On Purpose
A primer on enactivism and embodied cognition.
The question of whether life, the universe, and everything is in any sense meaningful or purposeful is one that entertains many minds in our day. The mainstream view is probably that the Universe in itself is meaningless, and that whatever meaning we seek or see is projected or manufactured by us, as biological and social beings. The universe itself is kind of a blank slate, atoms and the void, in Democritus terms, constantly being re-arranged through energetic dynamics into a never-ending cascade of forms.
However the question of purpose, or its lack, doesnt always require invoking some grand cosmic meaning. Meaning and purpose are discovered first in the intelligibility of ordinary lifein the way we write, behave, build, and think. The moment we ask whether something is meaningful, were already inhabiting a world structured by purposes. Furthermore, the belief that the Universe is purposeless is itself a judgement about meaning. Asking what this purpose might be, in the abstract, is almost a red herring - it doesnt really exist in the abstract, but it is inherent in the purposeful activities of beings of all kinds, human and other. It is, as it were, woven into the fabric.
We might further say that purpose does not only belong to the realm of human consciousness, but is implicit in life itself. Even the most rudimentary organisms behave as if directed toward ends: seeking nutrients, avoiding harm, maintaining internal equilibrium. Nothing in the inorganic realm displays these (or any!) behaviours. This kind of directednesswhat might be called biological intentionalityis not yet consciously purposeful, but it is not mechanical either. It reflects the organisms orientation toward a world that matters to it in some way. As Hans Jonas observed (in Phenomenology of Biology), the living being is concern, and this concern is inseparable from its form and function. To live is already to be oriented toward something beyond mere material presenceto act in terms of what matters so as to preserve itself against the second law of thermodynamics. That it does this, is the signal difference between living and non-living. Life is negentropic swimming against the tendency towards ever-greater disorder that is shown everywhere else.
Telos, Teleology, and Teleonomy
Much of the debate about purpose revolves around an ancient idea, telos. The ancient Greek term telos simply means end, goal, or purpose. For Aristotle, it was a foundational conceptnot just in ethics and politics, where human purpose is self-evident, but in nature as well. "Nature," he writes in Politics, "does nothing in vain." He believed that things have intrinsic ends: the acorn strives to become the oak; the eye is for seeing; the human being is naturally oriented toward reason and society.
This way of thinking made perfect sense in a world where observation and common experience guided inquiry. But in his Physics, Aristotle extended teleology into cosmology, famously asserting that heavy bodies fall because their natural place is the center of the earth. This kind of explanationwhile meaningful in its own contextwas ultimately, and righfully, displaced by the rise of modern mechanics. Galileo showed that bodies do not fall because of their purpose, but due to forces and motions that could be described mathematically, without reference to final causes. Physics since then has largely dispensed with teleology (to the point where it was practically a taboo!)
But biology is another matter. Living things are not simply acted upon by forces they grow, develop, repair, adapt and evolve. Throughout, they act as if theyre pursuing ends: survival, reproduction, flourishing. And biologists, even when steeped in the reductionist spirit, cant help but speak in the language of purpose. In 20th c biology, this gave rise to a certain unease, memorably captured by J. B. S. Haldane:
To ease this tension, the term teleonomy was introduced. It was meant to describe the appearance of goal-directedness in living organisms without invoking any spooky metaphysical purpose. In other words, creatures act as if they have ends, but these ends are entirely the result of blind evolutionary processes. The term was a rhetorical compromise: a way to acknowledge the structure and coherence of biological processes while maintaining ideological fidelity to non-purposive causality.
(But then, whos to say what really distinguishes apparent from real purpose? I suspect that what many people mean by real purpose is simply purpose of the kind they can entertain havingdeliberate, self-conscious, human. But if youre a lone villager being stalked by a rogue tiger while gathering firewood, that tigers intent is deadly real, and youll discover it soon enough if you dont make haste.)
So, as the philosopher David Hull once noted, "calling something 'teleonomic' doesnt explain teleology awayit just gives it a different name." The explanatory work is still being done by the as if. And when the entire vocabulary of biologyfunction, adaptation, selection, error-correction, informationis suffused with purpose-shaped terms, one has to wonder whether weve really done away with telos, or simply smuggled it back in through the servants' entrance.
The Great Abstraction
The rise of early modern physics was built on a profound methodological simplification: the exclusion of context. Galileo and Newton inaugurated a new style of reasoning by isolating variablesmass, motion, forceand expressing their relations mathematically. The result was a set of laws remarkable for their precision and generality. What made them so effective was precisely their invariance: they were true in all places and times, for all observers, regardless of the specificities of any actual situation. As Thomas Nagel put it in Mind and Cosmos, regarding the inevitable dualism that this entailed:
But this universality came at a price. To attain it, physics had to bracket out the world as we actually live it: a world rich with meaning, embedded in time, shaped by perception and concern. Philosopher of biology Steve Talbott put it like this:
In this light, the familiar claim that the universe is meaningless begins to look suspicious. It isnt so much a conclusion reached by science, but a background assumptionone built into the methodology from the outset. The exclusion of purpose was never, and in fact could never be, empirically demonstrated; it was simply excluded as a factor in the kind of explanations physics was intended to provide. Meaning was left behind for the sake of predictive accuracy and control in specific conditions.
That this bracketing was usefulindeed revolutionaryis not in doubt. But the further move, so often taken for granted in modern discourse, is the assertion that because physics finds no purpose, the universe therefore has none. This is not science speaking, but metaphysics ventriloquizing through the authority of science. It is a philosophical sleight of hand that confuses methodological silence for ontological negation.
And yet, the moment we turn to the biological realm, the limits of this framework become apparent. Organisms dont merely obey lawsthey respond, adapt, develop, pursue, express. They live. Their very being is bound up with shifting internal and external contexts, with dynamic self-organization and regulation. As Talbott further writes:
To speak of organisms is necessarily to speak in the language of function, adaptation, and goal-directedness. Biologists may insist that these are mere heuristics, that such language is shorthand for mechanisms with no actual purpose. And the plain fact is that life is not like that.
The Observer Returns
And neither, for that matter, is physics immune. One of the most unsettling discoveries of early 20th-century quantum mechanics was the so-called observer problem. Much ink has been spilled on its implications, but for our purposes, it suffices to note this: physics was forced to reintroduce the very context it had so carefully excluded since Newton: the observational result was dependent on the experimental set-up. The result is the famously unresolved proliferation of interpretations of quantum mechanics.
As is well known, the predictive success of quantum theory is extraordinaryentire branches of modern technology rely on it. And yet, as one of its most prominent architects admitted, nobody understands it. If that can be said of physics, the most precise and mathematized of the sciences, how much more must it be true of evolutionary biology, of which we are both the authors and the product?
The blithe assurances of scientific positivismthat the universe is devoid of meaning and purposeshould therefore be recognized for what they are: a smokescreen, a refusal to face the deeper philosophical questions that science itself has inadvertently reopened. In a world that gives rise to observers, meaning may not be an add-on. It may have been that it is there all along, awaiting discovery.
Footnotes and References
Telos, Aristotle, Politics, IEP
Indeed, Arisotle distinguished between the intrinsic purposiveness of organisms versus the extrinsic (or imposed) purpose of mechanisms, a distinction which has been recognised anew by some current biologists.
Jonas, Hans. The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. Reprint, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001.
Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3536.
Stephen L. Talbott, What Do Organisms Mean? The New Atlantis, no. 30 (Winter 2011): 2450.
I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.
Richard P. Feynman, The Character of Physical Law (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965), 129.
Also posted on Medium.
The question of whether life, the universe, and everything is in any sense meaningful or purposeful is one that entertains many minds in our day. The mainstream view is probably that the Universe in itself is meaningless, and that whatever meaning we seek or see is projected or manufactured by us, as biological and social beings. The universe itself is kind of a blank slate, atoms and the void, in Democritus terms, constantly being re-arranged through energetic dynamics into a never-ending cascade of forms.
