From: Erin Noonan (enoonan@kent.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 21 2002 - 01:14:52 BST
I remember in a previous thread there was
an attempt to define the intellectual level.
The only attempts I remember off the top of my head seemed to fall into
a logic,reason etc camp vs a human rights camp.
This discussion seems to be in that same direction.
I thought Wim's summary and expansion on
Darrell's empathic thinking was interesting.
The human rights definition makes more sense to me
now that I think about this evolution of thinking
from primitive-logic-empathic thinking.
I don't know if people really want to rehash the
attempts to define the intellectual level but
I think I would be interested.
Or maybe just continue see if we can identify
a higher thinking then logic (empathic thinking)
Also in the same theme is whether the intellectual level is
about individual or not. Scott suggests "Or I might venture that the
intellectual level only truly comes into its own when the idea of being an
individual is transcended".
This individual vs collective thinking anamoly
may be helped by this empathic thinking?
Erin
WIM:
Do you then agree if I interpret your succession of
primitive/logic/empathic thinking as a description of intellectual
evolution, of a succession of stratagems for overcoming 'the violence of the
environment'? (I thus interpret this 'environment' as 'social environment'.)
Do you mean that 'empathic thinking' reconciles this 'conflict between our
earlier two processes of thinking'?
You don't really write about what constitutes or distinguishes 'empathic
thinking' from primitive and logic thinking.
I wrote 12/9 23:45 +0200:
'we will never be sure whether other beings than ourselves are conscious
unless we share their experience (which I don't consider impossible...).'
Could the distinction with earlier types of thinking be that 'empathic
thinking' presupposes the possibility to (intimately) share experience
between individuals?
SCOTT: While the intellect makes awareness of the individual possible (via
SOT), it can also do other things. Maybe someday there will be group minds or
whatever. Or I might venture that the intellectual level only truly comes into
its own when the idea of being an individual is transcended. So I would say
calling the fourth level the level of the individual is too restricting. You
say the reverse, so I ask, what is there in the individual that is not
dependent on the intellect that is an evolutionary advance over the social?
SAM: In MoQish, and relevant to how this thread started, I suspect it is part
of
the DQ breakthrough which saw individuals as having importance above and
beyond the social role in which they were embedded. If you see human
beings - *all* human beings - as made in the image of God, then it carries
the implication that they should be treated as inherently worthy of respect.
(Which is where much of our 'human rights' language has its origin of
course
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