What are the philosophical consequences of science saying we are mechanistic?
Physic is mechanistic to the point we can shoot rockets across the solar system and know with extreme accuracy where they will end up. Even clockwork isn't' so precise.
The human body with skin pulled back is obviously mechanical with muscle, bone and tendon obviously arrange to maximize the efficiency of mechanical tasks. This is however nothing compared to what we see at the molecular scale with molecular machines like Kinase, the myosin motors in muscles, ATP synthase and the bacterial flagellum. How neurons work is no less mechanical, with Ligand and voltage gated ion channels neurotransmitters. We know how neurons work individually and in groups like the 302 neurons of c-elegans. We know fare more than I am able to convey here.
Other than potential for quantum indeterminacy having an effect, science would suggest that even the brain is deterministic, even if know what it will do isnt predictable. Even if you believe that the randomness of quantum indeterminacy can have a macro effect the effect would only be to inject some randomness into an otherwise deterministic system. Given this arent we as mechanistic, mechanical and as much a machine as any automaton, robot or computer?
What is the fundamental difference between information processed by a mechanical computer and a brain? How can there be a fundamental difference in what is happening if all we are is mechanistic?
What is the implication of this for the idea that computers are just too mechanical to be, conscious, to love, to generate or understand meaning, to have a self or to have free will? How would changing notions of consciousness, meaning, morality, free will and self to make them fit with bodies as mechanical as any robot change these psychologically important notions?
Comments (172)
I wonder if many people really believe that. Many might believe they believe it, but humans are very prolific in anthropomorphizing. We ascribe inner lifes to everything from our house cats to the weather.
So I think in practical terms it won't require much of a psychological change at all to consider machines as human in everyday interactions, though that will not necessarily extend to treating them as human.
As for the philosophical perspective, we have precious little reason to assume other people who look like us have a consciousness like ours. It's mostly just a practical assumption. What reason do we really have to exclude this or that from consideration?
Quoting Restitutor
Physics is mechanistic because we constructed the framework for describing and measuring certain phenomena within geometric space-time grids. In other words, its not the physical world in itself that is mathematical or mechanistic, it is our template for interpreting it. We could have chosen a different way of modeling it , but so far this way is quite useful for us. It may not always be so. Meanwhile, this mechanistic form of causality is less useful in representing biological and psychological phenomena, so we apply a different descriptive vocabulary.
Quoting Restitutor
In order to create our mechanistic framework for modeling physics or building machines, we have to pretend as though subjectivity does not play a part in how our machines work or our descriptions the physical world. In other words, our computers are already interactions between human subjects and what we create, so the workings of computers reflect this subjective aspect within themselves even when we call them purely mechanical.
Quoting Restitutor
I wouldn't have thought that there is much difference. A self-aware machine would have to have a feedback mechanism. Experts are looking to create this:
"The final step of AI development is to build systems that can form representations about themselves. Ultimately, we AI researchers will have to not only understand consciousness, but build machines that have it. This is, in a sense, an extension of the theory of mind possessed by Type III artificial intelligences. Consciousness is also called self-awareness for a reason. (I want that item is a very different statement from I know I want that item.) Conscious beings are aware of themselves, know about their internal states, and are able to predict feelings of others".
This is fine, and i agree with on the whole, it just make the question meta physical rather than answering it. Ye by Quoting Joshs
This statement is a really problem for me as it is just un-true. The difference between what i believe the "self is" and "free will is" and "consciousness is" compared to what most people believe isn't just different descriptive vocabulary. Science says humans are mechanisms and what we think and feel are products of that mechanism, most people do not believe this and vocabulary isn't the problem.
I don't think the rest of what you said answered the question i posed.
I don't have a problem with what you said.
Yes we don't know that anybody other than ourselves is conscious and i guess that relates somewhat.
I think that anything that refers to introspective experience + notions are fundamentally understood by people and the notions we have of them are fundamentally wrong. If we want to be correct we need to change them in a way that is naturalistic and fits with the fact they are generated by machines. Joscha Bach does a lot of this if you know the guy. If we are machines this has to be true and we are certainly machines. I just don't see why every atheist doesn't agree with me.
I'm an atheist. I don't agree with you. I don't know if we are machines. Atheism is whether on not you believe the proposition that gods exist. It says nothing about other beliefs. Some atheists I know believe in ghosts and astrology - they are not all Richard Dawkins acolytes. Some secular humanists and skeptics go further and deny anything they consider to be 'supernatural' but that's a separate belief system. I don't know what consciousness is, or how to account for emotion and subjectivity. Even if true, my lived experience of being a human is not enhanced by the machine metaphor.
You have to realise that modern physics itself is a useful abstraction. It grew from the many thousand year old prior tradition, but made a unique breakthrough with the so-called scientific revolution pioneered by Newton, Galileo, and Descartes to mention several. By breaking with scholasticism and Aristotelian physics, Galileo arrived at the then-revolutionary conception of treating physical objects purely in terms of their measurable attributes, whilst Newton's laws, coupled to Cartesian algebraic geometery, promised to extend the scope of these laws universally.
Key to that was the division of the world - into primary and secondary attributes, first, which are the precisely measurable attributes of physical bodies and their perceived qualities, respectively. Then the Cartesian division of extended matter and immaterial mind. This is the underlying construction between much of the modern worldview. As Thomas Nagel put it:
[quote=Mind and Cosmos, p35] The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. [/quote]
That is the implicit framework underlying your question, I would suggest. But it's an abstraction. The absolutely determinable objects of early modern physics have since dissolved into the excitations of fields whose attributes are described in terms of degrees of probability, and the discovery of which thrust the role of the observer back into the frame, as it were.
Quoting Restitutor
But it's not. There are machine-like elements, to be sure, but at the basis, humans (and all other creatures) are organic and not mechanical. They don't operate solely according to the abstractions of physics, in addition there is a much more sophisticated level of activity that occurs even on the level of cell division and growth. The machine metaphor is just that - a metaphor - and you could argue that it's a metaphor that's gone rogue, that is, escaped from its enclosure and wrought havoc in culture at large.
Quoting Restitutor
Where? What science? Got any citations for that? Here's one for you, from Ersnt Mayr, one of the leading theoretical biologists of the 20thc
[quote=The growth of biological thought, Ernst Mayr] The discovery of the genetic code was a breakthrough of the first order. It showed why organisms are fundamentally different from any kind of nonliving material. There is nothing in the inanimate world that has a genetic program which stores information with a history of three thousand million years![/quote]
Nowhere it mentions the fact that humans have a sense of time, which is a subjective sense of duration.
Machines have built-in clocks -- they don't "judge" that something is taking an awfully long time to finish. The idle time, for example, in a computer is fed into the system. The user chooses 20 minutes, for example, to be long enough to be idle, the computer signs off. It's not that the computer got bored, or got tired of waiting, or got excited for the unexpected speed something has completed.
If you believe the analogy of brain to computer is literal there is nothing to discuss me thinks. Deterministic and Determinism are different. You are aware of this?
Otherwise, might be worth exploring some weird ideas.
Our models (i.e. deterministic developmental linear & nonlinear dynamical mathematical systems) for describing and explaining aspects of the physical world are "mechanistic" but this in no way entails that the physical world itself (e.g. bodies, brains, weather systems, chemical processes, etc) is "mechanical" or a "machine". That paradigm is too simplistic a reductive fallacy. "Physics" amounts to a provisional, best approximation (i.e. simulation) of phenomena and fundamental dynamic processes. For instance, that most 'brain processes' are computable does not make 'the whole brain' a "computer"; obviously it's more complex than that model (i.e. metaphor / simulation). IMO, "the philosophical consequences" begin with this reminder: don't confuse maps with the territory.
Quoting Restitutor
I think your question relies on confused assumptions.
Your split between ineffable subjectivity and physical
mechanism harks back to older traditions in philosophy. There are newer ways of thinking about the relation between physical science and subjectivity which dont get caught in this dualist trap of assuming subjectivity is something added onto or apart from the physical.
Evan Thompson writes:
I would note that in the first paragraph quoted you are looking at small parts of a person. I think most of our discomfort with "determinism" and "mechanism" comes from the fact that it is often wedded to smallism (the view that facts about big things are grounded in facts about little things) and reductionism. People tend to think that one implies the other, that you cannot have determinism without smallism. This isn't true.
Smallism and reductionism are in decline. I would say they are more popular in the general lay conception of "how science says the world works," then "how physicists and philosophers of science tend to think the world works."
If by "mechanistic," we simply mean "the world exhibits law-like regularities," then this is still a very popular take. However, this sort of determinism does not imply that every individual thing can be explained in reference its smaller (and thus presumably mindless) parts.
I personally don't like most conceptions of libertarian free will I have come across. If our decisions aren't "determined by" the way we are, and the way the world is, then it seems like they are arbitrary, random, and thus not free. Plato and Hegel seem to have the best popular definition of freedom I am aware of: freedom as (relative) self-determination.
That is, we are free when:
1. Our reason is able to unify our drives and desires such that we are a unified person, not at war with ourselves.
2. We understand why we are doing things and the consequences of our actions and choose them anyhow.
3. We want to have the desires that are effective in us.
4. We are not missing information that would make us act differently. We are not being manipulated.
5. We are our authentic selves, able to seek what we think is the highest good.
Determinism is not a barrier to free will in this sense. It is rather a prerequisite for it.
Many types of popular process metaphysics, e.g. pancomputationalism, aren't commensurate with smallism. Many theories in fundamental physics aren't smallist either. These are very popular with eminent physicists, and have the benefit of giving us new ways of looking at the metaphysics of free will.
The fatalism that comes with "natural determinism," then seems to be more an outcrop of the smallist and superveniance views of the world. E.g. "I am just the current molecules in by body and the rules for how these molecules work, (which is mindless), dictates everything about me."
I would agree that this is a depressing view. It also seems to be a hard view to support, for many reasons. To name just one, reductive substance metaphysics seems to deny the possibility of strong emergence (Jaegeon Kim, etc.). But then, where does first person experience come from? A view that seems to deny what is most empirically obvious to us seems critically damaged. Add in that there are many other reasons to adopt a process based metaphysics, to see wholes as sometimes more fundemental than parts, and to reject superveniance as a useful concept, and it seems easy (to me) to simply reject smallism, reductionism, etc., without rejecting the law-like nature of the universe.
But if we are hard to delineate processes nested in a larger universal process, I see no barrier to relative self-determination of the sort Plato, the Patristics, and Hegel are talking about. The bleak picture of determinism vanishes. It ends up just telling us that "we live in a world of regularities." It doesn't "disenchant" nature into a clock in the same way.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
In his essay, The Question of Technology, Heidegger distinguishes between two modes of revealing: the related Greek notions of techne and poesis vs instrumentality, which is common to mathematical physics and technology. The form of revealing of poesis is bringing-forth, which, unlike instrumentality, explicitly sees itself as making use of all four causes:
By contrast, mathematical physics and technology reveal by taking into account only one of the four causes:
Well, there's a long thread that covers this topic, here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12417/chomskys-mysteries-of-nature-how-deeply-hidden-reading-group/p1
Especially the essay in the OP.
It would take a long time to elaborate. The gist is that, contrary to popular claim, Newton proved materialism wrong when he discovered gravity. Materialism was understood to be mechanistic. Hence his famous quote:
'It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact, as it must be, if gravitation in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it... [this] is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters [science] a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it."
(Bold added)
This is then expanded upon by Locke mostly, but also Hume and Priestley all the way up to Russell and Eddington.
But, there's a lot to it.
:up:
It seems to me like plenty in physics, the life sciences, and complexity sciences are willing to take a broader view. The strong hold of the old mechanistic, smallist account of the world seems to be more a combination of inertia and the fact that no single succinct, easy to present alternative has shown up.
It's all well and good to show that the dominant paradigm is shot through with error, but what do you teach if there is no one solid replacement? That's where it seems we are at.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I agree that the various domains of the sciences are willing to take a broader view, but my own bias is that the willingness is not equal across domains . Physics needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into ways of thinking about such things as temporality that are already familiar ground for many biologists and social scientists.
That was Newton's interpretation of his own work as outlined in the Principia. Hume and Locke agreed that his conclusion was correct.
You can skim the essay I provided in that other thread, but the essay is long. It goes well beyond a mere opinion.
I'm fully ready to believe it was his own interpretation of his own work. He was a very superstitious person who lived a long time ago. "Proof" is much too strong a word for what this is.
The vast majority of physicists think the world is a machine? What? That's news to me.
Sure, he was superstitious, but on gravity he was quite serious and celebrated for it. I wonder what physicists we are reading that are coming to opposite conclusions.
Unfortunately it doesn't look like there's any unambiguous polls about this, only people writing about their impression of the state of science. And NOBODY but you is saying that the state of science is that physicalism was disproven by Newton.
There is, however, a neat poll of modern philosophers, and physicalism/materialism is pretty dang popular there. Perhaps they didn't get the memo?
It just doesn't seem "proven" to me. "Prove" is an extremely strong word. If it were proven, I'd expect some kind of plurality of agreement at least among relevant experts - that's not what we see.
