[MD] Ham & swiss cheese

[Scott Roberts]

Ian,

Ian said:
Scott, I'm still struggling to get to the reality of our differences,
but his view still seems quite un-MoQ-ish to me.

Scott:
Simple. You're a physicalist, and I'm (to coin a word) a semiosist. You 
think that semiosis is something that evolved out of physical processes, 
while I think that physical processes are a form of semiosis.

To put it in contradistinction to the MOQ (where, using Arlo's categories, I 
started out in this forum thinking of myself as an "extender" or modifier, 
but have had to realize that I am a "dissenter"):

The MOQ says that Quality is basic. I agree, but since as I see it, one 
doesn't have Quality without Consciousness and Intellect, then those as well 
are basic (and not three bases, but three ways -- and there are more -- of 
naming the basis). Because I include Intellect, I obviously disagree with 
the MOQ on its handling of intellect (as limited to the fourth level of 
SQ -- I agree that there is a fourth level that is intellect, but that there 
is also Dynamic Intellect, which is the same thing as DQ. So the fourth 
level starts when DQ/DI became conscious in humans, so to speak).

The MOQ uses a dynamic/static distinction. I also find great value in this 
distinction, but treat it differently than the MOQ does. The MOQ privileges 
DQ over SQ, seeing SQ as being "in the wake of" DQ. I see the dynamic and 
the static as a contradictory identity, or to put it in tetralemma terms: 
one can't say of any experience that it is dynamic, one can't say it is 
static, one can't say it is both dynamic and static, and one can't say it is 
neither dynamic nor static.

In terms of morality, the MOQ holds that the intellectual trumps the social, 
and that DQ trumps the intellectual. I agree with the first, but not the 
second, since for me the intellectual is (one word for) the dynamic/static 
contradictory identity. Now this means that all levels are the playing out 
of intellect. So what makes the fourth level different is that with the 
fourth level, DQ is human agency. We can now consciously reflect on the 
social, and so consciously change it.

- Scott