I didn't say they understood each other.
But that was what you were implying. The context was intelligence, was it not?
In the last post I was implying they don't understand each other and certainly not in "human terms". I guess I didn't do that well enough.
Animals do signal each other, and us, and observation can inform us as to the function of those signals.
A lot of the time we get other species' signals wrong when they're signaling to us because we attribute human meaning. A cat rolling on its back is a different signal from a human rolling onto its back. A dog rolling onto its back is different signal from from a cat rolling onto its back.
Pavlov's dog food.
Sure, Grace attempts to modify the cat's behaviour but if she doesn't do that right, the cat will leave. It comes for the food and shelter but if the conditions aren't right, bye bye.
"Understanding" is irrelevant. The cleaner fish gets fed, it's client gets cleaned. The process is mediated by signals. The cat gets fed and sheltered, and Grace gets....I think in some previous post you said, "the desired behaviour." The process is mediated by signals.
and figure out what they mean for cats.
This is a mistake. We can only figure out what we've done to the cat that gives back what we put into it.
Cat signals and behaviour and their correlation are what's there to study. Are we talking past each other? Maybe I should have put "mean" in quotation marks. If you mean we still have to interpret the data. Then I say yes, we do.
Cats are alien
Nope. Cats and humans have common ancestors.
So do humans, fish and bacteria. Studying their signals and behaviour presents various kinds of difficulties which we cope with in some fashion or another.
Are you saying that if a life form comes from off planet we can't study its signals and behaviour?
What corresponds to what?
I don't know. I suspect it would be a really difficult problem. It would require heavy data analysis with tools analogous to cryptography. But eventually correspondances might be discovered. Might get lucky, even.
Because it's not a contemporary perspective. Education became a public good in England and throughout Europe as it was during the Roman period.
Dickens didn't believe that. Under tyranny education is limited to a few.
Dickens has nothing to do with medieval period. He told a lot of truth but it's limited. What he wrote helped improve things. Raking him up doesn't help us with enough facts, even about the 19th century. With respect to 19th century, I think you've been taken in by the marxists. Living conditions for many people in early 19th century England were appalling but they improved consistently throughout the century as capitalist industry expanded to take up the excess work force of displaced agricultural workers. The increased prosperity expanded social advancement as folk took advantage of the class system (which, contrary to much prejudice and hypocrisy about it, is the vehicle of social advancement). During the same period political freedom and public education also expanded. The 19th century is the greatest period in human history, thus far. Marx lied. He fudged the figures to advance his "theory" and his romantic (read fascist) dream of revolution creating utopia (read fascism). All the time things were getting better for the workers and everyone else, he said they were getting worse!
With respect to the medieval time. Do you think in the constant struggle against tyranny that those wanting freedom and prosperity had no success? The struggle over 2500 years has been constant. I caught onto the truth about the medieval period because all the huge urban and industrial development and trade could not have happened without literacy and numeracy. Iron, wool, grain merchants, traders, artisans, monasteries, dukedoms and the Holy Roman Empire needed literate numerate prople. Sure, the tyrants hated the manufacturers, towns and trade but they had to have them to support their extravagance and wars.
Tyrants hate education but have to have it, so they try to control curriculum.
yes, I'll suppress you.
QED. You have limited toleration. Therefore, toleration can't be a start point for problem resolution.
Limited toleration is exactly what the British and Americans used to shut off their religious strife. Or, perhaps it was limited intoleration. Either way, that's what they used. The starting point was the desire to resolve the problem.
Uh oh, the Marxist dictum of class warfare.
I think class is a good thing. It's what makes social mobility possible. The more classes the better. Marx got this all wrong.
Why do you think that being rich is desirable?
I think feeling properous and generous is desirable but you don't have to be rich to feel this way.
I was thinking taking other folks wealth instead of working for our own is unjust. I was thinking leaving the rich alone is a good idea because if we do, then we all become more prosperous.
Any extreme of possession is bad.
People tend to be enthusiatic, don't they? A couple of drinks feel good, so more will make me feel even better....
(I'm not rich. I'm in the position of the butcher who deals with the rich folk on the hill - he wants them to do really well).
The 'crat political philosophy. Grace had that affliction until I gradually made her realize that it's totally mistaken. Totally.
I thought the 'crat philosophy had to do with turning everybody in the world into a welfare client.
I want the rich to do well because they're good customers, not quite the same thing. But Grace is smart, so I'm listening.
I vote against, speak against, and contribute money against, and act against these things.
And that reinforces their persistence. For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. Newton's 3rd and the Law of Karma.
So what do you propose? Let them do their worst? Let them gain more adherents? Regan should not have opposed the Soviets? The Allies should not have opposed the Nazis? I should not have reported the burglary in progress? I should not oppose a tax on capital? I should not oppose the do gooders who are doing things to us for our own good but are really building for themselves a bureaucracy?
I don't see how I can't not oppose or undermine them.
Toleration,... We can change our personal collection of tolerances and intolerances as we can change from a baseball cap to a fedora, change the wardrobe from Dior to Punk, or change the paint, decorations, windows in our homes, or change the flower beds, trees, and vistas in our gardens and parks.
This is known as "ethical relativism" and it's the root cause of societal decay. Liberalism in the contemporary sense embraces this view and doing so accelerates the demise of toleration, ethical relativism, and liberalism.
Ethical relativism means all behaviour towards others has the same value and therefore, no value. I certainly hate to think I stepped in that and I didn't intend it. You quoted my very badly expressed thought which implies changing a hat is as easy as [has the same value as] changing religious toleration and the following sentence you didn't quote,
"Doing all these things take varying degrees of commitment, effort, planning, discussion, judgement, negotiation, conflict and by the time they're done, our outlook changes a bit"
does a bad job of explaining what I meant. Changing couture houses is trivial. Toleration and intoleration are not. What we tolerate is not trivial - it can have serious ethical, social and political consequences, such as widespread drunkeness, corruption, slavery, (which I think are bad whatever culture they're found in). Changing what we tolerate also can have serious consequences: religious peace, emancipation, civil war.
But ethical relativism isn't involved in these changes unless we bring it to them - unless an actor is an ethical relativist.
You asked me. "What's an intellectual style?"
As I've been describing it for myself, style, in any field, trivial or consequential, is emphasizing or relying on some things and de-emphasizing or not relying on other things. As a result, style affects what we see and not see, how we think, what we do, and how we behave towards others.
An over emphasis or over reliance on some elements - extreme style - can often lead to difficulties, injury, failure - including moral lapses, even catastrophe. Three examples of extreme intellectual style from my own experience: the teacher who taught an introductory literature course totally from the point of view of Freudian psychoanalysis and another who taught an introductory philosophy class through a marxist political lens. The over-reliance, over emphasis, these two placed on these ideologies led them to minimize their obligations to the school and students - they were being dishonest.
An employer of mine had a contract with a penal system and in the course of my work I interviewed a number of psychopaths. These people were unlike run of the mill criminals. They utterly underemphasized, relied not at all on, (actually, totally disregarded), truth values and facts and emphasized what they thought I wanted to hear. This style is so bizarre I did seriously wonder if I was dealing with human beings or some other species.
Intelligence is not a style. It's an absolute. Only humans on this planet have it.
Intelligence may be an absolute, but thinking has qualitative differences from person to person and I've been using style as a way to understand those differences because it's descriptively useful.
The accelerating spread of democracy seems analogous to the expansion of a successful new species.
As successful as Islamists?
Touche. Tyranny and fascism collide with freedom. It's happened before. We'll see. |