Apologies for the insertion.
I initially said that the mechanistic picture of the world was proven false by Newton, and I believe this is true, based on not only what Newton says, but also what Locke, Hume, Priestley, Russell and Chomsky say (among a few others).
I should've added for clarity's sake that it is this specific conception of materialism (as mechanistic) which was shown to be false, not the whole school of thought.
There are other kinds of materialism, presumably the kind you are finding in the Google articles. That materialism tends to be associated with the view that everything that exists is physical in the sense of what physics says there is. That's not mechanistic, our best theories of physics aren't mechanistic, they are probabilistic.
Newton's views are often misinterpreted, when this quote is given, they tend to say that Newton had trouble understanding gravity because it didn't make sense to him, but that the image he left was that of a mechanistic universe, but that's not what he says in that quote.
Of course, there are other materialisms which are defended, such as Galen Strawson's or Dennett's or even Sean Carroll's. These are very different in character.
Again, sorry for the misattribution. I am rather slow today...
"Mechanism," was view that all phenomena reduces to stuff bumping into other stuff, a view popularized by Galileo.
It's true that Newton's findings re gravity were sort of a death blow to this conception of the world. Gravity, for Newton, was a force acting at a distance. The original "mechanism" didn't allow for this.
Then, after the discovery of gravity as such a force, we began to figure out electromagnetism. This lead to a huge proliferation of supposed suis generis "forces," e.g., a special "life force."
But advances in the 20th century actually seemed to make something like mechanism more plausible again, although with major modifications. Even reductive physicalism today is still pretty different from the more simplistic view the original mechanists hoped for though.
So, the type of mechanism Newton disproved isn't exactly what we think about today. It was a view very much based on billiard balls crashing into each other, etc., which turned out to have issues.
In any case, I still don't see any consensus among the relevant experts that "we aren't mechanistic", quantum physics notwithstanding. If it was proven, it seems like huge portions of academic science and philosophy have missed the memo.
And even the deep truths about quantum physics are debated. Quantum physics is probabilistic, yes, but the function that determines those probabilities is deterministic (the Schrödinger equation). The exact nature of how quantum physics works under the hood is still a hot topic, and the second most popular interpretation is a kind of meta-determinism - many worlds. Is a deterministic view of quantum mechanics "mechanistic"?
I just don't think it's justifiable to say this idea is "proven" yet. Newton wrote about his educated opinion in the late 1600s - many of his ideas have stood the test of time but this one doesn't seem to have made a dent.
The universe is not billiard balls - I fully agree. My idea of "mechanistic" is much broader than that.
We are beginning to speak about different things now. As you ask, yes, I think determinism is one thing, mechanical is another. My impression was that, by now most physicists (that I read, which admittedly are popular scientists) reject the view that the universe is a big machine (like a giant clock, for instance, or the example Timothy mentioned), but they call still be deterministic, and many are.
I was pointing out that this view, that the universe was not a machine, was reluctantly recognized by Newton, much previously than QM. Now, you can define a machine in a different way than the traditional conception if you want.
You are correct, there are some theories that may suggest a deterministic outcome, like Many Worlds or some remaining "hidden variables" theory. Maybe they're correct. Or maybe not, I can't say.
I don't see what big outcome in philosophy hinges on a deterministic universe. Like, if you have in mind free-will, I don't think the universe being one way or the other matters for this topic. But that's a subject for a different thread.
I agree, I think we, as in human beings, are mechanistic even if quantum physics is random. Maybe I just have a different idea of what "mechanistic" means.
It's because Western culture, generally, has deprecated and dismantled classical metaphysics. That happened mainly as a consequence of the division of mind and matter, self and world, primary and secondary, that I mentioned in my initial post. Science and engineering subsequently seized on the supposed reality of 'res extensia' and dismissed the mind, 'res cogitans', as a ghost in the machine. But whole model was built on abstractions in the first place! And to call 'materialism' or 'physicalism' into question is to flirt with - what, exactly? - spooky immaterial substances and other slippery notions of mind that no respectable academic would defend. They're materialist by default.
That, of course, is a bit of a caricature, but it's not too far from the fact of the matter. But outside academic and mainstream philosophy, there are worlds of alternative worldviews and philosophies, against which your mainstream 'analytic philosophy' is an academic parlour game.
Quoting flannel jesus
Nevertheless it is indisputable that 'the nature of the wave function' is among the great unresolved issues in philosophy of physics. There is a strong idealist streak in the new physics, Schrodinger himself wrote extensively on philosophy later in life, and professed admiration of Arthur Schopenhauer and Advaita Vedanta.
So its materialism that hasn't got the memo. It's why academic philosophy, especially in the English-speaking world, that is hardly relevant to current culture.
I think so too.
But we agree on the bigger points, so, all seems well for now. :)
precisely what occurs with the act of observing an experimental result. It 'makes manifest'.
Computer information processing is simply a mechanical procedure --- one thing after another --- as envisioned by Shannon. And some people still expect those assembly-line mechanisms to soon become Conscious, emulating human Sentience, as the data through-put increases. Yet "computing" is easy compared to "knowing".
For example, the brain stores data, not as localized physical registers, but distributed & interrelated as non-local pattern. Similarly, the human Self-image (Me) is not a physical pattern of dots, but a meta-physical design of meaningful relationships. So, the "Fundamental" difference, is an Integrated System versus a linear procedure.
Therefore, it's plausible that, as AI becomes more internally integrated and self-referenced (feedback), it might become Conscious, in some artificial or alien sense. But, I suspect that a novel manner of manipulating Information may be necessary. :smile:
PS___ This is just a riff on your insightful question, not an authoritative answer to the riddle of the "hard question".
Your thinking is rather last decade. The systems that run modern AIs use many interconnected processors operating in parallel, and a complex ballet of distributed processing is a more accurate metaphor than an assembly line. Furthermore, neuromorphic hardware that will massively increase the degree of parallelism while also dramatically dropping the power consumption is around the corner.
Quoting Wayfarer
Really? FWIW, my understanding is that "the nature of the wavefunction" is a mathematical artifact of the set ups of QM experiments. Philosophers of physics, in contrast to philosophically sophisticated physicists, wantonly and unparsimoniously (mis/over)interpret this mathematical artifact which is, as is often pointed out, of little to no significance to theoretical physicists. Like every other theory in science, QFT is only a simulation of the world and not 'the world itself'; thus, "the nature of the wavefunction" is nothing more than an extension of "the nature" of QFT (i.e. simulation). Re: model-dependent realism.
Yes, modern physics, is a useful abstraction, but it is a useful abstraction that represents fundamental reality well enough to make incredibly accurate, specific and counterintuitive predictions so dont just dismiss it. It is more than just abstract.
The fact that some people 400 year back formalized the old idea of a material and immaterial world and dressed it up as science doesnt make what they say correct. There were plenty of people in Descartes time that werent buying what he was selling. Princess Elisabeth for one.
You have probably been told things like substance dualism breaks the 2nd law of thermodynamics, but you probably dont care even though it is a rather important law. Also, people have probably pointed out that the fact that head trauma, tumors, etcetera will affect everything and anything about your introspective experience, including your sense of self, suggests that your mind (rez -cognizance) isnt independent of our brain (rez-cognizance).
The reason I am not substance dualism is because it is very unlikely to be true because it is very bad science. Extremely few people who understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics (physicist) or understand modern neuroscience are substance duelists and I care what these people think more than I care about what a scientist that died 400 years ago and had no insight into how the brain works thinks. If you were seriously interested in the truth in this matter, you would believe somebody like Michal Gazzaniga over Descartes. I recommend Gazzanigas Gifford lectures. They will blow your mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dadT-14FkSY&list=PL8AD2B712B1A0578F
I think the idea of Dualism is broadly correct, but it does needs to be modified to make it fits with established scientific fact with substance dualism simply doesnt do.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sorry to highlight but this section of your answer is kind of lazy. You quoted the stuff about the musculoskeletal system, ignored the bit where I highlight less superficial parts of the body that said were mechanical (ATP synthase) and then tell me that once you get past musculoskeletal system is all organic and not mechanical. Of course, the body is organic. It is just that it is also mechanical when you look down at it with high enough resolution. The videos below explain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUrEewYLIQg&t=303s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RUHJhskW00
Its obvious I am not saying the body is a machine in the naïve, narrow and stereotypical way a child may see a machine. I am saying the body is machine in the sense that every aspect of what is does is mechanistic and things that are purely mechanistic can be called machines without abusing the term machine. If your definition of a machine is something made of mettle and is designed by a human we are not machines but that isnt the definition of a machine
Oxford dirtionary an apparatus using or applying mechanical power and having several parts, each with a definite function and together performing a particular task.
Or
any device that transmits a force or directs its application.
Saying people dont Operate solely according to the abstractions of physics, in addition there is a much more sophisticated level of activity that occurs even on the level of cell division and growth. I am the director of a Lab at a rather prestigious scientific institution. A staggering amount of information we have on how the body works at the smaller scale says it is all 100% mechanistic obeying physics 100% of the time. There isnt even a hint of anything happening that isnt 1000% explained by the laws of physics. Biology is just as mechanistic as movement of the motion of the planets.
It is difficult to convey how much we know and at what detail we know it to laypeople without just using superlatives. Laypeople really have no idea (sorry laypeople). We for example know the structures of over 100 thousand proteins. We very frequently know what they do and how they do it. Look at the video about ATP synthase. We have the crystal structure for the vast majority of it know how it works mechanistically.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pro.4038#:~:text=On%20January%2020%2C%202021%2C%20there,in%20the%20last%205%20years).
On January 20, 2021, there were 153,400 and 13,253 protein structures, respectively, determined by x-ray crystallography, by solution and recently solid-state NMR, and 6,814 by electron microscopy (a rapidly increasing number in the last 5?years).
I dont know how to prove how much we know as scientists now as you need to be immersed in it. I cant just quote you the entity of the scientific literature. All I can do is show you something like ATP synthase and say we have the same kind of information on masses amount of other systems and they are all just as mechanistic.
The fact that there are emergent properties that relies on the functioning of lots of molecular machine, such as cell division say nothing about if the human body is a machine. Machines can do thing that require multiple parts working together. We know a massive amount what is happening during cell division, down to the individual molecules. We know how memory works, down to individual molecules for example. This is not a good objection against the mechanistic nature of the human body as lots of machines have lots of parts that work together.
You think that the idea humans are machines is a metaphor, but I tell you as a scientist, the vast amount of information we have about the human body says we are as mechanistic as a computer and the atoms within us obey the laws of physics just as the atoms in any machine does.
Please understand, you do not have enough of a scientific background to understand how mechanistic science has shown the human body and all life to be. You also need to reassess where you are getting your information from.
You can ignore the philosophical reality of this by denying it or by saying its just a metaphor. You may even need to believe that it is true, but it isnt true.
I'm not dismissing it, but I'm saying it's not the full picture, which is what you're proposing. The point of harking back to the Cartesian division is not because Descartes was great (although that might be), but to point out where the idea of the universe as 'machine like' originated.
Quoting Restitutor
'Metal'. Machines are manufactured artifacts, whilst humans and other animals are organisms. Organisms and machines have many fundamental differences, organic processes and mechanical processes have many fundamental differences. Organisms have the ability to grow, heal, mutate, learn and evolve, which machines do not have.
Quoting Restitutor
You have provided no indication that you do, nor any citations for same, so no need to be condescending. You're advocating a mechanistic model which is well out of date.
In respect of physical things, right. That doesnt make it a model for philosophical analysis of the nature of being.
So to paraphrase your argument, the universe operates according to mechanical principles because science says it does. If you disagree then its because you dont understand science.
Did I miss anything important?
It is better than a model for philosophical analysis of the nature of being because it is much more likely to represent reality, rather than just representing the way we would like reality to be, with your scientifically indefensible belief in substance dualism being case in point.
Did you look at the ATP synthase YouTube video?.
No, if you don't think the world is mechanistic science isn't the problem, the facts are the problem
The fact that a Urbain Jean Leverrier predicted the location of Neptune based Newtonian physics equations is the problem.
The fact that from a genetic test you can say that a one nucleotide change will or won't cause cystic fibrosis is the problem.
The fact that the whole modern world, including the computer you are using was built based upon experienced reality that the world behaves mechanistically is the problem.
Democritus was before Descartes.
Not being as such, but of the objects of experience. Questions about what objectively exists are different to questions about the nature of existence, which are much broader in scope.
Not relevant to the issue though. The mechanistic model of nature comes from early modern science not Greek philosophy as such.
I gave you real definitions from a real dictionary saying what a machine is. All you have done is crafted an artificially narrow definition of a word that contradicts dictionaries but proves your point. Find a dictionary that says a machine is defined in the way you define it and then we will talk.
What are these fundamental differences? What you have done is cherry pick a whole load of emergent properties. Saying humans have properties that non-human machines don't just doesn't prove your point. Lots of classes of machines have specific emergent properties other machines don't. Growing is simply an emergent property the same way flying is an emergent property. A few hundred years ago you could have included flying on your list of what machines can't do and organisms can. Even now there are emergent properties on your list that robots can do. Machines certainly learn for example, it is called machine learning. Although i don't know of machines can physically evolve, there are lots of examples of programs that control robots being designed to evolve. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbyQcCT6890.
