[MD] Food for Thought

[ian glendinning]

Brilliant Case, glad you're concentrating, you're making progress I think ...

So what ? OK I agreed already definitions are semantic arguments for
dummies. So in that sense I accept your sentiment.

I also agree with your Kuhnian "lens" metaphor. I didn't intend to
make any pejorative statement about dogmatic paradigms ... quite the
opposite in fact.

But, in your final para ... this is where we syhthesise your points
and Dan's with mine ... I had said "self-reflective consciousnes IS
the distinguishing feature of the cultural (3/4) level from the merely
biological / living (2) level ... It is the feature that enables
symbolic manipulation etc ..."

You replied
> [Case]
> True dat. But coming from my recent forays into consciousness it is
> important to add the consciousness emerges at those levels it is not
> divorced from the underlying levels. Note that I am still will to use levels
> as general pointers but I don't see them as fundamental.

I guess what I'm saying is that whilst the layers are not independent
- they are additive Dan said - in a geometric sense you said - I agree
with both, there are "more fundamental" (more "significant" maybe)
distinctions that we can identify between ...

0 and 1 (Quality itself enabling Physics)
1 and 2 (The Physical enabling Life)
2 and 3/4 (Life enabling Self-Consciousness)

Than there are between ...
3 and 4 (social and intellectual).

None of the levels is truly "fundamental' in any axiomatic sense, but
some distinctions provide a much more powerful "lens" than others in a
pragmatic sense. The 3/4 distinction is not one of them - a very fuzzy
lens so far.

The real power of such lenses is in their "explanatory value", not
their defintions. No ?

Ian