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Originally Posted by CO Hummer
I slightly disagree.
There is a lack of consensus about a general theory of competence, and therefore, little to guide researchers in selecting and evaluating dimensions of communicative or emotional competence. I find that literature consists of numerous proposed dimensions, but that few of these have undergone rigorous assessment and evaluation. I advocate combining knowledge of how to behave with actual performance in order to distinguish competence, and i argue that competence also implies standards of appropriateness and effectiveness.
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Your drivel was anticipated.
To simplify for you as best as I can relate to a lower facimile of human life. Your argument enevitably points to the eternalquestion as to the general state of human nature.
Natural productions are generally formed by degrees.Vegetables grow from a tender shoot, and animals from an infant state. The latter being destined to act, extend their operations as their powers increase: they exhibit a progress, in what they perform, as well as in the faculties they acquire. This progress in the case of man is continued to a greater extent than in that of any other animal. Not only the individual advances from infancy to manhood, but the species itself from rudeness to civilization. Hence the supposed departure of mankind from the state of their nature; hence our conjectures and different opinions of what man must have been in the first age of his being. The poet, the historian, and the moralist, frequently allude to this ancient time; and under the emblems of gold, or of iron, represent a condition, and a manner of life, from which mankind have either degenerated, or on which they have greatly improved. On either supposition, the first state of our nature must have borne no resemblance to what men have exhibited in any subsequent period; historical monuments, even of the earliest date, are to be considered as novelties; and the most common establishments of human society are to be classed among the incroachments which fraud, oppression, or a busy invention, have made upon the reign of nature, by which the chief of ourgrievances or blessings were equally with-held. Among the writers who have attempted to distinguish, in the human character, its original qualities, and to point out the limits between nature and art, some have represented mankind in their first condition,as possessed of mere animal sensibility, without any exercise of the faculties that render them superior to the brutes, without
any political union, without any means of explaining their entiments, and even without possessing any of the apprehensions and passions which the voice and the gesture are so well fitted to express. Others have made the state of nature to consist in perpetual wars, kindled by competition for dominion and interest,where every individual had a separate quarrel with his kind, and where the presence of a fellow-creature was the signal of battle.The desire of laying the foundation of a favourite system, or a fond expectation, perhaps, that we may be able to penetrate the secrets of nature, to the very source of existence, have, on this subject, led to many fruitless inquiries, and given rise to many
wild suppositions. Among the various qualities which mankind possess, we select one or a few particulars on which to establish a theory, and in framing our account of what man was in some imaginary state of nature, we overlook what he has always appeared within the reach of our own observation, and in the records of history.
In every other instance, however, the natural historian thinks himself obliged to collect facts, not to offerconjectures. When he treats of any particular species of animals,
he supposes, that their present dispositions and instincts are the same they originally had, and that their present manner of life is a continuance of their first destination. He admits, that his knowledge of the material system of the world consists in a collection of facts, or at most, in general tenets derived from particular observations and experiments. It is only in what relates to himself, and in matters the most important, and the most easily known, that he substitutes hypothesis instead of reality, and confounds the provinces of imagination and reason,of poetry and science.