Hello again Tim. I read both.
There are a lot of things I could replay to this. Because you're talking about "objective reality" I think I should start there, even though there is not direct correspondence with anything specific within your text. My hypothesis, which I have written on in earlier discussions, is that MoQ stand in a dual relations to Conceptual Systems Theory (CST). Why? Well, if we begin at the by both rejected Cartesian dichotomy, in MoQ everything is mind (subject) - while in CST everything is matter (object). There is a problem with the word "subject" and "object". "The electron was subject to a magnetic field". "The object of this study is to examine the relation between the spin of the electron and the magnetic force of the field". So "mind" and "matter" is actually better. I've written some on the subject of measurement/observation prior to this. In the all-matter approach, the scientist interacts with the electron. But because the scientist is so much larger than the electron, he must act very gently on it and then magnify its response. The opposite is true with, for instance, the sun, which is much larger. The scientist I content with letting just a very small portion of the sun act on him - otherwise he would be destroyed. In the all mind-view we can put it this way. The scientist wants the electron to express itself so as to make an impression on him (the scientist). What he then does, is to provoke the electron. First he shoots it off with some kind of apparatus. This doesn't really upset the electron, but then he lets it pass through an magnetic field. This is serious business to the electron and it then expresses itself, and thus change the magnetic field. The apparatus generating the field can sense this - and can magnify the reaction so as to make an impression on the scientist, however small. Afterwards, neither the electron nor the scientist, would be the same as they were before. The sun, however, expresses itself a lot of the time, and the scientist wouldn't even try to provoke it in some way. But he doesn't want to get too impressed, so if he wants to look at the light, for instance, he must reduce it, so as to not get dazzled or blinded. And the sun can't express itself all the time without changing its state - in this case decreasing its amount of hydrogen and increasing its amount of helium. You could really use any of these perspectives, or both at the same time, depending only on your own purposes. It's just a kind of intellectual framework you use. Pirsig mentions somewhere the low quality of sitting on a hot stove. A grown-up would probably know from where the bad perceptions is coming. And actually, a grown-up in some cases, couldn't even try to sit on the stove in the first place, even though it was cool. He would rise even before sitting down. A small child, however, wouldn't know from where the bad feelings were coming. It would take some time for it to become aware of the feelings and then it wouldn't at first know from where they came or what to do about them. Perhaps it would try screaming while waving its arms and kicking its legs. In the case of the grown-up, then, you could say he had a lot of static quality (SQ) so that he reacted to a perceived sense of low quality, even though he hadn't really perceived any. The small child, however, was in the opposite state of mostly dynamic quality (DQ) and thus at first had no idea to react it was just overwhelmed by the perception at first - and then it would try anything. In the all matter approach you can describe this as well. In the adult, synapses are established in the spinal cord and the limbic systems of the cortex, which reacts at unconscious perception (the spinal cord) and induction of prior experience (the limbic system). In the small child, there is an excess of synapses, each as probable as the other - and thus there is no preprogrammed reaction in the child's nervous system. This just to get a better sense of the subject/mind - object/matter and SQ -DQ distinctions. The idea, however, is that truth is of no concern. It's just a matter of usefulness or applicability - relations of correspondence. Next, the categorization of SQ. When studying, for instance, the child on the hot stove, you could try to describe it just in physic-chemical terms. There is heat radiating from the surface of the stove, which excite electrons in the child's skin. This radiation and the dissipation of molecular structures starts reactions in other molecular structures, which results in the creation of electric fields starting a current and so on. This description, however, isn't very useful if you try to understand what happens when the child finally rises. Especially it would be very inappropriate if you want to explain why and adult wouldn't want to sit on the stove at all, even if it was cool. This is why we want to conceptualize at different "levels". When I said the biological SQ INFORMS physical SQ, I mean that it gives SQ special structure. In the CST sense, a living system make itself distinct from its surroundings and in order to do this, it must constantly work so as to preserve this state -if it didn't it would instantly seize to exist as a living system. To "inform" in this sense means "give form" or "organize". The reason I chose the word "inform" is that in the dual relations between MoQ och CST: Quality <-> Negentropy = Information. And the other way around: the reason physical patterns of SQ CONFINES biological patterns of SQ, is that physical patterns are what the biological patterns organize. If you could talk about "principles" at the different levels of moral, you could say that the major principle at the physical level (on "short" distances) is the second law of thermodynamics - or "a will to