Reason

[Russell Smith]

December 13, 1998–Smitty’s Discussion of Intelligence and Reason

Smitty: The last few weeks we have been kicking around the difference between intelligence and reason. Anybody have any more constatation on the idea of intelligence versus reason that they would like to discuss?

Kenny: Intelligence is a goal seeking mental function that can take and use problems of fact in waking life to reach the higher value, clearer state of knowing, called conscience.

Smitty: OK.

Mark: Would reason be a formatory thing whereas intelligence would include more, either more parts of higher parts of centers or more centers perhaps?

Smitty: Good thought, Mark, actually you have it backwards. Reason would be a higher quality than intelligence. Intelligence is strictly a singular line of memory independent by itself. I grab the dog bone box and I shake it once, the dogs know it is the dog bone box. It is verifiable, they have heard it before, they know it is the dog bone box. But it is a single line of memory and they can be possessed with many of these single lines of memory–a registered event. A loud noise goes off, where does Angel, one of our dogs, go? She hides in the bathroom and tries to get behind the commode because of the loud noise. Some memory–loud noise–she is afraid of. “Maybe the farmer is shooting at me”. She has a single line of memory; a registration of an event that can she has retained.

We all watched the movie Babe, right? When the farmer took Babe into the shed, Babe saw that the farmer was carrying this thing under his arm (of course it was a shotgun) and Babes’ recounting was how food often came from long shiny tubes….A single line of memory.

Now, if these individual moments of memory, these registered things are intelligence then what is reason?

Deb: Reason would have to include many varied associations that have been mingled or constated together.

Smitty: Good.

Angie: When all the separate independent parts work together toward one aim.

Smitty: OK that is a greater formulation.

Mark: Many associations being put together by higher parts of centers or different centers.

Smitty: That’s part of it, who else?

Jon: Reason would be the memories of more than one center but objective reason would be the activation/manifestation of memories of all centers simultaneously.

Smitty: OK, but there is more expansion.

Jeffrey: Reason seems to apply a structural organization to the data that is acquired through knowledge into intellect and offers an opportunity to actually recreate in itself something more than what was going on in the individual before.

Smitty: OK. So, if intelligence is this single line of memory–this something that can be constated and retained–then reason must be the intersection of many of these lines almost on the level of Similarities to the Already Arisen. If a tree has fallen across the chasm then many animals can walk across that tree to get across the chasm, and they will remember where that tree was. They will remember it. They will have memory. They will have intelligence and when they head to that place again they will go across the same tree because they can remember. They have a memory, but reason would be the ability to fall a tree across that chasm, to create a similarity to what has already arose. To come to another chasm and say, I’ve got another chasm to go across, how did I get over the last chasm? I crossed on a fallen tree, well, I don’t see any fallen trees, but can I create a similarity to an already arisen? Can I get something like that over this chasm? Perhaps I can gnaw down a tree. Probably the first time they gnawed one down it fell the wrong way. OK, that didn’t work. Alright, we got to gnaw it on this side first…we have to get it to fall in this direction. So the creation of similarities to the already arisen is a reconstruction from memory. We use the example of the curved rock holding water and the first man of reason who walked out of the cave one day and said: “There’s water in that rock, a curved rock holds water.” Now, if after a rain he only had intelligence he would say: “Oh, there’s a place to get a drink.” And the next time it rains he might say: “Oh, I remember I got a drink from that rock.” But all he can have is the memory of that. Reason would allow him to create a similarity to the already arisen, to say: “I’m thirsty, I need to find a curved rock, it looks like it is going to rain…ooh, there ain’t any curved rocks around, I know, I will curve out a rock”. So now we start to expand or connect these individual lines of memory and be able to recreate them. Then reason comes in–a constraining or expansion of memory that allows a man to create something similar to what has already arose.

Angie: Is reason exclusive to three brained beings?

Smitty: It is exclusive to Man.

Mark: So formatory center by itself has reason.

