[MD] (MD] Collective intelligence

[Ham Priday]

Ron -- this is a follow-up to my earlier response, particularly to your 
second question concerning "purpose".

[Ron]:
> What do you feel is man's purpose? By this rationale
> isn't even this concept meaningless abstraction?

Since "purpose" signifies meaning, MY purpose can only be a meaningless 
abstraction for YOU, if you have some other purpose in mind that is more 
meaningful.

I think it is left to each individual to determine the meaning of life, and 
to derive purpose from that determination.  I also believe that most people 
arrive at a personal philosophy based on their values, whether or not they 
express it publicly.  Even those who claim they have no "belief system" 
(nihilists) usually belie this claim by their statements.

Why do I insist that one's philosophy is based on value?  If you read the 
arguments and assertions posted here, you can quickly discern what's 
important to each individual by the views being proffered.  For example, 
there are "culturalists", like Ian, David and Arlo, who draw upon the 
evolving cultural community for what is important. There are "objectivists", 
like Craig and Case (AKA Krimel), for whom the material world and its 
operating principles are of fundamental importance.  Then there are the 
"esthetics", Platt, Marsha and SA (Perella), who put great stock in their 
emotional responses to beauty in Nature and Art.  What is important to a 
person is that person's value; and his or her reality revolves around it.  A 
belief system (i.e., philosophy of life) is constructed of the values one 
sees as most important or significant.

You also asked why the idea of a collective intelligence offends some of us.
> Ham, Platt, Micah, just what is it about this idea that
> drives a burr in your saddle?  If a collective energy is an
> acceptable theory, why not an awareness on some level?
> If we did not, I fail to see how we relate to one another.
> There must be some continuity and shared perception of
> value sense.

Speaking for myself, collective (or as Micah rightly calls it, "collected") 
intelligence is a metaphor for books, files, theses, or other inanimate 
sources of knowledge compiled and used for reference purposes.  Such 
compendia have no consciousness, no awareness, no intellect in themselves. 
A body of recorded data and ideas, once made aware, can be communicated to 
other people, and thus called "common" or "universal" knowledge.  But this 
appellation does not support the notion that  intelligence is an 
extra-corporeal entity from which the individual derives his thought process 
and cognitive ability.  If this were true, the Internet would be an 
electro-mechanical brain with constantly updated "awareness".

I keep coming back to the fact that all knowledge starts out as cognizant 
awareness derived from experience.  Awareness in this world is 
differentiated both by the "knower" and by what is known.  Thinking, 
creating, figuring, and conceptualizing are proprietary to the individual. 
Remove proprietary awareness and there is no knowledge or intelligence.  As 
I wrote in the introduction to my thesis, "Without consciousness there can 
be no experience of reality, and 'insensible knowledge' is a meaningless 
absurdity. ...We can only speculate as to the nature of an objective world 
without sensible awareness, except that it would be meaningless."   To 
credit the universe as the source of man's intelligence is to reject human 
cognizance and deny man's role as the choicemaker.  As Platt succinctly put 
it: "It's not even a useful illusion."

Essentially yours,
Ham