From: Jonathan B. Marder (jonathan.marder@newmail.net)
Date: Thu Jul 03 2003 - 17:18:18 BST
Hi Bo and Platt,
Jonathan wrote
<<<The recent posts convince me more than ever that "social level thinking"
is
an oxymoron. To be governed by the social level is to do things
"unthinkingly" based on
what society expects. Thinking is what DEFINES the intellectual level.
[snip]>>>
Bo asked Jonathan:
> I agree with everything you say, but what was "thinking" before the Greek
> philosophers? I still have this hunch that what so many understand by
> "thinking" or "mind" (and why they get so upset by the S/O-intellect
> interpretation) is the dynamic aspect of existence.
and
> OK, everything you have said supports the view that the intellectual >
LEVEL
> emerged with the Greeks and is the S/O divide or reason, yet - after
having
> said that the early hominids (of the social era) had "considerable powers
> of thought" - insist on the thinking definition of intellect. Please
> explain.
Platt interjected
This raises the question: Did aborigines prior to the influences of
Western civilization think? Or did they survive by mystic intuition alone?
Jonathan says yes, they did think and thus participated in intellectual
level patterns. Bo says no. Going along with Pirsig's "collection and
manipulation of symbols" definition of thinking, I say yes.
Jonathan replies:
We identify the Greeks with a particular TYPE of thinking, that is dominated
by the subjective-objective dichotomy.
I think that intellect involves a much wider range of thought patterns, that
allow for intuition, inspiration etc. I feel confident that aborigines
thought, small children who can't yet talk think, and to a degree even
chimpanzees think! - even though us "intellectuals" may judge their thoughts
as disorganized and useless, (i.e. of low intellectual quality).
To link this to an earlier discussion, I believe that intellect started
evolving beginning with the Big Bang, which established the potential for
everything we know today.
At what stage particular intellectual patterns become identifiable is itself
very vague. What Pirsig says on this that a particular type of thought (SO)
became identifiable in ancient Greece, and the use of REASON to govern
society became dominant after WW1.
Bo, does this make my position clearer?
Jonathan
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