[MD] How far do you go to preserve individual life?

[Arlo Bensinger]

[John]
I don't agree with your "inter-nodal neural nets" analogy, 
Arlo.  Sounds reductionistic to me and in truth it's easy to see 
examples of such neural relationships in other animals with no 
intellect at all.

[Arlo]
Its no more "reductionist" to say the human body rests on carbon. 
Upper levels always use the lower levels for their support. In the 
case of intellect, it rests upon social patterns, which rest upon the 
biology of the human brain.

In Magnus' example, he asked why a human could be removed from a 
social web and still contain thoughts. Although the evidence clearly 
indicates decay of cognition in cases of extreme isolation, the 
patterns of thought persist because the node can survive by virtue of 
its own "social echo" (if you will) for a short time absent 
connection to other nodes (as I said, in the same way a fish can 
survive outside of water for a short time before dying).

As for neural relations in other animals that aren't "intellectual", 
well John I agree (this is where I disagree with Pirsig), and I would 
call these the rudimentary social patterns that are able to rest upon 
sufficiently complex neural nets (less complex than those of human 
physiology). In fact, I think the research into non-human species 
symbolic sharing shows the MOQ's hierarchy as being correct: out ot 
sufficiently complex biological patterns, social patterns are able to 
emerge. They do not discriminate based on "is this thing human or 
not" (as Platt may suggest), their only restriction is the 
neuro-biology from which they emerge.