Dear 3WDave,
I think your problems with the social level, as expressed 24/8 16:50 -0500,
can be solved.
You write:
'First it doesn't correspond to most of the other "perennial" philosophies
old or new, most of which go inorganic, biological, then go mind, or
self-consciousness, or intellect or something very similar'.
So these other philosophies run into problems explaining the jump, problems
Pirsig atributes to SOM. The social level should make this explanation
easier.
You write:
'Second many here have supported language written or spoken as the step from
biological to social but how does this occur without the intellectual
capacity to manipulate symbols.'
Depends whether we mean language or 'language'...
Language at some point (beyond mere 'signing' or conveying emotions)
provides a new way of latching values. For written language this is obvious,
but before that -connected with ritual repetition- language created oral
tradition. Connecting symbols with meaning requires conscious attention (it
certainly did for the first humans using language in this way). I consider
this to be the jump from social to intellectual.
More primitive 'language' ('signing' and conveying emotions) may have had a
role in the jump from biological to social. But to really define that jump
we need more, because
as you very correctly go on to write:
'Third many of the patterns of value we call social in humans, are very
similar to what we observe in animals. Eg. specialization or divisions of
labor within a species, altruism, setting and defending boundaries, kinship
bonds, mating for life, family rearing of young etc.'
Depends on what we mean with 'social'...
As Bo writes 25/8 21:26 +0200:
'the MOQ re-defines EVERYTHING and ... all static levels are different from
their dictionary counterparts. ... [especially] "society" which is something
unique to the MOQ'.
Q-social has nothing to do with the distinction between
'individual'/'social', but -according to me- with the ability of societies
to reproduce and perpetuate 'culture' without 'hardwired biological
instinct'. I agree that some other species than homo sapiens may also have
created a rudimentary social level. This not only requires 'sufficient
intelligence and memory to recall and act based on some values other than
hardwired biological instinct', however. It also requires the ability to
preserve these patterns of behavior over a lifetime (i.e. strong habits) and
to reliably pass these patterns of values on to the next generation (i.e.
the inclination to copy behavioral patterns of older/higher status group
members and to 'train' younger/lower status group members to follow one's
own behavioral patterns). This means that we need not push back the jump
from biological to social as far back in time as you suggest. I'd put it at
some 2 million years ago (the first hominids).
Why wouldn't this jive with the MoQ?
With friendly greetings,
Wim
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