Hi Arlo 7 jul 2014 x kl. 22.40 wrote ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR:
> [Jan-Anders] > When we have done step two clear we can go on to the next step: step three. > The understanding of the evolutionary step from the social level into the > intellectual level. > > [Arlo] > I think a critical consideration in this path of inquiry is to remember that > the levels capture a wide range of complexity. You wouldn't begin an inquiry > into the appearance of the biological level by envisioning lions or dolphins > springing into existence directly from inorganic patterns. If you zoom in on > the boundary between inorganic and biological patterns you're going to > encounter amoebas, bacterium and eventually simple carbon atoms. At that > level of analysis, I think, you'll find the boundary to be more fractal than > absolute. Theorists like Michael Tomasello have speculated that the boundary > between biological and social patterns was precipitated by the simple moment > of 'shared attention'. That the simplest forms of 'social behavior' is just > the recognition that something else is an attentional being like yourself. > From that simple recognition (simple in act, although amazingly > consequential) come all the larger and complex social structure we see around > us today. I th > ink you'll find the same thing when you zoom in on the boundary between > intellectual and social patterns. What you want to find are those social > 'carbon atoms' that led to the simplest of intellectual patterns. > > The other things to keep in mind is that the emergence or appearance of one > level does not entail a cessation of evolution on the lower levels, and > emergence does not entail immediate dominance. The lives of the first > proto-social humans was still largely dominated by biological necessity. > Imagine the length of time between the behavior of those carbon atoms and the > dominance of biology over inorganic forces. So I'd expect that the first > proto-intellectual patterns existed before an era where we expect to see them > as the dominate level. > > In ZMM, Pirsig traces the moment of 'dominance' (the conflict point at which > intellect first began to assert dominance over social patterns) to the > intellectual conflict between the Sophists and the Cosmologists. Some (like > the SOL crowd) use this to assert that Pirsig places the entirety of > 'intellect' as the offspring of the Greeks (another way of declaring moral > superiority over the non-Eurocentric peoples), but instead Greece became the > first visible battleground between intellect and society in our own cultural > history. And, due to the outcome of that conflict (the Cosmologists won), it > was a S/O-intellect that rose to dominance. Had the Sophists won, well, we'll > never know what our own intellectual history would have looked like (we can > glean some guesses by looking at the intellectual histories of the Orient and > other global cultures outside the European trajectory (a la FSC Northrop). > > I'm saying all this here because if this was a clash of intellectual > orientations (Cosmologists vs. Sophists), then even here we are at the end of > a long history since the first proto-intellectual patterns appeared. So you > have to (IMHO) go back even further, to the origins and similarities that > both of these traditions have evolved from. Someone once said to me that all > intelligence was derived from the simple statement "why?". Its pithy, and of > course you'd have to substitute in the accurate early linguistic > counterparts. Maybe its some perception of 'planned action', which must have > predated (and enabled) the appearance of tool use. > > Finally, keep in mind that when you identify this social 'carbon atom' you > may not be identifying something noticeably 'intellectual'. Few consider a > carbon atom to be in and of itself a biological life form, but nonetheless it > was the catalyst from which all terran biology descends. I'd like to complete step two first, but for step three I'd put it like this: it's all patterns, but what makes a pattern to be intellectual instead of social? Early intellectual patterns are just concepts, names or even more rudimental..? Would a couple of banana flies communicate with concepts about the surroundings? If I move the banana, will they find it again? Are their concepts independent of the individuals and will they be inherited by new generations? JA > > 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
