[MD] Dawkins a Materialist (is watching?)

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[Ian]
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).

[Arlo]
What I guess I'm arguing against here is the notion that there were these two
cells, and one cell said to other "hey, look, let's form a human body with a
brain and a liver", and the other said, "do you think we'll need a stomach and
legs", and the first said "i guess so, and let's try this appendix thingy, but
if it doesn't work out we'll scrap it", and they went out and recruited some
other cells saying "if we work together to make a brain, we'll be able to do
more things".

"Encoding" I'd say is more or less another way of saying "latching". So as cells
in collective behavior gained some "betterness", that was latched, and along
the way as this latching grew in complexity, eventually there was a brain.

But at some point, as latching lead to increasing complexity, something new and
unintended (from the vantage point of the cells) emerged as these these larger,
complex biological bodies began interacting socially... a consciousness.

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

[Arlo]
Sure it does. I just don't think it was a "planned event" for one level to
create the level above it. 

[Ian]
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.

[Arlo]
I think Pirsig's level mark, in broad strokes, the significant points of
emergence. But each level has quite a bit of gradation in complexity, and like
Case points out, getting closer and closer to the actual "line of demarcation"
things get interesting... like a fractral pattern perhaps?