From: Wim Nusselder (wim.nusselder@antenna.nl)
Date: Sat Mar 08 2003 - 22:28:48 GMT
Dear Platt,
You wrote 20 Feb 2003 10:07:15 -0500:
'For humans, social patterns by themselves can't find food. It takes
thinking, planning. Unlike primates, humans have to reason to survive.
...
So Pirsig's statement about intellect being used early on to find food,
detect danger and defeat enemies supports my contention that what
separates man from beast is his ability to put two and two together, not
some herding instinct, copycat behavior or reliance on tooth and claw.'
Does that imply that according to you man is separated from beast by the
distinction between the intellectual and social levels rather than by the
distinction between the social and biological levels? I can agree with that
if you mean by 'man' homo sapiens and not the earlier hominids.
Maybe you could agree that for hominids (not yet man, more than anthropoid
apes) social patterns of value -the passing on of cultures consisting of
patterns of unthinking behavior between generations and the differentiation
of these cultures by adaptation to different environments- may have given
them enough of an advantage over anthropoid apes to be more successful? If
you don't agree, you effectively skip the social level from between the
biological and the intellectual levels. 'Herding instinct', 'copycat
behavior' and 'reliance on tooth and claw' are products of the biological
level.
I may have described not clearly enough in my 18 Feb 2003 23:01:28 +0100
e-mail what distinguished early hominids (who had a herding instinct and
exhibited copycat behavior) from anthropoid apes (who also had a herding
instinct and exhibited copycat behavior), but I did so elsewhere. Their
stronger inclination towards curiosity and mimicry created a dim
consciousness of 'belonging' to the group they herded with and a feeling for
and drive for 'status'. It was the preferential copying of behavior from
others 'belonging' to the same group and with higher 'status' that created
'culture' and 'societies' that stayed recognizably the same over
generations. On the one hand these could adapt to different environmental
circumstances, e.g. when groups of hominids migrated through different
ecosystems or had to escape adverse climatological conditions, (the Dynamic
aspect). On the other hand these social patterns of value could preserve
'best practices', the 'know-how' of how to survive under specific conditions
(the static aspect). No thinking was needed. Better patterns of copied
behavior survived better than worse patterns of behavior, WITHOUT being
latched genetically either.
You wrote 24 Nov 2002 20:00:03 -0500:
'All humans have intellect. To suggest that an individual's religious
beliefs, political leanings, or sexual practices are the decisive criteria
in determining intellect is ... "quite preposterous."'
You wrote 20 Feb 2003 10:07:15 -0500:
'The key word [determining that a terrorist belongs at the biological level]
is [terrorist] "practices" which make a terrorist a terrorist, a person who
intentionally and randomly kills without warning.'
And 'sexual PRACTICES' DON'T determine that nearly everyone belongs to the
biological level???
Don't terrorists have intellect too???
Taken loosely I agree when you 'break the levels down into the world of
ideas (intellectual), the world of human associations (social), the world of
animals and plants (biological) and the world of particles, chemicals and
minerals (inorganic).' But categorizing levels by some 'things' that are
easily recognizable as elements of a lot of the patterns of value at that
level ('ideas' at the intellectual level, 'relations' at the social level,
'animals and plants' at the biological level and 'particles, chemicals and
minerals' at the inorganic level) inevitably runs you into problems.
According to you every human artifact 'is' an intellectual pattern of value
(I'd say is an element of an intellectual pattern of value), BECAUSE it
results from ideas. (I think that among hominids artifacts did not result
from ideas, but that is the former subject.) What about human associations
that result form ideas then? Like ... terrorist organizations? Do you call
them 'intellectual', because they 'result from ideas'? Or do you call them
'social', because they belong to the world of human associations? Or do you
call them 'biological', because they consist of terrorists who by their
'terrorist practices' are defined as 'biological'?
As long as you mix up 'patterns of value' and 'things', you'll never get a
clear classification.
By the way, you wrote in the same thread in your e-mail about 'Pirsig's idea
that [an idea] "is the collection and manipulation of symbols, created in
the brain, that stand for patterns of experience"'
Pirsig did not define the term 'idea' with this quote from 'Lila's Child'
however, but the term 'intellectual level' (which he equates with
'consciousness' and 'mind').
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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