Hi Matt
Matt: I agree with ants and bees, but I hesitate on cells. I begin to lose
hold on what the hell biological is supposed to be, let alone if you extend
it even further. Then again, my knowledge of biology isn't that great. To
my mind, the only way to effectively do justice to both biological evolution
and cultural evolution is to toss this four level idea.
I think exactly the opposite. My version of the social level emphasizes how
similar biological and cultural evolutions really are. And when you see those
similarities, you can also use observations from one to predict events in the
other. That way, the levels can actually be used for something other than just
argue about what belong to which level.
I drew up these five some time ago:
Inorganic level - non-replicating persistence
> Biological level - replicating persistence
Social level - non-linguistic semiotic behavior
Intellectual level - linguistic semiotic behavior
Eudaimonic level - autonomous behavior
I'm very sorry but I don't see much value in those. For example, replication are
found in chemistry as well. And I don't see how they implicitly build on
eachother. It's very specific to our earthly condition. And what's so special
about human communication that it should require a new level? There are lots of
smart animals that are capable of learning parts of human language. The idea of
a level is that it should give rise to something completely new, not something
old in a more sophisticated form.
I was trying to emphasize how the levels build on each other. Rocks just
are. Cells replicate. Some cells form what we call "multicellular
organisms," and some of these just sit around persisting and replicating
(e.g., trees), but others become mobile, and in their mobility as
multicellular organisms begin to "communicate". Eventually, one particular
strand of these communicative organisms came up with a method of
communication that was so intricate that it began giving birth to artifacts
that didn't necessarily have anything to do with replicative persistence--we
call this "culture." One of these cultures of multicellular organisms, one
day, dreamed up a goal of letting every particular organism persist in a
manner of their own choosing, so long as that manner didn't threaten the
choices of anybody else (which includes the manner in which we have the goal
of letting people have choice). We call this "democracy."
Too specific to the human condition for my taste.
I used the Greek "eudaimonia," which means roughly "human flourishing,"
became Sam Norton had taken the word up as a slogan, and I had become quite
partial to it. There are three big breaks that I wanted to
emphasize--physical evolution (which basically just means the spatiotemporal
movement of stuff out from the Big Bang), biological evolution, and cultural
evolution. Within biological evolution, we basically include the
communicative/social relations of animals, but the fact that we can see how
language was just a sophisticated extension of what animals were already
doing allows us to emphasize how these are not strict "levels," like Plato's
divided line, but a continuum of increasing complexity.
But Matt, didn't we say that we would try finding the "correct" division of the
static levels? It seems you're back to some "usable" version now. And it seems
it's only usable for the division you set out to use in the first place anyway.
Come on now, try to really read what I'm trying to say here. You didn't even
comment on my specific arguments in my last post.
Let's start with the quality event. Q creates one subject and one object. A
quality event "happens" in one level, so the resulting subject and object are of
the same level. I.e. there are four distinct types of quality events, or "types
of experiences". This gives us a pretty good definition of what a level is:
A static level is one unique way to experience reality.
So, let's start with the inorganic level, that's the only one most people seem
to agree on. Experience at the inorganic level is perhaps not what most people
would call "experience", but the MoQ does, and effects of the forces of nature
can also be said to be inorganic quality events. This is one unique way to
experience reality, the inorganic way.
Now, to find another unique way to experience reality, we can't just invent
something that we think sounds good, like replication. Replication is first of
all not a new way to experience reality, nor are the patterns that are
replicating themselves. There is nothing inherent in them being self-replicating
that somehow makes them able to experience some uniquely new type of value.
However, I don't think anyone can deny the utterly unique experience of taste
and smell. It's simply a whole new kind of reality that opens up for patterns
that are able to take part in such quality events. If we examine a bit closer
what taste and smell are in terms of inorganic patterns, we see that they are
different molecules that, in the taste/smell event, have a good or bad 3D fit.
The better two molecules fit together, the better is the biological value
experience. This is my take on a real level border. It's really *real*, there's
no way you can deny the reality of the inorganic experience, and at the same
time, you can't deny the reality of the biological experience. Depending on
whether you put that "object" on your tongue or in an electron microscope, you
will experience completely different types of patterns, even though it's the
exact same *thing*. Every level border has its own version of a wave/particle
duality, and this is the duality of the inorganic/biological border.
Don't you realize the *realness* of such level borders? It's not an ad-hoc
border that I just made up one day to solve some thought experiment, it's simply
the real deal.
Regarding writing as a new level, I fail to see the uniqueness of it. It's
simply a new way to represent an intellectual pattern. The idea being written is
still the same, merely in a new form.
Magnus
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