Wim, (with a PS to Bo)
> I think your problems with the social level, as expressed 24/8 16:50 -0500,
> can be solved.
Solving for you, or me, as individuals is one thing. Trying to reach
some consensus encompassing a majority of this group, let alone a wider
one, as to what the MoQ say's is completely different issue.
> Depends whether we mean language or 'language'...
> Language at some point (beyond mere 'signing' or conveying emotions)
> provides a new way of latching values. For written language this is obvious,
> but before that -connected with ritual repetition- language created oral
> tradition. Connecting symbols with meaning requires conscious attention (it
> certainly did for the first humans using language in this way). I consider
> this to be the jump from social to intellectual.
If you are saying that somewhere between a strictly oral language
tradition and a movement to some sort of written "language" (ie cave
art) marks the jump from social to intellect. I would agree. But I
assure you many here, do not.
> Q-social has nothing to do with the distinction between
> 'individual'/'social', but -according to me- with the ability of societies
> to reproduce and perpetuate 'culture' without 'hardwired biological
> instinct'. I agree that some other species than homo sapiens may also have
> created a rudimentary social level. This not only requires 'sufficient
> intelligence and memory to recall and act based on some values other than
> hardwired biological instinct', however.
Agree , and when you go on to say " It also requires the ability to preserve
these patterns of behavior over a lifetime (i.e. strong habits) and to
reliably pass these patterns of values on to the next generation (i.e.
the inclination to copy behavioral patterns of older/higher status group
members and to 'train' younger/lower status group members to follow
one's own behavioral patterns)" I also agree, but when you go on to
conclude:
>This means that we need not push back the jump
> from biological to social as far back in time as you suggest. I'd put it at
> some 2 million years ago (the first hominids).
While this might be so, it could also be argued that there is evidence
that other species also develop these "strong habits" by "social
activities" within their own "cultures". There is some evidence of this is
both in the efforts of "save the species groups" to reintroduce
captive raised, orphans, or injured young, back into the wild and in
trying to get some species raised in zoos to mate and rear young
successfully by themselves. Even elephants, which have been domesticated
for a long period of time, have difficulty with cows accepting,
feeding, and protecting new born calves when not raised in a natural
kinship type herd where they can observe these patterns of value prior
to giving birth themselves. All primates, including humans, display similar
problems. To me this is an indication that these patterns of value are
not exclusively "hardwired biological" ones, but are "the inclination to
copy behavioral patterns of older/higher status group members and to
'train' younger/lower status group members to follow one's own
behavioral patterns" or social patterns of value.
> Why wouldn't this jive with the MoQ?
My MoQ, or Wim's MoQ, or Bo's MoQ, or xyz's MoQ? Or Pirsig's MoQ?
I'm coming to the point that I think both the greatest strength and
weakness of the MoQ is that it is so broad and general that it can
contain everything but using it to say anything definitively about
particulars, is next to impossible. It promotes a kind of ultimate Post
Modernist dialogue which goes on and on always placing conclusions just
a little more talk down the road.
3WD
Bo, when you say:
> In between many
> species have emerged and gone extinct, but the basic value is fixed, what
> else is "static" supposed to mean? Yet, a set of static rules can open up for
> a virtually unlimited variety, the genetic code has just six letters (isn't that so
> you experts?) yet generates the whole cornucopia of life.
you know quite well that "static" under the MoQ does not imply "fixed"
or "eternal" or "forever and ever Amen" Stable is a much better
characterization of pattern qualities. But static and dynamic is a
sexier sounding rhetorical split.
Then you confuse "patterns" and "rules of patterns" neither of which
are permanently "fixed" , "static" under the MoQ. "Patterns" are
"static" if they are sufficiently STABLE to exist, apart and distinct
from other values. But they still have the capacity to change for better
or worse. "Rules of patterns" are all hypothical, "static" only in the
sense that they are "good" to use now, but only until a "better" more
useful rule comes along.
> The SOL will never become extinct, it will remain the intellectual level. It has
> grown a plethora of sophisticated patterns
I would of course reword this to: The intellectual level has grown a
plethora of sophisticated patterns all stemming from the fact that at
this level of evolution, patterns gain a sense, a feeling, that they are
to a large degree separate and autonomous from all other patterns and
they can begin to articulate, communicate sense this to others at this
level in many different ways. One of the predominant names in Western
culture for this step in evolution is the "subject/object split" and it
can be traced to early Greek philosophy. But there are many other names
for this split both in Western and in other cultures. The actual
evolution of intellectual level however was much, much, earlier in
human evolution than the time of early Greek culture.
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