By convention hot is hot, by convention cold is cold, by convention color is color. But in reality, there are atoms and the void. Democritus (c. 460 BC c. 370 BC).Quoting Wayfarer
Democritus even says introspective experience is generated by atoms. (he did believe atoms moved mechanistically).
Descartes acknowledged all animals to be "beast machines" except us. Its soooo incompatible with science.
Quoting Restitutor
But plainly that is a fact of neither mechanics nor physics but of biology. In all of what youre saying machines are a metaphor. Furthermore youd never learn about genetics by studying physics, the fact you can call on emergence as a kind of universal ad hoc gap filler notwithstanding.
That is the dictionary definition quoted. Organism is defined as
Organisms are mechanical in some respects but with attributes not possessed by machines.
Not so. The implications of the nature of the wavefunction are significant.
Ontological Status: Is it a real, physical entity or merely a mathematical tool for predicting experimental outcomes? Realists argue that the wave function represents a physical state of a quantum system. In contrast, instrumentalists view it as a tool for calculating probabilities of different measurement outcomes, without ascribing it any physical reality.
Wave Function Collapse: The issue of wave function collapse during a measurement process is another philosophical puzzle. When a quantum system is not being observed, it is described by a wave function that encompasses a superposition of all possible states. However, when a measurement is made, the system appears to 'collapse' into one of these states. The nature of this collapse whether it is a real physical process or a mere update of our knowledge is debated with no empirical way of adjuticating the competing interpretations.
Locality and Nonlocality: Quantum entanglement, where particles remain connected so that the state of one (no matter how far apart they are) instantly affects the state of the other, challenges the notion of locality in physics. This leads to philosophical questions about the nature of reality and whether actions at one point in space can instantaneously affect distant objects (nonlocality).
Determinism and Indeterminism: Quantum mechanics, through the probabilistic nature of the wave function, raises questions about determinism in the universe. While classical physics is largely deterministic, the probabilistic outcomes in quantum mechanics have led to debates about whether the universe at a fundamental level is deterministic or indeterministic.
The Measurement Problem: This is related to the issue of wave function collapse and concerns the question of how and why quantum states appear to change abruptly and discontinuously in the act of measurement. This problem has led to various interpretations of quantum mechanics, each with its own philosophical implications.
Many-Worlds Interpretation: This interpretation posits that all possible alternative histories and futures are real and that they exist in a vast and complex multiverse. This raises philosophical questions about the nature of reality and our place in it, as well as the meaning of probabilities in a universe where every possibility is realized.
Epistemological Questions: Quantum mechanics also poses epistemological challenges. It forces us to reconsider our notions of knowledge, observation, and reality. The role of the observer in quantum mechanics, and the limits of what we can know about the quantum world, are central to these discussions.
Of course, most working physics can ignore the questions, as the equations and predictions work with enormous precision. They simply shut up and calculate.
Those "implications" are nothing more than second-order interpretations of first-order models. You're merely referring to "the nature" of the simulation, Wayfarer, and not what it simulates.
The whole point is that 'what it simulates' is an unknown.
Not at all, sir: what is simulated the natural world, 'subject-invariant' reality is approximately known with respect to the scope precision and fidelity of the simulation (à la mapping territory which necessarily exceeds mapping). Dispense with the outdated Kantianism, sir, epistemology as well as science has developed two and have centuries past his (anti-Copernican) transcendental anthropocentricity and occult ding-an-sich.
'If you're not shocked by quantum physics, then you plainly haven't understood it' ~ Neils Bohr, taking questions after lecture to the Vienna Circle, Copenhagen, 1950's.
The fact that quantum physics appears to undemine the concept of objectivity was part of the major news out of the Solvay Conference in 1927. Why was Albert Einstein compelled to ask the question 'doesn't the moon continue to exist if we're not observing it?' The later Bohr-Einstein debates were mainly about this. Hey, don't take it from me, here it is from John Wheeler:
From John Wheeler, Law without Law
'No elementary phenomena is a phenomena until it is an observed phenomena'.
And how does it "appear to undermine" "objectivity"? With objective findings. Your argument(?), sir, is as self-refuting as a 'positivist' argument. :lol:
I did look at the video. I thought it was fun. It's interesting that the language of the commentary cannot help leaning into a metaphorical vocabulary. One structure was 'designed' in a certain way; 'desires' were imputed to proteins; emotions were ascribed in order to explain the strength of certain forces. Of course it would be a dry commentary without these lively ways of speaking, but they are a nagging reminder of how human organisms are: teleological, purposive, feeling stuff: features we find problematic when applying them to 'machines'.
There's a recent paper by Esposito and Baravalle on the machine-organism relation, which oddly enough seems to me to lend some support to all sides of this debate. They explore the ill-defined definitons of 'machine' and more specifically of the purported analogies between machine and organism. The ATP Synthase can usefully be described by analogy with a machine, but that is not an argument either that (a) it *is* a machine, whatever that might be; nor (b) that the organism of which it is a component part can usefully be described by analogy with a machine.
Here's the paper (I found by fiddling about I could get at the pdf):
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40656-023-00587-2
Quoting 180 Proof
I would say that rather than undermining objectivity, approaches within science studies and physics( Rouse, Fine, Harraway, Barad) re-situate the basis of objectivity within intersubjectivity. Not just human intersubjectivity but the intra-agential relations within non-human nature.
No, this is basic science you just don't understand it in anything like a sophisticated way. The fact you call the idea of emergence a "ad hoc gap filler" is profoundly ignorant. All scientists believe in emergence and the fact that you don't explains why you are so profoundly confused about how physics and biology relate to each other.
Physics gives rise to chemistry and chemistry gives rise to biology, this is all that is meant by emergence. To say emergence doesn't exist is to say chemistry isn't a product of physics and to say biology isn't a product of chemistry. Intellectually you have to know, if you change the laws of something like quintom electro dynamics (physics), you would change chemistry and there for change biology.
An atom is simply the product of quarks and electrons following the rules layer out in the standard model. Molecules are just atoms following the rules of quintom electro dynamics. Biology is simply a lode of molecules we call protein, RNA and DNA interacting through rules of charge and thermodynamics as it relates to hydrophobic and hydrophilic interactions. All of it is mechanistic and all of it relates back ultimately to the laws of physics.
You seem to think that there is some great sacred divide between biology and everything else and there isn't. Biology is just chemistry that is dependent on the catalysts and such produced by the template called DNA. The template does allow for new rules to emerge and some of them are both complicated and very powerful such as evolution but evolution isn't magical, it also has to follow the mechanistic rules of physics.
You don't seem to get the fact that we know how biology works to a level of detail that strips it right back down to chemistry and we know how chemistry works that strips it right back down to physics. You are just profoundly ignorant of this science, preferring dusty quotes from out of date scientists.
Did you watch the video about ATP synthase? You need to understand we are build out of many sextillion of molecular machines. These things are millions of times smaller than anything that you can even see but they operate mechanically. This is what makes life special and capable of generating properties that clunky made made machines can't. It is this rather than you bizarre idea that that biology is somehow unrelated from physics and doesn't operate causally.
The scientifically grounded notion of information is also important in understanding biology and i think that you may be interpreting the role of information in biology as making it non-causal or non-mechanistic. The information in the DNA of an organism for example is important and generate properties that are hard to see as mechanistic but information is integral to modern notions of physics.
Again, your aspersion has missed the point of the original question : What are the philosophical consequences of science saying we are mechanistic?
Parallel processing --- multiple assembly lines --- increases Mechanical through-put, but has nothing to do with Consciousness, or Philosophy. Neuromorphic hardware is an attempt to mechanically mimic the structure of the human brain. But the salient Function of the brain, for its owner, is not fast thinking, but the creation of Awareness & Self-Consciousness. In this 20th decade of the 20th century, can you point to a working example of Machine Consciousness? As I said before : "computing" is easy compared to "knowing". :smile:
Neuromorphic Machine Consciousness :
These questions are rooted in what is called machine consciousness. How do we create consciousness when we don't understand it or its objective in humans?
https://www.servomagazine.com/magazine/article/rise-of-the-neuromorphic-machines
ChatGPT: Has a chatbot finally achieved self-awareness? :
So, ChatGPT knows that it has an internal state which reflects the memory of what has been said so far. But it still vehemently insists on not having feelings or consciousness.
https://lamarr-institute.org/blog/chatgpt-has-a-chatbot-finally-achieved-self-awareness/
Quoting Wayfarer
You are confusing what you would like to be for what is.
Yes physics talks about what objectively exists but that doesn't mean it isn't saying anything about the "nature of existence". You just don't like what it is saying.
Standard physics and science in general is saying the nature of existence is mechanistic and deterministic. Science says this ever time a scientists makes a production based on the belief that the nature of the world and everything that exists in it is mechanistic and then make an observation consistent with that prediction. This happens thousands of times a day.
Science is screaming at us that the fundamental nature of existence is mechanistic and deterministic but because this isn't what you want to hear you don't listen.
Evidently quantum mechanics is probabilistic rather than deterministic with the deterministic world emerging from this probabilistic world. If you want to argue that the world is probabilistic at the most fundamental level this is fine by me.
Thanks i will read the paper. Thank you for suggesting it.
Honestly, what we define as the word machine as is semantics and distracts from the core reality. The core reality is that both organic and non-organic machines are simply conglomerations of unthinking atoms mechanistically obeying the laws of physics to generate what ever emergent properties the machine generates.
Intellectually doesn't matter if if you use a narrow human centric view of the word machine like wayfarer does and then and use it at as a metaphor or you use the word machine more broadly but not as a metaphor. The statement above still stands.
Unfortunately the word machine is however rhetorically important as calling human a machines is the only thing that seems to make people realize that science says biology is just as mechanistic and deterministic as any object engendered by a human.
You have a strong mechanistic intuition, which is fair enough. So we take that as axiomatic, which is as good a starting point as any. So what happens when we come across a concept that doesn't easily fit the model? Do we change the concept or the model? We should try both, no? And see which is more fruitful? What if the concept seems just as axiomatic as the model?
As usual, the implicit debate within the dialog is between the utility of Practical Realistic Physicists (Feynman) versus the futility of Philosophical Idealistic Physicists (Wheeler, Heisenberg). The former produce tangible results --- television, computers, cell phones, and nuclear weapons --- while the latter postulate abstract concepts --- words, ideas, principles, etc.
So, we're talking past each other, about apples vs appleness ; specifications vs generalities ; objectivity vs subjectivity ; matter vs mind. But, why are we talking about Apples & Bombs on a philosophy forum? You can't eat "appleness", so what good is it? Apparently, for some of us, a full belly is better than a satisfied mind. Why don't the fruitful utilitarian belly-fillers just go away and leave us fruitless futilitarian mind-fillers alone? :joke:
What is the difference between a philosopher and a physicist?
Physics is concerned with unravelling the complexities of the universe from the smallest to the largest scale. Philosophy deals with foundational questions of the most general kind: what there is, what we know and how we came to know it, and how we ought to act and structure our lives.
https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses/course-listing/physics-and-philosophy
Well some times emergence-of-the-gaps is used a bit like a God-of-the-gaps. Of course, lots of instances of novel properties emerging from systems is entirely reasonable and comprehensible. But sometimes people come pretty close to saying "emergence-did-it" without offering convincing details, most obviously when arguing that consciousness is an emergent property of brain activity.
There is a big difference however, in that instances of emergence are observed all over the place, whereas omniscient minds existing for no reason aren't.
Somewhat, yes. I'd want to know why someone thinks consciousness emerges from brain activity. The usual answer is that changes in brain activity result in changes in experience. It's also hard to make sense of the claim. If consciousness just is brain activity it seems odd to say it emerges from that brain activity. If it isn't brain activity, what exactly is it and how does it connect with the brain activity?
Same with god-did-it. I want details. Why do you think that? What is God and why is it an explanation that out-competes other explanations?
:ok:
But sometimes (not always) the appeal to emergence is just as much of a non-explanation as appealing to a notion of God. In both cases, we need convincing details.
Can you articulate the alternative to emergence here?
Either panpsychism or eliminativism I think. Those plus emergence are mutually exhaustive of the possibilities it seems to me.
I don't really take elimitavism as a serious contender, personally. But even if I did, I feel like there's still some emergence in there - I'm sure elimitavists would disagree, but I don't see a way around it.
I don't know if it's been clear up to now, when I say "emergence" I don't mean the strong variety.
Sure, I'm not criticising the concept of emergence in all contexts, just in the context of the move from non-conscious systems to conscious ones.
Our consciousness is at the very least especially unique, because it is causal. I think it's causal. It would be very weird of my body to write "I'm conscious" if my consciousness wasn't part of the causal chain. But consciousness doesn't seem to be causing anything else to communicate about consciousness, only humans. So even if pansychism is true, SOMETHING specifically about humans and human brains is emerging (not strongly, in my opinion, though it's hard to justify) that makes our consciousness more tangible, somehow, then the consciousness of everything else around us.
