[MD] Levels in electronic computers

[Magnus Berg]

Hi Krimel

Thanks for the input. Always nice to shift perspective now and then.

After reading your post, I think I want to start with this.

You ended your post arguing that the first cut of a metaphysics ought to 
be between good and bad. And as it turns out, that's exactly what 
Quality is about. Of course we mostly talk about good, but whatever is 
not good, is bad.

Ok, so everything and everyone judges and divides all experiences into 
good and bad ones. Lower levels, like inorganic, don't have much choice 
in the matter, but higher levels do.

When an inorganic experience happens, it always follows the good path. 
I.e. earth keeps circling the sun and its molten iron core keeps 
spinning in a slightly different pace than the rest, producing a 
magnetic field.

But when a biological experience happens, it is also filtered through 
this Quality. However, the very complex inorganic stuff that is 
happening is producing one and only one biological judgement. And it's 
this biological judgement that is the whole world for the animal making 
the judgement call. It has no idea how it's supported by lower levels, 
or even that it *is* supported. It only knows, or rather feels, that 
this is good or this is bad and that's the whole experience.

I think it's a rather good call for a metaphysics to acknowledge that 
such biological experiences deserves to be called real in themselves. 
Not just because they are supported by inorganic events, or even quantum 
effects, or perhaps one day we'll dig even deeper than that. But we say 
here and now that a smell experience counts as real, no matter how deep 
we can dig to explain how it works.

Regarding fractional dimensionality, I didn't know that about fractals. 
I did know about our spatial dimensions having been unfolded by the big 
bang, at least 3 of them, plus time being unfolded as we go along, or 
some such. But the string theorists still think there are 7 more that 
wasn't unfolded, right?

Anyway, first of all I don't really see that dimensions are not discrete 
from that example. The zooming in on a point is a gedanken experiment, 
but how is it connected to our spatial dimensions?

Also, I can imagine that our 3 spatial dimensions are rather tightly 
connected. But even if they are, it doesn't really say anything about 
metaphysical, non-spatial, dimensions.

Or?

And, on the absurdity about the level conflicts and lower levels always 
winning. That's not as absurd as it might seem and that's because lower 
levels are much more static than higher. In other words, higher levels 
can *count* on lower levels behaving as expected. But of course lower 
levels will always win if they really misbehave.

	Magnus




On 2010-07-16 18:36, Krimel wrote:
> Magnus, Arlo, Andy, Ian and Whoever;
>
> I think there is an important issue Magnus is missing at least with respect
> to fractal boundaries. One of the major points Mandelbrot was making is that
> dimensions themselves are not discrete. "Fractal" is actually a made up word
> contracted from fractional dimensionality. I think it was Mandelbrot who
> used an example of this similar to your cube example. He said imagine a
> point that when you zoom in on it turns out to be the end of a strand of
> yarn which twists into a circle and then balls up into a sphere. The object
> under observation is not zero, one two or three dimensional is has a
> fractional dimensional value.
>
> Also, in your example, in order to shift position, in order to see the
> square as a cube, you have to be able to pan over to a vantage point where
> the difference is detectable. Thus in order to perceive things in three
> dimensions you have to exist in four.
>
> But from an ontological standpoint the only sense we have that actually
> gives us direct experience of three dimensions is touch. Constructing 3D
> from sight is always a perceptual process as the information is always
> presented to us on the 2D surface of our retinas.
>
> Arlo makes an interesting comparison between fuzzy sets and fractal
> boundaries which probably doesn't hold up mathematically but is a good
> analogy. All of this goes to show what I consider to be the futility of
> Pirsig's ideas about levels. It is all well and good as an outline but the
> claim that the levels are discrete or that they are somehow not entirely
> arbitrary strikes me as wrongheaded. Even his selection of level and where
> he draws their boundaries is questionable.
>
> I have not been following this discussion as closely as I might but it seems
> that this boundary confusion has arisen in the issue of life in machines.
> Pirsig's inorganic level kind of makes sense but in constructing the second
> level as "biological" he flubs it. Organic chemistry is carbon chemistry so
> the molecular structure of biological processes gets relegated to the
> inorganic level even though it is organic by definition. Perhaps Pirsig
> sought to skate around this discrepancy by using the term biological but the
> border between inorganic and organic is much sharper that the fuzzy border
> between inorganic and biological.
>
> If there is a bit of absurdity in even the drawing of boundaries between
> levels, it gets amplified in the absurd notion that the levels are in
> conflict with one another. If there is such a conflict the lower level will
> always "win". The existence of higher levels depends entirely on the static
> qualities of the lower level. DQ in the inorganic level will wipe out all
> quality at the biological level and so forth. Of course this takes us into
> the larger issue that DQ is NOT always good, better or best. Quite often it
> is disastrous. Perhaps if one really wanted to construct a metaphysics of
> morality then the "first cut" ought to be between "good" and "bad". That is
> certainly the way we construct the world automatically ontologically.
>
> Nice discussion though. Case tells me he is think of revising one of his
> pithy sayings to:
>
> Pan and zoom in,
> Pan and zoom out,
> Refocus.
>
> Krimel
>
>
>
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