On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 1:52 PM, Arlo Bensinger <[email protected]> wrote:
> [John] > > But I do notice the difference between the fruit fly's reaction when I swat > it off my peach vs the reaction I get when I flick a grain of sand from the > same place. > > [Arlo] > Sure you do. Who wouldn't. But I'd say the difference you are seeing is the > expanded repertoire of response-possibilities the fruit fly has. John: Yes you would. I wouldn't. I'd say the difference is that the fruit fly is alive and the pebble is not. That's because I'm un-sophist-icated. Q: How many fruit flies does it take to convince an academic? A: Depends upon the the repertoire of response-possibilities intellectually analyzable in the given moment, ;-) > [John] > > And that difference, that responsive reaction on the part of the fruit fly > is what I call intelligence. > > [Arlo] > I'd call it biology. > > John: Well quoting Platt might not win too many points with you Arlo, but he's quoting pirsig in a post here: On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 8:45 AM, Platt Holden <[email protected]> wrote: > > > In the MOQ evolutionary moral order, "thinking" is a biological phenomenon > that first occurred long before the advent of the S/O Intellectual Level. > John: I agree with Platt and Pirsig. "Thinking" is a biological phenomena. How far does thinking (or intelligence, same thing) go "down" the biological scale of complexity? We know for sure humans do it. We see other animals like your dog, and Bo's raven doing it. Where does it stop? That's an open-ended question, in my book. > [Arlo] > I'd caution here that continuing to redefine "intelligence" to reach lower > and lower patterns, or even to describe Quality itself, renders to term both > meaningless and absurd. > > John: I'll offer the distinction "investigating" rather than "defining" if that will satisfy your concern. I Arlo: > For example, if you want to say "cells are intelligent", you have to > explain exactly what constitutes evidence for that, but would be something > that would also not apply to Ribosomes or carbon atoms. John: I did mention that I'd cut off intelligence to the whole entity. And admittedly, "entity" is also more of a creative decision than a hard and fast line. But it's a valuable distinction to assert that only biological beings possess intelligence, not their individual constiuent parts. Arlo: > And, backtracking here, I'd ask how you respond to Pirsig's implication > that the formation of carbon atoms was an act of "creative response" on the > part of subatomic particles. Where they "intelligent" back then? Did they > "lose" this ability? How? Where did this "intelligence" go? Where did it > reside? > > If we're going to "go there", then I'd say we have to attribute the intelligence of particles to a cosmic background intelligent matrix of being. This isn't a far-fetched way of looking at it from the perspective of eastern ways of liberation or QM, but this is also an area I assign to that which I deem investigation rather than definition. No time for more! Late for work as usual! John 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/md/archives.html
