Hugo Fjelsted Alroe (alroe@vip.cybercity.dk)
Sun, 2 Nov 1997 06:32:01 +0100
Bodvar:
>Are we at odds or am I inscrutable?
Well, no, I don't think you are inscrutable, and I dont think we are at
odds. My major problem is that I find it difficult to convey my MoQ-like
thoughts without using well-known terms from philosophy and ordinary
language, and then I use them in a somewhat different sense than is common;
and we as a group has not yet learned to understand each others MoQ-language.
>
>I agree - and disagree - with you Hugo. The disagreement is about
>the "age" of Society. Pirsig's position (IMHO) is that ALL
>levels start as part of - and indistinguishable from - the parent
>level. The social values were for aeons in the service of life
>(according to Magnus a biological body is a society), but as a moral
>order in its own right it is younger and more like the picture
>that Martin paints. The first (human) social manifestation beyond
>family (which is a transient stage) was the clan/tribe cooperation.
>In this context the individual still was a mere member - in Jaynes'
>book it is argumented that early humans were mindless (in MOQish
d
>not value freedom from society), but a little bit freer than in the
>family clutches (Yes, look, the intellect was already budding, but
>still in the service of society!).
My problem with this is that there are so very many social values at play
in nature, wolf-packs for instance, that I fail to see this social
structuring as something specifically human. It seems to me that what you
call the emergence of the social level, I would call the first traces of
the intellectual level. I don't find the breakthrough to humanity in the
social but in the intellectual. Having said that, I am not at all certain
when exactly the social level did emerge; as I have said before there are
huge differences inside the levels too, from the very first crude form of
sociality to the complex social lives of mammals for instance. My only
guide in stating when the levels arose in our evolutionary history is the
definition I have given of the levels. Hence, if you disagree with these
definitions I have no further arguments for my statement.
>I find your exposition good. Particularly the section about mind as
>seen by Bateson versus Köppe interested me greatly. I have Bateson's
>"Mind and Nature", could you give the page where he elaborates on
>this?
I think much of this book is actually arguing this point, though some of my
recollection might be from his 'Steps to an ecology of mind'. In chapter
three, three pages in (p.89 in my danish version), he talks of why he does
not think elementary particles harbour 'mind' in his sense, because the
processes of mind are always processes of mutual interaction - or something
to that effect. Here he distinguishes himself from Samuel Butler and
Teilhard de Chardin, he says, as they attribute some kind of mental
(spiritual?) endeavour even to the smallest particles.
> The bending of him into Pirsigean shape I have a few comments
>to: Mind in this (umwelt) sense is the very same that I tend to call
>"intelligence" (any organism's universe depending upon its neural
>complexity) to distinguish it from the Intellectual level of MOQ.
>Your ladder of minds above matter i a "tempting" solution
>(Life=reflecting environment; Society=reflecting other minds;
>Intellect= reflecting itself), BUT IS IT QUALITY METAPHYSICS???????
I follow your distinction between intelligence and intellect and have no
objections to that. And I definitely feel that my solution is a solution
within quality metaphysics (with due respect towards Pirsigs judgement on
this).
>I ask because I am not sure. I notice that you use the expression
>"levels of mind". Can it be understood that you regard Life as well
>as Society and Intellect as levels of mind? If so why not include
>Matter? Unless you do, it is the old story of
>matter-at-a-moment-in-time-becoming-imbued-with-mind; a larger
>version admittedly, but still good old SOM.
I can follow your hesitation towards my use of the term mind here, and I
should have been more careful. When I read Bateson I loved his placing
human mind inside the larger mind of nature, but I actually revolted
towards his sharp distinction between mind and matter, and I do believe
that you are right that he is wrong on this. My solution then was the idea
that 'things with properties' were not what actually existed, 'relations'
were primary. And in this I actually followed Bateson, because I think he
was on to this in his talk of information as 'differences that make a
difference' and not least in his discussions of what properties are (second
last part of first chapter in Mind and Nature, f.i.) and more. This is
where I part with Køppe as well; in his book he is discussing the iterative
analysis of systems into subsystems and their relations, and he rejects the
idea that systems were 'all relations' because there would be 'nothing at
the bottom then' (I dont recall his exact words). Køppe sticks to some sort
of materialism with undividable objects or particles at the bottom, and if
you read my first reference to Mind and Nature above, you will see that
Bateson did the same, at least at that time. If one dares to explore the
'its all relations' ontology, one will necessarily end up in a MoQ-like
structure, and at some point of reading LILA it dawned upon me that that
was what Pirsig was on about.
To get back to our discussion, I would have no problem with a terminology
of four levels of mind (Peirce talks of matter as the 'stiffening of mind',
so I dont think he would disagree either), with non-reflective mind and
three kinds of reflective mind. I don't see mind as something which is
'imbued on matter', I just used the term to describe the more complex (ie.
reflective) forms of existence. On the other hand I do think such a
terminology (four levels of mind) might lend itself to be misunderstood as
saying that everything in the universe was part of some larger mind (eg.
God), in a way which I do not intend.
There really is no easy way out of our problem with using SOM like language
to discuss and describe MoQ like ideas, but I dont think we disagree on the
above, Bodvar. Thanks for adressing these issues.
Hugo
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