[MD] expanded list Platt

[Arlo Bensinger]

[John]
But I do notice the difference between the fruit fly's reaction when 
I swat it off my peach vs the reaction I get when I flick a grain of 
sand from the same place.

[Arlo]
Sure you do. Who wouldn't. But I'd say the difference you are seeing 
is the expanded repertoire of response-possibilities the fruit fly 
has. But as each is sent careening off your arm, both respond to the 
environment within their particular capacities. Didn't Pirsig say 
that "gravity" is simply an "inorganic value preference? For the 
inorganic pattern, what we see as "gravity" is simply a very stable 
pattern of preference.

[John]
And that difference, that responsive reaction on the part of the 
fruit fly is what I call intelligence.

[Arlo]
I'd call it biology.

[John]
Therefore, I think it best we leave the question of undetectable 
intelligence levels, keep it at "relatively creative response to 
environment" and leave it at a nebulous and mysterious continuum 
which we continually investigate.

[Arlo]
I'd caution here that continuing to redefine "intelligence" to reach 
lower and lower patterns, or even to describe Quality itself, renders 
to term both meaningless and absurd.

For example, if you want to say "cells are intelligent", you have to 
explain exactly what constitutes evidence for that, but would be 
something that would also not apply to Ribosomes or carbon atoms. If 
you say "respond creatively", I'd say again to explain to me the ways 
a cell can "respond creatively" that a Ribosome could not. When you 
start getting closer and closer to "respond to its environment", we 
are in agreement.

And, backtracking here, I'd ask how you respond to Pirsig's 
implication that the formation of carbon atoms was an act of 
"creative response" on the part of subatomic particles. Where they 
"intelligent" back then? Did they "lose" this ability? How? Where did 
this "intelligence" go? Where did it reside?

[John]
The key then is *creative* response. Not merely random, but 
purposefully adaptational and environmentally appropriate, not 
entirely predictable.

[Arlo]
Well, again, this is pretty much how Pirsig described the appearance 
of carbon atoms from subatomic particles. What say you?

[John]
What is it about a city, that makes it something beyond the life of 
its people?  There's created a new individuality to a whole community 
that makes it more than the sum of its parts, Arlo.  You reductionist you.

[Arlo]
Well, I wasn't playing the role of reductionist. You had said that 
you agreed that cells (which constitute the human body) have an 
intelligence even as their larger collective (person) has its own 
intelligence. But you said that Ribosomes couldn't be intelligent 
because they are just a part of a cell. So I was asking what's the 
difference here?

I'm also thinking of larger macrotic structures in the body. Does 
"intelligence" just skip from cells to "species"? What about your 
heart? Is it "intelligent"?

[John]
Well they both have their good aspects and their not so good.

[Arlo]
Yeah, I know a cosmos where some Grand Puppeteer makes everything 
"just so" is comforting and all that. But its ultimately a dead 
cosmos. Like that Jim Carey film The Truman Show.

Again, if Quality is doing the choosing, then you are not.

[John]
Well my all time favorite, (tho I'd never post it because it's just 
so overdone and old and trite) is "Oops, my Karma just ran over your Dogma".

[Arlo]
I saw one the other day that made me chuckle.

"If Liberals Hated America, They'd Vote Republican."