If you exclude reading, writing, speaking, and listening (ie use of language, including math or code) as mere table stakes, how would you define “intellectual” in terms of essential non-language behaviors that non-intellectuals typically don’t exhibit?
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I see an intellectual as someone who explicitly places his or her writing and argumentation in dialog with a tradition (meaning: sequence) of other intellectuals who have written on the topics s/he is engaged with — references, in short
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Of course, that’s not sufficient. When people think it is, that’s when you get the phenomenon of the poseur or the pseudo-intellectual, who goes through the motions of name-dropping for prestige purposes, but who has little original to add to the tradition.
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Hmm, that’s a coherent definition of one kind of intellectualism (traditional/scholastic/straussian). I have a feeling there’s at least a couple of other distinct types.
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Who are some examples you’re thinking of, of intellectuals who fall outside my definition?
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I think of them as "take only pictures, leave only footprints" people. Some of my friends who have an intellectual orientation towards, and relationship with life, but don't situate themselves in tradition as a first order of business. Only as a side-effect
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But doesn’t saying they have “an intellectual orientation” risk becoming tautological?
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Not necessarily. I'm characterizing the orientation in intensional terms via definitional behavioral constituents such as curiosity which others have pointed out. "Intellectuals are curious" like "water is wet". They try things. They forgo immediate reward. etc etc.
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Curiosity cannot be enough to qualify as an intellectual. Even kittens are curious, despite the mortality risks.
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Likewise, situation in tradition cannot be enough to qualify as an intellectual. Even hidebound priests are situated in tradition. And I'm actually inclined to admit possibility of say "chimpanzee intellectuals". I don't think there are tight necessary/sufficient conditions here
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Here’s a possible synthesis: placing yourself in a tradition means you *aim* to be an intellectual; the complexity and originality of your work within that tradition is what determines how *good* of an intellectual you are.
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Or you aim to be a particular sort of intellectual who seeks that kind of validation and comparative evaluation against others. I think it can simply be a way of living like mysticism. Just as mystics exist in both monastically embodied traditions and as wild solitary hermits.
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