[MD] The SOM/MOQ discrepancy.

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Bo]
Then to Arlo's question about " ... an example of something that 
responded to DQ before "man" appeared on the stage..." (cut)

As said a man-borne biological pattern "reacted to DQ" and became its 
stepping stone to the social level.

[Arlo]
So before "man-borne biological patterns", give me an example of 
something that responded to DQ? To use your words, give me an example 
of a "non-man-borne biological pattern" that was able to respond to 
DQ prior to man's appearance. Since you skirt the issue, let me 
remind me I suggested a return to the Mesozoic, a span of time 
accounting for about 200 million years of history. (1) Did something 
respond to DQ during that timeframe? (2) Speculate as to what? 
Plants, cells, animals, dinos? What?

I am NOT asking about what biological patterns became the "stepping 
stone" to the social pattern. I am saying that before man existed, 
before primates existed, WHAT responded to DQ?

I'll give you my answer. Everything. Plants responded biologically, 
as did dinosaurs, and sabertooths, and mammothes, and bugs. All these 
things responded to DQ biologically (and according to their 
bio-complexity) as they CONTINUE to do today. If you propose that 
they "lost" their ability to respond to DQ (as Platt does), then I 
ask firmly for an example of what an animal could do BACK THEN (in 
response to DQ) that it CAN NO LONGER DO today. What were DQ-enabled 
animals in the Mesozoic able to do that present day UNDQ-ed animals 
are no longer able to do?

Certainly you see the absurdity in saying that things "lost" the 
ability to DQ when "man" appeared. (Another follow-up would be 
"when?" Did animals in North America suddenly "lose" the ability to 
respond to DQ when the first primate appeared in Africa? Or did 
animals only lose this ability when they encountered man (when man 
spread across the Siberian passage and into North America?)

[Bo]
There was nothing biological dynamic enough to provide a "stepping 
stone" to the social level.

[Arlo]
Ah now here's a crux. Dynamic "enough"! Maybe there is a scintilla of 
agreement between us. But again, seen this way all these other things 
(that were not Dynamic enough) still responded to DQ, and would 
continue to do so til this day, albeit with a repertoire of responses 
less complex (or "not complex enough") to provide a foundation for an 
emergent level to grow from them.

So again, I say that it is not that "some things respond to DQ and 
some things do not", but that everything responds to DQ but those 
responses are mediated (enabled and constrained) by the level that 
pattern resides, and its complexity within that level. An atom most 
certainly responds to DQ, but it does so with perhaps the most 
limited, mundane, unimpressive, repertoire of responses imaginable. 
An amoeba has a wider repertoire of responses, which include 
responses made possible only to patterns residing on the biological 
level. A wooly mammoth (or my dog) has a greater range of responses 
than that amoeba (due to its greater biological complexity), but its 
response repertoire is still one that is biologically mediated. 
Humans (biological patterns of great complexity) when they started 
the social processes that enabled a social level to appear were 
bestowed with an exponentially greater repertoire of responding to DQ 
(namely, socially). Etc.

The critical thing I am arguing is that man is not "unique" in his 
ability to respond to DQ, but is "unique" in the repertoire of 
possible responses her/his intellectual-social-biological-inorganic 
composition affords (nod to Mel for clarifying his use of "unique", 
which I adopt here (I hope)).