[MD] Two Minds

[John Carl]

Austin,

On Wed, Nov 4, 2015 at 9:46 AM, Austin Fatheree <austin.fatheree at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> I think that both the social and intellectual levels emerged out of the
> biological level.  The intellectual did emerge after the social and still
> holds moral authority over it and still has access to it, but it is more
> correct to say that it emerged from biology.
>
>

Jc:  I disagree.  I think that "bottom's up" view of the cosmos is common
but highly problematic.  The mechanism upon which the whole thing runs,
isn't a mechanism!  So why get mechanical at all?  It makes more sense to
me to take a top-down approach, such that it's seen that intellectual
patterns  create various social patterns,  social patterns support and
create biological success and biology begets new inorganic combinations.
There really is no conflict, EXCEPT, for between the social and the
intellectual, occasionally.  But this isn't a natural aspect of reality,
it's a problem, when it occurs.

Austin:


> I think this because it more adequately fits what we see in reality.



Jc:  depends upon your reality

 Austin:

(snipped)


Unfortunately the fallout from this is that distinguishing that the
> intellectual level should have moral authority over the social level
> becomes even murkier.  Unfortunately this also seems be an accurate map of
> the territory.  I’m from Houston and yesterday we voted down our Houston
> Equal Rights Ordinance(HERO) because we have a significant portion of our
> population that has no desire to operate at an intellectual level.  It is
> all still way to social here in the South and social means that that guy
> over there is going to get one over on me if I don’t take it for myself.
> Boo us.
>
>
I'd say that since our ideal goal is for the intellectual to have rule over
the social, we should just make that our pragmatic foundation and USE it.
I think a metaphysical system is good if it actually helps us to overcome
experienced conflicts, and bad if it just leads to more conflicts in a
widening gyre.

As to Texas... don't get me started.  I'm a Californian, through and
through.

But thinking about this interplay between intellectual and social patterns,
it's really what the American experiment was all about, eh?  This country
was founded with the idea of individual freedom - which is all about
reining in the powers of the social to restrict free thought.  But what
gets people confused is, that doesn't mean we have an intellectual
society!  We just have a society that values intellect enough to let it be
free, in the hopes that thus we evolve upward, rather than downward.

I think the MoQ's statement of values as real, makes everything else work
out, in the end.

John C.