[MD] Social Ants?

[Steve Peterson]

Hi Horse, Arlo, Case, Matt, Michael, Craig, Platt

Arlo asks:
A quick question for Horse. Let's say we consider an ant colony as a 
non-social, biological network. What then distinguishes social human activity from this ant activity? Would it be language, whether vocal, gestural or the like?  Would it be, as I think Steve(?) suggested, "learned behavior" as opposed to "instinctual behavior"? Would it be, as maybe Ham would agree, some form of conceptual awareness of self? Or, if the social level is reserved, as Pirsig
suggests, for humans, is the social level contingent upon some form of unique human biological trait (btw, Tomasello in The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition argues just that)?

In other words, in this conversation about whether or not ant activity is social, I've lost track of what we are saying would constitute the "bare minimum" of activity, conception or biological precursor, that we would say places something on the social level. 

Steve:
I don’t think you lost track. You we’re probably just thrown off a bit by Platt’s nonsequitor.  We are still trying to determine whether ants or other animals display social patterns and trying to define the social and biological levels through that lens. I can’t see why Platt thinks that arguing about politics is what’s missing from a conversation about whether ants have social patterns.

The discussion group over the years has revolved around an assumption of social level=bad and intellectual level=good and trying to associate one’s own views with intellect and one’s opponent's views with society. In reality these are two types of good and quality on each of these levels must be defended.

Pirsig says in Lila:
“Today we are living in an intellectual and technological paradise and a
moral and social nightmare because the intellectual level of evolution, in its struggle to become free of the social level, has ignored the social
level's role in keeping the biological level under control.”

If the intellectual level is good to the social level’s evil, then how could we be living in a moral nightmare due to intellect taking control over society?  

At any rate I think it is an interesting topic to try to understand social patterns as an evolutionary leap above the biological level rather than as the oppressor of intellect.

(I probably shouldn’t go off on a tangent here while I’m trying to help re-focus this thread, but I can’t help but comment on Pirsig’s following explanation for the moral decline associated with intellect taking over:

“What the Metaphysics of Quality indicates is that the twentieth century intellectual faith in man's basic goodness as spontaneous and natural is disastrously naïve.  The ideal of a harmonious society in which everyone without coercion cooperates happily with everyone else for the mutual good of all is a devastating fiction. It isn't consistent with scientific fact.  Studies of bones left by the cavemen indicate that cannibalism, not cooperation, was a pre-society norm. Primitive tribes such as the American Indians have no record of sweetness and cooperation with other tribes.  They ambushed them, tortured them, dashed their children's brains out on rocks.  If man is basically good, then maybe it is man's basic goodness which invented social institutions to repress this kind of biological savagery in the first place.”

To sum up, intellect versus society is not an individual versus the collective issue. As Pirsig points out above, the individual free of society’s coersion (socialization) is not some uncorrupted superman but rather an animal.) 



My position on what type of behaviors would constitute social rather than biological patterns is as you say to try to distinguish instinctual behaviors from socially learned ones.

I don’t think that your “whole is greater than the some of it’s parts” idea defines social achievement. That happens across all scales as a molecule is not just a bunch of atoms and an organism is not just a bunch of cells.

I think that social learning occurs as unconscious copying of behavior as a response to social quality that may be best understood as celebrity rather than as genetically programmed responses to inorganic and biological quality.

This social learning is distinct from biological patterns because it is not passed on through genes but instead forms a culture that is passed on through other means.

If Quality is an organism’s response to it’s environment then we are looking for a new type of quality other than biological quality that an animal must be responding to to call its behavior social.

Pirsig seems to say that celebrity may be the best way to understand this new type of quality: “Celebrity is the Dynamic Quality that primitive social patterns once used to organize themselves.” “It becomes an organizing force of the whole social level of evolution.  Without this celebrity force, advanced complex human societies might be impossible.  Even simple ones.”

I think we should be looking for something like celebrity and an ability to respond to celebrity among animals to think that they have social patterns. 

As for social patterns being contingent on some biological trait, I’ve speculated that a capacity for emotions may be this trait. An emotional reaction may be the biological correlate to a response to social quality.

Is anyone aware of accounts of animal behavior that fit my description of social patterns as distinct from biological ones?

Regards,
Steve



Ch 20
Celebrity is to social patterns as sex is to biological patterns.  Now he
was getting it.  This celebrity is Dynamic Quality within a static social
level of evolution.  It looks and feels like pure Dynamic Quality for a
while, but it isn't.  Sexual desire is the Dynamic Quality that primitive
biological patterns once used to organize themselves.  Celebrity is the
Dynamic Quality that primitive social patterns once used to organize
themselves.  That gives celebrity a new importance.
None of this celebrity has any meaning in a subject-object universe.  But in a value-structured universe celebrity comes roaring to the front of reality as a huge fundamental parameter.  It becomes an organizing force of the whole social level of evolution.  Without this celebrity force, advanced complex human societies might be impossible.  Even simple ones. Funny how a question can just sit there and then suddenly, at a time you least expect it, the answer starts to unfold.



 		
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