[MD] Redressing the MoQ

[Magnus Berg]

Hi David

On 2010-02-16 18:50, David Thomas wrote:
> Mangus,

Actually, it's Magnus.

> I reread both your essays and I guess a good place to start on this
> redressing of the MoQ would be where you say:
>
>> ³the two, perhaps most important, aspects of the levels² [are]
>
>> 1. Higher levels depend on lower ones.
>> 2. Each level is discrete.
>   >[Undressing on MoQ site]
>
> I reversed your order because IMHO the whole system is dependant on the
> physical universe regardless of how it works or whether we know how it does.

Hmm... I sense a problem here when you say "physical universe", especially in 
combination with the "regardless...". The term "physical universe" is a term we 
use to lump "non living" things together into one big unknown blob. What I'm 
trying to do when defining the levels is to use my incarnation of "Phaedrus' 
knife" to divide that big blob into smaller parts. And if we then can use the 
level rules about dependency and discreteness, we can perhaps realize stuff 
about that blob that we otherwise would have missed.

About the order of the aspects, I actually don't think your 1 makes much sense 
without 2. I mean, if you can't tell two things apart, what's the point of 
saying that one depends on the other, but I guess that's what you said below.

> The second is dependent on the first but I would add one more dependent
> claim as equally important in sorting out the static levels.
>
> 3 Moral order and authority.
>
> This claim is that as each level evolved from the former, it is more
> dynamic, of a higher moral order than the former because it allows a greater
> degree of freedom. This freedom gives the new level the moral authority to
> use or dominate the lower levels with some restraints; the big one being you
> really shouldn¹t destroy lower ones.

Yes, I guess I take that for granted, but it might be an important point to 
mention explicitly. The restraint however, is pretty self-regulated. If you 
destroy the patterns you're made of, you're dead.

> However ³dependence² is not the sole
> quality of the lower to upper level relationships. None of them are really
> static in the strong sense. There are varying degrees of static, stability,
> even on the inorganic. In reality they are constantly changing in ways that
> patterns on the other levels are forced to respond to or risk extinction.

The important thing here is to keep DQ out of the equation. Higher levels 
doesn't imply the presence of DQ, just a higher ability to respond and adapt to 
influence from the outside, such as DQ.

> I agree that ³discreteness² is a much more difficult issue than ³dependent²
> even if we disregard the mystics.
> For this I find it helpful to visualize reality as consisting of just three
> components, sunshine, stardust, and biomass. Biomass legends tell that
> biomass drinks sunshine and eats then ultimately shits stardust. Sunshine
> seems pretty discrete. A huge distance physically separates the sun and
> earth and as far as I know it¹s for all practical purposes a one-way event.
> The loop of stardust-biomass-stardust is much more problematic. What we
> commonly call ³life² it but a temporary state of stardust-being in this loop
> and as you suggested it is not easy to sharply draw just where the ³life²
> lines are. While the events and laws explaining them for the inorganic and
> biological levels seem discrete it¹s really hard to be sure because the
> inorganic laws are still in force at the higher level.

It becomes a problem only because you make it a problem. When you see a "thing", 
you want to have a clear and fool-proof way to tell which level this "thing" 
belongs to. That's simply not possible.

If you want to divide the world into levels and patterns, instead of "things", 
you need to leave the "things" behind. Or, you can use the dependency rule and 
realize that each thing consists of all levels from the lowest up to the thing's 
highest level pattern.


> An even more
> troubling is Lovelock¹s Gaia Hypothesis that is looking more and more likely
> to be true in some form or other. It suggests weather and atmosphere are
> hybrid class of phenomena that are dependant on some of the inorganic laws
> and some of biological laws. Kind of bridging the gap making the
> discreteness claim harder to defend. Is weather primarily inorganic or
> biological? A little of both and what level do you assign it to?

Like before, you take the "thing" weather and try to assign it to one and only 
one level. Leave the "thing" behind and realize that what we call weather is 
simply inorganic and biological patterns interacting.

