dmb says: I think the various cognitive structures that Piaget and others have identified in developmental psychology can very easily be used as a sort of window on our collective evolutionary development. You know, our collective evolutionary process is recapitulated in the maturation process of each individual member. Or so we hope. Anyway, Wilber's work presents a variety of concrete ways to make distinctions between magical, mythical and rational cognitive structures, each corresponding to the various worldviews and types of culture. I mean, there is a scientific basis for drawing these sorts of lines. And these lines only imperfectly organize what is observed, of course. The lines are just ways to make sense of what we see in history, in our kids and in ourselves. Are you so much of a positivist and a behaviorist that you have already rejected any such developmental psychology? (And now with a Jerry Sienfeld accent...) I'm mean, come on! What is up with that?
[Case] (And now in my best Krammer voice:) "WHAT?" I would caution you against using Wilberfied Piaget as the basis for much. It has been a few months since I read Wilber's account of Piaget. I recall enjoying his presentation and being grateful for the Piagetian overview but at the same time Wilber's account did not square with my previous encounters with Piaget or I thought he was stretching Piaget way past where Piaget would be comfortable stretching. If it means a lot too you I will go back through this and provide specifics. But yes one of the coolest almost true facts of biology is that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. And I encourage you to look into the real Piaget. I am not at all sure how you get from Piaget to "... magical, mythical and rational cognitive structures, each corresponding to the various worldviews and types of culture." and back to developmental psychology. Nor do I see how developmental psychology is specifically at odds with behaviorism at least from your perspective. [dmb] I think the comments from the letter are only pointing out that these earlier structures are detectable in ancient artifacts, with the Bible being one of the most well known among them. He's not saying they were stupid or anything like that, of course. He's saying that the difference displays more than just a different set of beliefs. Its reveals a different way of thinking such that intelligent people could hold those beliefs. The bible is full of stuff that simply makes no sense within our contemporary worldview and everybody knows it. The stages or levels explain this difference WITHOUT resorting to the idea that the ancients were just ignorant or stupid compared to us. [Case] Well the fact of the matter is that the ancient were ignorant. It is also true that we are ignorant of many things that influenced them. This mutual ignorance limits what we can conclude about what they said and meant. But the simply fact that not enough time has passed for there to be significant physiological differences between us and them indicates that biological evolution is not a factor. The fact that the ancients understood the world differently than we do should not be shocking to anyone. They are remote from us in time, place and culture. Almost nothing in our environments, physical and intellectual has much in common. Any conclusions drawn from this are speculative at best. And the more fanciful the conclusions the less inclined we should be to buy into them. There are a variety of ways to account for the differences between ancients and moderns that do not involve lines, levels and stages that do not suggest that either we or they are stupid or ignorant. My biggest bitch with the track this has taken is the claim that social and biological factors are the only ones at work in the Torah. Just the fact that it was written down and a form of law was codified suggests an intellectual process. The attempt to record history, the presentation of answer to the question of "why" there is a rainbow or why there is something instead of nothing, or why there is evil and suffering in the world, or why the chosen people are in the state they are in. These are all intellectual questions and while we may not embrace the answers given they are intellectual answers. 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/
