Do you think a higher value should be placed on intellect or on social constructions?

Please define “value”, “intellect”, and “social constructions”, and specify by whom the value is being placed.

@nikipedia value is pleasantly indefinable – in this case I mean which has the higher quality. intellect and social I consider to be two parts of non-biological evolution… but I’d say social includes idealizing Victorian ideals and intellectual would be idealizing “modern” ideals. To put it another way… Social idolizes actors and intellectual idolizes doctors… just as one example.

I do not feel enlightened by that explanation.

I think, @Marina, that’s because the distinction between those presumed oppositions just isn’t there. Intellect is social, in the sense that without society, we wouldn’t have an intellect.

The obverse is also true. Without intellect, we wouldn’t have society. We can’t really conceive of one without the other.

My sense is that this is trying to sound like a pseudo-intellection question, because our friend JeanPaul is not certain what he is after. Perhaps he thinks that in some way, social construction is non-intellectual, or that the intellection has nothing to do with society. Since neither is true, there’s not much to be said, although, as usual, I have said it at length.

Another way of looking at it, would be “is fluther a socializing site, or is it for intellectual discussion?” But that is really pushing it, I think. A lot of new people have recently shown up. Through social encouragement, they will soon learn how we approach intellectual engagement.

How do you place values on either?

@lemsteve: why do you need to? I think you can have preferences, but it’s hard to assign value to the name of a categorization scheme. It is what it is. You might value one set of criteria for distinguishing intellect of socialization over another, but we do not have any schemes proposed here to decide between, so the point is moot.

@daloonagain Sigh! You’re back. Thank you and lurve.

@daloonagain I see what you’re saying but would argue that the core of all conflict can be tied to a few basic conflicts. Biology vs death, society vs biology, intellect vs society… and probably something beyond that that hasn’t been explored fully yet. Each requires the previous – that is, society couldn’t exist without biology, but it still works to oppress it (hence why we’re all so embarrassed by the biological things that we all do.) I do think social construction is non-intellectual though, as you suggested, because no one decides to construct society, it forms based on common need.

Has fluther arisen without decision? Clearly we take an active role in constructing our society. It doesn’t arise out of nothing. It needs help.

As to your oppositional model—I wonder what it explains. I don’t think it has any predictive power, so I don’t see how it adds to our understanding of our world. Part of the problem here is that you really don’t define your terms, and so it is as if our words were stuck in a pool of molasses. We can’t even talk past each other, since the words are impeded so much that they blow up like a puffball.

I prefer evolutionary models, and models of necessity to explain behavior of humans.

@daloonagain I’d argue that this is an evolutionary model – but one that is more over all evolution, physical and social. I think if you look at major conflicts you can use this model to break it down and see why the conflict is there. Most these days are social vs. intellectual.
I’d say Flurther is no exception, yes there was a decision to make a website, but even this discussion could not have been predicted at that time, the progression of a society is more organic than intellect, but less so than biology.