Bodvar Skutvik (skutvik@online.no)
Sun, 9 Aug 1998 05:59:27 +0100
Wed, 05 Aug 1998 22:48:48 +0000
Donald T Palmgren delivered a note.
Donny!
As usual I find your musings highly interesting, stimulating and -
agreement or not - always understandable.
First one strange statement. You wrote:
My cat can chase a ball, knowing that the ball is something "out
> there." Acording to Bodvar this simple recognition suddenly rates as
> Intelectual activity. Come on! She chases the ball because that kind of
> play is good for practicing the hunt... and, trust me, most of the time
> she isn't very clear on the fact that this ball is a non-living thing
> animated only by momentum and gravity. Anybody w/ cats knows how they
> attack shoe laces, etc. Consciousness ("S-O" is implicit) does not = Int.poVs. I am
> still very unconvinced, and fear that Bodvar's theory is just another
> redefining of "Mind" as Int.poVs.
Please, have I ever expressed an opinion of cats displaying
subject-object "thinking" playing with a ball? It is the last
species to do so, they don't even have a social structure. (If your
doubts about my SOTAQI is based on that - no wonder!)
Lower down you write:
> Aarrrggggg..... You continue to wound me.
> Tell me, do these female baboons have the standerd Enlightenment
> (sometimes "Western") values of objectivity, rigerous logic, methodical
> experamentation, recording results... do they possess that most
> important
> -- most fundamental -- Intelectual value, namely that the validity of a
> proof is independent of who proposes it (be he black, Native American,
> be
> it a woman... whether it is a multi-PHD w/ an IQ of 180 born of royalty
> and filthy rich, or a bum on the street). That is the driving idea --
> begun in the 18th cen. -- that won IntPoVs (acording to pirsig) their
> freedom from Social values. Do Baboons posses such thoughts which man
> himself lacked until *very* recently in his evolution?
Don't worry! I fully agree with your discourse about enlightenment,
validity of proof, the American way and all that; those are refined
Intellectual values of the Western cultures. My baboon example was
merely hinting to an embryonic ABSTRACTION ability, not a
contemporary Homo Sapiens.
Hugo once spoke of an ape looking into a mirror, becoming aware that
it was itself. Such a rudimentary abstraction could have developed
into InPoV over the eons had it not been for the fact that the human
race has closed the window of opportunity on all other species on
earth.
Look Donny, what I imply is that there must have been a beginning to
ALL Q-patterns, and that these gropings are possibly still at work.
When Matter was all there was and DQ "played" with the carbon
molecules one could not speak of much Life! A string of amino acids
wriggling around in a pond, but it was the origin of the species.
Likewise, when Life had filled every nook of the earth and the
highest forms started to co-operate to protect themselves one can't
speak of advanced Societies, but it was the origin of empires.
Finally, at some moment in time Intellectual value was almost
indistinguishable from Social value. One important tenet of the MOQ
is that ALL PoVs started "in the service" of its parent level. I am
not sure how to apply it to the Matter/Life combination (I'll report
as soon as I have an epiphany!), but the Life/Society and
Society/Intellect relationships are pretty obvious.
Bodvar
-- homepage - http://www.moq.org/lilasquad unsubscribe/queries - mailto:lilasquad@moq.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu May 13 1999 - 16:43:37 CEST