As usual really interesting article. Some comments:<br><b><br>'Social order in preliterate
societies may involve nothing more than family relationships, or at
most the society extends kinship by positing ancient common
ancestors. With little or no apparatus of government, civil order is
maintained by feud or fear of feud.'</b>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.5cm">The above paragraph which begins with
a possibility, ends with a statement of fact, the sort of loose
academic licence which is a sure sign that these guys are trying to
prove a point – which seems to be that what we want is to learn to
<b>control</b>.<i> 'Control structure, the element which is new to
Rank 4 thought' </i> The absence of evidence of mechanisms to
maintain order in preliterate societies may indicate that these
mechanisms were not required. This treatise with its assumption that
this absence would inevitably give rise to conflict and fear,
(published 1990) predates much research (Lynn McTaggart –
The Bond, The Empathic Civilisation – Jeremy Rifkin) which shows
the opposite to be true, and probably relates more to the cultural
background against which this is written. In the 1980s US prison
population was rapidly rising so that in 2008 approximately one in
every 31 adults (7.3 million) in the United States was behind bars,
or being monitored (probation and parole). The assumption that
without these mechanisms there must be conflict and chaos, ignores
the possibility that a society needs regulation only if it is not
being run in the interests of its members.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.5cm"> While the article includes many
interesting ideas about the evolution resulting from spoken language,
through the development of the alphabet and numerology, the emphasis
on control and manipulation (<i>What is critical about language is
that it enabled people wilfully to manipulate their mental processes,
to gain control of consciousness) </i>leads to unduly emphasising the
role of programming software rather than using computers to
communicate. The advantage of having the ability to produce your own
tools cannot be denied. But that is akin to saying people should
learn how to produce electricity rather than just using the energy to
create light. And personally I am much more interested in the
content.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom:0.5cm">There is recognition that '<i>the
proliferation of new "interdisciplinary" ventures'</i> is
indicative of rank 4 ideas when they '<i>lay out two disciplines side
by side only to transcend them.' </i><span style="font-style:normal">Following
this I would suggest that new ways of thinking are more to do with
connecting wholes, dispensing with the boundaries which separate
disciplines; systems thinking; integral theory; and appreciating
processes which link rather than just seeing discrete units. A caring
society admits subjective criteria as contributing to morality, and
does not rigidly separate subject and object in order to qualify as
'scientific'. </span>
</p>
The new consciousness enjoys evolving through compexity not as an end in itself, but because it brings the experience of increased freedom.<br><br>Anna<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 5:53 AM, Michel Bauwens <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:michel@p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">michel@p2pfoundation.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Dear friends,<div><br></div><div>after a year's absense, I 'm rejoining, and I'm sure traffic will go up <g></div>
<div><br></div><div>it would be great to have a briefing on how the list evolved while I was not participating?</div>
<div><br></div><div>Michel<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Dante-Gabryell Monson</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dante.monson@gmail.com" target="_blank">dante.monson@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
Date: Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 4:55 PM<br>Subject: evolution of cognition : metaphor, metalingual definition, algorithm, and control<br>To: <a href="mailto:econowmix@googlegroups.com" target="_blank">econowmix@googlegroups.com</a>, <a href="mailto:global-survival@googlegroups.com" target="_blank">global-survival@googlegroups.com</a><br>
<br><br><h1 style="font-family:'Times New Roman'" align="CENTER"></h1><h1 style="text-align:left"><font size="4"><a href="http://asweknowit.ca/evcult/CogEvol.shtml" target="_blank">http://asweknowit.ca/evcult/CogEvol.shtml</a> </font><font>( found via metacogs on fb )</font></h1>
<h1 style="font-family:'Times New Roman'" align="CENTER">The Evolution of Cognition</h1><center style="font-size:medium;font-family:'Times New Roman'">
<p><br><br><b>William L. Benzon and David G. Hays</b><br></p></center><p style="font-size:medium;font-family:'Times New Roman'"></p><hr style="font-size:medium;font-family:'Times New Roman'">
<p style="font-size:medium;font-family:'Times New Roman'"></p><blockquote style="font-size:medium;font-family:'Times New Roman'"><p><b>Abstract:</b> With cultural evolution new processes of thought appear. Abstraction is universal, but rationalization first appeared in ancient Greece, theorization in Renaissance Italy, and model building in twentieth-century Europe. These processes employ the methods of metaphor, metalingual definition, algorithm, and control, respectively. The intellectual and practical achievements of populations guided by the several processes and exploiting the different mechanisms differ so greatly as to warrant separation into cultural ranks. The fourth rank is not completely formed, while regions of the world and parts of every population continue to operate by the processes of earlier ranks.</p>
<p><br></p><p></p><menu><li><b><br>1 Evolution in <a href="http://asweknowit.ca/evcult/CogEvol.shtml#Biology%20and%20Culture" target="_blank">Biology and Culture</a></b><br></li><li><b>2 <a href="http://asweknowit.ca/evcult/CogEvol.shtml#Ontology" target="_blank">Ontology</a>, Abstraction, and Behavioral Mode</b><br>
</li><menu><li><b>2.1 Ontology</b><br></li><li><b>2.2 Abstraction and Metaphor</b><br></li><li><b>2.3 Abstraction and Rationalization</b><br></li><li><b>2.4 Neural Implementation</b><br></li></menu><li><b>3 <a href="http://asweknowit.ca/evcult/CogEvol.shtml#Cognitive%20Rank" target="_blank">Cognitive Rank</a></b><br>
</li><menu><li><b>3.1 Rank 1: What's In a Name?</b><br></li><li><b>3.2 Rank 2: The Letter of the Law</b><br></li><li><b>3.3 Rank 3: Subject and Object</b><br></li><li><b>3.4 Rank 4: Modern, Post-Modern, and All that Jazz</b><br>
</li><li><b>3.5 Cognitive Rank and Cultural Diversity</b><br></li></menu><li><b>4 <i>In Medias Res</i> : <a href="http://asweknowit.ca/evcult/CogEvol.shtml#Current%20Flux" target="_blank">The Current Flux</a></b><br></li>
<menu><li><b>4.1 The Thinking Machine or Electronic Brain</b><br>
</li><li><b>4.2 The Software Problem</b><br></li><li><b>4.3 The child is father to the man</b><br></li></menu><li><b><a href="http://asweknowit.ca/evcult/CogEvol.shtml#References" target="_blank">References</a></b><br><br>
<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
</font></span></li></menu><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><p>
</p></font></span></blockquote><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
</font></span></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br>P2P Foundation: <a href="http://p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">http://p2pfoundation.net</a> - <a href="http://blog.p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">http://blog.p2pfoundation.net</a> <br>
<br><a href="http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation" target="_blank"></a>Updates: <a href="http://twitter.com/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://twitter.com/mbauwens</a>; <a href="http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens</a><br>
<br>#82 on the (En)Rich list: <a href="http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/" target="_blank">http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/</a> <br>
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