From: Scott R (jse885@spinn.net)
Date: Tue Aug 12 2003 - 00:40:11 BST
Matt, Sam, all,
> Matt:
> I definitely think there needs to be a rationale, and I certainly didn't
offer that much of one. The difference I see between the lower complexity
celluar organisms and the higher order ones is that you can't explain the
behavior of ants and lions (let alone humans) by reference to their cells.
I think that would be the point most evolutionary biologists would make. I
think there's a nice, distinguishable change with the movement from particle
talk to cellular talk to "herd" talk (or something like that). So, maybe my
choice of contrast between amoeba and lion was poor. More like cells and
lions.
Scott:
I've been toying with a three-level system, where the social and
intellectual are collapsed into one level, called the semiotic level. The
general idea is that all social patterns are semiotic (it is the badge that
signals that this biological organism is a cop and can arrest you according
to some other signs called laws, etc.), and of course, all normal
intellectual activity consists of playing language games, each of which has
to be -- per Wittgenstein -- a social game. So that leaves two things to
deal with: the fact that higher animals engage in semiotic activity as well,
and of course, what happens to social/intellectual conflicts.
On the first -- which is actually more germane to your question -- the
answer is to qualify the third, semiotic level, with the word "open". All
animal "language" is a closed system. There is a finite list of
sounds/actions that an animal can perform, and a finite (usually one) way
another animal can respond. Changes take place at the species level, not on
the individual. With humans, there is the possibility of new responses, of
lying, of creating new meanings, etc.etc. So the full name for the third
level would be "open semiotic". The commonality between cells and lions is
that they both can be characterized as simple responders to stimuli, whether
the stimulus is a food particle or a dominance-establishing roar. There is
no choice involved.
On the second problem, I suggest that Pirsig's fourth level is "really" not
a new level of *static* patterns of value, but actual creativity on the
third level. So the conflict involved is between static and dynamic, not
between two static levels. Once an idea (like freedom of speech) is made, it
becomes another semiotic static pattern, and the conflict between censors
and free-speechers becomes a conflict between two sets of semiotic values
(whether laws should favor one or the other). The one with the greater value
is the one that better promotes DQ, not intellect per se.
Under this scheme, the Big Shift of 500 BC is that at that point, DQ started
to move inside people (or people started to be aware of it as inside),
making them individuals, so that they began to think of themselves as
creative, and not muse-inspired.
Just thoughts, not entirely thought out,
- Scott
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