Hello again John and Arlo, [Arlo] If you're implying that "negative Quality" is the immoral destruction of higher level patterns by lower level patterns, then the phrase "immoral" is good enough, I'd argue.
John: Well, if "immoral" means the same thing as "negative Quality" then why struggle against it so vociferously? We surely can't merely be quibbling with terms. You almost come across as an atomistic materialist whose "stuff" is a concept you think you've got bagged. Quality as the new phlogostonic aether of the day. Honestly, if good ole Quality don't just mean, good old "Good" then I have no idea what I'm doing here or where y'all are comin' from. It doesn't make sense how you kick and you squiqqle, just to avoid such an obvious point. Unless there is a more fundamental problem than "merely" semantic. Which I think might be the case. [Mary] John, all that exists is Quality. It is nothing else. So I think Arlo's objection to the term 'negative Quality' is the confusion it can introduce. If all is Quality, 'negative Quality' cannot exist. What does exist is a hierarchical relationship between the levels. What's 'good' for one is not 'good' for another. Based on earlier posts, it looks like Arlo and I agree on the evolutionary relationship between the levels, and we both agree there is a risk of confusion when you only think of them from the top down perspective. When you only acknowledge that one direction, then you get yourself into all kinds of trouble with questions like the Japanese have been asking on TV, "What did we do to deserve this?" Well, nothing. They didn't do anything to deserve it or not deserve it. That's the wrong question. According to the MoQ, the earthquake and tsunami had value for the Inorganic Level. That they happened to be bad for the Biological, Social, and Intellectual levels is of no concern whatever to the Inorganic. The Inorganic doesn't even 'know' those other levels exist. [John] Monocultures are like disease and cancer. Cancerous death is bad. Life is good. Is that so hard to understand? Cancerous death isn't merely a little less good than life, its not a qualitative question, it's a qualitative one. [Mary] Cancer has Biological Level Quality. It is a successful life-form, apparently. That we don't want to get it is irrelevant to the values of the Biological Level as a whole. Arlo: The catch is that it is not "negative quality" if something makes YOUR context worse in the pursuit of its own betterness, it would only be "negative Quality" if you make your own context worse (again without any higher-level motive to make things "better"). John: such irrationality will never fully satisfy. What is, is good. NAture is the source of values. Nature is the end-effect of an anti-entropic, fundamental force of the universe which is self-responsible and self-explanatory. That's good. That which tears down, destroys and obviates those precious patterns of life, those are bad. Negative quality. [Mary] You are free to say nature is the source of values, but the MoQ says Dynamic Quality is the source of Static Patterns of Value, and nature is a set of Static Patterns of Value. What you are arguing for is a metaphysics that differs profoundly from the MoQ. That's ok, as long as you acknowledge that you won't be able to shoe-horn the MoQ into it. The MoQ can seem cold and unforgiving since it does not offer blanket condemnation from on-high for bad events. Yes, I said 'bad', and this is totally acceptable within the MoQ framework. Everything that 'is' or 'happens' is good at some level. If it were not it would not 'exist' or 'happen'. But a 'good' thing at one level is not a 'good' thing at any other level. Intertwined with this rule, though, is another that says the higher levels depend for their existence on the lower, so had better respect them. It is a complex dynamic that is stable (thus 'static') and balanced. At the end of the day, any level that gets out of control with achieving its own 'good' will destroy the higher levels like dominos, and then, I guess, the whole thing would have to start over again. Who knows? Maybe it has multiple times? Best, Mary 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