And if it's fundamentally more tangible in us, maybe it's also true that it's emerging in us to begin with, and not some kind of fundamental feature of reality at all.
These are the intuitions keeping me off pansychism
I think it is causal too, but not just in humans. One way to solve the problem of overdetermination (psychological causes compete with physical causes as the explanation for human behaviour) is to suggest that all causation is fundamentally psychological. But I think you are right to point out the problem of when to introduce consciousness-as-cause, as this is as much as an issue for panpsychists as anyone else. A thoroughgoing panpsychist might take the line that if matter was not conscious, it wouldn't do anything. All the behaviour we see around us in the physical world is only doing what it is doing because of how it feels.
That seems a bit like it fails the Occam's Razor sniff test to me. The only behaviour that truly needs "feelings" in order to explain, that I can see, is people who talk about feeling feelings. (well, and some animal behaviours, but animal consciousness or proto-consciousness seems pretty agreeable to everyone). Everything else seems more simply explained by physics, whose operators don't seem to have any reference to feelings. That compounds with the fact that the thing we frequently refer to as 'feelings' themself seem emergent - someone on antidepressents feels different feelings than when they're not, so feelings seem to be a high-level phenomenon to humans, "emerging" from the chemical interactions in our brains.
Like I said before, I don't think poorly of pansychism in general, there may indeed be "something it's like" to be an atom, but I'm certainly skeptical that that "something it's like" involves anything recognizable as "feelings".
Or maybe I'm interpreting your use of that word too literally. Who knows?
But you keep making sweeping statements that 'all scientists believe this' and 'all science says the universe is a machine'. There are plenty of criticisms of reductionism and physicalism within science. Furthermore there is a distinction between the domains of science and philosophy, although as a philosophical distinction it might be hard to appreciate from a scientific perspective.
Quoting Restitutor
It's an ontological distinction, not a 'sacred divide'.
Quoting Restitutor
It doesn't consider the human condition, the plight of human existence. It deals solely with the behaviour of objects.
Quoting Restitutor
Not "science" - you're screaming that.
Quoting bert1
:lol:
Do you have an opinion of how information exists, mechanistically or otherwise, only an abstraction or something physical? I've noticed some physicalists use information as an abstraction without identifying a means for it to physically exist.
An observation would be that information has specific content so how would you bridge the mechanistic with specific information content?
I couldn't agree with you more. Emergence has a tendency to be used as a magic wand. Your point is very well talk, as is your highlighting of the fact that is is real even if it does get abused.
That's what I was getting at.
There are no properties of particles, states of matter, laws of physics, physical processes, or anything else known to science, that explain how the matter and energy of the universe can be conscious under certain circumstances. There's no logic or science behind the idea that, if you put enough physical things together, they will, by virtue of nothing but their physical characteristics, become conscious.
Understandable, but sometimes convincing details are only available to people who study a lot of relevant stuff.
Me, I'm kind of a Fezzik of neuroscience. :strong: :wink: I've seen lots of convincing details, of the emergence of minds from brains.
Learning about Hebbian theory is a good place to start, followed by looking into information processing via neural nets.
:lol:
Thanks, I like it. First time I've come across it.
Hebbian theory. Information existing as neural networks. That works for me. It's a physical basis, has specific location and time frame and is dynamic and fits with how we experience information.
So did Donald Hebb or other neurologists, neuropsychologists identify information as brian state only?
I don't think they did or currently do, but they should.
Pardon the intrusion, but could reflect that accusation right back at you. You seem to be confusing what you believe with "what is". Yet, your science-based worldview {insert label here} is what you are convinced exists, not by personal perception, but based on hearsay from those who see by proxy for you, perhaps via artificial technology instead of natural perception. Is that an accurate assessment?
But Way is talking about what we know via our innate human Reasoning*1. For example, Quantum Physics includes subatomic Quarks in its list of "what exists" in Nature. But no one has ever seen a quark*2. So, when you say, "if it looks like a Quark, and quacks like a Quark, it must be a Quark", you are stating a belief or opinion, not an objective observation. In other words, if the indirect evidence fits our abstract definition of a Quark, it must be the thing named. That's the Nominal Fallacy.
Do you believe in Mathematics? Is it natural? Is it mechanistic? Are imaginary numbers Real? In what sense does Math exist? Have you ever seen an example with your eyes? How do you know that (2 + 2 always = 4)? By direct observation, or because a teacher told you so, or because you have done the math often enough to infer . . . not that the equation exists physically, but that it is True philosophically? What are the philosophical consequences of mechanistic mathematics with infinities between the inputs & outputs? Just kidding. Don't burn out your brain computing a mechanical answer. :chin:
*1. Nature of Existence :
Existence is comprised of space, time, and consciousness. These characteristics manifest in the perceptible forms of capability, activity, and awareness, respectively.
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=117288
Note --- Space is inferred from observing Matter, and Time is inferred by observing Change. Is Consciousness perceptible or conceptible? Is Awareness a directly knowable physical feature of Nature, or a meta-physical aspect known only via Rational Inference? If Apprehension of meaning is known via perception, what does it look like? How do you know?
*2. How Do We Know Quarks Exist If They Have Never Been Directly Detected?
It comes down to indirect effects how quarks influence their surroundings.
http://thescienceexplorer.com/universe/how-do-we-know-quarks-exist-if-they-have-never-been-directly-detected
Note --- Reasoning from "indirect effects" to Existence is also how we know Energy exists, even though no one has ever seen, touched, or tasted Energy. For example, a Photon goes from invisible Potential to visible Effects so fast that we never see the particle itself. So, the existence of Energy is not objective, but subjective : known by logical inference, not by observation.
*3. What Does Quantum Theory Actually Tell Us about Reality?
Werner Heisenberg, among others, interpreted the mathematics to mean that reality doesnt exist until observed. The idea of an objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist, independently of whether or not we observe them ... is impossible, he wrote. . . . But quantum theory is entirely unclear about what constitutes a measurement.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/what-does-quantum-theory-actually-tell-us-about-reality/
Note --- A measurement must be perceptible in some sense. Quantum measurements are inferred indirectly via mathematical analysis of abstract scattering patterns. {see image below}
What is the "nature" of Quark existence? Is it Real or Ideal? How do you know?
CAN YOU SEE THE QUARK IN THIS PICTURE?
Something I'm confused about is the apparent equation of physical states with symbolic meaning that is implied here. Symbolic meaning is representational, where a symbol or sign represents meaning to an interpreter. (That is basic to semiotics which extends the concept to many organic processes other than language). But does this mean that a brain state is the same as an item of propositional knowledge? I don't see how it can be, as propositional knowledge is internal to the act of thinking, whereas a physical state or configuration of neural matter is objective or external to the act of thought. And even to try and map an item of propositional knowledge between it's linguistic meaning - 'the cat is on the mat' with an array of neural activity, relies on the reliability of symbolic (and therefore logical) representation ('this means that', 'this is the same as that', and so on.)
Do you see the difficulty I'm trying to articulate (probably not very well)?
I can add that once brain state is identified as the physical form of information then a mechanistic theory works for me and the loose ends have been taken care of.
If you are getting at something of a dualist nature I might understand. Brain state is neurons holding mental content. The neurons obey the laws of physics but the mental content does not.
For example mental content can go from nothing to something to nothing again. Does that help?
But what is 'holding'? Is it 'representing'? If so, that's semiotic - which is not itself physical as it relies on interpretation.
If you say that 'a thought IS a brain state', that 'IS' is not, itself, something physical. You're saying that 'this physical state' means or is the same as propositional content. But that is a judgement of equivalence between a physical configuration and semiotic or semantic content. I can't see how it can be claimed that such a judgement can be understood as a 'brain state'. That's the issue.
The argument of brain-mind identity theorists, who posit that every thought or mental state is identical to a brain state, faces complexities when dealing with semantic content, like 'the cat is on the mat'. The core challenge is this: while neuroscience can identify and map various brain activities and states, it struggles to find a direct and consistent correspondence with the semantic content of thoughts or propositions. This issue arises partly because thoughts and propositions are abstract, involving meaning, context, and interpretation, while brain states are physical, observable phenomena.
Different individuals may have different neural activations for the same thought or proposition. This variability makes it hard to pinpoint a universal brain state corresponding to a specific thought.
The meaning of a proposition can change based on context, individual understanding, and interpretation. This subjective aspect of semantic content is difficult to capture in the objective framework of brain states.
Language and thought are highly complex and dynamic. The same proposition might involve different cognitive processes depending on factors like language proficiency, attention, or prior knowledge.
There's also the issue of subjective experience or qualia. How a person experiences understanding a proposition might not be directly translatable to a measurable brain state. The same proposition might mean something completely different to different people.
Hence my difficulties accepting the equation of brain states and information.
I've never understood this to be a problem. I mean, you can say the same things about ai. ChatGpt 3 has different array matrices activations for "a cat in a hat" than ChatGpt 4 does. If that makes human minds not physical, then does it also make chat gpt not simulatable? Not digitally encodable?
I don't think so. I think it's completely normal that neural networks encode the same (or similar, anyway - it's never really the same) ideas in drastically different ways. I don't find that problematic at all for physicalist ideas of the mind.
In fact I think it would be incredibly surprising if all humans encoded all learned information in exactly the same way. That would be more weird than what we do see.
So, given two choices:
1) information is an abstract concept.
Or
2). Information is brain state; neurons holding mental content.
Which do you prefer or are there alternatives?
I don't see how a stand alone abstract concept can exist non-physically and where abstract concepts show up a brain is always involved.
You've seen the range of information definitions that show up here. Two that seem to be scientific but are not are Shannon information and what physicists call physical information. Both of these reduce to abstract concepts that must be supported by brain state.
So if we need a singular, universal, physical definition of information then brain state is the answer.
This is different from our systems of symbols and meanings. Whether the binary of computers, spoken language, written language, or any other system we have. No symbol has any objective meaning in any system we invent. They only have the meanings we assign to them.
But if brain states = thoughts, then that means the symbols - that is, the arrangements of matter - [I]objectively[/I] mean those thoughts. But to whom or what? The laws of physics that are responsible for every arrangement? Further, the idea that many different arrangements objectively mean the same thing seems odd.
Because you're thinking of thoughts as these concrete singular unambiguous thing, but human thought isn't like that. When I think of an apple, and you think of an apple, we're probably loosely thinking of the same sorts f things, but we're not thinking of them EXACTLY the same. I associate it with different things, different flavours, different contexts, different feelings than you do. Maybe you had your first apple as a toddler but I didn't have one until I was 6. Maybe I associate apples more with cider and you don't really think of cider at all.
All of these differences in thought are reflected in differences in structure.
Human thought is more complex than could be accounted for with the idea that 2 people thinking of the same thing must be having their brains activated in exactly the same way - that's just not it.
:100: :up:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2147696-blind-people-repurpose-the-brains-visual-areas-for-language/
People use the same parts of their brain for different things.
That's because brains aren't like clocks, brains are a different sort of thing. Clocks have hundreds of moving pieces where every moving piece has a specific function, and if a piece is out of place or removed, the clock stops working.
Brains, on the other hand, are malleable. The stuff your brain can do now, it couldn't do before. There may be something your brain can do tomorrow that it can't do now. But if you've had a clock for 30 years, it can probably only do the same stuff now that it could always do.
I don't want to pretend to know how brains work, but I know how they don't work: they don't work in such a way that there's only one way to accomplish tasks, and everybody accomplishes those tasks the same way. We know at least that about the brain.
Fair enough. Good posts.
Do you think there is a "core" brain state for an apple? (See what I did there?) Perhaps a certain number of neurons are in the same state for every person thinking of an apple, while other neurons are in a different state, due to the fact that no two people are thinking the exact same thing when they think of an apple?
Anything learned is learned dynamically, and an apple is most certainly something learned.
I wish I knew HOW the brain structures dynamically learn things. I know that, even if I store an apple in this part of my brain and that's where you store a tennis ball, that WHERE it's stored matters a whole lot less than what it's connected to. In fact if you moved your Apple storage from here to there, but kept all the connections in tact, it probably wouldn't matter much that you moved it.
Connections are everything. Not location.
Probably.
I very much love this question. I think that information is really key to understanding mind/brain and key to what information is, is how information relates to physical matter. The core of what I am saying I would describe as accepted science. The framing of what the science says information is as information-matter dualism is my framing and I make no claims of intellectual support from anybody for it.
You put your finger on the fact that physicists use the word information differently to normal people. They are multiple different but related meanings of the word information. For physicists information is any discernable difference by any measurement you can make of anything. This means that the consequence of matter existing in different places and in different states is that information simply comes along for the ride. If you simplify the universe down to Conways game of life, pretending the alive (white) squares are atoms. The information in the system in this analogy would be the relative placement of the white pixels relative to each other. To copy all the information in the system would involve copying the placement of all the white pixels relative to each other. Sabine Hossenfelder describes information as everything you would need to know to make an exact copy of you down to the level of the exact placement of every subatomic particle. If you vaporized your computer hard drive the information is everything you would need to make an exact copy down to the placement of every subatomic particle
This video is of somebody else saying what I said. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a35bKt1nuBo Sabine Hossenfelder book existential physics also covers it.
