[MD] A.I.

[John Carl]

Arlo,


> [John]
> The social patterns are the building blocks, the SQ of old intellectual
> tracks,
> where the train has gone already.
>
> [Arlo]
> I don't understand this. Are you saying you see the evolutionary levels
> going
> Inorganic-Biological-Intellectual-Social?
>
> Or do you think that while intellectual precedes social in the evolutionary
> path, it then is a higher moral pattern? So "social" would be something
> like a
> derivative level, or not really a level per se, but the static remnant of
> intellect?
>
> Something like "Inorganic-Biological-Intellectual" with "Social" being seen
> as
> the SQ-ized intellect?
>
> Yeah, obviously I am not following what you are saying.
>
>
John:

Me neither.  :-)

What I'm trying to get to, is that existing social patterns at the simple
and primitive levels, do not evolve or produce or create intellectual
patterns or patterning.  You don't get a combination of different societies
combining into some sort of intellectual reasoning.  I mean, I don't even
know what that would look like.

By my formulation of an intellectual/artistic continuum as the 4th level,
then the myths of old culture and/or the intellectual values of modern
culture evolve and social patterns are arranged or arrange themselves
according to these patterns which are higher in the evolutionary level of
being.  This is a top-down creation.

Intellectual patterning IS DQ to the social level.  But remember, I don't
buy the intellectual level as SOM - myths and religious systems are just as
much intellectual in a unified Art/Intellect continuum - which create social
patterns (churches and universities and city-states of government)

If the principle of top-down creation carries through-out the level
understandings, then social patterns are creative and protective of
biological patterns - and this is certainly true.  But at the same time,
social patterns are totally dependent upon biological being for the
individuals in the society.

So biological beings are the "sq building blocks" of dynamic social
manipulations of herd and group, so are social entities the sq building
blocks in dynamic intellectual creation of new social and intellectual
patterns.



> [John]
> You can call a book an Intellectual pattern", and you'd be right in that it
> had
> an intellectual creator.
>
> [Arlo]
> I'd say a book has no singular "creator" except in some social-celebrity
> sense.
> "Books" are dialogic, along the lines of Bakhtin, they are "responsive" to
> previous aspects of the dialogue and "expectant" of future aspects.
>
>
John:  That's an additional point, and a good one.  The intellectual
pondering of this dialogue, produces a social response where ideas are
communicated (and marketed!) to an other.



> [John]
> But the fact of a book or a teaching is a social phenomena,involving
> publisher
> acceptance and reader popularity.
>
> [Arlo]
> Well, this too. But this is just saying that in modern America (for
> example),
> publishing is an economic activity. Fair enough, I suppose, but this is
> something that we hope, anyways, does not condemn high quality thoughts to
> the
> economic dustbin.
>
> I mean, I am sure many great books were never published for economic
> reasons.
>

John:

Right.  But even if not published, ideas have validity if read by someone,
or at least one vital person who takes the ideas and turns it INTO something
socially accepted and spread.  If no other is ever involved in an
intellectual idea, then can we say the idea even actually exists?

Another interesting sidebar, is that since the rise of the internet, the old
economic constraints on the publishing of ideas has been radically changed.

As you can see!

So this medium we are using right now, represents the potential for  freeing
intellect as never realized in history.  Freeing it from the sq weight of
social acceptance, publishing costs, etc.

Arlo:

We got lucky with ZMM (or maybe Qualigod manipulated the cosmos to ensure
> His
> Gospel would be told! - sarcasm)


John:

Actually the second premise makes more sense to me than the first.  What is
"luck" anyway?  Sounds like a moronist notion.

Arlo:

, and books like A Confederacy of Dunces (a
> good nomiker for the SIMians! - meanspirited jab).



John:

I think you're allowed 3 per week.  I'll have to check the by-laws.

Arlo:


> But one wonders if the best,
> most insightful, most astoundingly revelatory book is sitting somewhere in
> some
> file cabinet because someone expects there to be no "reader popularity". We
> will never know.
>
>
John:

Well I'd say in today's age, we've got more hope than ever.  What is needed,
tho, is attentive readers.  People who are focused enough on Quality to look
for it and spread it when it appears.
And unfortunately, we seem to be suffering a dumbing down of populations,
even while we've got unprecedented opportunities.

