Hello Matt (and Steve by reference), On Sat, 26 Dec 2009 you (Matt) wrote a lengthy post extrapolating upon a comment Steve made.
Steve said: Intellectual patterns could never eliminate social patterns since if we had to first justify every action before acting we would be paralyzed. I agree with Steve. >From this you developed a hypothesis: <snip> 1) actions occur at the biological level. 2) thoughts occur at the intellectual level. 3) a train of thought can continue on indefinitely. 4) for actions to walk out at the end of a train of thought, the train must at some point terminate. 5) because trains of thought can continue on indefinitely, something must be able to intercede. 6) what intercedes are social patterns. 7) social patterns are to be interpreted as "terminals of satisfaction" on the track of thought. 8) a well-used terminal (where trains stop) accrues what we call "authority" the more trains it is able to stop. <snip> I have to disagree with this. I think the train has jumped the tracks here. > all individual people function at all levels all the time Yes, absolutely. > all thoughts must pass through a social-authority matrix to turn into action... If you are saying that we do not take actions unless guided by a pre-existing Social level pattern, I disagree. Bacteria take action without benefit of social organization. Babies cry without benefit of language, logical thought, or social conditioning. <snip> The steps in any inferential pattern might be visualized as points on a graph. The points at the outskirts of the pattern we think of as "assumptions," points with lines extending inwards (to form the pattern), but not outwards (which would thus enlarge what we are seeing as "the pattern"). The assumptions form the unconscious barriers, or outline, of what we are able to conceive conceptually/inferentially. This is the first kind of unconscious part of thinking. There is a second, though, and that's the _form_ of the inferential pattern, the particular kinds of lines that are drawn between various points within "the pattern." Not all lines that _could_ be drawn are legitimate, we say, based on the rules of logic we've been learning through the centuries. (E.g., Point "P" cannot have a line drawn to Point "not P" because that would violate the law of non-contradiction.) The form of inference, like the assumptions that motivate inference, can itself become an object of thought. In this case, "thinking about X" becomes specifically "thinking about thinking." <snip> The graphic lines proscribing the "pattern of assumptions" about an object could be likened to the constructs of object-oriented programming. The software through which you are reading these words now was likely written in a language of objects consisting of only two things - (1) attributes (the fact that this is a string of text represented by the extended ascii character set instead of a differential equation with boundary values, for instance) which define the nature of the object (this email post) and (2) methods, which define the actions this email may take or be subjected to (delete, edit, copy, paste, deliver a virus, etc.). So in this analogy the "assumptions" would be the attributes and the "form of the pattern" would be the methods. I do not think our inference engine is controlled by the MoQ Social level. I think our inference engine created the Social level. By the way, interesting word "inference". It turns out to mean something that current computers cannot really do very well. Here are a few choice definitions I found online. Inference - the reasoning involved in drawing a conclusion or making a logical judgment on the basis of circumstantial evidence and prior conclusions rather than on the basis of direct observation. inference - The forming of a conclusion from premises rather than explicit information provided in a passage. ...and my favorite inference - a logical guess based on incomplete evidence. This is a whole other area I could easily digress into. The fact that using binary logic, it is very difficult if not impossible to simulate leaps of imagination. Computers are not known for hypothesizing. They do not experience Quality Moments. They are not privy to "pre-intellectual experience". No ah ha moments for your Dell. There is a reason for this. I think you have made a great case for describing exactly what the Social level is. It is all about constraints - in particular constrants placed on any and all Biological level and Intellectual level activities that threaten the continuity of the social structure (whatever that structure might happen to be in any given place and time). It is a communal agreement between participants based on the fundamental premise that chaos in all its forms is bad. The Intellectual level knows this is not universally true and constantly agitates, but it works. You could call it an "unconscious" agreement and be right because once a static latch (like general agreement that social order is good) has clicked into place it becomes an underlying assumption in the general human environment. The Social level was so necessary for the Intellectual level to flourish because it provides the stability necessary for higher (grander) thinking. I would have a hard time writing this post if I had to stop to defend my property from pesky home invasions. Perhaps I have missed the point. As a programmer-type I am aware that I often take people too literally; but, let me just conclude with this - the answer to my own question about when the Intellectual level split from the Social is that it was not a time anyone can pinpoint in history with certainty. There is no "Intellectual Level Day" on the calendar, though the beginning of the Renaissance is as good as any. Our brains did not change - for if that were the case, we would have to look back into pre-history at something prior to Homo-Sapiens-Sapiens and we could find it by measuring brain-cases. We are the same as we've always been. I believe it was always there, lurking in the background, without yet achieving the critical mass in numbers necessary to create a static latch. Just one more step in our evolution, but not a biological one. This level is invisible. It is a flowering of a state of mind that says the old beliefs that circumscribed our thinking should be questioned, and I think it came about when enough people were ready to see that the existing religio-social order was failing us. It works to a point, but more is possible. The Intellectual level is the level of the possible. Mary The most important thing you will ever make is a realization. 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/