Smitty: That is correct. Formatory apparatus is the smallest modicum of reason that we have. The problem with it, Mark, is that it is an automatic part of a center so it does not work with attention. It works automatically. Man who does not possess anything higher in his intellectual center than his formatory part is just an automaton with reason, but it doesn’t serve anything greater–it’s formatory. It uses formation instead of formulation. We need the higher part of the intellectual center to get formulation involved.

Pammie: I can give you an example Mark, for instance, previously Smitty mentioned the dogs, and the doggie bones, and the box; and how they recognized the dog bones; but they do not know how to go to the store and buy them. They do not have that ability.

Mark: Dogs don’t have intellectual center at all do they?

Pamela: Yes, they do. And they have the higher emotional center as well.

Smitty: When you get into chapter 7 in my book we will go through the ascension of animals, in fact, many animals are higher than man, i.e., show me a man as loyal as my dog. With this idea you can start to realize that dogs possess a higher emotional center, a center that is higher than what most men possess. You cannot trust your neighbor, but you can trust your dog. You can come home and kick your dog every night and he will still wag his tail and love you. He will forgive you. Show me a man that possesses that high of a quality. You cross a man’s path once and he will be against you for the rest of your life, but dogs are forgiving. Dogs are loyal. Dogs are compassionate.

Mark: So dogs have three centers?

Smitty: Yes, dogs are three brain beings. They just have not added the last part which is reason. There are many animals that have great intelligence. They build hexagonal combs, they find the same branch to nest in year after year. That is intelligence. Bees fly in straight lines, when they come to an obstacle they go up–over it–and back down. When they find a flower they reverse the process. When they get back to the hive they do a dance. Perhaps they are telling all the other bees: “You go this way, then you go up–then you go down, then you go left, then you go right, then you go up, then down and that is where the flowers are.” And everybody in the bee hive takes off in that direction following the movements indicated in the dance. An ant lays down a pheromone trail to the food that it has found. There has got to be intelligence there. You probably can not get that from a turtle. You probably can not put some food out and have one turtle go back and tell the other turtles how to find it. They are just going to have to stumble on it.

So, we look at the whole growth of the development of our centers and how man is a three-storied factory. That means that there are three sides of him in essence and three sides of him in personality. We call them the red cards and the black cards–essence and personality. He starts with an instinctive center. He can sense. At this level it is called plants. It has no movement, but from sensation…movement is born and something is acquired in personality. The whole octave that this is a part of is the octave of duplication. It is really the whole octave of sex…of the duplicating principle. That is what all life is about, trying to duplicate. The first DNA molecule that copied itself would be the first moment of self-remembering in the universe. It could duplicate. Everything serves this duplicating octave. Sensation gives birth to movement. You have a better chance of duplicating if you can move, because now if it doesn’t rain you will not wither and die. You can move to where the water is. So when the moving center is developed, it helps enhance the possibility of duplication.

But then animals become emotional, they develop the emotional center. They start to recognize their own young. They start to nurture them. They do not have to dump 10,000 eggs in a stream and hope that a few will make it. They can say: “Gosh, with an emotional center we can have a small clutch of babies–two, three, four and we will watch them. We will feed them. We will care for them. We will bring them into existence until they are old enough to take care of themselves and that will give them a better chance of going on to duplicate…of continuing our species.”

We are all caught in this great octave of duplication.

Then animals become intelligent and one animal says to another: “Remember last year, we met and had those kids? Let’s do it again the same way that worked last year. I’ll meet you at the same tree. We will build our nest in the same branch. We will be intelligent about duplicating. Once we find a way that works we will repeat it. We will find our way back to the same stream that we were born in because if it worked before, it will work again. Let us not pick just any stream. It may not work. We have to use our intelligence. We will meet on the same island every year. We will swim to the same shore, to the same beach. We will nest in the same tree. We will use intelligence to have a better chance of duplication”.

Then the animals develop a higher emotional brain. They start to live in clans, in herds, in packs. Some watching while the others feed; and if a predator comes, one of them may even run the wrong way to make the predator chase it so the rest of his clan, the rest of his herd, the rest of his pack can get away. He would sacrifice his own existence so that the rest of his species has a chance to go on to duplicate. And from there we find great animal manifestations of real caring and loyalty and trust and unity within the species. In some tribes of apes, only one ape may mate; but all the other apes support the tribe even though only one gets to mate. It is as if they have got conscience.

