[MD] The MOQ's First Principle

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ian]
I actually believe we have a whole series of "onion-skins" making up the 
whole socio-cultural-intellectual levels.

[Arlo]
I agree, but also think we have a whole series of onion-skins making up the 
inorganic and biological too. I mean the biological level jumps from an 
amoeba to a dolphin. Inorganic encompasses quarks to quartz.

And, I think, if we consider the emergentist nature of the MOQ, where 
collective activity of individuals give rise to the emergence of higher 
level patterns, this also occurs in gradations within the levels. Muscles 
and organs arise from the collective activity of individual cells. Human 
bodies arise from the collective activity of muscles and organs. Etc. So 
although we see evolutionary leaps creating four broad levels, within level 
evolution occurs as well. Or, perhaps better stated, evolution is a 
continuum eventually reaching a point of complexity on one level from which 
an entirely new level is able to emerge (social patterns could not emerge 
from biological patterns until those biological patterns reached a certain 
point of complexity).

So while the four MOQ levels provide broad classification categories, we 
should not surmise that everything within any particular level is 
evolutionarily (or morally) equal.