However the question of purpose, or its lack, doesnt always require invoking some grand cosmic meaning. Meaning and purpose are discovered first in the intelligibility of ordinary lifein the way we write, behave, build, and think. The moment we ask whether something is meaningful, were already inhabiting a world structured by purposes. Furthermore, the belief that the Universe is purposeless is itself a judgement about meaning. Asking what this purpose might be, in the abstract, is almost a red herring - it doesnt really exist in the abstract, but it is inherent in the purposeful activities of beings of all kinds, human and other. It is, as it were, woven into the fabric.
We might further say that purpose does not only belong to the realm of human consciousness, but is implicit in life itself. Even the most rudimentary organisms behave as if directed toward ends: seeking nutrients, avoiding harm, maintaining internal equilibrium. Nothing in the inorganic realm displays these (or any!) behaviours. This kind of directednesswhat might be called biological intentionalityis not yet consciously purposeful, but it is not mechanical either. It reflects the organisms orientation toward a world that matters to it in some way. As Hans Jonas observed (in Phenomenology of Biology), the living being is concern, and this concern is inseparable from its form and function. To live is already to be oriented toward something beyond mere material presenceto act in terms of what matters so as to preserve itself against the second law of thermodynamics. That it does this, is the signal difference between living and non-living. Life is negentropic swimming against the tendency towards ever-greater disorder that is shown everywhere else.
Telos, Teleology, and Teleonomy
Much of the debate about purpose revolves around an ancient idea, telos. The ancient Greek term telos simply means end, goal, or purpose. For Aristotle, it was a foundational conceptnot just in ethics and politics, where human purpose is self-evident, but in nature as well. "Nature," he writes in Politics, "does nothing in vain." He believed that things have intrinsic ends: the acorn strives to become the oak; the eye is for seeing; the human being is naturally oriented toward reason and society.
This way of thinking made perfect sense in a world where observation and common experience guided inquiry. But in his Physics, Aristotle extended teleology into cosmology, famously asserting that heavy bodies fall because their natural place is the center of the earth. This kind of explanationwhile meaningful in its own contextwas ultimately, and righfully, displaced by the rise of modern mechanics. Galileo showed that bodies do not fall because of their purpose, but due to forces and motions that could be described mathematically, without reference to final causes. Physics since then has largely dispensed with teleology (to the point where it was practically a taboo!)
But biology is another matter. Living things are not simply acted upon by forces they grow, develop, repair, adapt and evolve. Throughout, they act as if theyre pursuing ends: survival, reproduction, flourishing. And biologists, even when steeped in the reductionist spirit, cant help but speak in the language of purpose. In 20th c biology, this gave rise to a certain unease, memorably captured by J. B. S. Haldane:
Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but hes unwilling to be seen with her in public.
To ease this tension, the term teleonomy was introduced. It was meant to describe the appearance of goal-directedness in living organisms without invoking any spooky metaphysical purpose. In other words, creatures act as if they have ends, but these ends are entirely the result of blind evolutionary processes. The term was a rhetorical compromise: a way to acknowledge the structure and coherence of biological processes while maintaining ideological fidelity to non-purposive causality.
(But then, whos to say what really distinguishes apparent from real purpose? I suspect that what many people mean by real purpose is simply purpose of the kind they can entertain havingdeliberate, self-conscious, human. But if youre a lone villager being stalked by a rogue tiger while gathering firewood, that tigers intent is deadly real, and youll discover it soon enough if you dont make haste.)
So, as the philosopher David Hull once noted, "calling something 'teleonomic' doesnt explain teleology awayit just gives it a different name." The explanatory work is still being done by the as if. And when the entire vocabulary of biologyfunction, adaptation, selection, error-correction, informationis suffused with purpose-shaped terms, one has to wonder whether weve really done away with telos, or simply smuggled it back in through the servants' entrance.
The Great Abstraction
The rise of early modern physics was built on a profound methodological simplification: the exclusion of context. Galileo and Newton inaugurated a new style of reasoning by isolating variablesmass, motion, forceand expressing their relations mathematically. The result was a set of laws remarkable for their precision and generality. What made them so effective was precisely their invariance: they were true in all places and times, for all observers, regardless of the specificities of any actual situation. As Thomas Nagel put it in Mind and Cosmos, regarding the inevitable dualism that this entailed:
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. (Mind and Cosmos, Pp35-36)
But this universality came at a price. To attain it, physics had to bracket out the world as we actually live it: a world rich with meaning, embedded in time, shaped by perception and concern. Philosopher of biology Steve Talbott put it like this:
The physicist wants laws that are as universal as possible, true of all situations and therefore unable to tell us much about any particular situation laws, in other words, that are true regardless of meaning and context... Such abstraction shows up in the strong urge toward the mathematization of physical laws.
In this light, the familiar claim that the universe is meaningless begins to look suspicious. It isnt so much a conclusion reached by science, but a background assumptionone built into the methodology from the outset. The exclusion of purpose was never, and in fact could never be, empirically demonstrated; it was simply excluded as a factor in the kind of explanations physics was intended to provide. Meaning was left behind for the sake of predictive accuracy and control in specific conditions.
That this bracketing was usefulindeed revolutionaryis not in doubt. But the further move, so often taken for granted in modern discourse, is the assertion that because physics finds no purpose, the universe therefore has none. This is not science speaking, but metaphysics ventriloquizing through the authority of science. It is a philosophical sleight of hand that confuses methodological silence for ontological negation.
And yet, the moment we turn to the biological realm, the limits of this framework become apparent. Organisms dont merely obey lawsthey respond, adapt, develop, pursue, express. They live. Their very being is bound up with shifting internal and external contexts, with dynamic self-organization and regulation. As Talbott further writes:
In biology a changing context does not interfere with some causal truth we are trying to see; contextual transformation is itself the truth we are after... Every creature lives by virtue of the dynamic, pattern-shifting play of a governing context, which extends into an open-ended environment. The organism gives expression, at every level of its being, to the unbounded because of reason the tapestry of meaning.
To speak of organisms is necessarily to speak in the language of function, adaptation, and goal-directedness. Biologists may insist that these are mere heuristics, that such language is shorthand for mechanisms with no actual purpose. And the plain fact is that life is not like that.
The Observer Returns
And neither, for that matter, is physics immune. One of the most unsettling discoveries of early 20th-century quantum mechanics was the so-called observer problem. Much ink has been spilled on its implications, but for our purposes, it suffices to note this: physics was forced to reintroduce the very context it had so carefully excluded since Newton: the observational result was dependent on the experimental set-up. The result is the famously unresolved proliferation of interpretations of quantum mechanics.
As is well known, the predictive success of quantum theory is extraordinaryentire branches of modern technology rely on it. And yet, as one of its most prominent architects admitted, nobody understands it. If that can be said of physics, the most precise and mathematized of the sciences, how much more must it be true of evolutionary biology, of which we are both the authors and the product?
The blithe assurances of scientific positivismthat the universe is devoid of meaning and purposeshould therefore be recognized for what they are: a smokescreen, a refusal to face the deeper philosophical questions that science itself has inadvertently reopened. In a world that gives rise to observers, meaning may not be an add-on. It may have been that it is there all along, awaiting discovery.
Footnotes and References
Telos, Aristotle, Politics, IEP
Indeed, Arisotle distinguished between the intrinsic purposiveness of organisms versus the extrinsic (or imposed) purpose of mechanisms, a distinction which has been recognised anew by some current biologists.
Jonas, Hans. The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. Reprint, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001.
Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3536.
Stephen L. Talbott, What Do Organisms Mean? The New Atlantis, no. 30 (Winter 2011): 2450.
I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.
Richard P. Feynman, The Character of Physical Law (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965), 129.
Also posted on Medium.
Comments (289)
Long live the observer.
I more or less agree with most of it. I would even say that 'purpose' is the hallmark of living beings. Also, I would add that living beings exhibit a 'holistic' character that isn't found elsewhere, i.e. they seem to be truly 'distinct entities' that aren't 'reducible' or even 'emergent' from their environment. So, other than 'having an end' they seem to be truly 'beings' in a fuller sense than inanimate objects are. And I don't believe that any of these things contradict the theory of evolution.
How can 'irreducible wholes' and 'purpose' arise from something purposeless is clearly a problem. In fact, as I said elsewhere, I think that this perhaps is an indication that the 'mental' is perhaps a fundamental aspect of reality in some way. Celarly, it is a problem for a reductionistic and mechanicist view of physical reality.
