Hugo Fjelsted Alroe (alroe@vip.cybercity.dk)
Wed, 19 Nov 1997 19:09:09 +0100
Maggie:
>None of this is "conscious". No intellectual patterns exist at this point.
>But the patterns are not innate, either. The child must be raised by the
>society if it is going to be able to participate.
>
>Shared behaviors (including the new cooperative patterns) that benefit the
>group are passed on by imitation and there is no change, no choice, except
>changes forced by changing natural circumstances, in other words, accidental
>happenings that are imitated.
>
>At some point, the act of reacting to a change, the situation arises of
having
>two competing patterns of behavior available. A "choice" is made. When the
>fact of having to make a choice becomes recognized as a social pattern, the
>intellectual level has begun.
>
>The social level is still the dominant level of human action.
Hugo:
I pretty much agree on the above.
>The multiplication tables are a social pattern. The response that leaps to
>our lips when someone asks, "What's 7 X 8?" has no intellect involved.
A dove can count - this is suggested by experiments, so the basics of
'doing mathematics' must be part of what Bo calls intelligence and what I
call reflection or representation of the world, arising with the biological
level. The ability to compare numbers can arise by chance and spread by
imitation. But more sophisticated mathematics seems necessarily to involve
imagination, the ability to perform gedankenexperimenten, and hence be
exclusive to the intellectual (selv-reflective) level - if I do this, what
will I have then, and so forth.
Anything that arises from intellectual dynamics can spread by imitation and
be preserved by habit, and I agree that much in our lives are governed by
imitation and habit. But the important point is non the less that we have
the ability to question those habits - MoQ is qustioning habits that are
very deep and very firm in our worldview.
We have the choice to be more or less dynamically alive, biologically,
socially and intellectually, - and Lila Squad is very much alive :-)
Maggie:
>I probably ought to admit, and this is as good a place as any,
>that the whole huge LS discussion of SOM evades me.
>I can't figure out what the point is.
If you could be a bit more specific, I will try to explain.
Hugo
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