Magnus Berg (MagnusB@DataVis.se)
Wed, 10 Sep 1997 04:15:44 +0100
From: Diana McPartlin[SMTP:diana@asiantravel.com]
>
>Maybe the key to understanding the relationship between social and
>intellectual value lies in the role that language has played in human
>evolution.
I agree, but! -->
>
>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.
I agree even more about this last paragraph, but! -->
>
>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.
Here's the but!
The language our individual intellects are built upon are the
language provided by our social patterns of value called our
bodies.
It hit me when you wrote "...in the invention of language...",
how can a language - and now I mean a conventional language used
to communicate thoughts, needs or warnings - be invented without
intellect?
Please, feel free to reformulate the sentence to avoid this
hen-and-egg-situation.
Magnus
>
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