Regarding physics, I would not be so sure. I don't think there is sufficient evidence to say that there are 'purposes' outside living beings. And, in fact, even if one takes very seriously the 'observer' role - like epistemic interpretations of QM do - I believe that it at most poses a limit on 'what is knowable' rather than giving insights on how 'physical reality really is'. Perhaps one might argue that, along the lines of Anthropic principle, that the fact that physical constants have such values as to be consistent with life is something to be explained and taken seriously. I, for one, don't think that the 'multiverse' is a good response to this problem: I generally don't like explanations that assume the existence of a lot of 'unobservable worlds' in order to explain features of this world. Again, perhaps, life and 'consciousness' might be at least an essential latent potentiality in the inanimate. Certainly, even in this case the physical universe doesn't seem to be like a 'mechanism'.
I have some minor quibbles about teleonomy -- I think the distinction with teleology is more meaningful than you do -- but they're not worth going into.
But here's my main question: Let's grant that biological life is purposive in all the ways you say it is. Let's even grant, which I doubt, that all living creatures dimly sense such a purpose -- gotta eat, gotta multiply! The question remains, Is that the kind of purpose worth having for us humans? Is that what we mean by the "meaning of life"?
Indeed -- and I think Nagel goes into this as well -- it's precisely the pointlessness of the repetitive biological drives you cite, that causes many people to question the whole idea of purpose or meaning. It looks absurd, both existentially and in common parlance: "I'm alive so that I can . . . generate more life? That's it? Who cares?" Cue the Sisyphus analogy . . .
Any thoughts about this?
I'll acknowledge from the start that this is an unresolvable issue. I won't convince you and you won't convince me. As usual, my view is that this is metaphysics. You're not wrong, I'm not right. We just have a difference of opinion about the most useful way of looking at this. Although I have no intention of convincing anyone, I would like to present an alternative way of looking at this.
Quoting Wayfarer
You are begging the question here. You ask us whether the universe has meaning and then when we say "no" you jump up and say "Ah ha! You recognize that meaning and purpose are important." Well, for most of us, the answer to the question is not "no," it's "I don't think about things that way. Life's purposes and goals are not things I think about unless someone like you brings them up." I don't ever remember thinking about life's purpose except in a philosophical context. I think most people are like me in that sense.
Quoting Wayfarer
Are you saying that "as if directed" is the same as "directed?" That would be about as circular as an argument can get.
Quoting Wayfarer
If you look up "intention" you find two kinds of definitions 1) a near-synonym for goal or purpose and 2) a mental state. If we apply the first type of definition, we're back in a circular argument. As for the second type, the idea that the simplest biological organisms, or that biology as an entity, has mental states is clearly unsupportable.
Quoting Wayfarer
"Concern" here is just another word you're using for "goal" or "purpose." It doesn't add anything new to the discussion. In these discussions, it often seems that people use "function" as a synonym for "purpose." Do you see it that way? My heart clearly has a function in my body. Does that mean it has a goal? Of course, that's really the question on the table. We're headed back into a circular argument.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm certainly not a student of Aristotle but, as I understand it, he saw telos as the result of final design and final design as the result of intention, which we've already discussed. Saying "Nature does nothing in vain," is just another way of stating your premise.
Quoting Wayfarer
I live in a world where observation and common experience guide inquiry and I don't think that understanding is necessarily the most useful way of seeing things. It certainly isn't true in any absolute sense. Again, it's metaphysics.
Quoting Wayfarer
Again - as if.
Quoting Wayfarer
You quoted this from Nagle and then you commented:
Quoting Wayfarer
You and I have been in enough discussions so you should know I am as skeptical of the idea of objective reality as you are. I even agree we live in "a world rich with meaning, embedded in time, shaped by perception and concern." And that's because we live in a human world. Those properties come from within us. If that were all you are saying, we would have no argument.
I think it is an important understanding for us to see that there is a difference between the world inside us and that outside us. I always imagine when I look at babies that that is what they are learning as I watch them wiggle, look at everything, touch their toes, and make noises. They're learning some things are them and some things are the world. I guess that's their first adventure in metaphysics.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. Exactly. If you will acknowledge the way you describe things is also a "background assumption" then you and I will have no argument.
Quoting Wayfarer
To start, function and adaptation and not the same as goal-directedness. If I were going to pick a point when it would make sense to talk about an organisms goals, it would be when they are capable of intention. Intention requires a mind and a mind requires a nervous system. At that point, we've moved out of the realm of biology and into neurology, ethnology, and psychology.
Quoting Wayfarer
In my understanding, this is not exactly accurate. Some interpretations of quantum mechanics bring the observer into the equation, others do not. It appears that all the different interpretations are equally consistent with the mathematics and empirical results of QM. Since there appears to be no empirical way of decide among those interpretations, the choice of one over the others is, again, metaphysics.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is pretty outrageous. You've lost track of the fact, if you ever recognized it, that you can't answer scientific questions with metaphysics and you can't answer metaphysical questions with science.
As I said at the beginning, there is no resolution to this issue. You and I have had at it enough times to know that. Now I've had my say and we can leave it at that if you want.
Quoting T Clark
What do you think about, and why? Do you think about things because they are relevant and meaningful to you, in relation to your goals and purposes? If so, then maybe you are thinking about lifes purposes all the time. That is, not some single overarching purpose, but a contextually-focused network of significance that you consult as motivator of your actions. I think that is Wayfarers point.
Quoting T Clark
Because a scientific stance is itself a derivative or expression of a metaphysical stance, answering its questions is already to engage with the metaphysics that guides it. A scientific evolution is likely to also constitute a metaphysical revolution.
Nor I, but thats why I said that the argument is kind of a red herring - if you were looking for purpose in the abstract, what would you be looking for? But Im interested in the idea that the beginning of life is also the most basic form of intentional (or purposive) behaviour - not *consciously* intentional, of course, but different to what is found in the inorganic realm. (The gap between them being what Terrence Deacon attempts to straddle in Incomplete Nature.)
As for the anthropic principle - that general argument provides a meaningful counter to the kinds of ideas expressed in (for example) Jacques Monod Chance and Necessity. Monod, a Nobel laureate in biology, argued that life, and indeed human existence, is a product of "pure chance, absolutely free but blind." He saw genetic mutations, the ultimate source of evolutionary innovation, as random and unpredictable events at the molecular level. While natural selection then acts out of "necessity" (the necessary outcome of differential survival based on adaptation), the initial raw material for selection (mutation) is blind and without foresight or purpose. A central tenet of Monod's philosophy was the forceful rejection of any form of teleology (inherent purpose or design) in the universe, especially concerning the origin and evolution of life. He argued that science, particularly molecular biology, had revealed a mechanistic universe governed by objective laws, where the biosphere is a "particular occurrence, compatible indeed with first principles, but not deducible from those principles and, therefore, essentially unpredictable.
The strong anthropic principle (that the universe is such that life must appear) mitigates against the possibility of life being understandable as a sheer accident. It suggests that the universe is structured such that life (or observers) is either a necessary or at least a highly probable outcome. Some readings explicitly embrace a form of teleology, positing a "design" or "purpose" for the universe's life-permitting properties. In any case, it challenges the cardinal role of 'blind chance' typical of Monod's (and Dawkins') style of scientific materialism.
Quoting J
That's a fundamental question of philosophy. It's basically a 'what's it all about?' question. Nagel said
It's taken for granted nowadays that evolutionary naturalism is a philosophy of existence, but it's not.. It is a scientific theory of the evolution of species. I should say, what prompted this OP was a Medium essay by Massimo Piggliuci The Question of Cosmic Meaning or Lack Thereof (may require account to read). He takes on Nagel but then draws on the basic Monod-style materialism I refer to above. The germ of this OP came from his response to a comment of mine, where he breezily dismisses any idea of purpose as being 'explained by teleonomy'. Perhaps I have too have been breezy, but really, the distinction between 'actual' and 'apparent purpose' is a slim reed on which to support such argument!