That might not be wholly true.  Just the muttered imprecations of a
disillusioned iconoclast.

Pay no heed.


> [John]
> Even teachers can't be teachers by themselves.  The social game is
> fundamental.
>  No writing can be significant until it's been read.
>
> [Arlo]
> Wait. Suddenly we are in full agreement and I don't know where that shift
> occurred. Do you think I'd disagree with this???
>
>
John:

Hey.  Don't blame me.  I'm just shootin' from the hip.



> [John]
> But DQ is where the ideas come from.
>
> [Arlo]
> The key here is to ask if ideas are formed ahead of time and "given" to the
> lucky recipient? Or is the idea an act of creation, of bringing into being
> something that did not exist before, not even in some conceptualized "mind"
> of
> an agenic "DQ".
>
>
John:  Eww.  I see what you're saying.  No.  The idea is an act of creation,
through an individual intellectually responding to some  social pattern  or
some socially accepted or presented ideas.

I believe the fundamental intellectual creativity arises in the individual,
who is socially involved and trying to solve some problem.  Whether a
scientist or mathematician working on ancient problems, or Henry Ford trying
to organize a new system of production so he can get rich.

I agree with Pirsig's earliest realization, that hypothesis come from
somewhere, but they don't come ready-made or handed down.

Arlo:


> However, this is a very interesting topic for me, and it harkens to
> Pirsig's
> questioning of where hypotheses come from, and I'd bring in Peirce's theory
> of
> abduction to flesh that out (ontop of those Pirsig already brought in;
> Einstein, Poincare, etc.)
>
>
John:  Ok, so we do see this the same way.  Yes, I agree. I don't know much
about Peirce, other than what other philosophers have to say about him,
which I find very interesting.  And I recently learned that he was widely
shunned in his day for his weird anti-social habits and he wasn't very
successful in life.  But James and Royce were both fierce advocates of his
thought and as it turns out, those three, Peirce, James and Royce, made a
most interesting philosophical trio and I agree, from what I've discovered
so far, Pirsig fits in with their metaphysical wanderings quite
companionably.



> [John]
> Intellect IS DQ to social patterning.
>
> [Arlo]
> Okay, back to not getting what you are saying.
>
> Is "biology" DQ to inorganic patterning?
>
> Do you think intellect precedes sociality?
>
>
John:  I DO think biological patterns are Dynamic to inorganic patterning!
 Photosynthesis.  Eating and elimination, or just ants moving grains of sand
because grains of sand can't move themselves.

Furthermore, there's a whole 'nother argument to brought in, ala Lanza's
Biocentric theories of reality.

In order for a falling tree to create a sound, it needs the ears of an
animal.

And I do think the idea precedes the society in human society.  Animals
don't have intellect, but they do form social groups.  It would probably be
a good idea for the herd to circle around with the bulls facing outward and
the calves in the middle, but I can't imagine how they communicate this idea
to one another.  Instinct.  Fukuoka calls "instinct" just another word
science uses when it means, "we don't know".



> [John]
> DQ to Intellect can only be "DQ" in its essence - an undefinable something
> out
> there that generates hypothesis.
>
> [Arlo]
> So levels exist as "DQ" to the levels immediately beneath them? Is that
> what
> you are saying?
>
>
John:

Yes.



> [John]
> If intellectual patterns came from social patterns, then the "infinity of
> possible hypothesis" postulate wouldn't hold.
>
> [Arlo]
> Its the only way it does hold. How could a biological brain conceive of an
> infinity of hypotheses without a social symbolic system in which to
> conceptualize such a thing?
>

John:  Biological brains conceptualize nothing.  Conceptualization only
occurs with intellect.  Intellectual conceptualization IS the unique human
attribute and the human brain isn't merely biological.  Sure, it runs on
biological hardware, but it's the software that is significant.

What I meant by what I said earlier, is social patterns are finite relations
and patterns of relationships between finite beings.  If it were just a
matter of adding them all up, we'd come to an end of possibilities.  But
since intellectual formulation is theoretically infinite in nature (well, my
theory anyway - and Royce's - and Peirce's) we can see how hypothesizing
could go on forever.

Arlo:


> You think a feral human is gonna be able to do this? Not a chance.
>
>
John:

Not without some major software upgrades!