From: gerald_a_levy (gerald_a_levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Sat Jan 24 2004 - 08:08:30 EST
Hi Andy. > From > whence do you think mental capacities arise? Species other than homo sapiens have 'mental capacities', but I'll discuss only the mental capacities of our species (although I think that we can learn much by observing and studying other species. E.g. the reading of 'body language' and 'expressions' is something that is an important social communications and processing skill for other species besides our own.) Scientists have long known that our species typically only utilizes a small percentage of its mental capacity because of the underutilization of the brain. I'll put that aside, though, because our concern now should not be the abstract potential of mental capacity (although it is an interesting topic which could perhaps be discussed in relation to Marx's ideas about communism and the end of the 'pre-history' of humanity). With the above qualifications, human mental capacities are a consequence of: -- genetics. -- the interaction of the individual with groups and social institutions. The state, class membership, education, the media, gender roles, and the prevalence of the commodity-form all shape (and hence distort) mental capacity within the context of the bourgeois mode of production. Other social institutions (e.g. religious institutions) can affect this process (by e.g. discouraging people from developing certain capacities and by fostering perceptions of guilt and fear) and the interactive experience among family members, peer groups, classes, communities, and 'significant others' can help further, distort, and/or inhibit this process. >Would you agree they > are 'emergent' from lower level process (including brain processes)? > Would you agree that they are one side of the social relations of > production? Yes and yes. In solidarity, Jerry
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