[MD] Individual v Collective

[Squonkonguitar at aol.com]

Mark,

You're right - "just aesthetic" was loose talk on my part ...  sorry about 
that.
 
Mark: Hello Ian.

Ian: The aestheics as a part of every interaction,  every communication,
every grip on every spanner / wrench, every feel of  every wrench
against every nut-face against every thread .... So how to  communicate
my point .... ? Perhaps as a question ...
 
Mark: The words we use, and those you use here, are all analogues of  
Quality. The MoQ says we can teasel these words out into when evolution  generated 
them.

Ian: Why is the bird-song communication from one bird to the community  of
birds social, whereas linguistic / symbolic communication (of
whatever)  human to humans, is intellectual?
 
Mark: All communication is imitated. We can teach a Human Adult with zero  
Intellectual capacity to imitate the phrase, E=mc2. (Some birds can imitate the  
phrase E=mc2.) Social patterns are learned through imitation. A Human Adult 
with  zero Intellectual capacity could learn through imitation that the 
appropriate  request for his career to help him visit the lavatory is to utter the  
phrase, E=mc2.
The relationship between concepts such as energy, mass, the constant of  
electromagnetic radiation velocity and Geometric progression are  governed by 
rules of deductive inference. Deduction is an aesthetic appreciation  of abstract 
relationships. The Human Adult with zero Intellectual capacity is  devoid of 
such aesthetic appreciation, whereas the 'Rain man' savant has  exquisite 
aesthetic appreciation of abstract relationships but needs help to  visit the 
lavatory.
Imagine the shades in-between and no wonder it seems problematic for the  
intellectual and social realms to be differentiated, but it all comes down to  
aesthetics. At least, that's the argument i have been pressing ever since i had  
anything to do with this forum.

Ian: I guess we need to translate our mutual use of the words value  &
meaning ... seems to be an important difference in our  statements.
 
Mark: As Alan Freeman would have it, 'Norrarf pop pickers. Alright?'
As i stated in the last post: 'If you consider what meaning is, i think you  
may see it is a bundle of preferences. And preferences are values.'
The Social aesthetic is a relationship between your values and the  current 
social conventions (values). This is social meaning.
The Intellectual aesthetic is a relationship between your values and the  
current intellectual conventions. This is intellectual meaning.
Value come first - meaning is an intellectual pattern of ambiguous nature -  
in order for meaning there has to be a valued intellectual tradition for 
meaning  to be coherent. Very often, a challenge to an intellectual tradition 
reveals  incoherence and the whole aesthetic begins to feel a bit off.

Ian: BTW I've never advocated an individual / collective or a social  /
intellectual "split" far from it ... I'm just trying to understand  the
axes along which they are related ... and just suggesting  the
individual / collective is more meaningful / more significant /  higher
value than the social / intellectual ... where I'm still failing  to
see any clear distinction ..

Ian
 
Mark: You posited the socio-intellectual level. You suggest an  
individual/collective analysis of the socio-intellectual level may be  helpful.
The MoQ says: Social patterns are imitated, Intellectual patterns are  
manipulated.
The MoQ thus provides a clear dividing line between these levels - a  
dividing line you do not accept.
I've expanded upon this by suggesting the social and intellectual realms  are 
aesthetic. I think this may be effectively sustained within MoQ literature.  
This may beg the question: Is the aesthetic individual or collective? I get  
around this by suggesting there is a relationship between 'you' as a bundle of  
preferences and 'collective' as a bundle of preferences. But as bundles are  
non-atomic and merge, field-like into a higher continuum, i think the  
individual/collective question is unasked.
I've also suggested that meaning is a bundle of preferences or values. One  
such value/meaning is the MoQ paradigm. I think the MoQ paradigm is highly  
coherent in that it is aesthetically very pleasing.
 
Love,
Mark