At 6:03 PM -0600 12/9/98, glove wrote:
>Keith, perhaps, perhaps not. but if a spider has no capacity for symbolic
>manipulation, why do they construct their webs in the fashion that they do?
In what fashion is that? Do you mean what you said in a previous post that
they do not learn how to spin a web but know it instinctually from birth:
>>because baby spiders are not taught to weave webs by adult spiders. they
>>just seem to "know" how to build a web. where does that "knowledge" come
>>from? prior to the LSD experiment the concensus was that the spider, under
>>the influence of a hallucinogenic drug, would be unable to spin a web.
>>however, just the opposite happened. the spiders began spinning webs of
>>abnormal beauty and perfection.
That seems to be what you mean since you go on to argue that instinct is on
the intellectual level:
>Keith wrote:
>
>COGNITIVE: the origin of mind, i.e. the basic cybernetic, cognitive
>organization, going from simple reflexes to complex nervous systems,
>learning, and thought.
>
>Keith, this was part of your cybernetics post of 12/8/98. simple reflexes
>would cover instinct, to my way of thinking. if that is true then i fail to
>see the cause of your disagreement with my placing of instinct in the
>intellect level instead of the biological. clearly they belong to the
>intellect. and the cyber-people seem to agree with me as well. and i can see
>where cognitive could indeed be placed before the social and the social
>level regarded then as the highest. i just dont think that is right however.
If you read my post "A Cybernetic View to Intellect" carefully, you'll see
that the COGNITIVE level is not one that I invented or recommend. It is one
of the tracks the writers of Principia Cybernetica suggest and I merely
included it in my post to explain their position. I then used their
insights on the role of control in defining emerging metasystems to develop
a tentative six-level hierarchy that defended Pirsig's ordering of the four
levels by revealing some detail within his levels. In my tentative
hierarchy, the simple reflexes you mention were contained in the BIOLOGICAL
level. INTELLECT was four levels above that.
I think it should be clear that instincts are on the level of biology, and
not intellectual responses. The definition of intellect I proposed holds
that it's a particular pattern of ideas that constrain culture, which
itself is the sum of all of our shared ideas. My arguments aside, in most
linguistic contexts, the word "instinct" is used in opposition to
"rational" or "thought out", potential synonyms for intellect. Instinct is
often associated with biology, and I believe that is a correct assessment.
Cheers,
Keith
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