In any case, getting back to your question - are we really only defined in terms of the terminology of evolutionary biology (the 'four f's' of feeding, fighting, fleeing and reproduction)? I don't think evolutionary theory, as such, provides the basis for a great deal more than that. Which is why I argue that h.sapiens transcends purely biological determination. Hence, philosophy! (along with art, science, literature, and a great deal else.)
Quoting T Clark
They don't really 'bring the observer into the equation'. The problem is precisely that 'the equation' makes no provision for the act of observation. The famous wave-function equation provides predictive accuracy as to where a particle might be found, but the actual finding of it is not something given in the mathematics. That is where the observer problem originates. (The 'many worlds' interpretation attempts to solve this by saying that every possible measurement occurs in one of the possible worlds.)
Regarding whether organisms really act purposefully, or only as if they do - this is central to the whole debate about teleology and teleonomy. (The Wikipedia entry on teleonomy is worth the read.)
Quoting T Clark
What I said.
Quoting Joshs
Pretty much! I like that expression I've picked up from enactivism, 'the salience landscape'. Might do another OP on that.
Well, I agree, but I didn't see you arguing for that. I thought you were contending that any sort of biological purposiveness was good enough to answer the question, "Does existence have a purpose?" -- "whether life, the universe, and everything is in any sense meaningful or purposeful." Were you trying to get to a purpose that is actually meaningful for humans? I don't think your OP addressed that, other than to say that merely asking the question must imply some framework in which "meaning" can figure -- "The moment we ask whether something is meaningful, were already inhabiting a world structured by purposes." And I share @T Clark's doubts about whether that follows.
Another way to say this: By focusing on the question of whether the universe has a purpose, you seem to be implying that an affirmative answer will mean something in terms of human purpose. Again, I may have missed it, but I don't see that discussed in the OP. Never too late, though!
You're right to note that I didn't try to answer the question of human purpose directly. My intention was more foundational: to challenge the premise that the universe is inherently meaningless by pointing to the ubiquity of purposive activity in life itself, starting at the cellular level.
You could say this is a thin end of the wedge strategy. If even the simplest organisms act in goal-directed ways, then purposefulness is not merely a projection of the human mind onto an otherwise purposeless backgroundits already there, intrinsic to the structure of life. My aim was to question the modern assumption (popular among positivists) that purposiveness is somehow unreal or merely heuristic.
I do think this ultimately has implications for human purposebut I didn't try to develop that in this piece. What I wanted to show is that the universe, far from being purposeless, brings forth beings whose very mode of existence is purposive. That alone, I think, should shift the philosophical burden of proof.
I never denied that I have purposes and goals for my own behavior. I work with the purpose of making money to pay for my house and food and car. I go to the liquor store with the goal of buying wine. As I said to @Wayfarer, if thats all we were talking about, there would be no argument here.
Quoting Joshs
You and I have a different understanding of the meaning of the words science and metaphysics and of the relationship between the two.
Quoting Joshs
Thats a question Ive thought about and Im not really sure of the answer.
Now, that doesnt amount to a fully formed metaphysics, but it at least opens a way of thinking that challenges the view of humanity as a cosmic flukean accidental intelligence adrift in a meaningless expanse.
I think this is clearly incorrect as a matter of science and not of philosophy. What weve learned about self organization, and abiogenesis since he made those statements shows there is structure and process intrinsic to the nature of the universe. Saying structure and process is not the same as same as saying purpose and goal.
I watched an exceedingly interesting talk recently ('How the Universe Thinks without a Brian') on slime moulds and other very primitive organism, that utterly lack brains and nervous systems, but which nevertheless form memories in respect of their environment. For example, Physarum polycephalum can learn the patterns of periodic environmental changes and adjust its movement accordinglydespite being just a giant single cell.
This doesnt mean it has a mind in the conscious sense, but it strongly suggests that intentional-like behaviororientation toward what matters to it can appear even before anything like a nervous system arises. Thats part of what I meant by intentionality in a broader sense than conscious intention. Its not about inner deliberation, but about the intrinsic organization of living systems around meaningful interaction with their environment.
This is why I think the boundary between biology and psychology isnt as clean as the classical model would have it. A lot of the resistance to this idea, I think, comes from our folk understanding of intentionality: that it has to be something like what I am capable of thinking or intending. But thats a very anthropocentric benchmark. The broader point from fields like enactivism and biosemiotics is that purposeful behavior need not be consciously formulated to be realit can be embodied, embedded, and evolutionary long before its verbalized.
So when I say that purpose is implicit in life, Im not projecting human psychology downward. Im pointing out that living systems are organized around the kind of concern that enables them to persist, adapt, and flourish. Thats not a metaphor; its what they do.
Quoting T Clark
As do I!
Is intention without a mind and nervous system meaningful? Im skeptical, but I dont know enough about this particular example to make any intelligent judgment.
Quoting Wayfarer
I dont think the idea of a teleological universe is very compelling, but that doesnt mean I see any particular value in the idea of teleonomy.
Quoting Wayfarer
Im not sure what to say about this. I guess I would have thought a clear delineation between biology and psychology is at the heart of the hard problem of consciousness that weve discussed many times.
Quoting Wayfarer
You call it the folk understanding. I call it the actual definition of the word. As I see it, youre the one trying to change the meaning from how the word is normally used.
I just noticed I responded to your posts out of order. Ill go back and respond to your first one now.
In my understanding, interpretations of quantum mechanics, which do not make a provision for the act of observation are just as consistent with the mathematics and observations of behavior as those that do.
Thanks.
I think we ought to consider that what we know as the Universe, is a construction of human minds, and as such it was created with purpose. What modern physics demonstrates to us is that much of reality is far beyond our grasp, not even perceptible to us. What we take to be the Universe, the model we make, is formed and shaped by usefulness and purpose.
If we extend purpose, and intention to life in general, and assume that purpose is at work in the mechanisms of evolution, then we also need to assume that the way that the world appears to us through our sense organs and brains, is also a product of purpose. If we ask, why does the world appear to us through our senses, in the way that it does, when physics tells us that it is really not like the way it appears, the answer is that it proved purposeful through the process of evolution, to perceive things in this way.
If we want to get beyond this representation of the universe, which was created on purpose, to understand the true reality, the independent, objective world, the reality of which we like to posit, then we need to remove purpose from the representation. This is the purpose of the concept of "truth", to have a representation which is not influenced by purpose. Notice that it is impossible to actually remove purpose, as there is even a purpose for truth, which is to get beyond purpose. But this is about as close as we can get, to creating a representation of the universe which is not influenced by purpose, to have as our purpose, to remove purpose and its influence.
I agree. And the big question for a reductionist or emergentist model is how to explain the properties that are associated with life (and consciousness) in purely physical term.
'Weak' Emergence works very well, say, in explaining how a collection of particles can behave as a liquid or a solid. In a sense, you can say that 'liquidity' and 'solidity' are just conventional/provisional properties that are useful to us to explain things. After all, if they are completely understandable in terms of properties of the parts that constitute the solid and liquid objects, they can be rightly understood as useful abstractions that simplify the descriptions of what is going on. Even inanimate macroscopic objects themselves can be thought as 'weakly emergent' features from the microscopi world. I don't think it is particularly controversial to say that, ultimately, even the inanimate macroscopic objects themselves are useful abstractions.
The above is of course 'reductionism' and it works quite well outside life and consciousness.
The problem with life is, however, that even, say, an unicellular organism is difficult to understand as merely an emergent 'feature' of its constituents and its environment. Also, as you say, there seem to be a basic intentionality going on and yes intentionality is difficult to explain in weakly emergentist/reductionist terms. So, if physical reality is merely a 'mechanism', 'reductionistic' etc how can we explain life with all its properteis? Personally, I never encountered a satisfying explanation. So, perhaps, reductionism is false*.
Regarding the 'strong anthropic principle', I mentioned it because, after all, it's both a tautology and a profound insight IMO. Of course, physical laws must be compatible with life and consciousness - after all, living and conscious beings exist. But, again, this 'tautology' is, in fact, quite insightful. First of all, it inspires us to seek an explanation of how life and consciousness are possible in this physical universe. Secondly, it also highlights that, given what we know about physics, life is very unlikely.
