Diana McPartlin (diana@asiantravel.com)
Tue, 9 Sep 1997 04:23:51 +0100
oops...just whetting your appetite with that last post;-)
WRT Magnus' and Bodvar's posts, my 2c..
Maybe the key to understanding the relationship between social and
intellectual value lies in the role that language has played in human
evolution.
To go back to the days before humans had any intellectual or social
value is to go back to Neanderthal man or even to the apes. At some
point they must have realized (dynamically not intellectually) that if
they formed a social group they would have a better chance of survival
than if they just kicked each other's heads in. From then on
communication must have been the most dynamic value. That would be what
held the group together. From this need to communicate emerges language.
Initially language would have been dynamic social value.
But with the process of naming things comes the concept of subjects and
objects and from that, cause and effect relationships. So in the
invention of language is the birth of intellectual value. Of course it
was a long time from when the first words were spoken until SOM became
the way we interpret the world, but I think that's where it started.
Understanding cause and effect is the purpose of intellectual value. My
definition of Intellectual value would be "the pursuit of rationality".
The intellectual rational patterns in the brain exist on top of the
social language ones. Rational thought could not survive without a
language.
As for intellectual patterns residing on the organic patterns of the
brain. In a sense they do. If you look at the brains of apes, the motor
functions of their brains are similar to ours but they don't have such
well developed frontal lobes. So I guess Magnus is right that the
intellectual patterns have a physical home in the organic body.
The problem is that humans continued to evolve biologically while the
social and intellectual values were developing. But, the intellectual
patterns would not have evolved if the social patterns had not evolved
first. So that's why intellectual patterns do have a physical reality
but didn't come from organic value.
Diana
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