[MD] Discrete & Dependent

[Magnus Berg]

Hi Bo

> Our dispute boils down to the intellectual issue ... again! 

Yes, we really need to find some common root here. And perhaps see where we part 
ways.

> When a dog sniffs something there is a recognition of this particular 
> experience, but it's not "thinking" in the (silent) language sense - this 
> we agree on?

Hmm. You use two words here that makes me uncertain. First, it's "recognition". 
The word implies that the dog recognizes the smell, it has smelled it before and 
the smell probably causes associations to past experiences.

The thing is, it's only the *experience* that is biological. As soon as that 
experience is transformed and recognized, it's not biological anymore. It then 
becomes a representation/memory of that original, cutting edge biological 
experience. And that representation requires intellectual patterns. No other 
level can represent anything else.

The other word is "silent". It implies you agree there is an internal language 
in our brains. The language itself is perhaps no proof of the existence of 
intellectual patterns, but the *use* of that language to represent external 
experience, is.

> When we humans do the same we will at times add a 
> name to the experience - out loud or to ourselves, but this isn't 
> intellect, stone age people surely had language and names for 
> different smells. Intellect is the ability to distinguish between the 
> subjective experience and the objective explanation of it. Something 
> the 2nd. and 3rd. level lack.        

I disagree. Intellectual patterns are required to represent that "objective 
explanation" as you put it.

First of all, that's a much more important step in the evolution of life than 
the ability to distinguish between the experience and the representation.

Second, the levels are supposed to encompass everything. And if the "objective 
explanation" is not an intellectual pattern, it must be something else. And it 
can't be a biological pattern, because that's what the "subjective experience" 
was. So what is it?

>>> Regarding intellect the notion of the MOQ as an intellectual pattern
>>> makes everything "intellectual".
> 
>> No. And I have no idea why you keep persisting this. The MoQ is not
>> reality, it's merely a *model* of reality. I think it's connected to
>> your refusal to differentiate between gravity and the law of gravity,
>> but I can't really put my finger on it. At least to not so you
>> understand what I mean.
> 
> Intellect (the level) IS the distinction between the (in this case) 
> observed data of things falling to the ground and the explanation why 
> they do, while you claim that  "thinking" is intellect (the mind that 
> observes and give names to the observations).

But you're dismissing the *things* that does the actual falling. You only 
recognize those things as valid in your world after someone has observed them. 
But things fall regardless of anyone observing them or not.

Those *things* are the real inorganic patterns. The observed *data* of those 
things are not inorganic once they're data, they are intellectual patterns.

But I'll leave that up to you with a few questions.

* What type of pattern is the observed data of a falling stone?

* What type of pattern is the explanation of why the stone falls?

* What type of pattern is the stone? Does it exist to you?


> Pirsig of LILA also fell 
> prey to intellect's lure and insists that the MOQ is just another 
> subjective explanation of objective Quality,

Come on Bo, "objective Quality", what the .... is that?

> while ZAMM's Phaedrus 
> saw through intellect's veil demonstrated by the Newton example: 
> Intellect arrived with the Greeks and crystallized the present, the future 
> and the PAST in its subject/object matrix.    

I interpret the intellect of the Greeks as the time in history when society was 
first transformed into being ruled by intellectual value instead of being ruled 
solely by old social value. But I also recognize that the exact same thing has 
happened before, when the brain of animals became large enough to start ruling 
the animal using intellectual value instead of social.

>>> DQ itself is "intellectual", the static 
>>> levels are "intellectual". Craig protested and called this confusing
>>> the menu and food, but after my Newton example he clammed shut.     
>  
>> Craig's right, you're wrong.
> 
> Is ZAMM's Newton example wrong?

Yes, it didn't have the level tool of the MoQ to explain the problem. And 
actually, the tool to really solve that problem was first presented by me in 
"The levels undressed".

 From ZAMM (about gravity):
"Sitting there, having no mass of its own, no energy of its own, not in anyone's 
mind because there wasn't anyone, not in space because there was no space 
either, not anywhere...this law of gravity still existed?"

First of all, since he didn't have the level tool yet, he interchangeably used 
both "gravity" and "the law of gravity" as if they were the same thing.

Second, the real answer is that gravity didn't exist until space and time came 
into being at the Big Bang, creating the spatial level. Before that event, there 
were no space and therefore no speed, acceleration or space curvature that any 
gravity could affect. It's exactly the same reason why smells didn't exist right 
after the Big Bang. There were no molecules that had any 3D-structure which is 
the basis of smell. But as soon as those molecules were created, the universe 
got a whole new way to create new stuff.

The "law" of gravity is of course an intellectual pattern, but since nobody had 
thought of it before Newton, that law as an intellectual pattern didn't exist 
before that. There's no need to make a mystery of it when there is none.


>>> The SOL interpretation is now vouched for by Pirsig (as far as he
>>> could possibly go)
>  
>> I must have missed that, what did he say about it?
> 
>     There has been a tendency to extend the meaning of "social" 
>     down into the biological with the assertion that, for example, 
>     ants are social, but I have argued that this extends the 
>     meaning to a point where it is useless for classification. I said 
>     that even atoms can be called societies of electrons and 
>     protons. And since everything is thus social, why even have 
>     the word? I think the same happens to the term, "intellectual," 
>     when one extends it much before the Ancient Greeks.*  
> 
> The same (=usless for classification) happens to an intellectual level 
> before the Greeks. It means that the SOL interpretation is vouched for 
> by Pirsig. 

First, isn't it a stretch to take that as an approval of SOL? Just because he 
thinks the intellectual level appeared by that *time* doesn't mean that SOL is 
the only possible result.

Second, as I said the other day. I have refuted the above too many times to 
count so I don't take it as proof of anything. I simply think Pirsig is wrong 
here and I would frankly love to hear what he would have to say about my essay.

I'll summarize:

The social level does *not* extend down to atoms.

Atoms are created by the atomic level where the only forces (i.e. types of 
experience/value) are the strong and weak nuclear forces and electromagnetism. 
Also gravity is involved but that comes from the lower, spatial level.

Further, molecules are not societies because they are created by the chemical 
level. The forces (experience/value) here are the atom bonding preferences of 
different types of atoms.

After that, some basic combinations of molecules are biological value. If two 
molecules happens to have a good 3D fit with eachother, they can stick together. 
That's the molecular version of biological sexual attraction.

This sets the stage for the social level. If that combination of molecules are 
better (i.e. more moral) than they are separate, they will stick together. 
*That's* a social pattern and it is metaphysically identical to two humans 
combining to make a family, or a few people with different abilities combining 
to make a small village. All are better as a whole than the parts individually, 
they are even better than the sum of its parts.

>> I'm afraid I didn't understand what you mean by that last part. But I
>> will probably not accept it. And why would I drop the inorganic part?
>> Do you mean we should remove the inorganic level?
> 
> You said that "social" is what's left when there are no INORGANIC and 
> biological explanations. The biological part can be ascribed to the 3rd. 
> level in its parent's service, but the inorganic values as social is 
> untenable. 

We have so vastly different ways of approaching this level business. It's quite 
tiresome.

When I see a "thing", I want to explain what types of forces/patterns are used 
to keep that thing intact. You don't seem to bother much with that though. For 
example, what patterns keep a dog together? Biological you'd say, but does 
taste, smell and touch keep the dog together? Does the tail taste good to the 
back end of the dog and that's why the tail doesn't fall off?

I think you and many others are making it way too easy for yourselves. You only 
care to solve one particular problem you set your sights on, but the rest is 
just left as a pile of rubbish.

	Magnus