Proponents of the 'multiverse' try to explain this by alluding that there might be a large (infinite?) number of (inaccessible) worlds and we happen to be in one that allows the existence of life (and consciousness BTW). There are, I admit, good scientific reasons to support that idea. But, philosophically, I find it very unpersuasive.
IIRC others also try to explain the problem by simply saying that even unlikely events 'just happen', which I guess is true. But, again, is the most satisfying explanation? I guess that if I roll 100 times a 6-sides dice and I obtain always '6' as a result, it is of course a possible result even if the dice is fair. But, perhaps, a more convincing explanation is that the dice is not fair and there is a, so to speak, 'hidden reason' to explain that very unlikely result.
A more convincing explanation might be that we know only in part our physical world and, therefore, the 'unlikeliness' is merely apparent, due to observation bias (like, say, that we are more likely to observe brighter galaxies and, therefore, we might understimate the number of less bright galaxies). So, maybe, if we study more in depth the 'arising of life' won't be as 'unlikely' as it seems. But this might imply that, indeed, a more deep study of our physical universe will eventually reveal that the reductionist/weakly emergentist paradigm is simply wrong.
It is understandable why some try to explain away the intentionality, 'holism' etc which seem to be present in life as illusions (i.e. living beings behave 'as if' they have those properties...). It is perhaps the only consistent way to account for these properties. Some, instead, try to explain these things in a 'strong emergent' model, which seems to be unintelligible. So IMO these difficulties point to the possibility that, indeed, the reductionist/emergentist models are wrong and we need something else.
This is the point I take, above. The existence of a physical world requires intentional being. This is because, as a physical world, is how things are perceived through a purpose based apparatus. Therefore it makes no sense to say that it is unlikely for intention to exist in this particular physical world, because intention is necessary for any physical world.
In this way we turn the strong anthropic principle on its head. All the things which are said to exist in the physical world, physical laws etc., which are required for the existence of life, are really creations of life. These are the products of our purpose driven perceptions. They are conceptions, produced from our perceptions which, rather than being designed through random chance evolution, have been designed purposefully. our perceptions support our endeavours in the world, meaning they are very useful to us, in a pragmatic sense, but they don't necessarily equate to any real truth.
I figured this was your method. No reason an OP has to cover the entire ground all at once. It's only worth pointing out that, when "purpose" or "meaning" are cast in specifically human terms, a whole new set of concerns emerge.
Quoting Wayfarer
It probably is helpful to have some "sample metaphysics" that would suggest other ways of looking at this question, and I'm quite taken with the semi-Hegelian idea of a self-conscious universe. But I think the "cosmic fluke" view can be challenged without this, and on much simpler grounds. We're talking about degrees of likelihood based on ludicrously incomplete evidence. People who want to settle this one way or the other seem to assume that human inquiry, especially science, has reached an endpoint from which we can now pronounce on these questions. Why in the world would anyone think that? Is humanity a pointless fluke? Check back with us in a thousand years -- we may know more about it then! And if the retort is "But science can't talk about what has a 'point'," same answer: We'll see! At the moment our understanding of these questions is on the level of little children pottering around in the kindergarten.
I really like your post. I guess it helps that I agree with you on just about everything, but I dont know that I could have expressed it as clearly as you have.
What about the objection, though, that life and consciousness arose in the world many billions of time after the Big Bang?
I believe that in some important sense, the potency (I am using this term in more or less Aristotelian sense) to give rise to life is a fundamental aspect of the inanimate world.
I don't think that strictly speaking this means that the actual arising of life was necessary for the very existence of the inanimate. But, rather, as a potency life is an essential aspect of the world. I don't think that this 'potency' can be captured in a mathematical model, which is essential for physics. This to me suggests that life can't be explained in physical terms, precisely because the method that physics uses isn't adequate to explain the properties associated with life. So, the 'unlikeliness' might be explained by the fact that the models neglect some fundamental property of the physical world.
Kudos for clearly & concisely summarizing a vexing question of modern philosophy. Ancient people, with their worldview limited by the range of human senses, unaided by technology, seemed to assume that their observable Cosmos*1 behaves as-if purposeful, in a sense comparable to human motives. "As-If" is a metaphorical interpretation, not an empirical observation.
Inspired by your essay, I briefly scannned a Quora Forum*2 thread on the question of "purpose or direction" to our universe. Modern science tells us that our world has progressed from a dimensionless mathematical Singularity, to a burgeoning Cosmos of Matter, Life & Mind. Yet the majority of responses answered emphatically "no!".
However, even some of the "no god, no purpose, no telos" answers qualified their position by admitting that Evolution gives the "appearance of purpose". Yet, they seem to put more weight on Darwin's random mutations, and fail to ask "who?" or "how?" or "why?" Nature selects (choose, pick-out) the few fittest (orderly) products from among a (complex) cacophony of unfit failures. Empirical Science can provide a mechanical "how", but deliberately ignores the philosophical question of Final Cause : aims & ends & motives.
As you implied, the nay-sayers seem to be looking through the wrong end of the telescope. :smile:
*1. The cosmos is an alternative name for the universe or its nature or order. Usage of the word cosmos implies viewing the universe as a complex and orderly system or entity. ___Wikipedia
*2. [i]The whole point of modern evolutionary theory is that it explains the appearance of purpose (or telos, if you prefer) emerging from a purposeless process. There is nothing within evolution that indicates the existence of telos. . . . .
The key is whether purpose requires intent. If purpose requires a pursuit of a goal or telos, then intent would be required. This form of intent is subjective and presumes a host, such as an intelligent agent. Hence, evolution can have no purpose, scientifically speaking.[/i]
https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-purpose-or-direction-to-evolution
This seems to me a genetic fallacy, sir. Given the preponderance of evidence that "observers" (e.g. subjectivities) are chance emergents, it's doubtful that "meaning" (purpose) is anything other than a (semantic) property, or artifact, of "observers" and not, as you suggest, inherent in nature. After all, (e.g. entropy, evolution, autopoiesis) direction [b]=/= purpose, intention, or goal.[/b] However, even if the universe does have a "meaning" (purpose), then, like the universe as a whole, such a "meaning" (purpose) is humanly unknowable (Nietzsche, Camus) merelogical necessity: part(ipant)s in a whole cannot encompass (completely know à la Gödel(?)) that whole.
Quoting T Clark
:up: :up:
Quoting Gnomon
Once again, this claim is false.
Yes, from a perspective from inside the whole, it is entirely inaccessible.
It doesnt follow from this though, that there isnt a purpose. Or that that purpose may be reflected in some way within the whole. The purpose might be, for example, to demonstrate the innate patterns entailed in extension.
Agreed, and I stipulated it's a possibility.
Thanks for that. Maybe this is because pre-moderns did not have the sense of separateness or otherness to the Cosmos that the modern individual has. In a sense - this is something John Vervaeke discusses in his lectures - theirs was a participatory universe.
I've been reading an interesting book, a milestone book in 20th c philosophy, The Phenomenon of Life, Hans Jonas (1966). A brief précis - 'Hans Jonas's The Phenomenon of Life offers a philosophical biology that bridges existentialism and phenomenology, arguing that life's fundamental characteristics are discernible in the very structure of living beings, not just in human consciousness. Jonas proposes a continuity between the organic and the mental, suggesting that the capacity for perception and freedom of action, culminating in human thought and morality, are prefigured in simpler forms of life.' That is very much the theme of the OP. It is expanded considerably in Evan Thompson's 'Mind in Life', a much more recent book (2010) which frequently refers to Jonas' book.
Another point that Jonas makes in the first essay in the book is that for the ancients, life was the norm, and death an anomaly that has to be accounted for - hence the 'religions of immortality' and belief in the immortality of the soul:
[quote=The Phenomenon of Life, Essay One, Pp 9-10]That death, not life, calls for an explanation in the first place, reflects a theoretical situation which lasted long in the history of the race. Before there was wonder at the miracle of life, there was wonder about death and what it might mean. If life is the natural and comprehensible thing, death-its apparent negation-is a thing unnatural and cannot be truly real. The explanation it called for had to be in terms of life as the only understandable thing: death had somehow to be assimilated to life. ...
