[MD] Tweaking the emergence

[Tuukka Virtaperko]

Mark,


> Mark: In a scientific sense those are units, but fundamentally they are no different from the "units" we use to describe Beauty.  The are man made symbols that we use for descriptive purposes, in my view from Quality.

Tuukka:
I do think there is some "fundamental" difference, but maybe this isn't 
that important.

> Mark:
> All I was trying to humbly suggest, was that any formulaic presentation of Quality should bring in the concept of balance.

Tuukka:
You have a point here, but I suppose what you are suggesting could 
already be present in the theory. The theory does include a strong 
mathematical reason to suggest, that higher levels of quality may not 
manifest themself very elaborately, if they cannot sufficiently build on 
the lower levels. This is due to the way emergence is represented by the 
power set function.

Currently, the theory only measures some "potential" quality, not 
"actual quality". It maps all possible instances of quality, given a 
certain set of initial things of quality, which manifest themselves in 
the lowest level of any emergence chain. Emergence chain means a certain 
set of successive emergences. In LILA, the emergence chain has four 
patterns, and goes from inorganic to intellectual.

Because the theory maps "potential" quality instead of "actual quality", 
it generates a ridiculously large amount of information from a small 
amount of quality on the lowest level of the emergence chain. Such large 
amounts might not be convenient to handle even with computers, but on 
the other hand, computers are very fast, so they could probably do 
something in some context. But let's not go there now.

You asked for a balancing principle. Even the instances of "potential" 
quality become much more scarce if the low patterns contain only little 
data. So the theory would give the moral advice that if you wish to 
create intellectual quality, you need to build it on sufficient 
inorganic, biological and social quality. This means that even though 
intellectual quality is the highest form of quality, other forms of 
quality are needed too, hence, balance is desirable. Do you find this to 
be something like the concept of balance you were asking for?


>
> Mark:
> Well, there is chaos and then there is Chaos in my opinion.  Certainly some intrusion of chaos is good, but from my view there should be some coalescence.  This is analogized by the "levels" as presented by Pirsig.  It is also demonstrated by the human body which is highly complex, yet persistent.

Tuukka:
The outcome of a six-sided dice throw is chatoic. But it's not Chaotic, 
because it's always 1-6.

>> The semantic stabilization of this system is, that questions like "where does emergence begin", "where does it end" and "why does it go that way" can be answered somehow.
>>
> Mark: I see "answered" as a loaded term.  We make the questions, and we create the answers.  It is all to provide complex meaning, which is grand in my opinion.

Tuukka:
I said "answered somehow", not "answered". I think there's an essential 
difference here.

>
>> The weak points of RP are that normative quality seems a bit out of place perhaps. I'm not currently sure whether it is supposed to be a part of the emergence cycle or something separate. But it doesn't seem wrong, either.
>>
> Mark: I am not sure what you mean by "normative".  If you mean normalization, then that is what I am talking about.  A normalizing principle is required to bring order out of Chaos.

Tuukka:
Normative quality is a third form of quality present in my theory. I 
consider it important there... it contains Pirsig's "abstract symbol 
manipulation", that is (I suppose), formal logic and mathematics. They 
are neither subjective nor objective. There's really no good way of 
arguing them to be either of those.

> Mark:
>
> If we use a cause-effect paradigm, I would say that objective quality comes from subjective Quality.  Such subjective quality would be a presentation of DQ, and is not definable since it is from that which definitions arise.

Tuukka:
Yeah... does make sense.

>
>> Perhaps the top pattern should be seen as some sort of a pattern that terminates the emergence process. I don't think the theory would lose essential features even if the emergence were not circular. It would be a shame, though. I like the graph I made. But I don't honestly know how...
>>
> Well if we look at evolutionary theory, species do tend to terminate if the become over specialized (static).  However there is always a dynamic component which splits off from the tree farther down the branch.  In this way it is ever-creating.
>
> So I do not have a problem with a termination process.  If it were circular, Quality would not have direction, I do not think.

Tuukka:

Well, if it's circular, the direction is either clockwise or 
counterclockwise. In my theory it is counterclockwise, as if that would 
really matter. If you have a problem with that, what kind of a problem 
it is?

It is possible to go the circle in the wrong direction, in some sense. 
And maybe this is needed at least for correcting earlier mistakes. Now, 
correcting mistakes should indeed be moral. But the mistake turns into a 
mistake once we realize we need to correct it. So I do believe it is 
either immoral, or an indicator of past immorality, if the circle is 
traversed in the wrong direction.

RP is a system for constructing another system, which is for evaluation 
of a certain moral problem. It is a metaphysical theory for building 
other metaphysical theories. That's why the termination would be a 
problem. It would really damage RP's flexibility. I didn't realize this 
earlier, but now I do, and the new definitions seem to let me get away 
with the problems I mentioned - at least for now. I still consider it 
possible that this circular approach works.

Contemporary metaphysics is too specialised, because all there are left 
are unsolvable problems. MOQ is a broader scope, but RP is more broader. 
So the circularity makes RP less specialized, not more specialized.

>
> Mark:
> If normative quality is like "classical" quality, then everything contains both I would think.  This provides for a dynamic component in Quality.

Tuukka:
Normative quality is one of the three known forms of classical quality, 
which are subjective, objective and normative. I had to add the 
normative, because otherwise a lot of stuff had obviously been left out.

>> That would be maybe a wise way of going about it. It could be even necessary. Otherwise RP would apparently preclude intuitive understanding of logical phenomena.
> Mark:
> I don't think we need to stick to the cause-effect paradigm.  Quality is self sufficient, as I see it.

Tuukka:
I don't know what you mean here.
>> Sensory experiences are the end product of the subjective. Mental realms are the end product of the objective. Does this entail, the subjective is the end product of the normative? And that the normative is the end product of the objective?
> No, I do not think so.  We create sensory experiences with our bodies.  But there is something which triggers those sensory experiences.  In a way this whole process can be seen as circular, for our experience triggers the objective which in turn feeds back to influence the subjective.  It could be a "chicken-egg" kind of thing.

Tuukka:
Yeah, but if you have a theory that is specific enough, and if either 
chicken or egg has to come first, which one it is? But does either one 
have to come first in RP? Maybe not. I mean, Pirsig said he only saw the 
green sun after having read, that one can occasionally see the sun as 
green when sailing. So that's classical quality creating romantic 
quality, apparently.

But "We create sensory experiences with our bodies. " is just a figure 
of speech. Who is the we that creates? We=our bodies? So if our body 
creates a sensory experience, what is our body? I think you're reverting 
back to Cartesian dualism with that statement. Not sure, but think you do.

And this: "But there is something which triggers those sensory 
experiences. " So what is it? If you don't know, what is it, why you 
still say it exists? Unless "that something" is Dynamic Quality, I don't 
think I have any idea what you might mean.

>> I guess any other option doesn't make sense. But if someone can argue that another option does make sense, I'd love to hear it.
> I think we can come up with "better" options.

Tuukka:
I'm not yet convinced that we need a better one, but there could be a 
better one.

-Tuukka