perhaps - the intellectual
> level. In most people's opinion this sounds as slander as if meaning
> half-witted, but that is due to the "intelligence-intellect" confusion.
I agree. It's one reason I think the 4th level should be called the
Philosophical level rather than the intellectual, because it points to this
fact that lots of people contentedly live life without ever doing objective
analysis of life or themselves, which I consider the hallmark of the 4th
level.
I'm intrigued in the proposition that intelligence is necessary for society
- that is, intelligence of some kind is the hallmark of the social pattern,
even as intellect is the hallmark of the philosophical pattern.
All
> humankind is equally intelligent (with individual variations of course)
> but the 4th. level is not always valued - nay - is looked upon as
> pollution of VALUE itself.
I get what you're saying there and I sorta agree. I do think ultimate
immorality (or evil) is an intellectual disease, but that's not to say
intellect itself is immoral. Its just when immorality occurs, its because
of an intellectual choice of an improper dominance pattern. A lion eating
its prey isn't evil.
We'll continue this onward I hope,
you intellectual you,
John
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