Dear John B. (and 3WD),
It seems from your 31/10 11:58 +1000 posting that exploring
epistemology, ontology and deontology is indeed a fertile area.
(By the way, it reached me only 2/11 6:45 +0100, so I only
discovered it now that I am through replying to older posts.)
If you prefer to speak of interiority, depth or prehension at the
inorganic level, that's fine with me. The question then becomes
whether interiority/depth/prehension is a necessary and
sufficient condition for experiencing
value/quality. If yes, your "Quality has no meaning except as it
refers to an individual organism" still breaks down.
I think there is a gliding scale between individual and social
holons. Primitive metazoa (sponges, coral, jelly fishes) are
little more than conglomerates of protozoa (single cells). To the
extent that individuals identify with a group, the group can be
experienced as having collective consciousness. Mass psychology
attests to the fact that groups don't always act as just a
conglomerate if individuals. Did fascism and communism wrongly
mix up individual and social holons or did they manipulate
individuals by seducing them with the experience of collective
consciousness...?
I only have Frank Visser's word for Wilber's thinking being based
in a metaphysics that presupposes different irreducible spheres
of reality. I accept 3WD's correction of 4/11 8:26 -0600 that
presupposing something doesn't immunize it from rational
discussion. What seems more important to me, is whether Wilber's
criteria for distinguishing levels are better than Pirsig's. Can
you look them up?
Pirsig's criterium, that an new level means a new type of static
latch for Dynamic Quality, seems to me simple and therefore
attractive. Wilber's criteria can't be very strong if he
distinguishes different numbers of levels in his different books.
They don't need to be, if you follow my suggestion to regard his
levels as different types of stories as contexts of Meaning.
I don't think my deontology ('We know what we should do by
experiencing Meaning.') is too oriented to the social realm. The
story of "our" life CAN be understood as a part of the bigger
stories of the groups we identify with, but doesn't have to be.
If not, you are a "culture of one" or a "religion of one" (like
Lila, see "Lila" ch.30). It is oriented rather to the
intellectual realm (which is linked with the social realm,
because intellectual patterns of value have the purpose to serve
the social patterns of value that support them). Well the MoQ is
a would-be intellectual pattern of values, after all, so this
orientation to the intellectual realm is only natural.
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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