Re: MD the metaphysics of free-enterprise

From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Aug 02 2004 - 21:47:02 BST

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    Paul:
    Firstly, I think writing itself is a socially learned skill. Secondly, I
    think written words may contain intellectual patterns but may not.

    OK, we agree then that isn't the use of symbols itself that makes something
    a fourth level pattern.

    Johnny said:
    And couldn't an intellectual pattern never be expressed with symbols,
    like say the pattern of overthrowing a leader when he becomes too
    tyrannical or blasphemous?

    Paul:
    Well, I think the "overthrowing" itself would be achieved biologically
    and socially. If the *consequences* of the overthrow have been
    considered rationally, then that would be the symbolic intellectual
    component. If the overthrow is predicted to increase the dominance of
    intellect over society, then that would be intellectual motivation also.

    I don't think considering the consequences of overthrow has to be done with
    the use of symbols or language, does it? Or that it wouldn't be a fourth
    level pattern if the overthrow was predicted to increase social dominance
    over intellectual. I guess I was trying to say that there is a patten to
    societies overthrowing a leader when certain conditions arise, and, whether
    or not people in society write about it or talk about it, that pattern
    exists.

    Paul:
    It [the book Lila] is also about biological patterns, inorganic patterns,
    other
    intellectual patterns and Dynamic Quality, so I don't see how being
    "about society" provides a definition of intellect. I think you are
    trying to follow a line of thought which doesn't quite work i.e. biology
    is interacting atoms, society is interacting organisms, therefore
    intellect is interacting societies. If you take the components of
    language as the social patterns that enable intellect by interacting, it
    may work, but I'm not sure.

    That is the line of thought I am trying to follow, indeed. And I think you
    might be right that language might enable intellectual ideas about society
    to emerge, in that every statement is an implicit exhortation to listen and
    apply the statement and by writing it down or symbolising it, it becomes an
    exhortation for all of society to apply the statement to society, as opposed
    to telling someone "look out for that dog poo" which is socially expected
    but not a statement about society. That might be the connection I'm looking
    for to get back into the orthodoxy.

    And I think this exchange from a different post will help me make a point
    about the line of thought I'm trying to folow:

    David said:
    The fact that individually generated intellectual patterns can later be
    shared with other fully emerged individuals...

    Paul:
    Fully emerged individuals? To me, this is an ideal that you and Platt
    seem to start with that you are then fudging into the MOQ. It sounds
    more like Maslow or Rand than Pirsig.

    This is the same subject, I think. Fully emerged individuals have as much
    to do with intellectual patterns as fully emerged atoms have to do with bio
    patterns. Only atoms in certain relationships with other atoms will
    propogate a bio pattern, and only bio patterns in certain relationships with
    other bio patterns will propogate a social pattern, but the pattern is
    independent of them. Same with the intellectual patterns.

    Platt and David don't consider fourth level patterns to emerge from
    relations of third level patterns but from the individual minds of the
    people who thought of them. I agree that they emerge and are propogated by
    individual minds, like all patterns. But I think a person who notices an
    oak tree that's been there for a hundred years propogates that pattern with
    exactly the same amount of creativity and choice as someone who invents an
    airplane. In both cases, the patterns of Quality all had to converge in a
    certain way and create a consciousness aware of the new pattern, or it
    wouldn't fit into the universe, it wouldn't make sense, if everything were
    known. How could the Wright brothers not have invented the airplane, given
    history?

    And just as the airplane is an intellectual pattern that developed over
    social patterns (Airplanes are "about society" in that the pattern says
    "society should have these airplane things in it and people should fly
    around the earth") No "individual" hydrogen and oxygen atoms invented
    water (though some must have been 'first'), and no "individual" human
    invented airplanes.

    Johnny

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