be at equilibrium". At the biological lever, thermodynamic equilibrium is equal to death. So biological systems must have other principles. One major one, is "self-preservation" - but there is also another which is evolution. The latter is the DQ of biological patterns. What evolution is, is the mapping of information from the surroundings to the genome, thus improving the functions of the biological structures - making them "WORK" better and in new ways. The "rules" of this game of evolution is, the tautological: "if you get offspring your genome continues, otherwise it doesn't". Anything that makes you do this is "good" at this level. Now, however, there is the famous example of the slime-mold. When there is plenty of nutrition, the cells live in an amoebaean state as "free individuals". When nutrition lacks, however, they clump together forming a "spore body", which then sends a few cells away with the wind as "spores" while the rest of the cells die. This is a kind of "pre-social" pattern of moral. In hard times, a set of human beings behaving in an organized way will survive, while those who work individually won't. The social system let individuals die if it has to, in order to preserve itself, and it actively kills individuals who threatens it, be it from the inside or outside. The social system is thus always a potential threat to the individual, but it preserves an abstract "population" in times where the people wouldn't survive as individuals. In some senses, the social system equals the equilibrium of an ecosystem. Now intellectual patterns are created in the human neocortex, most probably in the frontal lobes. Its purpose is to create rational, that is functional, behavior. What it can do is to improve the social system. Many societies throughout history has been destroyed because they destroyed their physical means of sustenance. For instance, cutting down all trees so that the soil which they cultivate erodes into the ocean. Intellect can help society preventing such things. But society can also try to enslave intellect: because intellect is placed within a biological body: and society thus always suspect that the intellect just I trying to satisfy this body - and not to improve society. If society tries to enslave intellect, such concepts as heresy is created. Other ways is means to ritualize thought, social stigmatization and so on. So of course, an ideology is an intellectual pattern, but it is created for the preservation of society at a static state and not really for improving society. It shuts all DQ out. It's just SQ and the social SQ is dominating. For this reason the main objective of the Nazis was the establishment of the German Reich - that is social system and the supremacy of the Reich, not just over other social systems, but over intellect as well. So you could say: that which works is right - but what works depends on which level you are looking at. Concerning murder, at an intellectual level, there is an old medieval argument which goes: "Because the world only exists when it is perceived, the murder of a perceiving being is always a murder of the whole world". Or put in MoQ-terms: when you kill an individual's body, you don't just kill the body, but also the intellect and thus a possible link to DQ. Thus you could say, that society has a right to kill individuals when it has to, in order to preserve itself: but for this to be true, you must also add this: the society in question must acknowledge the supremacy of intellect. Then of course, it wouldn't if it didn't necessarily have to. Of course, now I didn't go into all your examples. But my objective now was to clarify how I interpret the concept and the best way to do that is to choose appropriate examples, which make clear the idea. If we go back to primary perception, it is just the Homo Mensura. You don't have to describe the measure, because the measure is what describe everything. All else are deductions on inductions. Both MoQ and CST are just means to help describe this: MoQ for finding the right purposes and CST for finding the right means. This is at least the way I perceive it - I hoped it clarified the subject somewhat more, even though I had to write some amount on it. /A (Alexander) -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Från: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] För [email protected] Skickat: den 3 november 2010 08:18 Till: [email protected] Ämne: Re: [MD] Is this the inadequacy of the MOQ? A, Thanks for the recommendation to this Koestler fellow, I had never heard of him before. About levels... First, I just composed my reply to Mark's (118's) post, so to get a sense of my frame of mind it might be best to read that reply before starting on this one. About levels, I just don't see what good there is for me to get too into it. Thinking about them casually is one thing. Knowing that there are these different sources of influence on me (and others), and being reminded to consider them all if I get caught up in a bad pattern (or if someone else seems caught in a bad pattern) seems helpful. But I really don't see a point to trying to make a physics of it. I guess this is the crux of a lot of my efforts so far here: am I missing something big? I happen to have read a little about Hitler for the first time a few months back, so I can offer a couple things here too. My understanding is that Pirsig was on point when he said that Hitler was very much taken by the patterns of his Victorian society. I don't know a thing about victorian society though :) My understanding is that he was considered a mediocre artist and a mediocre intellectual, and that he very much wanted to be an important member of society. I don't know if it was the want of power, or fame, or respect, but perhaps