Re: MD Intellect as Consciousness (formerly Collective Consciousness)

From: Arlo Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Thu Jul 21 2005 - 19:48:21 BST

  • Next message: Mark Steven Heyman: "Re: MD Intellect as Consciousness (formerly Collective Consciousness)"

    Ham, All,

    [Ham stated]
    >Gentlemen, if I may be so bold, I'd like to bring Intellect back down to
    >earth and discuss it as a proprietary human function. In other words, I
    >suggest that we drop the socio-cultural sophistication (otherwise coined
    >"philosophology") at least long enough to consider the thought processes of
    >the individual and how ideas are developed in the everyday world of
    >experience.

    [Arlo]
    First, who coined "socio-cultural sophistication" "philosophology"?

    Next, higher order functions develop out of social interaction. Within a
    socio-cultural theory, development cannot be understood by a study of the
    individual. We must also examine the external social world in which that
    individual life has developed, the artifacts (both material and symbolic)
    that are part of this social world and the governing "ideologies" and
    supportive mythos. This is an emergentist view, and so you can't simply say
    "let's ignore the social and talk about the individual". Both have to
    considered at the same time.

    [Paul replied to Ham]
    Paul: No, it's not too much to ask, it just begs the question right from
    the off, i.e. you make the assumption that proprietary intellectual
    consciousness is something that is the direct result of a certain level of
    biological sophistication, that e.g. a human born into isolation or at any
    time or place in history would think and perceive the same way we do.

    [Arlo]
    Exactly. "Conscious thought" (if you are using that as a synonym for
    "intellect") emerges out of social practice. We think "through" social
    semiotic systems, and through historical legacies such as the cultural
    mythos. We internalize "ideologies" and from all these things "conscious
    thoughts" emerge. Individuals, of course, contribute back to the social
    system, and evolutionary change (Dynamic change, if you will) is made
    possible via this dialectical relation.

    To be as terse as possible: "Conscious thought" is a completely semiotic
    process (words, symbols, categorizations, valuations, etc). Semiosis is
    socially-culturally derived from what Pirsig calls the "mythos", the total
    sum of analogues in that given culture. An individual, whose "conscious
    thought" has emerged through a particularlly situated socio-cultural
    environment contributes back to that environment, and may in fact produce
    evolutionary change within the system (as Pirsig did with ZMM), but that
    "conscious thought" is never separate from the socio-cultural system.

    Arlo

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