Hi John
On 2010-08-15 20:37, John Carl wrote:
John:
I think "teaching" is entirely a social pattern, Magnus. The contents of
the teaching can be social or if in humans, the contents can be
intellectual.
Ah, yes, that clarified things, to separate the process of teaching and
the contents *of* that teaching.
I agree that the process of teaching is always social. School is a very
important social pattern.
However, what I initially meant was rather that the process of learning,
i.e. the receiving end of teaching, implies that the animal is able to
change its behaviour dynamically.
Simple animals aren't able to do that. The nerve-paths that send sensory
input from one end of the animal to another are hard-wired to do
something depending on the input. They are simply unable to change their
behaviour, at least short of mutating and then in the next generation
change behaviour into something better.
But more complex animals doesn't send those sensory input directly. They
send it via a central processing unit which we call a brain where it can
choose to do this or that. And it can even change its behaviour if it
learns that it would be better in some other way. Many animals have a
mix of those different types of behaviour, we usually call them
instinctive vs. learned.
But the social patterning of elder to younger "teaching" is a
distinct stack.
Stack? Do you mean we can find all the levels inside the patterns that
we teach our young? Well, yes, I suppose.
Pardon if I offer my theory which agrees with Bo, but I too make a
distinction between intelligence and intellect.
Yes, I used to do that as well. But nowadays, I can hardly remember
which was which, because Bo is mostly the one using them and none of his
definitions of the words is anything like what I'd like.
I think we need a useful
distinction between the reactiveness to environment that all life has to
some degree, with memory, time perception, etc. that I'd term intelligent,
and intellect which is the realization of self/other in manipuable abstract
terms.
I'm not sure we can make such a distinction with the MoQ, and I'm also
not sure I think it's very important either.
I think Bo sees that difference as crucial, but it's actually just a
gradual difference in the brain that makes it possible to see the self
as a part in the reality in which the animal lives. Also, isn't that one
of the milestones of a baby's development? To be able to see itself as a
part of the reality in which it exists. Not sure that's important here,
but it seems to me it indicates it's a quite fuzzy borderline and
nothing like a discrete border the levels are supposed to be.
I think this is why there is so much confusion over the 4th level being
termed "intellectual", btw. In essence, intellect is predicated upon S/O
thinking, as opposed to simple organism/environmental reaction which I call
"intelligent".
And I could also imagine splitting up "intelligent" into learned vs.
instinctive behaviour, and then we have three divisions, further hinting
that the scale is somewhat fuzzy.
I make these distinctions in this way, in the hope that thusly they are more
useful.
I'm sure they are useful, if not only to make our language more effective.
Actually they're not. The intellectual level of the universal stack I'm
mostly interested in, the one supporting our human individual intellect of
our brains. That intellectual level is supported, not by a human invented
language but by the language used by our nerve synapses, it's the language
of our dreams, literally.
Does this mean you're divorcing our intellect from our sociality? Dreams
have a language unique to the self, whereas language requires relationship.
Interesting question. Not sure I can answer that more right now.
"Dreams have a language unique to self", well, I guess that's the common
way of looking at it, but it's pretty exciting to assume it's not.
Interesting if this is your aim. Not sure I can go there tho. What dreams
come of the self alone? nerve mechanisms don't really mean anything till
their contextualized by a cultural interpretation.
I guess they don't, but a "cultural interpretation" could be a culture
of only one person living by himself.
Thanks for sharing yours,
And thank you for some interesting questions.
Magnus
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