Hi , Donny, Xcto@aol.com, Squad
Donny:
>Even a (socially)
>primative homo-sapian can come up w/ -ambush- or -trap- or -weapon-. I
>don't think there's anything particuarly *intellectual* about that.
>I shy away from saying that a monkey using a rock to smash open a
>coconut is an example of Int. values. It's not. That's a
>highly-developed, sophisticated expression of bilogical value: Desire
for
>food
I'd say it's much more complicated than that. Repeating a well-practised
act in anticipation of a reward is biological. That's how you train
animals (and people). However, deliberately carrying out a new act, or
an act in a new context in anticipation of a reward that wasn't
previously attained by these means seems to me an act of intellectual
planning. This is a grey (fuzzy) area, because the circumstances are
never identical. So at the ends of the scale we have:-
Repeating an act in near identical circumstances - Biological
Deliberately "repeating" an act in completely new circumstances -
Intellectual
I put quotation marks around "repeating" because it isn't really a
repeat if new circumstances are quite different.
Xcto@aol.com:
> after reading this passage, the monkey opening a coconut with a stone
is
> clearly an example of the intellect at work. certainly it is a
biologically
> driven need that the monkey feels, but how did the monkey learn to use
the
> rock to smash open the coconut? i would guess by seeing other monkeys
do it,
> perhaps its mother. so the monkey is using a social event to learn an
> intellectual exercise to facilitate the satisfying of a biologically
driven
> desire for food.
>
I would say exactly the same thing about learning calculus or quantum
mechanics.
It is ORIGINAL thinking that is the pinnacle of intellectual
achievement. But originality isn't enough - it also has to be GOOD!
Jonathan
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