[MD] Transhumanism

[John Carl]

Here is a shining example of what I think MD should be.  Do I agree with
every point Mary makes?  No.  But she is clearly thinking for herself and
writing cogently and entertainingly her viewpoint, which I believe
contributes to the Quality of MD.




>

> Look, the Intellectual Level is just the next logical step.  If the Social
> Level was man's response to the problem of competition for limited
> resources
> in the Biological world, then the Intellectual is just man's response to
> the
> problems of oppressive beliefs imposed in the Social one.  The Intellectual
> Level took the "metaphysical sock" of Social Level restrictions and turned
> it inside out and used the whole Social Level concept of belief systems
> against itself.  The Intellectual Level became separated from the Social at
> the point where it took the Biological/Social assumption of discreteness
> and
> proclaimed it to be all there is.



Yeah, I think so.  I'm not sure biological assumptions include self/object.
 There's a lot of life out there that I'm sure doesn't discriminate thusly.
 Does a flower perceive sunlight as other or self/being?  Far as I can tell,
flowers don't perceive at all.  Maybe I'm wrong, but we have to observe on
what we see.

But positing the subject/object relationship as the roots of all social
patterning - that does make perfect sense.  How can you have any social
relationship without a self and an other?

Making this S/O relationship fundamental to intellectual, metaphysical
reality is the very primary/pre-school formulation of intellectual
patterning.  The kindergarten of intellectualism that Bo seems (ironically)
so stuck therein and Royce disparages as "no serious thinker holds for
long".


>  It was the new metaphysical twist that
> said the subject-object world we perceive really IS all there is and it is
> good - and not just good, but the only good.  And if any group before had
> ever said, "no it's not" (which Pirsig says there were and they did), then
> they were proclaimed wrong by this new Intellectual "freedom" which shifted
> the world under our feet and declared boldly otherwise.
>
>
Rene Descartes was a drunken fart who was very rarely stable...(c'mon sing
along.  You know the words)



> Lest you get the wrong idea, I'm not saying anything about my own value
> judgments here, I'm just pointing out that at the time, the advent of the
> Intellectual Level had to have been a refreshing relief for all those
> closet
> religious doubters who were daily persecuted, the early scientists who
> wanted to learn how things "really" worked as opposed to how God said they
> worked, and all those oppressed by the tyranny of inherited rather than
> earned privilege, caste, or rank.  The Intellectual Level sought to erase
> the inherent fallacies of the Social, and it worked pretty well.

For the
> first time it gave us a metaphysical basis from which to combat the
> insidious malaise of Social celebrity, unfairness, illogical "magical"
> thinking and all sorts of other Social stuff like that all in one fell
> swoop.
>
>

I agree completely.  But then what happens?


> But it had its downside.  If you are daily suffering under the yoke of
> social repression that prevents you from expressing freedom of thought or
> freedom of action, or says that your social status is determined by some
> arbitrary decision made by people who are arbitrarily powerful, then the
> tenants of the Intellectual Level are a godsend.  You now have a coherent
> belief system upon which to base opposing arguments.  But this belief
> system
> proved to be an incomplete solution and turned out to result in a new and
> different mental prison all its own. I shall explain.
>
>
Please do so.  I'm following you with eagerness here.



> If you no longer believe that God has moral authority then that authority
> falls to man.  Maybe that's a good thing, but if it defaults to man, then
> moral authority is just whatever you say it is, and if you combine that
> with
> another Intellectual tenant that says we are all created equal, then there
> is no moral authority at all.  My morals are just as valid as yours.
>
>
The nasty "subjective" horn of the angry bull.  Quality is only in your
head.



> If you no longer believe the world was created by an omniscient creator for
> your benefit, and you fail to replace that belief with something else, the
> world _must_ be nothing more than the subjects and objects you see.  This
> approach has benefits.  You can do science and expect predictable,
> non-arbitrary results, but it also means you've raised the value of the
> objective world to the equivalent of 'the good'.




I really like this.  I view it as accurate restatement of the premises of
ZAMM and the MoQ, up until the last bit about raising the objective to the
good.  That seems especially interesting and fresh at the moment.

Does this concede the other horn?  Quality is in the things we observe?  No.
 Quality is not in the things we observe, Quality is in the objectivity
towards the things we observe.  Science's highest values are the objective
approach to reality.  I agree.

However, this "objectivity" is actually a lie.  The scientist can never be
truly objective, and to claim she is, obviates the kind of understanding
which realizes the Whole truth.



>  If there is nothing else,
> yet you are aware of a sense of 'betterness', then 'the good' must be a
> quality that inheres in the object.  The object has quality.  Quality does
> not have the object, and as we all know, it's all down-hill from there.
>


Yet from this point on, why can't we simply  describe Quality as a term
which defines the relationship between subject and object, and call it a
day, pop open a beer and put the Gone With the Wind DVD on "play"?

Objects don't have Quality, Quality defines the relationship between
objects.  What scientific philosopher would have trouble with that?  And
why?


>
> That Bo insists the MoQ, while 'of' or spawned by Intellectual Values is
> not
> one itself, is because he is following Pirsig's model.  It says this.  A
> new
> level germinates within its parent, but as it matures it can be seen in
> hindsight to come into conflict with the values of its parent; and when it
> does, and when it has achieved sufficient static latching to persist, it
> can
> be seen to constitute its own separate set of patterns of value.



Well I don't agree with the bottom-up explanation of level evolution.  I'm
more of a top-down guy.  Even though I have authority issues comin' out the
wazoo.  But as I've pointed out many times, biological patterns toy with and
are creative of inorganic nature.  Social patterns are creative of and toy
with biological patterns and intellectual patterns are creative of and toy
with social patterns.  It's always the upper level in charge of and creative
of the lower.

Positing random arrangements that magically form into higher patterns is the
moronist position I rail against.  I take it as that last stronghold of
simplistic darwinian thinking that persists in school books and school kids,
even though most advanced biological science has moved toward a better
model.

I mean, there's a strongly evident universal force called entropy, which
obviates the view of bottom-up evolution.

Nice discuss, Mary.  Thanks.

Frankly my dear, I do give a damn.

John