I'd agree "thinking" is more than simply intellectual activity. Thinking of various forms arises in animals whose self-conscious awareness makes them also aware of the inter-relation with "other" - this is when social and intellectual patterns can start to arise.
(The social / intellectual distinction is bound up in group / individual and constraint / freedom issues - as we have done to death many times I'm sure.) But fundamentally I agree that this is just a definitional problem with what we signify by the term "thinking". Ian On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 1:27 PM, ARLO J BENSINGER JR <[email protected]> wrote: > [Marsha] > It wasn't an accusation. It was open question. > > [Arlo] > "Thinking", like all concepts, is something we define to explain or make sense > of experience. Thus the definition of "thinking" is an intellectual pattern of > value. You can, if you will, use this definition to point to non-intellectual > activity, the same way the intellectual pattern of "gravity" points to the > behavior of inorganic patterns of value, or I can define "blooming" as the > process of opening up (an intellectual pattern), something I experience a rose > after a storm doing, even though the rose has no concept or understanding of > "blooming". > > In the process, there are shared understandings of the term, when I say "I was > thinking about taking a trip to New Zealand", you know what I mean. If I say, > "my dog was thinking about chasing the cat" (deduced, perhaps, by a particular > stare it was giving it), you'd know what I meant. If I said the sun was > thinking about producing some solar flaring today, would that make any sense? > > So, defining the concept of "thinking" is an intellectual pattern, but how you > define it (i.e., does it describe experience on the inorganic, biological, > social, intellectual levels, or some, or one, or none or a few, etc.) is more > a > matter or what is pragmatically valuable in such a definition. > > > 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/md/archives.html > 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/md/archives.html
