[Craig] What justifies the move from 1) the "self" emerges when the baby's "biological experience" intertwines with the social patterns it experiences to 2) the "self" emerges ONLY when the baby's "biological experience" intertwines with the social patterns it experiences?
[Arlo] It's not a move, its simply a restatement with emphasis. Although the hypothetical (baby on a desert island) is pretty much impossible to occur in "real life" (the baby would die, of course), I've been looking into the research on autism. I'll post more on this later, but two strong themes have emerged 1) (severe) autism is marked by a lacked ability to appropriate social patterns, and 2) autism is marked often by the absence of understanding of self. With the causes of autism being researched, I think it gives good preliminary support to Pirsig's notion that "I am" is not dependent just on "I think" but must be preceded by "so and so culture exists" (and the subsequent- and ongoing- appropriation of those social-intellectual patterns). 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/
