[MD] Individual v Collective

[ian glendinning]

And, Arlo, (and SA and Squonk) ...

... at the risk of re-stating my answer ... "splits" are no use to me
at all ... I was just looking at aspects / axes that allow us to
characterise the "socio-intellectual" level(s) better.

I find the same problem with a socio-intellectual split as I do with
an individual-collective split, but unlike some I do see these as
somehow distinct axes / aspects.

I think we're violently agreeing on the two-way (loopy?) emergence and
informing / influencing in your final para Arlo. I'd even feel
compelled to use scare quotes around the more emotive words exactly as
you do. We could be joined at the hip here :-)

And I still haven't done justice to Squonk's suggestion ... yet ...
and I have my own "dead-metaphor" ideas on the socio-intellectal axis
... but I 'd like to build constructively.

Ian

On 8/14/06, ARLO J BENSINGER JR <ajb102 at psu.edu> wrote:
> Ian, SA, Squonk, All...
>
> At the risk of restating SA's caution, I think the "individual-collective" split
> is a largely false one. Especially considered as somehow (in any way) related
> to the "social-intellectual" level distinction. ALL MOQ levels contain
> "individuals", and as those "individuals" engage "collectively" the next level
> up emerges.
>
> Individual biological patterns emerge out of the collective activity of
> individual inorganic patterns.
>
> Individual social patterns emerge out of the collective biological activity.
>
> Individual intellectual patterns emerge out of the collective social activity.
>
> To say that "one level is (more) individual and another is (more) collective" is
> a fool's quest to grant power to one half of a dialogic pair.
>
> As for the social-intellectual description, I have come to see one problem being
> that we use "intellectual patterns" (symbols) to bound social-level activity,
> and as such confuse the intellectual concept from the activity it seeks to
> describe. "Family", I believe, is an intellectual pattern (as specifically
> formulated) that seeks to conceptualize particular social behavioral patterns.
> "The Church", as a symbolic term, is an intellectual pattern that describes
> social level patterns of behavior. In the same way that an "atom" is an
> intellectual pattern describing particular inorganic pattterns. "Business", to
> use a final example, as the "buying and selling of things" is an intellectual
> formulation of social level activity.
>
> The trouble is, that because we are part of the collective activity that gives
> rise to intellectual patterns we think we "own" them. In the same way the cell
> must feel it "owns" the body. Now, the cell is a vital part of the body, but it
> is not the body. "Calculus", an intellectual pattern, exists independently of
> any one person. Indeed, it is a pattern that has emerged over time from the
> collective activity of many dispersed both geographically and temporally. It is
> a GIANT that feeds off collective social activity in the same way Pirsig's
> GIANT (the city) was a social pattern that fed off collective biological
> activity.
>
> The power of the emergent system is that it is not only bottom-up in generation,
> but top-down in informing. That is, the intellectual level manipulates the
> social level to suit its own ends, as a strand of DNA manipulates inorganic
> patterns to serve it's ends. This gets close (I think) to memetic theory, where
> memes are independent patterns who "use" (to use the colorful word) people for
> their own propagation in the same way a gene "uses" DNA. (But, I am no expert
> on memes, so I could be wrong).
>
> More later... of to a BBQ (gotta feed the biological patterns...)
>
> Arlo
>
>
>