So, the whole evolutionary process pushes itself up…instinct giving birth to movement, emotion giving birth to intelligence; and at the highest level of the three stories, conscience–higher emotional center–giving birth to consciousness–to reason. And man possesses this third acquirement, this reason. So we come from a species of animals that already possessed higher emotional center, lived in a clan, took care of itself, watched each others’ young, nurtured them, raised them, worked as a unit to find food, made sure everybody got fed. Loyal, “I’ll fight for the clan.” No individuals here, but a clan, a group…superior to the individual.

And so, we are just an extension of those animals that already possessed higher emotional center; we have added one brain to it, a brain with reason. So the first men were just like a group of apes, in a sense. They were already a little troop, a little clan scavenging around during the day, and at night, hiding in the trees and listening. And then one of them developed the third acquirement, developed reason. One of them first saw the curved rock and said it holds water. “We don’t have to go down to the stream and get a drink at night and jeopardize our existence. We can scoop up some water in this curved rock in the daylight when it is safe and we can carry it back to the cave, and tonight when we are thirsty we can have some water to drink. In fact, we will take another rock and we will gouge out the curve of this rock so it will hold more water. We can probably even pack some mud together in the shape of a curved rock and let it dry in the sun and it also will hold water.”

Everything has been pushed up by this duplicating principle. We are supposed to be the pinnacle of creation on this earth. We have reason to enhance the duplicating principle. Man exceeds the force that comes from the Do at the bottom and is supposed to now be under the force of the Do that comes from above. He is no longer just a sex machine. We are the only species on the face of this earth that can make that choice. In every other species, when the female comes into heat, every male within smelling distance is coming after her. We are the only species that is not a slave to the duplicating principle. We are supposed to feel something coming from the Do that is beyond. For us, it represents the formation and crystallization of a higher body that can withstand the shock of death and enter into the octave which is beyond. So man is left in a precarious moment. He is no longer able to be shoved up from the bottom and he is not yet able to feel the Do pulling him up from the top, and he is left–as our work tells us–to finish himself. In the Psychology of Man’s Possible Evolution, the idea is that man is not capable of completing his octave just mechanically. He can not be shoved up to reason. Reason has to be acquired on his own.

Deborah: But if there are animals with conscience and intelligence, then animals have reason.

Smitty: We are the first animals that were able to use our conscience to temper our intelligence into reason. We are the first species on this earth to come forth with that. We have to accept, that over the course of time, there are going to be other animal species that will emerge with reason. Maybe it will be a dolphin. Maybe it will be a dog, a cat, or a pig. We are not going to be the only one. There is not just one kind of plant out there. There is a whole diversification of plants. There is not just one “one brained being” out there. There is a whole diversification of one brained being; not just one “two brained being”, again, there is a whole diversification. So having only one species on the face of this earth with reason only shows that we are the first. There will be more to follow. The time spans are immense and man has only been around a few thousand years, but it will happen again, it is the natural progression of things. From some other animal group, maybe dogs, some dog, will be sniffing about and say: “Hey, what am I doing, who am I?’ He will cognize the first I AM…“I AM a dog” and then with that reason he will be able to have a better chance of surviving and he will pass those genes on. The first man that could see the curved rock that held water and was able to scoop it up and carry it back to his cave did not get eaten that night. He survived to pass his genes on. Man has the ability to reason, to connect all these fragments of memory and then reproduce them, to create a similarity to the already arisen, to create something similar to the curved rock that holds water, to start to fashion a weapon and make a tool. Maybe he picked up a bone the first time and hit another bone to break it open, but now with reason he could make something like that. He could fashion a club or use a sharp rock, he could find anything similar to what he already had recorded in his memory and start to reproduce it, to make it out of other things, to adapt something else.

So, intelligence is the formation of memory, and reason is its integration.

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