ISSUE47 米国有米寒假1号第六次作业

cckantUID: 2247822

TOPIC: ISSUE47 - "Society does not place enough emphasis on the intellect-that is, on reasoning and other cognitive skills."
WORDS: 591          TIME: 1:07:32          DATE: 2007-2-2

1，              从人们的生活水平考虑
2，              从个人的发展考虑
3，              从社会进步的角度考虑

The speaker asserts that there is insufficient emphasis is placed on the intellect, such as reasoning and other cognitive skills. However, I believe that nowadays the society has been functioning very well in emphasizing the various skills of human to serve itself.

While considering the well-being of human being, reasoning and other cognitive skills are well utilized in the modern. As far as 19th century, the father of Economics, Adam Smith, points out that it is not the baker's willingness to help provide bread， nor the farmers’ kindly concerns about the hunger in the society which makes our life easy and convenient. Instead, it is their concern about the self-interests that all kinds of those service and production such as break and hair cutting would make themselves better-off. Some people may label these sorts of motive as selfishness. However, the more accurate term in economics is that the rationality of individual. Moreover, the extent of this kinds of rationality is determined by one's cognitive skills such reasoning, and abstract thinking. For example, when a couple is contemplating to have a mortgage for a new apartment, they would think about how much of their monthly earning would contributed to the loan repaid, according to their past live experience and reasonable expected change in the future live, so that the planed future expenditure would ensure a well balanced combination of their living condition and other aspects of live. The prevailing economic organization and cooperation as market-based economy in the recent century, which in a much larger scale requires cognitive skills for the innumerable daily transaction between agents, also suggest that the intellect is now highly emphasized.

On the Individual prospect, intellect is highly emphasized as well. As early as pre-school learning, being smart is critical when one assesses a kid. At the very beginning, reasoning more involves with simple event such as understanding the meaning of a word or a phenomenon. However, as a child grows and more years of schooling are attained, he or she is expected to possess an increasing level of cognitive skills. More intricate logical reasoning is taught and expected to understand and master to use in higher level of education. More frequently, abstract concepts are used in reasoning. Furthermore, students are evaluated directly and undirected according to their ability to these cognitive skills. However, the dominant role in cognitive skills does not disappear as people begin to work. Intellect is indispensable for interpersonal skills, as well as good job performance, in either the professional job or manual work.

Moreover, the contemporary development of science and technology also highlights the significance of intellect to the society. If the argument by many economist, that the slow economic development in pre-industrialization history of human being is due to lack of a social mechanism to extract the potential benefit of scientific innovation, is true, then the substantial growth since industrial revolution, particularly in the post-war period, indicates how powerful of scientific advance can fuel our modern live. By observing the truth that the underlying and necessary behavior of the science and technology is the creative, reasoning and abstract thinking skills, the emphasis of science now experienced in most countries is a strong sign of how the society values the intellect.

In sum, in individual consideration, intellect is critical to success; in the macro society concerns, the human community organizes their activities for well being upon the fundamental prerequisite of intellect; and human development relies on the use of cognitive skills. Hence, an appropriate emphasis is placed on the human intellect.