HI Joe, Thanks for the question, and I always appreciate your perspective. The concept of inclusivity, as I use it, derives from set theory, but is also common sense. We have the four levels, whatever you want to call them (remember I am a biochemist and have a different understanding of organic and inorganic). I will term them: Inorganic, Life, Social, and Intellectual. In the level of Life, I include our singular awareness as an organism, something akin to individual human consciousness. Each level imparts an increasing narrowing of class. So, the inorganic is required for Life, and Life is required for the Social level (I will deal with the intellectual level later). As such, all Life is physically composed of the inorganic, but not all the inorganic is life. I hope this clarifies how I use the term.
What you speak of in terms of the emotional apparition of inclusivity is a manifestation of the Social Level in the Individual (Life) level. That is, the need to be included is part of the Social Level, and not part of the Life Level. In today's Western Culture, the Social Level dominates one's awareness of existence. Much of this dominance is a result of words. An appreciation of the control which the Social Level has on our individual consciousness is the importance which we give to words. Such words in fact replace the object of awareness itself. We claim that we have progressed since we now have more words for everything, this is the result of Aristotelian Logic, and has not real basis. Classification and sub-classification. We claim to "understand" the sun because of all the words we have given it, and we clasify that the sun is a gaseous ball which creates energy through fission and so forth and so forth. However, this "understanding" has nothing to do with our own personal relationship with the sun, and in reality misleads the person into a static appreciation of the sun. You speak of the emotional level, which I fully appreciate. If one uses the dichotomy of Mythos and Logos in very simple terms, I would relate the "emotional level" you speak of as the Mythos, and the intellectual level as the Logos. Pirsig also speaks of this, but in a slightly different way. There have been recent posts on Nietzsche which may point to the same division. Indeed, the romantic v classic could also be termed the emotional v intellectual. If I use the structure of the brain as an analogy, we have the brain stem, and the cerebral cortex (again very oversimplified). All input coming through the brain stem (perhaps the "pre-intellectual") is filtered and reordered to provide meaning and survival to us humans. The reason I bring this up is to propose that the intellectual is based on the emotional (as you use it). I would not go so far as to say that such hierarchy is at all the same as the DQ/sq split, which may be a disagreement between us. The intellectual and the logical is ultimately based on faith. If we reduce any logical argument to the components (and sub-components) which make it up, we have to rely on faith in terms of the premises. This brings in the "emotional" as you use it. That we thing something is right or makes sense is based on how we feel about it. We then use the intellect and logic to justify that feeling in hindsight. For example, avoiding death and suffering is Good. To justify that feeling, we have to resort to intellectual theories such as Evolution and survival. However, avoiding death and suffering is much more substantive than that. Now, the Intellectual Level, as I fathom it, is a process which is divorced from experience. Often in some mythologies the physical or sensory world is given to man, whereas the intellectual world is given to angels. Angels cannot feel the physical world, but can reason. I am referring to Pure Reason, which Kant had such a problem with. Mathematics is a good example of the intellectual since many concepts therein have no basis in the sensory common sense world. Even the use of numbers and constants is completely divorced from the physical world in its theoretical uses. The fact that equations so derived can then turn around and become useful to the physical world that we live in suggests that the purely abstractive is tied to the other levels. Theoretical physics of today's age is purely abstract, and there is no way to prove if one string theory is better than another. Theories are chosen for their beauty and symmetry, or in other words, for their emotional appeal. As such it is no different to the Alchemy of Old. Modern physics is Alchemy in a different suit. Your faith in mathematics as being quantitative and therefore different, is something I have dealt with in other posts with you. I disagree there. While there may be different views of reality, they are still views of reality. In many of these posts I see a lot of Truth and very little Quality. The problem with the divergence of the Western Society, is that it became expression through that outside rather than expression through that within. Cheers, Mark On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 1:47 PM, Joseph Maurer <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Mark, > > "Inclusive" is a word I associate with emotional overtones. Am I included > in the invitations? I do not know what you mean by "more inclusive"? There > is a quantitative reality and a qualitative reality. In mathematical logic > 2 is more than 1 a quantitative difference. In evolutionary logic 2 follows > 1 but has a different existence. Mathematics ith its strict view of logic > has difficulty with a conception of evolution which redefines 1. > > Joe > > > On 10/25/11 2:51 PM, "118" <[email protected]> wrote: > >> This notions of levels being defined through the concepts of higher or lower >> has always intrigued me. Is a lower level fundamental to the higher level? >> If so, then the lower level is more inclusive than the higher. For example, >> the social only deals with groups of people, whereas the organic presents >> itself in many other things. So, which is in fact is the "higher" level? A >> better terminology may be "more (or less) Fundamental". In this sense one >> might say that DQ is more fundamental than sq. However, the way I see it, DQ >> and sq are two sides of a coin, therefore they have equal standing. > > > 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
