[MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?)

[ian glendinning]

Arlo, David M,

I had an Aha ! moment there.

I think the distinguishing thing about one layer from another, is that
it posesses the resources / information for the NEXT to emerge.

So to say a cell "has no idea whatsoever" about an emergent layer of
"organisation", cannot be entirely true.

It clearly has "encoded" within it the organisation of some higher
layer (like a brain or a liver), but maybe not a level higher that
might take a brain to organise (like new york city or an e-mail).

It starts to look like teleology, if you jump too many levels at once,
but that is an emergent "illusion" ... the emergence happens one level
of patterns at a time.

I guess like Arlo, I support the idea that we really have many more
levels to explain the whole of reality, and Pirsig's four are simply
pragmatic convention, useful and valuable, but not fundamental in any
explicatory sense.

Ian

On 1/16/07, Arlo Bensinger <ajb102 at psu.edu> wrote:
> [Arlo]
> So while organization (or collective activity, or even
> "organisation"  :-)) on a lower level gives rise to upper level
> patterns, it is not a planned, deliberate activity to do so.
>
> [Dave M]
> how do you know that?
>
> [Arlo]
> Because, if for no other reason, proposing the reverse leads to a
> world  that does not jibe with experience.
>
>  From LILA, "But it's as foolish to think of a city or a society as
> created by human bodies as it is to think of human bodies as a
> creation of the cells, or to think of cells as created by protein and
> DNA molecules, or to think of DNA as created by carbon and other
> inorganic atoms. If you follow that fallacy long enough you come out
> with the conclusion that individual electrons contain the
> intelligence needed to build New York City all by themselves.
> Absurd." (LILA, 217-218)
>
> For a cell to conceive of a "brain", and conceive of its function, in
> order to design and build the brain, it would have to possess at
> least as equally a powerful "brain" to begin with.
>
> In other words, to say "let's get together and form a brain that can
> manipulate complex symbols and engage in abstract thought", would
> require those individual cells to possess brains that can manipulate
> complex symbols and engage in abstract thought.
>
> It would also require a cell to have an awareness of distance and
> motion beyond itself for a cell to conceive of, and design, "feet and
> legs", not to mention the ability to symbolically represent these
> processes and activities _before_ the brain and legs were designed.
>
> Plus, are you suggesting that only past cells had this ability to
> preplan and create bodies according to some blueprint, but now modern
> cells are automated and don't? Or are you suggesting that each
> reproductive iteration involves groups of cells sitting around and
> deciding to "make on more like we've been" or "try something new"?
>
> Finally, do you think the cells also predesign cities and buildings?
> Or did the cells just get together and decide to build a "human
> consciousness" but then have no control over what that
> "consciousness" does? If not, how were they able to plan on making
> something so complex?
>
> To clarify, the cells each follow "what is best", and in doing so
> form collectives that function increasingly like "individuals" in
> their own right.
>
>
>
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