... Modem thought which began with the Renaissance is placed in exactly the opposite theoretic situation. Death is the natural thing, life the problem. From the physical sciences there spread over the conception of all existence an ontology whose model entity is pure matter, stripped of all features of life. What at the animistic stage was not even discovered has in the meantime conquered the vision of reality, entirely ousting its counterpart. The tremendously enlarged universe of modern cosmology is conceived as a field of inanimate masses and forces which operate according to the laws of inertia and of quantitative distribution in space. This denuded substratum of all reality could only be arrived at through a progressive expurgation of vital features from the physical record and through strict abstention from projecting into its image our own felt aliveness.[/quote]
Quoting Gnomon
More the case that they forget that they're the ones who made the telescope.
Quoting 180 Proof
You're seeing it from an anthropocentric sense of what meaning and purpose are. The point of the OP is that meaning, purpose and intentionality manifest at the most rudimentary stages of organic life. As soon as living processes begin to form, the fundamental requirement is for them to maintain separateness from the environment, otherwise they're simply subsumed into the thermodynamically-driven processes going on around them. That is the broader sense of intentionality that the OP is arguing from, not the projected meaning and purpose usually associated with theism and denied by atheism.
Again, this recent presentation, How the Universe Thinks Without a Brain, Claire L. Evans, is definitely worth watching in this context. 'To be, is to compute'.
Thank you T Clark, compliments are meaningful.
Quoting boundless
The Bing Bang is just the conventional theory. It's just an aspect of the current model, or conception, which represents a universe. But this conception is just a product of purpose. Further, as I explained, we often make the goal of truth, or objectivity, our purpose, so such a representation could have been produced from the goal of truth. In this case, when our goal is truth, our purpose is to remove purpose from our conceptions. Notice that it really can't be completely successful, because truth itself is a goal, a purpose.. And, as much as we may attempt to remove purpose, striving for truth, we are merely human beings, and usefulness toward other ends such as prediction, tend to overwhelm us distracting us from the goal of removing purpose.
Quoting boundless
If the universe is prior in time to life, then potency must also be prior in time to life. It is a feature of time which would be necessary for the creation of life.
Well, "to compute" ain't intention ...
I think that it is undeniable that there was a time in the past without living being in the universe. At the same time, however, I don't think that this necessary implies physicalism, let alone a reductionistic/mecahnicistic version of it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
While I would agree that truth is related to purpose - in fact, I would even say that truth (like the good) is the ultimate purpose of our rational actions - I am not sure how this answer my question.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, the potency was a necessary condition for the arising of life. But this doesn't imply that the arising of life is necessary for the potency being there in the first place. There is no evidence that outside life there are purposeful actions.
And yet... can we truly speak of potency without assuming some form of teleology? It isn't clear how can the intentionality which is present in life arise, in an intelligible way, 'out of' the inanimate, which seems to be without any kind of intentionality. So, either some kind of teleology was present even before the arising of life or it just 'started' with the arising of life. In the latter case, how was that possible? If the former, however, what is the evidence of that teleology?
I agree in principle, but I would question the exact way in which this is "mainstream." I don't think it was ever overwhelmingly popular as a position accepted by your average person on the street, or even a majority of people. It was dominant within the narrow silo of Anglo-empiricist philosophy and with some scientists, and I think even that is less true today than it was in the 20th century.
Still, I can see why it might be considered "mainstream" because 'something like it' seems to be a very common framing. That is, "when we put out 'scientist hats on' we must suppose to world is purposeless and valueless. We focus on 'description'" (where "description" is axiomatically assumed to exclude value, which is privatized). This isn't true for all science though. No one expects medical researchers to do this, or zoologists, or even evolutionary biologists, let alone social scientists.
Originally, this sort of separation of value and purpose from a wholly mathematized world (which, of course, excludes value by definition, axiomatically) was a sort of "methodological bracketing." Yet it was quickly absolutized into a full blown metaphysics, first a theistic one where all value and purpose comes from without, an external imposition (e.g. Divine Command Theory), and later in athiest forms that tended to just leave all the old theologically justified assumptions in place, but then chop God out and put the human individual, social community, or a sort of panpsychic "will soup" in its place.
I used to think that the reason we still tended to teach science in terms of 19th century metaphysics (ideas no longer popular in physics itself) was just inertia. The old model was intuitive and no one clear paradigm had come along to replace it, so it continued on by default. I now think there are serious problems with such a narrative.
First, the model isn't intuitive. It makes explaining the most obvious facets of our experience of the world impossible, dismissing most of human experience as in some way "illusory," and leaves all sorts of phenomena, particularly life and consciousness (quite important areas) as irresolavable mysteries. Second, one could easily argue that the very reason 19th century metaphysics hasn't been replaced in the teaching of chemistry, biology, etc. is that alternatives have been denied any inertia of their own by positive efforts to keep the old model in place, including censorship. One can see this in the EES controversy in biology, or in quantum foundations, etc. People get harassed out of their fields for challenging this paradigm, even though it is arguably a major factor in "science skepticism" and the emergence of an entire area of "new age 'science'" (precisely because it leaves so much out).
If one looks back to earlier epochs, one sees that shifts in the "scientific model," that predominates in societies, what C.S. Lewis call the "backcloth," were often resisted for political and ideological reasons. I don't think our own era is any different here. A view that makes all questions of value and purpose "subjective" aligns with the hegemonic political ideology of our era by effectively privatizing all questions of value, all the way down to the level of metaphysics and "what science says is true." It's worth remembering here that the current model grows out of a particular theology.
Such a view, by making all questions of goodness, usefulness, beauty, etc. "subjective" also helps to support the anthropology assumed by classical liberalism. This thin anthropology ("utility" as a sort of black box which decides all intentional human action, but which cannot itself be judged, i.e., volanturism) is hugely influential in contemporary economics and public policy. The entire global political and economic system is organized around such a view, and considerable effort is expended to make man conform to this view of him, to positively educated him in this role (e.g., highly consequential economic "shock treatments" aimed at privatization and atomization).
So, I think it's worth considering the exact way in which such a view is, and remains, "mainstream." It isn't so much as firmly held belief (although it is for a minority), but more a sort of dogmatic position that is thought to be necessary for "modern society." The privatization of value (and its demotion to illusion), builds support for a particular political theory grounded in volanturism, liberalism. One problem with this is that, if you privatize purpose, goodness, and beauty, you seem to face an inevitable slide towards privatizing truth as well, and making everything into a struggle for power. Indeed, there is a hidden volanturism at the bottom of the model that suggests the Will to Power as the ultimate primitive.
Well, these are "inclinations" and "desires" in an analogous sense. They aren't meant to imply consciousness, only the way a thing's nature determines how it interacts with other natures. Prima facie, it is no more anthropomorphic than claiming that rocks and stars "obey" "natural laws." Arguably, the second is actually more anthropomorphic. And is one reflects on the language of "obedience" and "law" that dominates modern science, I think it's easy to guess the type of theology that originally motivated such a shift. Both imply an ordering. The latter just implies a wholly extrinsic, imposed order. First this order was imposed by God. Now it's more common (at least in secular academic philosophy) to see it as a product of man, either "the mind" or "human language," which imposes the order from without.
Yes, so would I, but I'm also doubtful about the corrective narrative you offer. I'm not sure what domain you're quantifying over :smile: , and who the actors in this drama are. This would be an example:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
"Our" experience? This only applies to people who think philosophically or critically about it. I'd contend that, for most Western adults with an average education, the scientific model is totally intuitive: There's the world out there; scientific method teaches us truths about that world, and shows us how the world works; we can use it predict things and build things; it's been unbelievably successful at doing this, and improving human life. It makes "explaining the most obvious facets of our experience of the world" -- the astonishing order and regularities we discover around us -- possible. What's the problem?!
We on TPF can name some problems, but they simply don't surface unless you stop and think, "Well, what about consciousness? What about values? What about numbers? What about God?" etc. etc. But these questions -- and the move that links them with questions about science -- are not intuitive at all, unless you have a philosophical (or possibly a religious) bent.
This may just be a disagreement about what "intuitive" ought to mean, but all I can say is, given the way I was educated about science in public schools, I'd say my characterization of science, above, is second nature to me, and to most of my peers. It "makes sense": Got a question? Perform a controlled experiment; get the answer. This isn't right, of course, but we're talking about what seems intuitively true, based on education and culture.
