Mangus, I reread both your essays and I guess a good place to start on this redressing of the MoQ would be where you say: >³the two, perhaps most important, aspects of the levels² [are] >1. Higher levels depend on lower ones. >2. Each level is discrete. >[Undressing on MoQ site]
I reversed your order because IMHO the whole system is dependant on the physical universe regardless of how it works or whether we know how it does. The second is dependent on the first but I would add one more dependent claim as equally important in sorting out the static levels. 3 Moral order and authority. This claim is that as each level evolved from the former, it is more dynamic, of a higher moral order than the former because it allows a greater degree of freedom. This freedom gives the new level the moral authority to use or dominate the lower levels with some restraints; the big one being you really shouldn¹t destroy lower ones. However ³dependence² is not the sole quality of the lower to upper level relationships. None of them are really static in the strong sense. There are varying degrees of static, stability, even on the inorganic. In reality they are constantly changing in ways that patterns on the other levels are forced to respond to or risk extinction. I agree that ³discreteness² is a much more difficult issue than ³dependent² even if we disregard the mystics. For this I find it helpful to visualize reality as consisting of just three components, sunshine, stardust, and biomass. Biomass legends tell that biomass drinks sunshine and eats then ultimately shits stardust. Sunshine seems pretty discrete. A huge distance physically separates the sun and earth and as far as I know it¹s for all practical purposes a one-way event. The loop of stardust-biomass-stardust is much more problematic. What we commonly call ³life² it but a temporary state of stardust-being in this loop and as you suggested it is not easy to sharply draw just where the ³life² lines are. While the events and laws explaining them for the inorganic and biological levels seem discrete it¹s really hard to be sure because the inorganic laws are still in force at the higher level. An even more troubling is Lovelock¹s Gaia Hypothesis that is looking more and more likely to be true in some form or other. It suggests weather and atmosphere are hybrid class of phenomena that are dependant on some of the inorganic laws and some of biological laws. Kind of bridging the gap making the discreteness claim harder to defend. Is weather primarily inorganic or biological? A little of both and what level do you assign it to? Does weather have ³life²? Not in any of our common understandings of what ³life² is. (One uncommon one, Christopher Alexander¹s, treats ³life² just as RMP does quality, but that would just confuse the issue at hand even more.) When you go on to ask: >³But how could the novel LILA be intellectual patterns when there were no >social or biological patterns between the novel and the inorganic patterns to >support it?² >[Undressing on MoQ site] I think I have a possible solution. Ken Wilbur suggests treating human artifacts as a special class. Some qualities are manifest others are latent. Lila, the book or electronic copy on your computer, are in obvious sense physical, inorganic patterns like an excavated flint arrowhead. But with interpretation both ³the book² and ³the text² can give clues to the biological, social, and intellectual reality of the humans that produced them. Meaning however is not always self-evident with artifacts. Like the excavated flint arrowhead often our interpretations near pure conjecture. The MoQ seems to have some of those qualities too;-) This is of particular concern with the intellectual level. You said Lila, the text, is an intellectual pattern. How do you know? How is it we make this distinction? How do we you know that distinction is correct? It is very important because according to the hierarchical nature of the MoQ and ³moral order and authority² claim this level has the moral authority to dominant the lower levels as long as it doesn¹t destabilize them. (How much is too much?) So when we turn to the higher levels I¹m not sure how to validate either the ³discreteness² or ³moral order² or ³authority² claims. So when you say: >³it seemed relevant when talking about fuzzy things such as societies and >cultures, ..² >[Undressing on MoQ site] I agree the higher you go the fuzzier it gets. Near the end of your 1st essay you recap with: >³Intellectual patterns use the language provided by the society to simulate >another layer of static quality. By doing this, intellectual patterns can build >models of its own reality and manipulate the models without manipulating the >reality. Intellectual Quality Events are associations, inspiration etc.² >[Undressing on MoQ site] I find ³simulate² and ³model² interesting choices. But the power that all seem to leave out or discount is the intellect¹s power not only to simulate or model reality but to imagine, invent, create it. The power to ask, ³What if?² .questions. Or the ³What future difference would it make if this idea were to come true?² .questions. This is probably way more that enough to start. Dave 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/
