Mati, You started this thread with this snip from RMP's response to Paul Turner.
"There has been a tendency to extend the meaning of "social" down into the biological with the assertion that, for example, ants are social, but I have argued that this extends the meaning to a point where it is useless for classification...... Now that Bo and I have reach a permanent impasse I will go on an summarize my take on this how this ties in to my understanding of the upper two levels. Of course part of the difficulty at biological/social junction is that we are entering "the high country of the mind" which neither Western or Eastern philosophy have satisfactory explanations. The confusion with "social" is rooted in the separate, but related use of the word by biologists and anthropologists. Since RMP started from a anthro-POV he meant it as "human societies" and was somewhat piqued that this was not self-evident. In order to bridge that gap noted biologist E.O. Wilson has spent most his life exploring the social nature of biology inventing a whole new field sociobiology. "Sociobiology is defined as the systematic study of the biological basis of all forms of behavior, including human, incorporating ecology, ethnology, and genetics. "If humankind evolved by Darwinian natural selection, genetic chance and environmental necessity, not God, made the species." "The brain [and the mind] exists because it promotes the survival and multiplication of the genes that direct its assembly." The two apparent dilemmas we face therefore are: (1) We lack any goal external to our biological nature (for even religions evolve to enhance the persistence and influence of their practitioners). Will societies transcendental goals dissolve and will we regress to mere self-indulgence? (2) Morality evolved as instinct "which of the censors and motivators should be obeyed and which ones might better be curtailed or sublimated." Michael McGoodwin quoting Wilson Based on his work and others doing similar work I'm suggesting that small snips of social behavior first seen separately in animals on the biological level have overtime shown up collectively in humans until at some point in time they were present in sufficient number to tip humans over the MoQ's biological/social divide. It is not a very big step to guess that the emergence of the human "MIND" was the biological/social tipping point between the two levels. As long as we keep this in MIND: "The brain and the mind constitute a unity, and we may leave to the philosophers who have separated them in thought, the task of putting them back again" Quoted from in Zen and the Brain (by how appropriately) Sir Russell Brain (1895-1966) But at this tipping point evolution and the science supporting it get more interesting. To date the bulk of science's work has been focused on the "more easily" explored earlier levels colloquially known as nature. Most explored physical, less biological, a little bit social, almost none intellectual and integrated study and understanding of the whole almost nonexistent. This in part is the difficulty we here have in understanding the MoQ. So slow is our understanding that as a general public we still view and treat them as four domains instead of one. At the emergence of the social level not only do you have groups with a wide range of social characteristics, but groups of humans with minds, intellects, and quite probably the ability to communicate better if only by more expressive grunts and pointing. It is at this point that Dawkins as he closes " The Ancestor's Tale" with two sections titled "Value-Free and Value-Laden Progress" and "Evolvability" introduces the phenomena of "watershed events" where it seems that at certain points "evolution evolves." A point at which evolvability suddenly improves. I'm suggesting that biological/social divide is one of those points. I also guess that the intellect is an integral part of the evolvability of the social level and the eventual emergence of the intellectual one. Dave >> -----Original Message----- >> From: [email protected] >> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of KAYE >> PALM-LEIS Sent: Saturday, January 09, 2010 1:20 PM To: >> [email protected] Subject: Re: [MD] Intellect's Symposium 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/