it was this that Pirsig was talking about when he mentioned Hitler's being dominated by biological patterns. Now, as you mentioned, I guess the "biological moral" is: in the battle between biology and biology, biology can do as it will. But I don't recall Pirsig giving us any rules for morality within a level! So, to the extent that there was a battle between a jewish society and and Aryan society, and at the societal level, it seems all was moral. But I think that that was the intellectual argument offered by the Nazis, or perhaps it was just their hope. In reality jews were part of a german society... so the intellectual level is supposed to solve the moral problem. But, the intellectual level is the highest static level, so if there is no intellectual resolution, to what is the intellect to yield morally? I guess the presumption is that there is an absolute truth which judges intelligence fairly. I don't know what Phaedrus would say. But, I do think that he would not accept your having granted Hitler a mainly intellectual basis for his suicide! As I understand, Hitler had a preoccupation with suicide throughout his life, and many times when his movement hit a bump in the road he gave in to despair and mentioned that he should just kill himself. Now, you said, "But what he [Hitler] did was enslaving intellect under society, by a totalitarian ideology." I have two directions to go with this. The old one you know: (I haven't decided yet on your wording, but let me play with it here and see what you think) if the biological level "informs" the inorganic level about morality, and it the social level "informs" the biological level about morality, and if the intellectual level "informs" the social level about morality, and if the dynamic level is pre-intellectual, what informs the intellectual level of its morality? How is one to judge a totalitarian ideology? It is an intellectual conception. Whatever the intellect will inform society about will have a societal flavor, but a totalitarian ideology is an intellectual idea. It is difficult for me to imagine some absolute truth answering: false! For mathmatics, and for science on the inorganic level, perhaps absolute truth has meaning. But for social questions I think the whole point is that there may not be absolute truth; or if there is, which may be a better presumption, we can't obtain to an objective vantage to know it! Perhaps Phaedrus would say that the Dynamic level will work it out in the end. But this isn't quite satisfying. So I have this second direction. Perhaps freedom will give us a clue! Still we will not have the objective vantage with which to be sure, but it seems that freedom might suggest the answer! Let me start with another example. Murder. If we can ask, intellectually, is murder moral or immoral? Is Murder high quality or low quality? Let us not look at the margins for the moment, but at the center, think of the the murder of a nice, well-behaved child... playing in the park one fine, summer afternoon. The murderer might argue that he should be free "from" restriction in this regard; the universe values freedom, you should not put this barrier before me; the universe is more interesting if I can murder at my whim, and that is why I was able to do it; if reality wanted to prevent me, it would have done so; there are plenty of possibilities that life has denied me: I can't fly like a bird, or hold my breath like a while, etc. and etc. This is a very intellectual argument; I don't think that there can be a doubt about that much. But is it short-sighted? or provincial? The fact is, reality does restrict certain seeming-possibilities. There is another argument. Just like I do not have wings like a bird, if I am restricted from Murder... Let me say it this way: if we restrict ourselves from Murder, perhaps that restriction opens up more freedom elsewhere! Just like if the atoms of a DNA molecule restrict themselves to their highly ordered configuration, rather than a lightly ordered inorganic pattern, animals can go about flying in the air all over the globe, swimming to all depths of all the seas, and walking about the Earth loving and thinking, etc. and etc. Murder is but one possible action, which has very depressing repercussions; while the restriction from murder is also one action, but which has much more lively repercussions. If we could obtain to a perfectly objective vantage on the matter, perhaps it would be overwhelmingly obvious that there are more options in a society free of murder than there are in a society open too it. Does freedom pick not-murder over murder? The intellectual idea of a totalitarian state might be defeated by a similar analysis. Though of course any such analysis, due to our position subjectively within the problem, suffers from a lack of objectivity: that is, we must always worry that our results are too short-sighted or too provincial. I don't know if this is what Phaedrus thought when he identified dynamic quality as freedom... But even if it is, and even if it is on point, and even if it is useful for something like murder, I don't see how it can be very useful for close calls. Like Lila, marital infidelity? How are the levels (freedom) going to help me answer that question? In fact, it seems that any reliance on an intellectual prognosis based on the levels will only take me from the best dynamic answer and lead me into trouble. Like I said to Mark, I think this whole analysis of levels is a tool for getting out of the "muddle", it is a tool for maintenance when the dynamic machine is out of tune. Tim -- [email protected] -- http://www.fastmail.fm - Access your email from home and the web 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 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
