[MD] Just coincidence?

[Arlo Bensinger]

Hi Peter,

What I mean by the MOQ holding an "emergentist position" is that upper 
levels on the MOQ hierarchy emerge out of the collective activity of 
individuals on the preceding level. Static social patterns are not "out 
there" and they are not "created by the individual", they come into being 
over historical time and context, through the collective activity of 
biological "individuals", who are themselves the result of the collective 
activity of inorganic "individuals". Intellectual patterns emerge from the 
collective activity of social level individuals.

That is, the patterns are not external, nor do they exist in the 
individual, but exist due to the interaction of individuals one order down. 
It is emergentist, primarily, for three reasons. First, the newly created 
patterns are greater than the patterns from which they arise, but are not 
independent of them (of often "exploitative"). Pirsig uses the computer 
metaphor of software to hardware to explain the social to biological 
dependency. The social individual, of course, is much more than a 
"collection of cells", but arises out of the complex interaction of those 
cells*. Second, one cannot "skip levels", the social level could not exist 
out of inorganic activity without the biological level preceding it, nor 
could the intellectual exist without the social and biological and 
inorganic levels undergirding it. Third, the "emerging patterns" are not 
created by, nor planned, by individuals on the preceding level. Biological 
patterns do not "set out" to create social patterns. "Men" do not "create 
cities". Red blood cells do not plan to create human intelligence. It is 
emergentist, in this case, because it is not deliberate.

* I should note here, that I think Pirsig's hierarchy is overly simple when 
one thinks that "social individuals" emerge from cells. There are other 
"intra-level" organizations that occur first, using the same principle 
(molecules to cells, cells to tissue, ... all the way up to the human body, 
which is really a biological collective of other, but lesser, biological 
collectives. That is, we don't jump right from inorganic patterns to human 
bodies. There is, say, "gradation" within the levels.

I know this is brief, but hopefully will answer part of your question. If 
it does not, let me know.

Arlo