You will notice that a physicists view of information is agnostic to if the information that we are looking at has any pattern we can discern or if any such pattern is useful. Using the definition physicists use, TV static has information in it. From a less abstract, more practical human perspective we dont count it as information unless we can see some kind of pattern in it that seems like it may be of some value to us, which is fair enough from an evolutionary perspective.
Information from the human perspective is still based on the fact that information is the relative position of everything to everything else. Aristotle observed there are two distinct things about wax which are its substance and its shape. The substance and the shape are obviously related, but they are equally obviously not the same thing as you can change the shape without changing the substance. The shape is effectively a product of the placement of all the particles in the wax relative to each other. As Aristotle molded wax in his hands while thinking about the duality between substance and shape inherent in the wax he was shifting the relative position of one atom compared to the other, changing the shape of the wax. Given that shape is a product of the placement of the atoms relative to each other shape is a type of information. Shape is also a type of information that has meaning for construction and many other things making it something non physicists see as containing information.
The first wax records were made by taking a horn, putting a diaphragm at the end of the horn, putting a needle on the diaphragm and spinning the needle across the wax. When you talk or play music into the horn the diaphragm goes up and down, the needle goes up and down which causes the needle to bite into the wax to different degrees according to the specific characteristics of the compression (sound) waves entering the horn and pushing down on the diaphragm. Information in the soundwaves is captured in the exact shape of the groove of the needle cuts into the wax. The shape of the groove cut into the wax is a representation of the sound wave that made it.
After a mold is created from the wax record shaped by the needle, vinyl records are made by getting a molten ball of plastic and pressing it between the molds changing the physical shape of the molten plastic by changing how one molecule of plastic lines up next to another molecule of plastic. The information in the original wax is preserved in the mold making process and is subsequently locked into to every molten glob of plastic pressed between the molds. In this way the information in the original soundwave can be duplicated highlighting that information, unlike matter can be given away repeatedly without ever losing the original information. A record can be copied millions of times from the mold, with the mold changing the shape of molten plastic. An idea, a concept or a skill can in the same way be transferred from the teacher to hundreds of students by changing signaling proteins in the brain by post translationally modifying them with the addition or removal of phosphate being a common example. This work is what Eric Kandel wone the Nobel prize for, he studded it in sea slugs but we create memory in exactly the same way. This is what is happening in your brain as you are read this. As it is with the wax record it is with the brain except in the brain it is the shape of protein altered by posttranslational modifications rather than the shape of groves in a wax disk. Obviously this means that I am claiming mind is made out of information and the brain is made matter. The caveat is that the mind is dynamic, form moment to moment which is reflected in the dynamic nature of the information contained within the brain.
Other instances of what I am calling information-matter dualism I have not eluded to include objects such as cogs, cams and other objects such as the information inherent in the angle of the ball arms relative to gravity in a centrifugal governor. It is worth looking at the documentary about automaton and thinking about information https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Nt7xLAfEPs as you are watching. Another very good documentary about information is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioP0N4zYJeA They talk about what information is. They have a great example of information in the context of Jacquard machines that weave patterns in fabric accordance to information held in punch cards. It is very clever and a precursor to computer programing.
I have already talked through why I disagree with substance Dualism in a previous post, it is simply not compatible with science, or the observations made by scientists. The truth is however, there is a rather good, scientifically grounded substitute for res-cogitans if you are prepared to sacrifice one of the three key claims made about it. The key claims Descartes made about res-cogitans were 1) it is non-physical 2) it is independent of physical matter 3) it is what our introspective experiences are constructed out of. The thing you obviously realize is that the concept of information is integral to the description of the world provided by science and in this description, information is non-physical in the sense information isnt made out of physical matter. This is consistent with Descartess first claim. In addition, our introspective experiences are inherently informational by any definition of the word informational. This is consistent with Descartess third claim. This means that the only difference between res-cogitans and information is the second claim as information is very much not independent of physical matter like is clamed for res-cogitans. This means that to make dualism fully compatible with science all you need to do is stop claiming res cogitans is independent of matter and start calling it information. A phrase that seems appropriate to summaries my view on the relationship between matter and information could be described as information-matter dualism. So thats what I think, information-matter dualism is how I personally frame what science says about information.
Sorry it was such a long answer. I could have written 10x more. I didnt even talk about information held in the physical structure of DNA and how that works.
Thank you for the question. I would love to know yours or anybody else thoughts.
I agree with most of what you are saying. I make use a lot of information as noted in a more recent post which i regard as being what our minds are made up from. The part i would disagree with the last sentence. Scientists do represent biology mechanistically, this is what our understanding of biology is based on. I agree don't describe psychological phenomena mechanistically but i would suggest that this is for two reasons 1) Describing psychologically important concepts mechanistically is something most people find psychologically distressing 2) a failure of imagination regarding how to explain psychological phenomena mechanistically. The "different descriptive vocabulary", is in my opinion somewhat disingenuous people are just talking about there psychology's using different descriptive vocabulary, they are sometimes implicitly but mostly explicitly making ontological claims about the nature of the psychological phenomena. These ontological claims go the the core of how we think about and justify our beliefs about psychological phenomena so they are in no was incidental to the discussion. I am interested in how we should change the ontologies of psychological phenomena to make them consistent with a mechanistic universe and what the effects of doing this would be..
I want to go in the opposite direction from you. Rather than accepting a handed down model of mechanism from the physical sciences and trying to force our understanding of human or animal behavior into it, we need to recognize that physics, which was the queen of the sciences a few centuries ago, is behind the curve right now. The concepts of causality and information you are borrowing from the physical sciences, which work so elegantly in constructing machine technologies, are disastrous when we try to apply them to so many aspects of human behavior, such as psychopathology and mood disorders, the nature of language and empathy, models of perception, emotion and intentionality. To translate my argument into more concrete terms, I am an advocate of 4EA models in the cognitive sciences, and of enactivism and autopoietic self-organizing systems approaches. I applaud the way that representatives of these approaches critique authors such as Metzinger and Dennett for their reductionism.
Dont misunderstand me. I think its perfectly fine to strive to reduce higher mental processes to elementary ones, but I dont think todays physics is up to the job. It eventually will be though. Until then, its important to keep the conceptual vocabulary dealing with the most compact aspects of biological and psychological phenomena separate from that of physical mechanism.
The inter-action of neurons may well be mechanistic, but the general brain "state" is a snapshot (static) pattern or relationship, which requires a sentient observer to "see". For example, a political "state" is not a physical object or collection of objects, but the collective opinion of those who identify with that particular polity. In mathematical Statistics, a particular "state" is a datum, that in itself has no value, but only in relation to other states or data. Hence, "data" is relevant to "information" & meaning. :smile:
Thus the title, and we have a genuine scientist saying it; but what are the consequences?
On the face of it, the consequences are that, demonstrably, machines can produce moral systems, artistic traditions, religions, science, and philosophies. Who'd of thunk it? Well we would, apparently, because we are simply machines.
That's the idea. It's a refinement of Hilary Putnam's 'multiple realizability'.
Quoting Mark Nyquist
So, do you think in the absence of any mind that basic logical principles such as the law of the excluded middle would not hold? My view would be that the law of the excluded middle and other such simple principles are discovered by rational sentient beings who have the wits to discern them. That such principles are discerned by intelligence, not 'supported by brain state'. The unique thing about them is that they're independent of any particular mind, but only discernable to reason. That is what gives them the status as foundational to rational thought (nous).
Quoting flannel jesus
What about Chomsky's universal grammar?
Quoting Restitutor
That analogy can be extended though. If you have an item of information - say, instructions, or a recipe - that can be represented in any number of languages, or encoded in any number of media (digital, physical, and so on). Provided the information is faithfully replicated in each transformation, then the information stays the same, even if the material form of its presentation is completely different. That is the sense in which meaning can be understood as independent from physical form - as you say.
Quoting Restitutor
Not substance and shape, but substance (hyle) and form (morphe). 'Aristotle explained that "By hyle I mean that which in itself is neither a particular thing nor of a certain quantity nor assigned to any other of the categories by which being is determined." This means that hyle is brought into existence not due to its being its agent or its own actuality but only when form attaches to it. It has been described as a plenum or a field, a conceptualization that opposed Democritus' atomistic ontology. It is maintained that the Aristotelian concept should not be understood as a "stuff" since there is, for example, hyle that is intellectual as well as sensible hyle found in the body' (wiki). So 'form' is a much more subtle concept than 'shape', recall it is ultimately descended from Plato's 'ideas' albeit modified by Aristotle's 'moderate realism'.
Quoting Restitutor
I almost agree, with this caveat: Descartes' principle error was in regarding res cogitans as an object, something that could be conceived of in an objective manner. Husserl's primary objection to Descartes lies in the latter's approach to consciousness. Descartes regards consciousness as 'res cogitans' (thinking substance) and the material world as 'res extensa' (extended substance). Husserl, a phenomenologist, argues that this perspective wrongly subsumes consciousness under the same category as physical objects - by treating it as objective - thereby neglecting the inherently first-person nature of conscious experience.
Husserl contends that consciousness should not be treated as an object within the world but rather as the precondition for the appearance of any such objects, that through which everything objective is disclosed in the first place. He emphasizes the intentionality of consciousness its inherent nature of being about or directed towards objects, and how it constitutes the meaning and essence of things rather than merely perceiving them as physical entities.
This critique is fundamental to Husserl's phenomenological project, which aims to return to the 'things themselves' by examining the structures of experience as they present themselves to awareness, free from either preconceived theories or scientific assumptions. This is the 'phenomenological epoché' or reduction.
There's an entire massive website, The Information Philosopher, Bob Doyle, which is devoted to this idea. It's a constant reference point for me, I guess you know about it already but for the record it's here https://www.informationphilosopher.com/. The index of carefully curated articles about individual philosophers and scientists is a fantastic resource.
Where 'information philosophy' doesn't gel with me, though, is that I see philosophy - as distinct from science - concerned with the question of the nature and meaning of being, not the analysis of objects and their relations. There is an irrevocably first-person perspective required by philosophy, as distinct from science. I feel that prior to the advent of modern thought, this kind of went without saying, because humans hadn't yet reached the point of abstraction where we could stand outside ourselves and treat ourselves and everything else as objects of analysis. We had a more embedded and organic relationship with the Cosmos, which was (regrettably) harnessed to an empirically false cosmological picture. So the shattering of the great medieval synthesis was also a huge existential crisis. This is why the 'embodied philosophy' school that @Joshs mentions above is so crucial, as it re-orients science around 'the human condition' and stops treating humans as mere objects (or machines!) That is very much in keeping with existentialism, phenomenology and the continental schools of philosophy, unlike the scientistic reductionism that is so influential in English-speaking philosophy.
I very much Agree with your wider point. I do think there are some finer points in there that may profit in re-thinking slightly. It could be suggested that the information in a record is not the same as the information being produced by the sound waves you get from playing the record, you may said that the information in the record can be processed by the record player into specific sound waives that contain the specific information that were captured by the wax record. In this construction the information in the record would be different to, but encode for the information in the sound waves.
Really, i think this all comes down to a what your definition of information is down to a degree of precision for which we don't normally think down to meaning reasonable people could be forgiven for disagreeing.
I hadn't herd of Bob Doyle all the website but i will defiantly check them out. I don't get to talk about this with many people normally so its really great to get suggestions from well read people such as yourself.
So you are not liking this information is brain state idea. If I go from physical matter to human brains that hold mental content that is just setting the physical basis for information to exist in a physical world. So being at that point I don't put restrictions on mental content and your rules of logic are part of your mental content. They only exist as brain state, in my view.
Glad to be of help, and as I forgot to previously say, welcome to Philosophyforum.
Quoting Mark Nyquist
It's not a matter of like or dislike. There's a distinction in play between the idea of 'brain states' and 'intentional content'.
Is your term 'intentional content' somehow different from what I call 'mental content'?
I wound say they are the same thing.
In the form of a true/false statement I could state my view as 'intentional content' is derived only from biological brain function. Do you claim that is false?
I know I have an unusual position on this. I've come to think consciousness and how we deal with 'information' are one in the same but our language and culture have confused the issue.
For example when I think of some specific item of information my brain is in the same functional mode as when I'm aware of my own consciousness.
One issue with information is that multiple definitions have developed. I think the brain state definition is the best one scientifically because it's singular, universal and has a physical basis.
The definitions of genetic information, Shannon information and physical information to me are mental projections we give to physical objects that don't have a physical basis. For example genetic information isn't anything functional in the structure of DNA. Its physical form alone is all that is required. Same with Shannon information...the physical signal is all that is required. And physical information, again, a mental projection. Not required for the physics to function.
So does a Swede have Swedish brain states?
Ha... I'm Swedish descent. Don't know how to answer that. Hmmm. Don't speak swedish.
