[MD] Arlo's Rant and 3rd levels

Sat May 16 07:33:59 PDT 2009

Arlo,
I think it is important to escape the chicken/egg type of hierarchical understanding of evolution
especially in regard to the MoQ levels. it is clear, at least to myself, that life emerged as a society
from complex societies of inorganic value. The definitions of levels rest on recognizable norms of complexity
in experience.

________________________________
From: X Acto <xacto at rocketmail.com>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2009 10:16:28 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] Arlo's Rant and 3rd levels

Hello Arlo,
I have a difficult time imagining a time when any life form did not have shared expereinces,
everywhere one looks individuals exist via the society of beings they spring forth from schools
of fish to cells in the body to coral reefs. In my own opinion, biology and society are correlative,
it's the complexity which defines recognizable social norms.
-Ron

________________________________
From: ARLO J BENSINGER JR <ajb102 at psu.edu>
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
Sent: Saturday, May 16, 2009 10:07:17 AM
Subject: Re: [MD] Arlo's Rant and 3rd levels

[John]
My question revolves around what happens when a culture's values lose their
grounding in the "biological patterns of value".  My kneejerk analysis is that
they then become, by definition, unnatural, warped and doomed.

[Arlo]
First, I got to say... "rant"? Man, you guys are a brutal crowd. 

You'll have to be more specific here, as I am not entirely sure I understand
what you mean. We may be talking about two different things.

What I was talking about with WillBlake is the anthropological and
developmental point in evolution where the infant social level first appeared
out of the biological level, and how prior to this "thinking" (as it refers to
the manipulation of symboliocally encoded experience) was non-existent and
impossible.

The single best "description" or "hypothesis" about that exact point deep in
our pre-history I have found to date is Tomasello's ideas in The Cultural
Origins of Human Cognition. I won't do it justice with a sentence or two, but
the basic idea is this.

At some point in our pre-social, biological evolution (when "man" was nothing
more than a biological being), the complexity of the human brain, which had
been evolving every generation, had hit a point where "shared attention" was
possible. This was an unintended consequence of the brain's natural evolution
to provide response to the immediate environment. At that point, probably after
the complexity was in place for a bit, two biological humans, both focusing
their attention on some object, simultaneously recognized that the other's
actions were also deliberate towards that object. When one grunted a sound, for
example, and the other returned the same sound, and both realized that the
"sound" was the "object" (symbolically encoded), in that moment of mutuality
"thinking" was born.

Of course, we've come a long way since then, we are no so accustomed to
language and semiosis of some sort we don't even notice it, it is an ubiquitous
sea in which we swim.

Thus the "grounding", as I am was referring to, of the social in the biological
points to the specific neural biological developments that underscore our
evolutionary ability to collectively construct a symbolic representation of
experience.

I think, if I am reading you correct, you are looking at the effects of a
society that denies or ignores biological quality in experience. Before I
answer further, I want to see if this is right, or if I've misunderstood you.

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