It's true, life can't be explained using physics. The structure, development, and behavior of living organisms operate according to a different set of "rules" than physics - the rules of biology. At the same time, all biological phenomena act consistent with our understanding of physics.
The origin of life from inanimate material - abiogenesis - is not some mysterious unknowable process. It can be, and is, studied by science. It's not a question of certain chemicals happening to combine in very, very unlikely ways by the random action of molecules jiggling around. There are some who think life is inevitable given a suitable environment. I recommend "What is LIfe - How Chemistry Becomes Biology" by Addy Pross. It's definitely pop-sci, but it's interesting and thought provoking.
My own Enformationism thesis, coming from a different background --- quantum physics & information theory --- reaches a similar conclusion : that there is a continuity from physical structure to metaphysical forms of animation & sentience.
This Cosmic Process of gradual transformation is a history of phase transitions. And the common factor of post-neo-Darwinian evolution is the causal power-to-transform (e.g. Energy). In the 21st century, scientists were surprised to learn that the creative & vital force is a basic form of Shannon's Entropy vs Negentropy definition of Information ; formerly only known as a mental phenomenon.
Therefore, the autonomy of Life, and the reflective stage of Mind, are merely intermediate phases in the continuing evolution of our Cosmos, from pure Big Bang Energy through manifold & maniform evolutionary phase changes to the emergence of living Matter, and eventually of thinking Minds. Each new phase of Physics, has "prefigured" a later phase of Metaphysics. :smile:
Emergent Evolution :
EnFormAction theory takes a leap of imagination, to envision a more holistic interpretation of the evidence, both empirical and philosophical. Contrary to the Neo-Darwinian theory of Evolution, EFA implies a distinct direction for causation, toward the top rung in the hierarchy of Emergence, as denoted by the arrow of Time. Pure Randomness would just go around in circles. But selection (Entention) works like the ratchet in a clock-work to hold the latest cycle at a useful, and ultimately meaningful, stable state : a Phase Transition, or a step on the ladder of Being.
https://bothandblog3.enformationism.info/page23.html
It's true. The metaphysics of everyday life is different from that of science. Why would you expect anything different? Scientists are trying to do different things than insurance salespeople and truck drivers. Something around half of Americans don't believe the human species developed from previously living organisms without outside influence. That doesn't prove evolutionary biologists are barking up the wrong tree.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
As I see it, the difference between physics and the sciences you describe isn't primarily that physics excludes value while the others don't. It's that for the others, it is much, much harder to exclude outside influences on the results and so it's much, much harder to get clear, definitive answers to questions. Of course all science is value laden - values control what is studied, what questions are asked, and who gets funded. Beyond that, sciences that deal with people directly have to, theoretically at least, deal with those people humanely. The scientific method varies depending on what is being studied, but the basics are the same. It requires standing back and looking at phenomena from a suitable distance, objectivity if you will. That's true of psychology as much as it is chemistry.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
So, science is embedded in the society it operates in and takes on many of the values of that society. Sure, but you make is sound like some sort of conspiracy. The difficulty some scientists have in getting society to accept their well-studied and critical understanding of the world makes it hard to accept the claim that politics is unfairly hindering the inclusion of human values. It is exactly human values - money and power - that is muddying the water.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Does your whole argument rest on the basis of absolute, i.e. non-subjective, morality?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think you're example makes a point exactly in contradiction to the one you seem to think it does. It is the human values embraced by classical liberalism that corrupt the process. It seems your problem isn't the exclusion of human values, it's the exclusion of the particular values you share.
How so? People can have ideological blinders and biases without being involved in anything like a "conspiracy."
Consider that in ancient Greece, power structures influenced thought. Socrates was executed after all. Others ended up in hot water. You see the same sort of thing in ancient Rome, or even more so in Islam. This was obviously true within the context of the Latin Church and the Eastern Churches as well. Have we really reached the one time in human history where thought has become free of this sort ideological influence? Is liberalism and our dominant form of scientism truly "the clear light of reason one gets when superstition and error are removed?"
Hardly, right? It doesn't seem like our era should be unique. It's just that ideology is more transparent when one lives within it, especially when it has "gone global."
Ha, well that was exactly the point I was trying to make. "Goodness, Beauty (and sometimes Truth) only exist in your head, as a privatized projection, a sui generis hallucination produced by the mysterious, but ultimately mechanistic mind," obviously isn't neutral. It is not a view that arose through sheer substraction, i.e., just "stripping away old narratives and superstitions," to get to the "clear view of reason." It is itself an ideological construct, a particular tradition. And the motivations for it have been variously political, economic, religious, etc., as well as philosophical. The idea of freedom as primarily being "freedom from constraint," and "the ability to do anything" (i.e. freedom as power/potency) seems quite relevant here too (and it's a notion of freedom that comes out of early-modern theology, man being the image of a God who was sheer will).
I'm not sure. Obviously, the conclusion that privatizes value and purpose, and renders it somehow "illusory," seems less flawed if it is somehow right (I don't think it is though). But I don't think my point really relies on making a judgement one way or the other, since we could also just say that we merely lack warrant to reach this sort of conclusionthat the conclusion is reached for other reasons, and that it relies on questionable presuppositions. I mean, a lot of ethics in this tradition (e.g., Hume) don't argue to anti-realism, so much as assume it, and then try to show that their assumption cannot be challenged (crucially, based on what [I]they[/I] consider to be acceptable evidence). The common anti-realist move (which we can see on display in other threads up right now) is not to "prove" anti-realism, but rather to assert it and then to deny any counterarguments (arguably, to just set the bar for evidence arbitrarily high).
That is: "I don't have the burden of proof because I am saying something doesn't exist." But with things as basic as truth and goodness, this seems extremely questionable to me. For one, the hardcore eliminativist can do the exact same thing with consciousness. They can claim it doesn't exist, and easily stonewall any attempt to demonstrate its existence. Does that mean we don't exist? Denying that anything is ever good or bad for us seems on par with this. I have never met, or even heard of, a single person who espouses such a view who actually acts like they have the courage of their convictions here. In that, it is like radical skepticism.
Well, I was thinking of some of the more extreme premises of the reductionist model. For example:
-Your thoughts, planning, and sensation of volition never play any causal role in your actions because everything is determined by atoms "bouncing" in the void. Whether you accept or come to believe this or not also just comes down to such "bouncing," and has nothing to do with your "reasons," "truth," "validity," etc. except accidentally.
-Nothing is good or bad. It's not bad for a man to get hit by a bus, nor is it bad for a rat to eat rat poison. Serial killers and child molesters are ultimately no worse (nor any better) than saints. The cosmos is meaningless and valueless, and values a sort of illusion.
-Consciousness is epiphenomenal. You don't pull your hand away from a stove because it hurts, but rather because atoms have bounced in a certain way.
-Sunsets aren't beautiful. This is an illusion that takes place in your brain.
Etc.
The first three are among the most counterintuitive things I can think of. Indeed, Plato offers 1 and 3 up as a reductio conclusion against the mind-body being analogous to a tuning in the Phaedo.
Notice that I wasn't saying that biology is inconsistent with the known law of physics, but I admit that I was unclear. My point was that properties like goal-directed behavior/intentionality isn't understandable in terms of the known physical laws.
I think that a non-reductionist physicalist can agree with what I was saying.
Quoting T Clark
Thanks for the reference! Anyway, I wasn't trying to reject abiogenesis or anything like that. But I am not sure if all the properties that we observe in living beings (i.e. behaving as a distinct 'whole', goal-directedness, striving for survival and so on) can be explained in terms of the known chemical and physical laws. I really can't see how such properties can be understood in a reductionist (or 'weakly emergentist'*) paradigm.
*BTW, I think 'weak emergence' is a form of reductionism. Nothing really 'new' arises in the case of 'weak emergence'. What 'emerges' is just a convenient abstraction that allow us to make simpler explanations.