Far removed from Sweden. Family visits so still some connection.
Well there may be variation from time to time in how active our brains are. For example sleeping you are less conscious than being awake.
Mostly I'm saying that information is internal to our brains and not external. Can you flip from being aware of your consciousness to some specific item of information? That's what I mean by being based on the same mode.
I see what you mean. I wonder what differences in brain activity brain scans would reveal in various situations. No, I cannot flip my awareness in your scenario. But I would say the same when comparing being aware of something on the desk, and choosing to pick it up. Have I flipped my awareness in that scenario? Not that I am, uh, aware of. But I have clearly done something different. Something brain scans would surely pick up. I wonder if brain scans would pick anything up in your scenario.
Quoting Wayfarer
I enjoyed reading this. I think Hershel and by extension you are making lots of good points that i agree with. I agree that what consciousness is made out of (in my opinion information) should not be treated as an object within the world but rather as the precondition for the appearance of any such objects, that through which everything objective is disclosed in the first place. I would say that information offers a better framework for this than res cogitans.
The way i arrange the ideas discussed together is best talked about initially as an analogy. Imagine a documentary movie that blends some truth with some conspiracy theory.
On one end of the spectrum, you can imagine somebody who is naïve and who very much believes the narrative of the movie, getting very emotionally invested in it. On the other end of the spectrum maybe you have a knowledgeable person who sees the claims made by the movie are inconsistent with observations and the knowledgeable person also has the ability to generate a narrative about how the producer of the movie is making money from people clicking on the internet link. Both of the movie watchers are watching the same movie that really does exist, it is equally real for both of them.
Evidently the movie that blends some truth with some conspiracy theory analogies to what we conceive of as reality and the movie narrative analogies to the narrative we generate about reality. A naïve realist of a philosopher, like the naïve movie watcher will take their internally generated narrative as essentially true and as such they will tend not to like you casting doubt on its validity. It is impossible for the naïve movie watcher or philosopher to separate fact from fiction unless they are prepared to be skeptical about the narrative. It is impossible to be skeptical about your own internally generated narrative unless you are operating from an abstract perspective.
It is my opinion that it is literally impossible to separate fact from fiction from a first-person perspective. From an abstract perspective we can see how, even when we are sitting still we are moving as we are on the surface of a ball (the earth) moving through space at hundreds of thousands of meters per second. This understanding would be impossible if we were not able to adopt an abstract, non-first-person narrative. Imagine explaining this to somebody non-neurotypical who literally couldnt adopt anything but an embodied first-person perspective.
To be clear I am using the word narrative deliberately. I would argue that people literally generate what I call a narrative model of the world which encompasses, explains and rationalizes all the other models of the world we generate, such as our visual model of the world. Our first-person narrative model seems likely to have evolved first as cognitive less complex animals have it. A first-person narrative model however only lets you see the world from your perspective and so is limited and works best for bottom-up control of behaver. In more cognitively complex animals with humans being the best example, narratives from other peoples, or from an abstract perspective can be generated which excels in creating a framework for top-down control. The first-person narrative we generate is about survival and it is best understood in the framework of evolutionary psychology, understanding our first person narrative of things like lust, fear anger and love in the context of a mechanistic abstract narrative.
Looking at the world through a first-person perspective is only ever going to give you a self-portrait generated by our psychology which is itself is a product of the demands of evolution. If you use this perspective, you will see only what your psychology what you to see. By using an abstract scientific perspective based on predictive narratives (predictive narratives make provable predictions) we can generate a portrait of ourselves which is undistorted by our egos and psychologies. Michael Gazzaniga talks about narrative generation in split brain patients in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJKloz2vwlc&list=PL8AD2B712B1A0578F&index=3
Getting back to Hershel and the think in its self. I would suggest there is an ineffable world which exists and is sometimes called fundamental reality, sometimes called the quantum foam. As the word ineffable suggests we do not have direct access to this world. All we and other organisms can do is represent this world using different models of varying complexity. Humans have several very complex conjoined representative models which together make up a very large portion of what we call consciousness. This is epitomized the fact that we have a retinotopic map of objects in the world in our brains. This video about retinotopic maps really speaks to what I am saying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhFJIgeY-ZY
I also like how Joscha Bach thinks about a lot of it. And these are my favorite videos of his.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRdJCFEqFTU&list=PL-zlSLDa0oJp1vAGAbhIaDwMz2Og4rzsg&index=4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5nJ5l6dl2s&list=PL-zlSLDa0oJp1vAGAbhIaDwMz2Og4rzsg&index=5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3K5UxWRRuY&list=PL-zlSLDa0oJp1vAGAbhIaDwMz2Og4rzsg&index=6
Quoting Restitutor
An important difference between Husserls phenomenological approach ( which strongly influenced enactivist 4EA theories) and the videos you link to is that Husserl doesnt presume an ineffable world beyond our experience of it. There is no veil between the world and our experience of it. We are always in direct context with the world via some mode of givenness ( recollection, perception, etc). There is no original territory our constructions model or map.
Dan Zahavi connects the above thinking with a neo-Kantian metaphysics.
Husserl isn't sacred to me and i don't mind being at odds with him. This said i don't think what i think and what you highlight Husserl as thinking to be as dissimilar as you may be suggesting. Much of it may be reconciled by different ideas about the the word ineffable. In one sense the world is ineffable as we can not directly commune with it, by which i mean you can't bring the physicals external world into you brain or mind for that matter. The best we can do in terms of communing with the fundamental reality is to extract information from it and model that information it the physical structure of our brains and then commune with that representation. For me, the representation of fundamental reality can have as much "truth" to it as any representation of anything can. This would mean that we can commune with fundamental reality through extracting information and making models out of the information, it is just that can't directly. commune with fundamental reality in the absence of these models. The word directly being important.
I do think it would be a mistake to make no distinction between the retinotopic map of an object our consciousness accesses and the physicals object its self in the world. I would argue that science demands it by virtue of how it says visual perception works.
Not all science of perception makes this assumption.
Francisco Varela contrasts the old representational realist model of perception with the enactivist approach, in which perceiving is not representing a pre-given world but guided action:
Quoting Restitutor
The reason I reacted against the OP in the way I did, was because I took this as an expression of the kind of scientific materialism which I'll always argue against for the reasons I've given.
Once you begin to take into account the way in which mind constructs world, youve already moved some way from that, you're reflecting philosophically on the nature of knowledge.
But:
Quoting Restitutor
'Communing with fundamental reality' brings to mind something very different from 'representation'. It brings to mind Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's 'flow state' - where you are completely absorbed in what you are doing, to the extent you loose all sense of time and place. It might also bring to mind states of absorption that are encountered in yogic meditation, which is related to the 'flow state'. It is a felt and lived reality, a state of being, rather than a representation.
Besides, once you subject the idea of representation of reality to analysis it opens up many cans of worms - like, how do you compare the representation with the reality? To compare it, you would have to know what the reality is, so you wouldn't need a representation, but if you don't know what the reality is, then you can't compare it. (Also notice the excerpt from physicist Wheeler in this post about the 'observer problem' in quantum physics.)
I've run across Joscha Bach mainly in references from other sources - obviously a very smart guy but I don't have time at the moment to go through the lectures (seems to be a useful summary here. He does seem to throw shade on 'physicalist realism' i.e. here). Another of similar ilk is James B Glattfelder's Information, Consciousness and Reality, although I think he's less materialist in overall outlook.
There's a huge ferment of philosophical, scientific and spiritual ideas welling up on the Internet. My current listening includes Bernardo Kastrup, who's a computer scientist and idealist philosopher. He's a very effective critic of philosophical materialism in my view. I've put the case for a type of phenomenological idealism in the thread The Mind Created World..
I Just watched a bit of a video of enactivist and Francisco Varela which means i understand the last sentence. I just don't understand how the quote relates to it. I don't understand how it can be argued that retinotopic maps and objects that reflect light are two different things.
inactivist argument is "Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing else: you lay down a pay in walking" (Antonio Machado, borrowed by Varela). Honestly, sounds a little mushy. The didn't seem to be saying no information captured by any sense organs is in any way representative of anything using the common meaning of represent, and retinotopic maps aren't a thing.
I am down with the idea we create the frameworks that our reality is built out of. Everything is a construction of the mine, models within models and it is all contextual and there is likely to be all sorts of environmental feedback, giving rise to evolutionary psychology. Taking that to sense organs do no present the brain with any information that could in any way be said to be representational seems plainly wrong.
Quoting Joshs
Evan Thompson deals with this issue in depth in his book Mind in Life. I believe the correspondence you are referring to above between a retinotopic map and perceived objects is what he calls analytical isomorphism,
I may be opening a new can of [s]worms[/s] neurons here. But, I wonder if AI mechanisms --- emulating brain states --- can reason*1 (infer novel ideas), or do they just compute (add & subtract via parallel processing)? Some people seem to assume that self-programming computers (non-biological machines) are reasoning*2. Does reasoning require some non-mechanical non-linear (1+1+1+ ~ +1 = X) feature, in order to discover X the unknown?*3
For example, Quantum physics has determined that the matter a machine is made of is fundamentally non-deterministic*4. Do the non-local & indeterminate properties of sub-atomic matter provide lower-level-loopholes to allow our biological machines (brains) to make unpredictable-illogical-paradoxical quantum leaps of reasoning? Does Rational Inference require some emotional commitment?*5
Does the human brain have some non-mechanical feature/quality (e.g. Holism ; multi-level integration of sub-systems) that overcomes the physical limitations of a deterministic mechanical system? Does that freedom from material & linear-logical bondage allow the feedback loops that we call "Consciousness"? Not sayin', just askin'. Hmmm. :chin:
*1. [i]To Reason vs To Compute :
Reason and calculate are semantically related. In some cases you can use "Reason" instead a verb "Calculate".
Calculate verb - To decide the size, amount, number, or distance of (something) without actual measurement.
Reason verb - To form an opinion or reach a conclusion through reasoning and information.[/i]
https://thesaurus.plus/related/calculate/reason
*2. Reasoning in AI :
In fact, for centuries, it was the ability to reason that set humans apart from other animals and machines. But now, with the reasoning in AI, that distinction has been breached.
https://emeritus.org/in/learn/what-is-reasoning-in-ai/
*3. What Artificial Intelligence Still Cant Do :
[i]1) Use common sense.
2) Learn continuously and adapt on the fly.
3) Understand cause and effect.
4) Reason ethically.[/i]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brandonkochkodin/2023/11/19/a-trove-of-precious-gemstones-was-appraised-at-32-billion-the-mischief-around-it-is-priceless/?sh=6414bc541186
*4. Why is quantum physics not deterministic? :
Quantum mechanics is non-deterministic because it has to incorporate two incompatible properties into one whole.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-quantum-physics-not-deterministic
*5. Emotions as Inferences :
This chapter reviews emotions as inferences. The process of understanding principles is tractable, whereas the work of following them is not. It also suggests a solution as to why emotions are puzzling. In addition, it illustrates how emotions and reasoning influence one another
https://academic.oup.com/book/11984/chapter-abstract/161227867?redirectedFrom=fulltext
I would say the latter. Reasoning requires something else - like motive, for a start. Curiosity would be one. Distress might be another, or seeking advantage. Note the connection between reason and purpose, which was implicit in earlier philosophy, now called into question in everything, hence the nihilism of much of modern thought.
So in your estimation, "much of modern thought" lacks purpose? Maybe if you clarify what you mean in this context by "purpose", Wayf, I'll grok this statement better.
in your comment to Gnomon.
I notice a connection between reason and purpose. That the reason for something being, or happening, also implies its purpose. That is what is implicit in Aristotle's 'telos', and conversely the rejection of telos or teleological principles, implies 'purposelessness'.
Other than Zarathustra, I'm not familiar with Nietzsche's opinions on Reason & Purpose. But one definition of Nihilism may shed some light*1. It seems to equate the emotional "emptiness" of an apathetic-materialistic-mechanistic worldview with a lack of values*1 (Ethics ; Axiology). Yet, maybe our post-enlightenment pragmatic values are appropriately Instrumental (means), and only lack the feeling of idealistic Intrinsic values (ultimate ends). Can't we have both Kirk's Feeling and Spock's Reasoning?
Your response to 's challenge to define "purpose" is spot-on ; but then he may not share your philosophical purposes/values. The pre-enlightenment epitome of "Good" was God. So, what ultimate value could fill that role today? Perhaps you can address the question of "higher" values/purposes, in the context of a modern materialistic-mechanistic worldview. :cool:
*1. Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.
https://iep.utm.edu/nihilism/
Note --- I'm guessing that he was rejecting only "higher" values, not base values.
