SpheresOfBalance wrote:Wyman wrote:Unconscious motor responses don't seem to require any higher level cognitive abilities.
Lev Muishkin wrote:SpheresOfBalance wrote:
There is no high or low, only different. To attribute high or low, is always self serving.
So 'the' asteroid is coming, you can either sit there and play a symphony for it's arrival, requiem, of course, or you can grab your bicycle and hit the road in the opposite direction?
To rank ones abilities, purely mental masturbation of meaninglessness!
I take your point but reject it. I'm not ranking, but recognising learning and progress.
I hope you don't mind my parallel edit
When a person first plays the piano his or her skill is low,
When a person first tries to play the piano, there is no ability,
and it requires effort and practice to master it.
it shall require much effort and practice if one really cares to master it
As progress is made the skill becomes higher,
If one really cares to master it, their ability increases,
and it is also true to say that not all persons are bale to achieve a level of excellence beyond a certain point.
but it's always true that some want it more than others, that only the ones that truly want it shall achieve the excellence, that others have labeled as such.
To say a monkey plays a piano 'differently' but not at a lower level than Daniel Barenboim is hideously stupid, and denies DB's life's work.
I'm not sure, when you say, "at a lower level," do you mean amplitude? Do you have a hard-on for DB? How important should DB's life's work be?
I would say that what is definitely hideously ignorant (not stupid), from a philosophical point of view at least, is for one to not understand that what constitutes lower or higher level, as you seem to mean it, is ambiguous and arbitrary, or in other words, "subjective," At least according to my Art History Professor at University!
An extraterrestrial might not get it, let alone be able to actually hear it. And we might feel the same on his planet. So what does that actually mean, philosophically?
Differences!
High level skill is different than a low level skill.
More ability is a higher level than lower ability; yes a difference of LEVEL.
Why not try 'Angry Birds"? - your favourite game. Level One is easy, and level Two is harder.
If I were to call you a fucking idiot. That means that your ability to think is at a lower level than mine.
Do you remember at school when you were in remedial class, and they told you and the other drongos that your appreciation of maths, and English was "different" from the kids in the top set; those that managed to graduate with honours. Remember? Yes, well when they told you, that you were "different", that was just a polite way of saying you were stupid. Ahh, remember? Think hard. Yes, they called you 'special". Do you remember?
"Special" is different, is less able. Lower achievement; stupid.