 Since the internal ratio considers only the level of internal control within a biological individual, focusing on it alone neglects the other aspect of autonomous agency that arose in  section 6.3:  freedom from external influence. This external dimension to individuality can also be thought of as involving a ratio between cooperation and conflict—not between the parts of the individual but between that individual and other individuals that it interacts with. Just as an individual with a relatively large internal ratio has a higher level of individuality, according to Queller and Strassmann, so too would an individual with a low external ratio, i.e., one in which external cooperation was low and external conflict was high. To extend Queller and Strassmann’s idea along these lines, the measure of the level of individuality would be a type of meta ratio: the ratio between the internal and external ratios. 