*2. Value Theory :
Traditionally, philosophical investigations in value theory have sought to understand the concept of "the good". . . . . It is useful to distinguish between instrumental and intrinsic values.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_theory
*3. Nihilism :
It has been over a century now since Nietzsche explored nihilism and its implications for civilization. As he predicted, nihilisms impact on the culture and values of the 20th century has been pervasive, its apocalyptic tenor spawning a mood of gloom and a good deal of anxiety, anger, and terror. Interestingly, Nietzsche himself, a radical skeptic preoccupied with language, knowledge, and truth, anticipated many of the themes of postmodernity. Its helpful to note, then, that he believed we could at a terrible price eventually work through nihilism. If we survived the process of destroying all interpretations of the world, we could then perhaps discover the correct course for humankind.
https://iep.utm.edu/nihilism/
Note --- Apparently, the post-modern reaction merely meekly accepted the meandering uncharted course resulting from the rejection of Imperial Religion. Could there be a new star to steer by, that avoids the extremes of divine Theocracy and despotic Autocracy? Ironically, Tr*mpism may combine the worst of both paths.
Okay, clearer, though this observation concerns modern science and not, as you have said, "much of modern thought", and does not entail "nihilism" either (pace Nietzsche; vide Spinoza & vide Peirce). Apparently, you prefer pre-modern science ... :mask:
It seems to me like "purpose" is all over the modern sciences. Functional explanations in biology are filled with references to the purpose of organelles, organs, etc. All of the social sciences have purpose deeply bound up with their explanations of phenomena.
When I teach introductory economics courses, I am constantly talking about the goals of individuals and organizations. It would be impossible to teach introductory college classes in a whole host of fields without references to paradigm grounding theories based around purpose. E.g., in social psychology, "cognitive dissonance," and "the fundemental attribution error," make no sense without reference to purpose.
To be sure, you have some biologists who run around telling everyone that appeals to function "can only ever be short hand for describing truly purposeless events," but not everyone buys what they are selling. In any event, such arguments always seem to be more grounded in philosophy, than empirical evidence. I don't see how it could be otherwise. We observe our own purposes all the time. Arguments that they are illusory tend to go back to "elemental building blocks," i.e. making ontological claims about what essentially "is," and then use ontological claims to radically reinterpret empirical data.
"Purposelessness," as some sort of "bedrock idea" seems to me to be more a historical - philosophical moment, starting with the decline of idealism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and letting up more recently. What's the rock solid argument for purposelessness that doesn't rest on the idea that all phenomena can be explained in terms of (apparently) purposeless smaller parts?
It seems to me like the most common scientific response to largely philosophical claims about the essential and apparent meaningless and purposelessness of "the world" has been to shrug, say "well that's just philosophy," and to go right on assuming purpose exists in theories. Only is biology does this become a flash point. Physics and chemistry don't deal with things that seem to have purposes and the social sciences don't seem to take the "no purpose" claim seriously (how could they?)
:up: :up:
It's not that modern science dispenses with "purpose" categorically, only that telos in almost ever case of natural phenomena does not explain anything (like g/G). Anachronists like @Wayfarer usually forget that Aristotle's teleology (i.e. finalism) falsely "predicts" that the vacuum is impossible horror vacui because one "purpose" of matter is to fill space whenever possible; and that one of the brain's "purposes" is to be a radiator that cools the heart and blood. "Geocentrism" (later exemplified by Ptolemy's model and its epicycles) is also a consequence of this sort of occult storytelling (e.g. because the "purpose" of heavier matter is to fall to the center of things and lighter things like stars to stay far from the center). :roll:
"corrected" 's observation that "much of modern thought" is Nihilistic*1. But I think he missed the point. Way didn't say that "modern science" is nihilistic, but "modern thought". Which I'm guessing is a reference to academic Philosophy, or the philosophy of science, or more generally Post-Modern philosophy*2 --- not a denigration of pragmatic Science per se. Maybe Way will clarify his referent, but I doubt he was concerned about the lack of ethical values in practical scientific endeavors.
Like you, I have seen multiple uses of the term "Purpose" in scientific papers. But they are usually referring to the apparent objectives of local organs or organisms, not the universal purpose of a divine creator*3. However, it seems strange that scientists infer purposeful behavior in creatures, but don't attempt to trace that teleological trail back to its original impulse. Perhaps, due to professional concern about the controversial implications of what they might find.
When astronomers tracked cosmic cause & effect back to a point-of-origin, they found evidence for an (ex nihilo???) "creation" event --- which could be interpreted in terms of one's religious myths. But such circumstantial evidence could also be interpreted in terms of non-religious philosophical concepts, such as a logically necessary First Cause or Prime Mover --- or even a Multiverse. Unfortunately, such abstract hypothetical concepts, in themselves, can't provide much motivation for personal Purpose, to find the best way to live in an "apparently" mechanical world.
But if we interpret the obvious step-by-step progression of evolution as-if it's something like a computer program, at least we may be able to infer, hypothetically, where Nature came from and where it's going. Moreover, since we have learned that the foundations of physics are not rigidly determinate or mechanical*4, we may see a role for human Will --- guided by philosophical principles --- in reaching our own little goals. :nerd:
*1. Quote from post in this thread :
Okay, clearer, though this observation concerns modern science and not, as you have said, "much of modern thought", and does not entail "nihilism" either (pace Nietzsche; vide Spinoza & vide Peirce). Apparently, you prefer pre-modern science ..
*2. Does postmodernism entail nihilism? :
Postmodernism is the stance that meaning isn't universal and outside ourselves. Nihilism is the stance that meaning is essentially a fiction.
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/49588/does-postmodernism-entail-nihilism
*3. Darwins Greatest Discovery: Design Without Designer :
Darwin accepted that organisms are designed for certain purposes, that is, they are functionally organized.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK254313/
*4. Quantum Non-Mechanics :
The Quantum Universe in which we live, whether we want to accept it or not, may seem on the surface to be mechanical and linear but it is not.
https://larrygmaguire.medium.com/quantum-theory-proves-that-time-does-not-exist-5d0357a2a47b
I locate it earlier, with the division of the world into mind and matter, the Cartesian-Galilean paradigm that characterises early modern science. I already cited this quote but will continue to refer to it as it succinctly describes the issue:
[quote=Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp35-36]The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. [/quote]
Recall that in the heady days of early modernity the new sciences, initiated chiefly by Newton, were thought to be universal in scope, to apply to every kind of phenomenon without exception. Modern scientific materialism, still being carried forward by Daniel Dennett and other materialist philosophers. I daresay the original poster, who seems to have gone dark, holds to some version of it.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Biology is the science of life and as we ourselves are living beings, it encompasses the study of h. sapiens. But it too easily becomes reductionist, not by eschewing purpose, but by bringing it under the headings understood by biology - chiefly concerned with survival and propogation, the 'four f's' of evolutionary biology. After all, biology is hardly concerned with the reasons for existence in any sense other than the functional. That's what biologists were trying to differentiate with the invention of 'teleonomy' to describe 'apparent purpose' and differentiate it from 'actual purposes'.
There's a philosopher of biology, Steve Talbott, who's essays I encountered in The New Atlantis. He's an elegant writer on reductionism in biology, one example being What do Organisms Mean? He provides an account of the different kinds of reason - the reason of physical causation, and the reasons that underlie human motivation ('the "because" of reasons'). He then argues that the latter kind of reasoning - purposive reasoning - underlies biological processes from the very outset. That the whole metaphor of mechanism and mechanistic cause and effect when applied to biology, fails to do justice to what organisms are (hence the title!)
Insofar as modern thought takes science to be the arbiter of reality, and insofar as science construes the world as solely consisting of objects and relations, then plainly it posits a meaningless world. It is of course true that that is something of a caricature, but then again, its also not far from the facts of the matter.
You mean "modern thought" which includes being espoused by (philosophers like) Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Bergson, Peirce, Husserl, Cassirer, Wittgenstein, Adorno, Sartre et al? (Please spare me / us your usual litany of cherry-picked quotations in lieu of your own reasoning or arguments) Your anti-science 'scientistc reduction' of "modern thought" (i.e. the cultural west), Wayfarer, is not even wrong. :eyes:
No, much narrower than that. Modern thought as in the accepted wisdom, what the man in the street thinks. And please spare me your antagonistic cynicism.
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: Ludicrous, cop-out Wayf, even for a lifelong working class, prole like me!
You want cherry picking? Here's some for ya:
Quoting Restitutor
Quoting Restitutor
Quoting Restitutor
Quoting Restitutor
Quoting Restitutor
Quoting Restitutor
Quoting Restitutor
Of course, nobody actually *thinks* this stuff. 180 knows better. :lol:
None of those are examples of the kind of materialism I had in mind. If I could be bothered, I could produce a list of those who were.
But I can't be.
Of those philosophers you mentioned, only Marx and Sartre were arguably materialist, but Marxist economic materialism is a different thing to the kind of mechanist materialism I have in mind, and which the OP represents. Schopenhauer and Kant were both trenchant critics of materialism, as were Bergson, Husserl, Cassirer and Wittgenstein.
My critique of scientific materialism is that it is based on extrapolating the scientific metholody for which classical physics was the paradigm to the wider domain of philosophy and wisdom about life in general. And this is a pervasive tendency deeply embedded in modern culture, as many of those same philosophers you have mentioned also attest. As Ray Monk, Wittgenstein's biographer said, 'His work is opposed, as he once put it, to "the spirit which informs the vast stream of European and American civilisation in which all of us stand." Nearly 50 years after his death, we can see, more clearly than ever, that the feeling that he was swimming against the tide was justified. If we wanted a label to describe this tide, we might call it "scientism," the view that every intelligible question has either a scientific solution or no solution at all. It is against this view that Wittgenstein set his face.'
As do I. So why my posts provoke such a never-ending stream of vituperation from you is not at all clear to me, but it is exceedingly tiresome, and the least productive and useful aspect of my participation here, so you will forgive me if in future I fail to response to your needless provocations.
seems to envision his role on this forum as a Socratic gad-fly pecking & poking the transcendent pretensions of quixotic philosophy. But in practice, he sounds more like Poe's rapping-tapping raven, constantly croaking "nevermore", and preaching "despair" for those who wish to distinguish idealistic Philosophy from pragmatic Science. You'll do well to not open the door. :cool:
PS___But sometimes it's hard to resist responding to some blood-dripping tid-bit of provocation. That may be because he so craftily encapsulates the essence of shadowy Scientism into open-ended leading questions. :joke:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/855848
You're flapping around, sir, out of your depth again.
I see the Galileo connection more than the Newton one. I feel like you could almost call 20th century reductive materialism "neo-mechanism," because it turns back to "particles in contact" as the ground of ontology.
Newton's influence seems less clear to me because the idea of sui generis forces that act at a distance allowed for all sorts of ideas that included purpose. You had purpose coming from vital force as its own essential unique type of "fundemental force," and all sorts of "scientistic mysticism" in the late 19th century.
IMO though, the success of neo-mechanism has plenty to do with the philosophical, religious, and social context of the late-19th and early 20th century. It didn't just support a new way of looking at the sciences, but an entire "world view," on a level with the religion its advocates were self-consciously attempting to supplant.
Purpose seems to explain plenty to me, from the shape of hemoglobin to why people will face the wrong way in an elevator if everyone else is doing it.
It seems to me like the case for the abandonment of purpose in explanations is tied to formulations of the causal closure principle when it is paired with certain assumptions about what must be ontologically basic and "fundemental." I do think this is a major mistake in modern thinking. There is nothing even approaching consensus for a way CC can be coherently formulated. Despite this, even critics of CC will say things like:
[B]But the above is only true if we assume that the emergence of purpose in the world is necessarily non-physical and/or not fundemental.[/b] Note how the above conflates "physical and ontologically fundemental," with the label "physical." Yet purpose is quite obvious to us, so if CC is true, purpose must be accounted for coherently.
And, while CC can't be properly defined, neither can "physical" (Hemple's dilemma). This leads me to think the CC is mostly just a good way to accidently beg a whole boat load of questions. If you don't have a good definition of "physical," and what it means for "all things to be physical" despite the ostentatiously true fact of "mental life existing," then I don't see what CC does for us that the Principle of Sufficent Reason didn't already do with less problems. The big thing for me is that the entire "mental causes"/"physical causes" seems to presuppose a sort of dualism that I don't believe is warranted, let alone something that should be dogmatically enforced.
There is plenty of empirical evidence to support the idea that the mental and the physical flow into each other seemlessly. But if CC is formulated in terms that "the mental is physical," then I don't think it explains much of anything. It reduces to "all real things have only real causes."
I meant that Newtons laws of motion were universal not in the sense of explaining everything - gravity being the obvious omission - but in unifying so many hitherto disparate phenomena under a single set of laws. That was the context in which physics starting to be seen as paradigmatic for all science and indeed all knowledge. All I see, said one of the Enlightenment philosophes are bodies in motion.
Furthermore that the predictions of the physical sciences were independent of context. That is where the big difference is found with biology in which every process is contextual.
