Hello everyone On Sun, Jan 3, 2010 at 9:59 AM, Krimel <[email protected]> wrote: >> [Steve] >> The intellectual level of evolution is the collection of all intellectual >> patterns of value. >> >> [Krimel] >> Exactly! > > [Dan:] > Not exactly. Evolution isn't a level, is it? Evolution is what drives > the levels. Evolutionary history is what the levels have in common. > > Now, what Steve might mean is, the evolution of the intellectual level > is a collection of all intellectual patterns of value. But doesn't > that go without saying? > > [Krimel] > Evolution doesn't drive anything. It is a description of how patterns adapt > in response to change, flux, uncertainty; in other words dynamic quality. > Evolution is a reflexive process where the output of one cycle becomes the > input for the next.
Dan: Dynamic Quality isn't change and uncertainty. Evolution is the process of natural selection. "Evolution is recklessly opportunistic: it favors any variation that provides a competitive advantage over other members of an organism's own population or over individuals of different species. For billions of years this process has automatically fueled what we call evolutionary progress. No program controlled or directed this progression. It was the result of spur of the moment decisions of natural selection." (Mayr, quoted in LILA) "Dynamic Quality is not structured and yet it is not chaotic. It is value that cannot be contained by static patterns. What the substance-centered evolutionists were showing with their absence of final "mechanisms" or "programs" was not an air-tight case for the biological goallessness of life. What they were unintentionally showing was a superb example of how values create reality. "...survivalof-the-fittest" is one of those catch-phrases like "mutants" or "misfits" that sounds best when you don't ask precisely what it means. Fittest for what? Fittest for survival? That reduces to "survival of the survivors," which doesn't say anything. "Survival of the fittest" is meaningful only when "fittest" is equated with "best," which is to say, "Quality." And the Darwinians don't mean just any old quality, they mean undefined Quality! As Mayr's article makes clear, they are absolutely certain there is no way to define what that "fittest" is. "Good! The "undefined fittest" they are defending is identical to Dynamic Quality. Natural selection is Dynamic Quality at work. There is no quarrel whatsoever between the Metaphysics of Quality and the Darwinian Theory of Evolution. Neither is there a quarrel between the Metaphysics of Quality and the "teleological" theories which insist that life has some purpose. What the Metaphysics of Quality has done is unite these opposed doctrines within a larger metaphysical structure that accommodates both of them without contradiction." (LILA) Dan: Undefined fittest is identical to Dynamic Quality. Not change, not uncertainty, not chaos, not any sort of concept at all. Do you see? > > But, if you remove the reference to evolution entirely from the statement, > perhaps it does go without saying that the intellectual level is the > collection of all intellectual patterns. A pattern is that which has > extension in time. It is the encoding of experience into concepts. In that > sense all patterns are intellectual. Dan: In that context, yes. But evolution doesn't have levels. > > That would be my point anyway. You would think it goes without saying but it > is hard to detect from Bo's ongoing mangling of history. True, that. Thanks Krimel, and good to have you back, Dan 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/
