From: ian glendinning (psybertron@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Jul 19 2005 - 01:10:46 BST
Scott, Paul is de-facto right, and it's not complicated
The inorganic, biological and social levels are intellectual patterns
(postulated by intellect) but by definition of the MoQ's postulation
(and a thousand others) they do not involve intellect. That's the
point.
(And that's before we get on to questions of what intellect,
sentience, consciousness are and how they come to be .... which is
where the interesting debates are to be had, if we ever get to move
on.)
Ian
On 7/18/05, Paul Turner <paul@turnerbc.co.uk> wrote:
> Scott,
>
> Scott: The MOQ says it is a bad thing to treat the objective as "all there
> is", and that I agree with. Yet the MOQ preserves this materialist yarn,
> assigning to DQ the ability to get over the rough spots. Why?
>
> Paul: The MOQ redescribes matter as a stable pattern of preferences for
> certain relationships. It says that biology, society, and intellect are
> also stable patterns of preferences for certain relationships. Therefore,
> under this description, what we have is the question of how an evolution of
> relationships between values can occur and not the old question of how
> "unconscious matter" can become "conscious mind."
>
> So given that inorganic patterns are but one level of values, and given that
> it is values, not matter, that are evolving, I'm not sure if this can be
> called a materialist yarn.
>
> As to why the MOQ accepts the idea of evolution - it is, of course, due to
> the quality of the description. The idea of evolution describes a simple
> and elegant continuity in the world; it helps explain the problem of good
> and evil and the cause of suffering, and in the MOQ, provides a basis for
> morality.
>
> As to why the MOQ proposes an evolution from inorganic patterns through to
> intellectual patterns - it orders the levels according to the relative
> freedom of values to enter into new relationships.
>
> Since we are asking why - Why are any theories preserved or discarded?
>
> In fact, the preservation, discarding and development of theories are good
> examples of evolution in progress.
>
> Scott: You say "Although events at the biological, social or intellectual
> levels can, in principle, be described in terms of events at the inorganic
> level this does not mean that that is "all they are."
> I do not understand it.
>
> Paul: I'm making the simple statement that e.g. the intellectual solution
> to a math problem written out on a blackboard is not to be found by studying
> the properties of the inorganic chalk marks even though the activity can be
> described in those terms. It can also be described in terms of the
> biological movements involved in writing, or the socially agreed
> conventional meanings of the symbols being drawn.
>
> Scott: What else (according to you) are they, that makes the MOQ not
> materialism plus DQ?
>
> Paul: I thought that was clear by what I had written. They are biological,
> social or intellectual patterns of value. Have I misunderstood the
> question?
>
> Scott: I argue that space and time are produced in the act of perception
> (since the act of perception transcends the spatio-temporal nature of the
> perceived).
>
> Paul: The MOQ supports this by saying that space and time are intellectual
> patterns produced by Quality, which is perception.
>
> Scott: Hence the one level they cannot be assigned to is the inorganic, if
> the inorganic is not sentient.
>
> Paul: Space and time are intellectual patterns which are not presumed to
> represent an independent objective reality existing at the inorganic level.
> They are intellectual patterns that are extremely valuable for predicting
> and controlling inorganic (and biological) patterns.
>
> With respect to the question of sentience at the inorganic level, this, of
> course, presupposes that sentience produces or enables an awareness of value
> whereas I think in the MOQ, it is presupposed that an awareness of value
> produces or enables sentience i.e. sentience is one, evolved, mode of
> responding to value but is not its precondition. Think of the MOQ
> description of iron filings valuing movement towards a magnet - does this
> require the iron filings to be sentient?
>
> Scott: In any case, if the value that produces and maintains both inorganic
> and intellectual patterns is not dependent on the prior existince of a
> spatio-temporal universe, why is intellect seen as the latest stage of
> evolution?
>
> Paul: The spatio-temporal universe is an intellectual construction which is
> extremely valuable for predicting and controlling inorganic and biological
> patterns. It is proposed that intellect is dependent on social, biological
> and inorganic patterns of value, not space and time.
>
> Scott: Why is it anathema to say intellect is involved at all stages?
>
> Paul: I think one problem is that this can lead one to equivocate between
> uses of "intellect." We need to distinguish between what occurs at the
> inorganic level and what occurs at the intellectual level. By your lights,
> we have inorganic intellect, biological intellect, social intellect and
> intellectual intellect. This just seems to me lead to an unnecessarily
> confusing philosophy. Or are you denying that there is a difference between
> e.g. digesting food and geometry?
>
> We already have value involved in all stages, why do we need intellect as
> well?
>
> Paul previously said: As we can see in LILA, it turned out that a concept
> of DQ could help shed light on evolutionary growth, human cultural
> development, insanity, truth, religion, morality etc. I would say that DQ,
> far from waving them away, provides answers (or a new paradigm for answers)
> to a lot of hard questions.
>
> Scott:
> I sure don't see any light or answers. How do you get sentience from
> non-sentience?
>
> Paul: Non-sentience is a description of some lower level sets of responses
> to value; sentience is a description for another higher level set. The
> linkages between the responses are evolutionary. Evolution is a description
> of a migration of value patterns towards better patterns.
>
> Do you disregard all evolutionary theories as arm-waving? What about the
> evolution of consciousness proposed by Barfield? Is he doing a bit of
> flapping as well? Why did alpha-thinking occur? Why did beta-thinking
> occur after alpha-thinking? Why does anything change at all?
>
> Scott:
> One can never explain that which is fundamental, so I don't know why you
> complain that it is too mysterious to explain.
>
> Paul: I agree that one can never explain that which is fundamental to your
> explanation i.e. starting axioms. But I was pointing out that you complain
> about evolution being "Darwinian arm-waving dogma" whilst doing (what I
> think) is the same thing with the supposed ubiquity of semiotic
> consciousness.
>
> Scott:
> So what I am trying to get across is (a) that intellect, like quality, is
> irreducible (and is implied in the phrase "static pattern of value"), and
> (b) the resistence to acknowledging it seems to me to stem from a lingering
> materialist conditioning.
>
> Paul: I don't think intellect is implied in the phrase static pattern of
> value. Or if it is, it is not the intellect that is referred to by the term
> "intellectual level."
>
> Regards
>
> Paul
>
>
>
>
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