From: Patrick van den Berg (cirandar@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Nov 02 2003 - 23:20:15 GMT
Hi DMB,
Don't want to change the discussion, just something about language and
intellect.
Pirsig was quoted:
> "They have their genesis in society the same way that society has its
> genesis in biology. WIthout biology there is no society. Without
> society
> there is no intellect since there would be no one to talk to anyone
> else and
> thus no language to speak and thus nothing to contain the ideas."
>
I can agree with this.
However, later DMB writes:
> In the same way that biology preceeds society,
> language
> preceeds intellect. He makes the same point in several different ways.
> Maybe
> you rememeber where he corrects Descartes. He re-phrases the famous
> quote
> as, "French culture exists, therefore I think, therefore I am". (Or
> something like that) Also this evolutionary relationship is built
> right into
> his hierarchy, the moral codes, the four levels and all that.
"the four levels 'and all that' ": means that you regard the four levels
not as supreme as some others here do? Anyhow, I disagree with 'biology
preceeds society, language preceeds intellect'. If I were an advocate of
the devil, I'd argue that even the first statement is untrue: hasn't
life evolved in a symbiosis? Even a single simple cell couldn't survive
with other cells around: so cells and a 'society' consisting of chemical
and other interactions between these cells were created at the same
time.
But that's just stretching words like 'society'. More fundamental is my
disagreement with the 'language preceeds society'.
Dolphins have bigger neocortici than humans do. Do they have language?
It seems so. Well, tigers then. Do they have language? They don't have
the vocal apperatus to create complex soundstrings needed for language.
I think that's the major stumbling block for them to DEVELOP their
ideas. But their brains must be quite sophisticated. How many brilliant,
smart, completative, abstract, intellectual ideas some tigers might have
had in the last ten thousand years? We don't know, simply because they
couldn't express, communicate or 'hold on to' them. Moreover, they don't
have the body-tools humans have: hands. Humans can hold on to ideas,
develop and communicate them etc. and can put them to practical use by
literally using their hands, which enables further development of the
intellect (maybe simply because dolphins don't have hands they haven't
been able to dominate the world like humans do).
So, the spark of intellectual or abstract (from the momentary perception
cut off) thought might be there in lots of brilliant animal minds, they
just don't have the fuel or wood to make a fire and sustain it.
Greetings, Patrick.
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