> Does
> weather have ³life²? Not in any of our common understandings of what ³life²
> is. (One uncommon one, Christopher Alexander¹s, treats ³life² just as RMP
> does quality, but that would just confuse the issue at hand even more.)

Since we can't define what life is, I think it's rather uninteresting to discuss 
whether things have it or not. In fact, I think we need to involve DQ to really 
start defining life, because anything that is purely static would hardly be 
considered alive, right?

> When you go on to ask:
>
>> ³But how could the novel LILA be intellectual patterns when there were no
>> social or biological patterns between the novel and the inorganic patterns to
>> support it?²>[Undressing on MoQ site]
>
> I think I have a possible solution. Ken Wilbur suggests treating human
> artifacts as a special class. Some qualities are manifest others are latent.
> Lila, the book or electronic copy on your computer, are in obvious sense
> physical, inorganic patterns like an excavated flint arrowhead. But with
> interpretation both ³the book² and ³the text² can give clues to the
> biological, social, and intellectual reality of the humans that produced
> them. Meaning however is not always self-evident with artifacts. Like the
> excavated flint arrowhead often our interpretations near pure conjecture.
> The MoQ seems to have some of those qualities too;-)

I don't think you have to involve any special cases to solve it. My solution is 
that the patterns-to-meaning mapping is the social language that is required to 
read the text and understand it. Without that mapping, the text is nothing but 
ink. Or in other words, the intellectual patterns are dependent on the social 
pattern language.

> This is of particular concern with the intellectual level. You said Lila,
> the text, is an intellectual pattern. How do you know? How is it we make
> this distinction? How do we you know that distinction is correct?

Not really sure how to answer that without reciting large parts of the essay. I 
guess my way of knowing is that I have, at least to myself, made a clear 
distinction of what is what and how everything sticks together. I spent a few 
years trying to find holes in that system, resulting in a slightly revised 
system and the first essay. I still try to find holes in my system, but as time 
goes by and I still can't find any, I tend to increase my sense of knowing these 
things you ask.

> It is
> very important because according to the hierarchical nature of the MoQ and
> ³moral order and authority² claim this level has the moral authority to
> dominant the lower levels as long as it doesn¹t destabilize them. (How much
> is too much?)

Of course it's important, but I don't expect having to use the MoQ to advocate 
any revolutionary ideas anytime soon. First, I want to be able to use the MoQ to 
deduce new cool laws of nature. And if that's possible, you might be able to get 
acceptance from the general public.

> So when we turn to the higher levels I¹m not sure how to
> validate either the ³discreteness² or ³moral order² or ³authority² claims.
> So when you say:
>
>> ³Šit seemed relevant when talking about fuzzy things such as societies and
>> cultures, ..²>[Undressing on MoQ site]
>
> I agree the higher you go the fuzzier it gets.

I guess I wrote this in the essay, but the perceived fuzziness comes from the 
fact that higher levels are more able to adapt to DQ. Remove DQ and the 
fuzziness goes with it.

> Near the end of your 1st
> essay you recap with:
>
>> ³Intellectual patterns use the language provided by the society to simulate
>> another layer of static quality. By doing this, intellectual patterns can build
>> models of its own reality and manipulate the models without manipulating the
>> reality. Intellectual Quality Events are associations, inspiration etc.²
>> [Undressing on MoQ site]
>
> I find ³simulate² and ³model² interesting choices.  But the power that all
> seem to leave out or discount is the intellect¹s power not only to simulate
> or model reality but to imagine, invent, create it. The power to ask, ³What
> ifŠ?² .questions. Or the ³What future difference would it make if this idea
> were to come true?² .questions.

But that's exactly the type of questions you *can* ask with computer models. 
Before any new airplane is launched, the whole plane's aerodynamics is tested 
extensively in a computer without even having to build a physical plane.

Regards,

	Magnus