[MD] Intellect's Symposium

[David Thomas]

Mati,

You started this thread with this snip from RMP's response to Paul Turner.

"There has been a tendency to extend the meaning of "social" down into
the biological with the assertion that, for example, ants are social,
but I have argued that this extends the meaning to a point where it is
useless for classification......

Now that Bo and I have reach a permanent impasse I will go on an summarize
my take on this how this ties in to my understanding of the upper two
levels. Of course part of the difficulty at biological/social junction is
that we are entering "the high country of the mind" which neither Western or
Eastern philosophy have satisfactory explanations.

The confusion with "social" is rooted in the separate, but related use of
the word by biologists and anthropologists. Since RMP started from a
anthro-POV he meant it as "human societies" and was somewhat piqued that
this was not self-evident. In order to bridge that gap noted biologist E.O.
Wilson has spent most his life exploring the social nature of biology
inventing a whole new field sociobiology.

"Sociobiology is defined  as the systematic study of the biological basis of
all forms of behavior, including human, incorporating ecology, ethnology,
and genetics. "If humankind evolved by Darwinian natural selection, genetic
chance and environmental necessity, not God, made the species." "The brain
[and the mind] exists because it promotes the survival and multiplication of
the genes that direct its assembly." The two apparent dilemmas we face
therefore are: (1) We lack any goal external to our biological nature (for
even religions evolve to enhance the persistence and influence of their
practitioners). Will societies transcendental goals dissolve and will we
regress to mere self-indulgence? (2) Morality evolved as instinct "which of
the censors and motivators should be obeyed and which ones might better be
curtailed or sublimated." Michael McGoodwin quoting Wilson

Based on his work and others doing similar work I'm suggesting that small
snips of social behavior first seen separately in animals on the biological
level have overtime shown up collectively in humans until at some point in
time they were present in sufficient number to tip humans over the MoQ's
biological/social divide.

It is not a very big step to guess that the emergence of the human "MIND"
was the biological/social tipping point between the two levels. As long as
we keep this in MIND:

"The brain and the mind constitute a unity, and we may leave to the
philosophers who have separated them in thought, the task of putting them
back again" Quoted from in Zen and the Brain (by how appropriately) Sir
Russell Brain (1895-1966)

But at this tipping point evolution and the science supporting it get more
interesting. To date the bulk of science's work has been focused on the
"more easily" explored earlier levels colloquially known as nature. Most
explored physical, less biological, a little bit social, almost none
intellectual and integrated study and understanding of the whole almost
nonexistent. This in part is the difficulty we here have in understanding
the MoQ. So slow is our understanding that as a general public we still view
and treat them as four domains instead of one.
 
At the emergence of the social level not only do you have groups with a wide
range of social characteristics,  but groups of humans with minds,
intellects, and quite probably the ability to communicate better if only by
more expressive grunts and pointing.

It is at this point that Dawkins as he closes " The Ancestor's Tale" with
two sections titled "Value-Free and Value-Laden Progress" and "Evolvability"
introduces the phenomena of "watershed events" where it seems that at
certain points "evolution evolves."  A point at which evolvability suddenly
improves. I'm suggesting that biological/social divide is one of those
points. I also guess that the intellect is an integral part of the
evolvability of the social level and the eventual emergence of the
intellectual one. 

Dave



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