Or are you seeking to dispute my contention that physical cognition is underpracticed and undervalued there[]?
Nope. More formally, I’m saying that the relation between the “physical” nature of cognition and the social benefits you talk about is essentially screened off by the more immediate fact that such physical activities are far more likely to feature a widely-agreed standard of achievement. Thus, the fact that humanities scholarship is in some sense “non-physical” (which it obviously is, since it is properly about human cultures, as opposed to physical phenomena such as the mechanics of playing an instrument) is practically irrelevant to whether or not we should consider it to be “intellectually stimulating”, at least inasmuch as the merit of such scholarship is sometimes widely agreed upon.
It evokes all kinds of distracting side-issues about what constitutes the “real world”. (Is pure mathematics “real-world achievement”? et cetera, et cetera
To some extent, these issues seem to be unavoidable. One reason why pure math academia is in such a “bad” shape socially is that it is only directly valued by a tiny minority. Within the subculture that values it, though, achievement is reasonably clear and thus it can at least escape the negative connotations of “social cognition”. A similar situation seems to apply in newly-composed “serious” music, even though the subculture that values that might be even smaller, and the standard of “what makes this new piece worthwhile enough that I should be paying attention to it” somewhat less than clear.
Nope. More formally, I’m saying that the relation between the “physical” nature of cognition and the social benefits you talk about is essentially screened off by the more immediate fact that such physical activities are far more likely to feature a widely-agreed standard of achievement. Thus, the fact that humanities scholarship is in some sense “non-physical” (which it obviously is, since it is properly about human cultures, as opposed to physical phenomena such as the mechanics of playing an instrument) is practically irrelevant to whether or not we should consider it to be “intellectually stimulating”, at least inasmuch as the merit of such scholarship is sometimes widely agreed upon.
To some extent, these issues seem to be unavoidable. One reason why pure math academia is in such a “bad” shape socially is that it is only directly valued by a tiny minority. Within the subculture that values it, though, achievement is reasonably clear and thus it can at least escape the negative connotations of “social cognition”. A similar situation seems to apply in newly-composed “serious” music, even though the subculture that values that might be even smaller, and the standard of “what makes this new piece worthwhile enough that I should be paying attention to it” somewhat less than clear.