On 31 May 2002 at 20:46, Peter Register wrote:
> Hi all,
Hi and welcome Peter. Your reply to Elliot covered about everything I
wanted to say on "mysticism" (thank you) so I return to the early part of
Elliot's message which was a response to my response to this:
> > > social level thing but the manipulation of language, of words (which
> > > are symbols derived from language) into sentances and thoughts is
> > > intellectual. This is why i say language is an evolutionary step
> > > within the social, because the intellect is implied in its exsistance.
> >(Bo)No, no, language per se isn't q-intellect. I have no idea when
> >language entered existence, but I believe that the Neandertals and
> >Cro-Magnons of fifty thousands years ago spoke (the last is that
> >excavations in Spain has revealed remains as old as three hundred
> >thousand years with a skull like "modern" man and also a voice). These
> >people naturally lived in communities, but not developed to the stage of
> >carrying intellectual value.
> Elliot:
> I ask you the same question i asked DMB: How does language exsist if no
> one is capable of manipulating symbols to make a sentance? I dont doubt
> that Intellect was merely a tool for a period before it became a level of
> its own, the point where it became a level of its own is when people
> started carring intellectual values ...snip.
Hi Elliot
Our different views spring from different premises. I don't know how
much more you can stand of my lecturing about the wrong
understanding of the intellectual level - the "ordinary understanding" I
call - of it as THE mental realm - but here is the crux of the matter.
But let me proceed to the above question. This is probably DMB's
headache because I agree with you about there can be no language
without a capability to manipulate symbols, but this again reveals our
difference: Manipulation of symbols is TO YOU a mental act and
thereby "intellectual". Isn't that so?
As I tried to convey in my "intelligence" speech of the previous
message, if one takes that path (intelligence=intellect) q-intellect - even
seen as a "tool" - starts by the senses because sense inputs are
"symbolic" (representating something else). The sight of a tree is
something that has been transformed by the receptors in the eyes into
nerve pulses that are interpreted by the brain into a "tree". This is the
SOM impasse that the empiricist philosophers (Berkeley mainly)
discovered, I won't harp on it.
You continued:
> ............................................My problem with this is that this
> social level didnt begin untill intellect exsisted (even if only as a tool
> and not yet as a level). by the way, do you agree with DMB that ants are
> purely biological and only late primates and early humans are of the
> social?
Yes, I understand that it becomes a problem if q-intellect is defined as
"mental ability". And yes, I agree with DMB about ants and other insect
colonies. This is quasi-social behaviour, much like the cells of a
biological organism. If we interpret that as q-social value it looses all
meaning.
I believe however that there is social tendencies among animals other
than primates, but it couldn't develop to anything significant because
they lack the most important social "signal" - language. That goes for
the apes too.
> > > (elliot)Also, i'll add that although language and religion are social
> > > things,
> > > to me they seem to have been born from the intel level and were later
> > > altered and mediated to become the social things we know now.
> >(bo)This is MOQ nonsense - with all respect.
> Elliot:
> respect taken. I see why you think this in the next answer you give,
> because you dont accept mysticism as an intellectual pursuit. Religion is
> a result of mystical experience, one guy tells his story and everyone
> listened and then they stopped questioning it intellectually at some point
> and it became doctrine and people performed ritual with no idea why, just
> as a social practice. well, this next quote is still my anser to your
> claim to its nonsense.
Wonder what period (in history) you are talking about here? If it is
Stone Age people they certainly had inspired individuals among
themselves who had "visions" and was regarded as spokespersons for
the gods/forces that determined their existence, but remember that
there was no (intellectual) scepticism at that time, no division into an
objective and a subjective reality: Existence was what we call
"magical", the forces could be manipulated by sacrifices or preys could
be brought to their hunting grounds by chanting or painting their
pictures and so on.
Bo
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