Talbott contrasts the language of physics, which adheres to strict, invariable mathematical laws, with the language of biology, which is imbued with meaning and intention. Physical laws do not require interpretation, they are fixed and deterministic. However, the biological world relies on what is termed the "because of reason" an understanding that goes beyond mechanical interactions to include purpose, adaptation, and intentional action. Biological entities don't just follow physical laws; they interact in ways that create and respond to meaning, shaping their identity and function in relation to their environment. (Hence the adoption of biosemiotics.) This dynamic, expressive interaction is likened to language, where context and intent are essential. The biologist, therefore, must consider the full tapestry of meaning, which encompasses aesthetics, intention, and wholeness, to understand organisms fully. This approach rejects a purely mechanistic view and emphasizes the interconnectedness of all living things within a "community of meaning." The text suggests that biology's true challenge is to reconcile its language of meaning with the underlying physical laws, moving beyond a dated language of mechanisms to one that acknowledges the rich, interconnected fabric of life.
Steve Talbott emphasizes that biological processes and entities, while obeying physical laws, are imbued with an 'inwardness' or 'meaning' not found in inanimate objects (this is the origin of the hard problem). Meaning in biology does not necessarily equate to human consciousness but is a form of directed nature seen in cellular processes and organic behaviors. Biological systems, from the molecular to the organismal level, are governed by a "because of reason" that is more qualitative and less deterministic than the laws of physics.
The text also touches on the concept of causality, distinguishing it from the laws of physics. It argues that causes in biology are more context-dependent and less predictable than physical laws, which are more invariant and universally applicable. Biological organisms are complex systems where multiple factors and processes interact in a dynamic and meaningful way, and this complexity cannot be fully captured by simple cause-and-effect explanations. Furthermoe organisms are invariably situated in and conditioned by an environment, which to all intents can be disregarded for the purposes of physics.
Finally, the text challenges the traditional materialist view in science, which neglects the qualitative aspects of life and inwardness of organisms, and suggests that understanding organisms requires acknowledging and studying these qualitative aspects. It calls for a biology that not only respects physical laws but also appreciates the rich, meaning-laden interactions that characterize living beings. This involves recognizing that organisms are more than mere machines and that the because of reason is fundamental to understanding biological processes. The text implies that biology may offer a more foundational understanding of the world than physics because it deals directly with life and meaning, which are closer to our own experience as living beings.
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/what-do-organisms-mean
The classical mechanistic model of physics was formulated by Newton*1, but I wasn't familiar with the Neo-Mechanistic Model (NMM)*2. My understanding is that Newton's deterministic mechanics was called into question by the indeterminism of Quantum physics. Yet, for most practical scientific purposes, classical physics is still applicable, on the macro scale. But, what about the cosmic scale?
For speculative philosophical purposes, Newton's notion of a divinely-designed Cosmic Mechanism was forced to adapt to the new reality of a non-mechanical foundation. Fundamentally, the world mechanism seems to have some degree of freedom to evolve in unpredictable directions. Some might interpret that uncertainty to directionless randomness, while others will see it as providing opportunities for progression in complexity, and perhaps for freewill choices.
A quick google makes NMM sound like the doctrine of Scientism*3 : the world is a physical mechanism grinding on interminably, without original impulse or final output. Hence no direction or reason. And especially, no creation event or transcendent origin. So, I'm guessing that NMM is more of a reactionary*4 worldview than a scientific model. It retains Newton's Laws, but omits G*D's Laws. Does that inference sound correct to you?
As you suggested, Scientism seems to provide some of the essential functions of a religious worldview*5 --- except of course, the emotional values that stem from belief in a prescient guiding hand behind the vagaries of nature. Perhaps the universal extent & power of physical Nature is close enough for pragmatic purposes*6. In the Age of Spiritual Machines*7, I suppose online forums may serve the communal purpose of a church. :smile:
*1. Classical mechanics :
The "classical" in "classical mechanics" does not refer to classical antiquity, . . . Instead, the qualifier distinguishes classical mechanics from physics developed after the revolutions of the early 20th century, which revealed limitations of classical mechanics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_mechanics
*2. The Neo-Mechanistic Model :
They seek to explain how something works and not make claims about the ultimate reality of things.
https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/81693
*3. Doctrine of Scientism :
"The belief that the methods of natural science, or the categories and things recognized in natural science, form the only proper elements in any philosophical or other inquiry", or that "science, and only science, describes the world as it is in itself, independent of perspective" with a concomitant "elimination of the psychological [and spiritual] dimensions of experience".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
Note --- For philosophical (cultural science) purposes, personal perspectives are inherent, since their objects are entirely subjective. And their focus is primarily on psychological "experience". Which is obviously "natural", but clearly not empirical.
*4. Reactionary : return to status quo
*5. What is the philosophical definition of religion?
Religion attempts to offer a view of all of life and the universe and to offer answers to most , if not all, of the most basic and important questions which occur to humans all over the planet. The answers offered by Religion are not often subject to the careful scrutiny of reason and logic.
https://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialSciences/ppecorino/PHIL_of_RELIGION_TEXT/CHAPTER_1_OVERVIEW/Philosophy_of_Religion.htm
Note --- Even philosophical Reason is suspect for those opposed to traditional religions. In its place we substitute documented Observation. Ironically, for some of us secular Philosophy provides universal answers without the necessity for a formal Creed or Authorized Bible. Adherents of Scientism seem to assume that there is, somewhere out there, an official document of scientific Truth --- but I haven't seem it.
*6. Scientism :
Mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, in his 1971 essay "The New Universal Church", characterized scientism as a religion-like ideology that advocates scientific reductionism, scientific authoritarianism, political technocracy and technological salvation, while denying the epistemological validity of feelings and experiences such as love, emotion, beauty and fulfillment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
*7. The Age of Spiritual Machines is the ultimate guide on our road into the next century.
https://www.amazon.com/Age-Spiritual-Machines-Computers-Intelligence/dp/0140282025
PS___ Perhaps the primary advantage of Scientism is that, in theory, it provides hard (empirical) evidence to disprove aspects (beliefs) of traditional religions that one does not agree with. But, in practice we still seem to have never-ending philosophical dialogs & disputes about those age-old non-empirical open-questions. :cool:
Feelings. These play a significant role in the choices we make. We could simulate the role of feelings in software, but neither the hardware nor software would actually experience feelings.
We might sometimes be surprised by our own emotional reactions to things.
So while we could program reactions into software that would give the outward appearance of an emotion we think we would feel to a given situation, aside from, as you say, it being a sham, we would all sometimes disagree with the programming. So who gets to decide?
Anyhow, IMO teleology seems alive and well, it's just been naturalized and given the name "function," or gets framed in terms of "constraint." I see nothing wrong with this. There is definitely a sense in which "eyes are for seeing." If eyes didn't see, we wouldn't have them.
But it's useful to distinguish between teleological explanations that appear to invoke first person experience and volition versus ones that simply focus on the appearance or likellyhood of an end state given the characteristics of that end state.
End states can't "cause themselves," without retrocausality. But even explanations of purposeful human behavior don't hinge on retrocausality, so this opposition turns out to be simply a strawman.
The fact is that, even if end states are causally inefficacious, equilibrium-based explanations have significant explanatory power. E.g., "why do balloons take on their spherical shape?" The equilibrium-based answer is based on the characteristics end state (equalizing pressure), and while we could explain it in other terms, it doesn't seem possible to explain a good deal of physics without taking into accounts the idea of constraint. For example, I have only seen explanations of the formation of quark condensate in terms of the overall stability of fields.
What we have here seems to be a difference between "top down" and "bottom up" explanations. The first appeals to general principles, laws, etc. that dictate ends, whereas the latter deals with decomposition and parts.
The preference for bottom up explanations is sometimes grounded in the idea that only these can explain the "causal chain of events" undergirding phenomena. This seems justifiable in some cases, but not all. We can't describe the process by which a volume of hydrogen gas reaches equilibrium in terms of the collisions of molecules as mechanism supposed. Top down law like behavior ends up being essential to explain why we end up with a classical world that at first glance looks like it will require only bottom up explanations.
This is important because the demand for only bottom up explanations and the rejection of any form of telology, no matter how naturalized, seems to be grounded in metaphysical assumptions about how wholes must decompose into their parts. I don't think such assumptions are generally warranted.
At the same time, the teleological explanation the focuses on the end state can often be more accurate and parsimonious. Indeed, we often build our causal theories of [I]how[/I] equilibrium is reached only [I]after[/I] equilibrium laws are formulated, a sort of retroactive and often speculative flip to preference the bottom up explanation. Similarly, the empirical support for the top down tendency can be great, while support for the supposed bottom up causal mechanism can be weak (e.g. market equilibriums). This is a problem when it makes us conflate our certainly regarding the general tendency with a certainty regarding our explanation of it.
I used to think this had to do with the preferencing of the more "certain" sciences. E.g., Vico's list of "the new science," where mathematics is the most certain, then physics, then chemistry, etc. But I've realized this can't be right, because these fields very often focus on top down explanations. Rather, it seems more grounded in a metaphysics of decomposablity, the belief in a single "fundemental level" to being.
Maybe such a thing can be discovered. But even if it is, it still seems like it might be impossible to preference one type of explanation over an other, which means the characteristics of end states will remain important in explaining how they come into being - telology or telonomy if you like.
I suppose you can still see top down explanations as "mechanistic," but they seem more "organic" in ways.
Unfortunately, all of us world observers are physically limited to seeing open-ended "chains" of events without beginnings or endings. Admittedly, we star-gazing homo sapiens, having emerged in the middle of the story of cosmic evolution, can physically see only the mid-range links in the chain of change. But some of us curious creatures are un-satisfied with our physical limitations, so we engage our metaphysical powers (reason) in order to expand our view to see over the horizon.
For example, by combining current observations with rational imagination, astronomers were able to construct a hypothetical model of the sudden beginning of the space-time continuum. And yet, that based-on-actual-events fictional picture of a Big Bang is necessarily fuzzy, and subject to various interpretations. Likewise, ancient philosophers, sans telescopes, traced their historical chain-of-events back toward the beginning, and inferred the logical necessity for a First Link. Consequently, they also deduced the necessity for a Final Link in a mechanical causal process that shows no signs of being self-existent.
The philosophers seem to think in terms of whole systems, while the mechanists are content to deal only with the parts of the system that come readily to hand. So, teleology is a holistic worldview, while teleonomy is a more narrowly-focused cosmology. Unfortunately, the rigidly-hierarchical unitary perspective is now associated with some disreputable behaviors by the human rulers of top-heavy imperial religions in the past. Therefore, those who have suffered the abuses of centralized power, are wary of heavy-handed top-down command ; apparently preferring the vagaries of a piecemeal fragmented process of cosmic construction.
But, what if adamant law-based top-down Design is combined with the freedom of bottom-up Exploration of options (descent with modifications). That's what Darwin observed in his theory of a deterministic Selection Algorithm choosing from among indeterminate Randomized Options. Since the origins of the evolutionary chain are shrouded in the mists of obscure events, maybe semi-autonomous Teleonomy is more apt than autocratic Teleology to describe the wandering world-system we experience. :smile:
Teleology vs Teleonomy :
By decomposing the universe into free-floating chunks, materialists can more easily avoid dealing with indications of Teleology in evolution. The idea would be to eliminate the more robust commonsense notion of function and replace it with a deflationist theoretical conception to replace teleology with teleonomy. Teleonomy is future-oriented only in retrospect, not in prospect. However, for higher holistic organisms, teleological intention is a sign of rational, self-interested behavior. However, in altruistic humans, self-interest includes the interests of the community as a whole, and loved-ones in particular. Thats why Feser raises the explanatory gap in science regarding the emergence of Life, Consciousness, and Rationality. The Aristotelian holds that sentient life is irreducible to merely vegetative life . . . . And the Aristotelian holds that rational life is irreducible to mere sentience. Thats because those holistic functions are more-than the sum of their parts. The emergence of a new whole system (or sub-system; or holon) is always accompanied by novel properties and functions.
https://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page76.html
PS___ Those who, like Ed Feser, argue in favor of top-down Teleology --- read by Atheists as "Theology" --- like to use the term "irreducible", because their concept of cosmology is Holistic instead of Reductionistic. Yet, Holism seems anachronistic (e.g. New Age) to those whose worldview began in 17th century Europe with Mechanism & Materialism. So, in order to dodge that anti-religion bias, I'm willing to use the tepid term Teleonomy, to keep the discussion on a philosophical plane. :cool:
Interestingly enough Aristotle does distinguish telos from ergon, which is usually translated as 'function'; and furthermore, in defining ergon, he does seem to equivocate between the activity involved and the end-product. Thus the ergon of a sculptor is a sculpture - the product of doing 'well'; whereas the ergon of the eye is seeing - the process of visually apprehending 'well'.
The ergon of a human being in this context is eudaimonia, living 'well' in the sense of 'good' living.
I wonder if this distinction might illuminate the machine/organism distinction. Both machine and organism may have ergon/function, but the telos is a feature of the living 'purposive' being, even if the telos is no more than Darwin's survival to reproduce.
tldr: Feedback produces circular causation, like a thermostat regulates a heating system that operates the thermostat. This produces "in effect" a system with a purpose - to maintain a temperature between limits. Human bodies and living things do the same or similar things to maintain themselves in dynamic equilibrium. It would be foolish to try and understand a heating system without reference to its purpose; one could make no sense, for example, of its having "gone wrong". Understanding is another purposive relationship with feedback.