[MD] Social Ants?

[Michael Hamilton]

Case, all,

> [Case]
> In trying to understand anything, there are a variety of perspectives one
> could take, levels if you will. What I object to is:
>
> First Pirsig's statement that the levels are discrete from one another;
> that they are rungs on a ladder rather than points on a continuum.
>
> Secondly, that they are of metaphysical rather than metaphorical
> significance.

I agree with your second criticism, but not the first. In fact, I
think Pirsig might well agree with the second criticism as well - it's
more a criticism of the way some of us on MD (me included) have
treated the levels, rather than a criticism of Pirsig's intentions in
Lila. He intended the level system as a high quality, over-arching
"plain of understanding", not as a metaphysical absolute.

However, I think that Pirsig's levels derive much of their usefulness
from from being discrete. Each level is supposed to correspond to a
different 'moral' code, a different species of Quality. There seems to
be a good analogy between discrete quality levels and discrete species
classification in biology, although in both cases there may be some
grey areas at the points where the species divide off from one
another. The discreteness of the levels is intended to respresent the
way that these various species of the Good (roughly: truth, regular
morality, the law of the jungle, the laws of physics) are so
ostensibly distinct and unrelated, while nonetheless integrating them
under the Quality banner.

This issue reminds me of an article Paul linked to at
http://www.twelvelinks.blogspot.com/ about natural kinds and the
various facets of essentialism (inclusing discreteness). One of the
main arguments is that, while we might want to avoid a complete
essentialism (in your words, giving the levels "metaphysical rather
than metaphorical significance"), this doesn't mean we have to avoid
every facet of essentialism. Here's a couple of snippets (the full
article is at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2267/is_n2_v65/ai_20964254/print).

"It is very important to recognize at this point that essentialism is
a conjunction of several components, because although they are linked,
they are conceptually separable. It is not difficult to imagine cases
in which any pair of components does not co-occur. The category of
lawyers, for instance, is quite sharply bounded and has at least one
necessary feature, but it is hardly immutable, homogeneous, or based
on inhering, as distinct from socially conferred, characteristics.
Similarly, the category of children is neither sharply bounded nor
historically stable, but it plainly is based on inhering, naturally
grounded properties that support a wide variety of inductions."

"Although it is generally acknowledged that [biological] species are
indeed discrete and bounded, determinate extension does not hold in
the case of speciation events, when incipient kinds are in the process
of separating, and in the case of intergrading geographic variations
within species......In addition, the essentialist idea that there is a
single best way to partition nature is deeply challenged by the
different taxonomies produced by attending to morphological
similarities (the "phenetic" approach) and to evolutionary descent
("cladistics"), both of which seem to be equally apt for some purposes
(Hull, 1992)."