Well Chuck-
Leaving aside the chick thing it is the opening statement of a major post on a philosophy thread.
The word "most" implies that some,maybe only one,Western democracies do not demonstrate the characteristics you ascribe to the rest.Do you have any in mind.
I accept that your observation was based on personal experience but that experience is not the same as anyone else's and to allow it any credibility one does have to allow credibilty to all other statements based on a similar ground or claim an exalted status for yourself.
I think that there is good evidence that the general "intellectual sophistication", so to call it, in Western Faustian culture might easily be styled magical if it wasn't for the fact that the future will be more magical still.
I feel a certain pessimism in your posts which I recognise from long exposure to it in the pub.I'll accept that our companions can be a trifle trying at times but that doesn't seem a reason to draw any wide ranging conclusions.You could try laughing at them on the grounds that you might as well because you are not going to change them in any sudden or dramatic ways however enlightened your thesis is.
I will,however,have another look at your "more substantial" statements with a view to dumping on them as well.That's the essence of good discussion don't you think.Is there any particular one you would like me to focus my attention on?
Please feel free to dump on me anytime you feel like it.I'm not very sensitive.I like a good set to and recently retired engineers aren't exactly an everyday occurence on these threads.
PS.The chick thing reminded me of an epiphany I had when I was about 8 or 9.I'm a country kid and near where I lived there was one of the first large scale hatcheries in the district and I knew the guy who owned it.One day I was in there when the chicks were popping out and what I saw them doing I could never really put into words until now.
That "Whoa!" is perfect.A top notch cartoonist,I feel,would have been content with that.But I saw hundreds all running about.I also knew the "sexer".
I sometimes think Aldous Huxley had seen something similar and used it for his first part of Brave New World.Have you ever heard of Chicken Consciousness?
Spend
My idea of a sophisticated intellect is someone who has as a minimum understands CT and has made the attitude adjustment.
I once asked a philosophy professor "What is philosophy about?" He said philosophy is "radically critical self-consciousness". This was 35 years ago. Only in the last five years have I begun to understand that statement
I took a number of courses in philosophy three decades ago but it was not until I began to study and understand Critical Thinking that I began to understand what "radically critical self-consciousness" meant.
I consider CT to be ?'philosophy light'. CT differs from other subject matter such as mathematics and geography in that it requires, for success, that the student develop a significant change in attitude.
Anyone who has been in military service recognizes the significant attitude adjustment introduced into all recruits in the eight weeks of boot camp. During the first eight weeks of military service each recruit is introduced to the proper military attitude. During the eight weeks of basic training there is certain knowledge and skills that the recruit learns but primarily s/he undergoes a significant attitude adjustment.
I would identify the CT attitude adjustment to be a movement from naïve common sense realism to critical self-consciousness. It is necessary to free many words and concepts from the limited meaning attached by normal usage?-such a separation requires that the learner hold in abeyance the normal sort of concept associations.
The individual who has made the attitude adjustment recognizes that reality is multilayered and that one can only penetrate those layers through a critical attitude toward both the self and the world. To be critical does not mean to be negative, as is a common misunderstanding.
If we were to follow the cat and the turtle as they make their way through the forest we would observe two fundamentally different ways that a creature might make its way through life.
The turtle withdraws into its shell when it bumps into something new, and remains such until that something new disappears or remains long enough to become familiar to the turtle. The cat is conscious of almost everything within the range of its senses, and studies all it perceives until its curiosity is satisfied.
Formal education teaches by telling so that the graduate is prepared with a sufficient database to get a job. Such an education efficiently prepares one to make a living, but this efficiency is at the cost of curiosity and imagination. Such an education does not prepare an individual to become critically self-conscious.
If we wish to emulate the cat rather than the turtle we must revitalize our curiosity and imagination after formal education. That revitalized curiosity and imagination, together with self directed study prepares each of us for a fulfilling life that includes the ecstasy of understanding.
I think that radically critical self-consciousness combines the attitude adjustment of CT and combines it with the curiosity of the cat and then takes that combination to a radical level.
Chuck
I recognise plenty in that.We call it "square bashing" and I have done it and it does alter attitudes.
There are big problems here.Are you sure you are not confusing "intellectual" with "intelligent".Plenty of intelligent people are not intellectual and I suspect a lifetime in engineering doesn't encourage intellectual thinking.Intellectuals are considered a bit mad by most people.They have the morals of an alley cat for a start.Fear of punishment is not morality.Didn't Dostoevsky deal with that.
I wouldn't go near your cat/turtle idea.I think it is anthropomorphic.The poor old turtle is being second guessed.
But many things adjust attitudes even when we are agreed how they should be adjusted and what is the function of the adjustment.One might say every minute adjusts attitude all the way.
I've not a lot of time here as you might see.I'll have anther look tomorrow.
But I still think there's an elitist agenda and an engineering attitude to social and cultural forces.
