[David M] Not sure what your problem is with levels. They have an evolutionary role to play at least.
So that the intellectual-individual emerges from the social level, the social level from the biological and the biological from the inorganic through increasing organisation. I would suggest that each big level is made up of many smaller ones. EG the inorganic has photons, particles, atoms, molecules at least. Many forms of level with different levels of complexity, same for societies and for individuated people and their ideas. [Krimel] Ok, look at it from an evolutionary point of view for a second. After all Evolution is a TOE if ever there is going to be one. Evolution focuses on relationships that change over time. A relationship is a pattern of interaction, of sameness and/or difference between discrete things over time. If a pattern is consistent and invariant over time that is, if it has static quality, it is predictable. It is a reduction in uncertainty. As patterns pile up, uncertainty (DQ) has to seek ever more clever places to hide. In the depths of outer space there are fixed patterns of stars emitting particles that stream outward in more or less straight lines. Fixed, mostly invariant patterns with very little interaction and hardly any new patterns forming. If you set the controls for the heart of the sun, you find immense concentrations of particles and energies. Even patterns like "atom" and "molecule" can not form and static patterns are limited to plasma storms and streams and shifts in color. In stars it is tooooo Dynamic and space it is toooooo Static, in a Goldilocks Zone like Earth it is just right for pattern formation. Not only patterns, but patterns of patterns of patterns of interaction. We exist in a space, in time, where static patterns can be sustained, interact and even replicate themselves. It is certainly possible to speak of layers of patterns in terms of relative consistency or stability over time. The inorganic layer has the lowest rate of change. But properties of the inorganic layer create sufficient static quality for inorganic interaction to assume a new character. Call it chemistry. Sustained relationships that can interact in new patterns. Atoms interacting and combining and interacting in combination. Stabile inorganic patterns allow for patterns of interaction at higher levels of complexity. The properties of carbon for example at this place and this time, allow multiple configurations and multiple kinds of interactions. Incredible numbers and incredible possibilities over incredible spans of time. Call it biology. And so it goes. Skipping lots of gruesome details... For life forms, stability over time is enhanced by pattern recognition. Single celled organisms can be attracted or repelled from patterns of light and darkness or patterns of chemistry in their environments. These are in effect streams of probability. For plants the sidereal and annual patterns are key. For animals these are compounded to the point that complex pattern recognition is vital. At lower levels of the animal kingdom purely sensory patterns will do and inborn systems of pattern recognition will suffice. Higher order animals have increased brain size in relation to body mass. This increase in volume translates into the ability to recognize increasingly complex patterns of stasis and flux. Most critical for animals approaching human levels of complexity is the ability to transcend time through memory. It allows them to retain and access more and more patterns. It lets them see not only patterns in space but patterns in time and to construct from memories scenarios of possible futures. As an aside I rather like Kant's notion of apriori knowledge. That is categories of thought that format our experience. Patterns that are hardwired into our biology. These are patterns that are shaped from biology by evolution, conferring as they do selective advantage on those who possess them. I would note that Kant's main apriori categories were space, time and cause and effect. Space and time work for me at least if you conceive of them as spacetime; but cause and effect can better be thought of as pattern recognition or estimation of probability or the capacity to reduce uncertainty. Layers of levels of stability tend to shift in and out of focus depending on ones point of view. To adopt a fixed pattern of "leveled" relationships strikes me as adopting a relatively fixed point of view. I would further suggest the fixity of point of view is what the Hindu's call Maya. That is the long answer to my problem with THE levels. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
