At Tue, 13 Apr 1999 17:10:11 -0500, you wrote:
>
>Joe,
>I understand the parallels that you draw. But - (you knew there had to be
>one didn't you). I contend that it is a group of basic thought processes
>possessed originally in child hood and compromised by aging in our society
>that can be debugged and used to enhance ones life if it is desirable to the
>individual. A way of looking at things not a regression and not a hierarchy.
>I am sure that there are those who would corrupt this idea and those who
>will fight it because of the monetary loss or gain it presents.
>
>Best Wishes
>Jim
>
A child's willingness to uncritically accept mutually contradictory things (to the point of not grasping simple laws such as the continued existence of absent objects, mediated causality (a->b->c), seriation, conservation of quantity (number being independent of length in indicating more or less (.... . . .)) and conservation of volume independent of container shape (these are grasped at differing ages) simply points out that they have not at that point developed their cognitive faculties to the level needed to deal with extracting abstract general rules from prior experience and subsequently applying them to concrete particular cases; it does not indicate a pristine but subsequently corrupted capacity to self-conciously hold simultaneous multiple worldviews from which one or another is chosen to fit a situation, then replaced when another serves the next situation better. There are "critical periods" for the development of critical faculties, and the lower-level ones mu!
st precede the higher-level ones, to provide the foundations upon which they are built. This has been experientially verified beaucoup times. I realize that the science may not be to your liking, but it is there. Check any number of Jean Piaget's works in genetic epistemology (the beginnings of knowledge) for the progression and maturation of thought from the sensorimotor levels, through the first and second levels of pre-operational thought and the first and second levels of concrete operations to the level of formal operations (which occurs around puberty). I recommend THE PRINCIPLES OF GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY (1972), THE EQUILIBRATION OF COGNITIVE STRUCTURES: THE CENTRAL PROBLEM OF INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT (1985), THE GRASP OF CONSCIOUSNESS (1976), SUCCESS AND UNDERSTANDING (1978), EXPERIMENTS IN CONTRADICTION (1980), PSYCHOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY: TOWARDS A THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE (1971) and the two volume set POSSIBILITY AND NECESSITY (1987), as well as SOCIAL COGNITION AND THE!
ACQUISITION OF SELF by Michael Lewis and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn (1979).
>
>Jim Callahan magicjim@islc.net
>Creator of Applied thought Technologies
>http://www.magicjim.net
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: joe dees <joedees@bellsouth.net>
>To: virus@lucifer.com <virus@lucifer.com>
>Date: Monday, April 12, 1999 11:27 PM
>Subject: Re: virus: levels only two
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>At Mon, 12 Apr 1999 09:58:41 -0700, you wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Jim wrote:
>>>
>>>> You make my point for me.
>>>
>>>If so, then you have a very good point. But I don't think that the portion
>of
>>>the post you quoted makes the point that freeing oneself from the chains
>of
>>>Belief undoes all of the learning and experience that you have acquired on
>your
>>>journey. There may be aspects of child-like thought in the mental state of
>>>someone who has rejected dogmatic thinking, but that person will also have
>the
>>>assets of years of experience which were not available to him before his
>years
>>>of service to his master BS.
>>>
>>Thisd is an example of the "Return to the Wisdom of Innocent Beginnings"
>meme, found (in varying guises) in the Eden myth of
>Judeo/Christianity/Islam, the Uncarved Block/Original Face of Buddhism, the
>Peaceful Agrarian Matriarchy of Wicca/Paganism, the Noble Savage, the Good
>Old Days, the Glory That Was Greece/Rome/Egypt etc., Communism's Original
>Barter Economy, the Wise and Enlightened Aboriginal Shaman, and Jim's Child
>as Sage contention.
>>>
>>>> To search for what was lost is often extremely
>>>> time consuming and frustrating.
>>>
>>>"Of all ambitions, perhaps the least practicable is that of regaining
>something
>>>that has been lost -- a love, a trust, or any other desirable state of
>affairs.
>>>(.) That which we won and held by luck, confidence and simple good humor
>is
>>>far less available to the strained pleading of the dispossessed."
>>>
>>> -Robert Grudin
>>>
>>>
>>>> I do not infer that a child is more
>>>> sophisticated than a adult . ..The answer is out there..Not in a
>>>> book.
>>>
>>>Well, I'm about to head "out there" for a week, but weakling that I am,
>I'm
>>>taking a book.
>>>
>>>See you all in a week.
>>>
>>>-KMO
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Joe E. Dees
>>Poet, Pagan, Philosopher
>>
>>
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>
>
>
>
Joe E. Dees
Poet, Pagan, Philosopher