Of course you were. This is the dark, problematic side of scientism. I don't know how we'd settle the question of whose "intuitiveness" we're talking about here, yours or mine or some Average Jill's, if there really is such a person. I'm only saying I think it likely that, until these knotty questions are posed, it remains something like "intuitively true" for most Westerners that the sunny Popular-Mechanics view of science is just fine, and deeply reflective of how the world actually operates.
I agree. That's why I say 'probably'. But then, as I mentioned, the essay which prompted my response was one by Massimo Pigliucci, who is quite a visible internet philosopher on stoicism and the like, and he wrote:
So he articulates exactly the kind of positivist dogma that I have in my sights. And plenty of people believe it, including plenty of philosophers. (That's why there's space for the books of Daniel Dennett and D M Armstrong - they provide defenses for the kind of materialism that few of them would actually advocate, but at least can refer to when asked - let them do the dirty work :-) )
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Quite right, but it's very infuential. But here's an interesting thing: those Pew Research surveys which report on beliefs and attitudes, say that a significant percentage of people who identify as atheist still believe in a 'higher power' of some kind. In this matter, it's very hard to pin down hard borders. My long experience on Internet forums, is that there are only a few committed materialists in Piggliuci's mold, but that it's a background belief for a lot of the uncommitted - the idea that 'of course' the Universe comprises nothing other than matter-energy going about its purposeless activities.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No God, No Laws, Nancy Cartwright, discusses whether the idea of 'natural laws' which proscribe outcomes is meaningful in the absence of deity.
Quoting T Clark
Of course, but it easily slides into 'nothing-but-ism' - that life is 'nothing but' a specific combination of complex chemicals reacting in very specific conditions to give rise to something like a long chain reaction. That was very much the kind of idea Daniel Dennett pushed, in books like Darwin's Dangerous Idea. The philosophical point about the irreducible nature of life, is that life is not reducible to chemistry. A vast debate, of course, but of note:
[quote=What is Information? Marcello Barbieri;https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.2015.0060]The idea that life is chemistry plus information implies that information is ontologically different from chemistry, but can we prove it? Perhaps the strongest argument in support of this claim has come from Hubert Yockey, one of the organizers of the first congress dedicated to the introduction of Shannon's information [theory] in biology. In a long series of articles and books, Yockey has underlined that heredity is transmitted by factors that are segregated, linear and digital whereas the compounds of chemistry are blended, three-dimensional and analogue.
Yockey underlined that: Chemical reactions in non-living systems are not controlled by a message There is nothing in the physico-chemical world that remotely resembles reactions being determined by a sequence and codes between sequences.
Yockey has tirelessly pointed out that no amount of chemical evolution can cross the barrier that divides the analogue world of chemistry from the digital world of life, and concluded from this that the origin of life cannot have been the result of chemical evolution. This is therefore, according to Yockey, what divides life from matter: information is ontologically different from chemistry because linear and digital sequences cannot be generated by the analogue reactions of chemistry.
At this point, one would expect to hear from Yockey how did linear and digital sequences appear on Earth, but he did not face that issue. He claimed instead that the origin of life is unknowable, in the same sense that there are propositions of logic that are undecidable. [/quote]
Gödel, again.
I've already acknowledged that societal values and political considerations influence what is considered worth studying, knowing. And you're right - same as it ever was. But you didn't address the main point of my comment. This intrusion of societal influence into science is exactly the opposite of what you call "this sort of separation of value and purpose from a wholly mathematized world (which, of course, excludes value by definition, axiomatically)." It is the intrusion of values into science that has corrupted it.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It's really frustrating I can't get you to acknowledge that the characteristics you seem to deplore - a bias for reason, mathematics, and freedom from constraint - are human values just as much as "Goodness, Beauty (and sometimes Truth)" are.
This fairly common response seems to me to be a misread of relativism. Or perhaps it's a read of naive relativism.
There may well be no objective values written into the structure of the cosmos. Our universe doesn't protest when a baby dies, nor does it celebrate when a theist shows mercy towards an enemy. But this doesn't mean that "nothing is good or bad" in any meaningful sense. It means that good and bad are creations, let's call them emergent, intersubjective, historical, biological, cultural, and personal. They are not illusions, but human projections of experience, language, a social conversation, and biological response. Do we need more than this?
Your example is a man being hit by a bus. From the perspective of the cosmos, it is likely irrelevant. But from the standpoint of community, family, a loved one, it's a tragedy and a source of legitimate sorrow. We are social animals and we experince pain and loss. This doesnt become nothing simply because it lacks metaphysical grounding of some kind. The fact that it's relative doesn't make it meaningless.
Likewise, the difference between a serial killer and a saint isn't a metaphysical one, but that doesn't make it trivial. The values by which we differentiate them are based on shared human concerns: suffering, trauma, fear or flourishing, trust, and love. These values vary across cultures and time, sure, but they're not arbitrary. They arise from how we are embedded in the world and with one another.
A relativist doesnt have to deny that moral language is of use in our world: they just deny that it reflects some absolute, Gods-eye-view or Platonic realm of moral truth.
Nice. :up:
The issue for some is that goodness, truth and beauty emanate from God; are a reflection of God's nature. Take them away and quesions emerge.
This really confused me. You say that weak emergence is the same thing as reductionism. I'm ok with that, although I don't think it's quite accurate. I'm not a reductionist. I asked myself - "Well, how come you don't talk about strong emergence?" So I went back through your comments in this thread and found this:
Quoting boundless
You write off strong emergence as "unintelligible" but your fall back position is a universe infused with intentionality. You reject an established, if sometimes controversial, scientific principle with a wave of your hand and then point us at elan vital as the answer to our questions.
Here's a link to a famous paper on emergence "More is Different" by P.W. Anderson. It's not long.
I haven't said anything about about a bias towards or away from reason. If anything, modernity, and particularly the Reformation, is a reaction [I] against[/I] reason (e.g. fideism). Modern thinkers tend to be far more skeptical about the limits of human knowledge and the capacity of reason to lead and organize human life (i.e., its holding proper authority over the appetites and passions). Just compare Plato or Saint Augustine, with thinkers like Hume or Nietzsche.
Second, how can one argue for "reason" while denying the targets of reason, i.e. truth for theoretical reason, goodness for practical reason, or beauty for aesthetic reason. If these are all illusory, or sentiment, what exactly is reason?
The Pythaogreans not withstanding, the reduction of reason to something like computation is absent from the pre-modern philosophy, both in the West, and as far as I know also from the East. So the particular view I am objecting to can hardly be "human nature," if it doesn't show up before around 1700.
People have always valued freedom from constraint. I am speaking towards the distinctively modern tendency to absolutize this as wholly definitive of freedom. That is, "freedom simply is power" at the limit.
I'd question if this even still "anti-realism?" You seem to be assuming that realism = some sort of naive two worlds Platonism, else it is anti-realism. But that's not how I'm using the term, nor how it is usually used. Normally, it means there is no truth as to values (sometimes caveated to "moral values.") To call values emergent, isn't to say they aren't real. Although, if one wants to claim that they emerge from culture and language, this would seem to imply that nothing good or bad can ever happen to non-human animals, which seems false.
No, life is reducible to chemistry, it's just that it is not constructable from chemistry.
Quoting What is Information? Marcello Barbieri
Says who? Show me some evidence. Give me some inkling of a reason to believe this might be true.
I've had my say. I'll leave it at that.
No, I was assuming, from your posts, that you argue from God or Platonism.
My view is that relativist can argue that values are real - but they are contingent. For the theist, this is generally not good enough.
I linked to the source, it has ample documentation.
Also, I'm curious, do you really think there can be a "science free from values?" You say there has been an "intrusion." Does this imply that there was there a time where values hadn't yet corrupted science?
Isn't preferring truth to falsity itself a value? Or what of "good" evidence, "good" argument, or distinctions between science and pseudoscience? The whole project seems essentially value-laden to me. Likewise, any sort of applied science necessarily also involves goals, i.e., choice-worthy ends.
I am not sure if "valueless science," is a realistic, or even coherent goal. It might be a contradiction in terms. I think the goal of a "valueless science," is itself the product of the particular variety of scientism we are discussing. Maybe there is an added wrinkle, in that it sets up this goal, and then hypocritically violates it, but I'd say the problem is more the goal itself.
This isn't ubiquitous though. The Baconian idea of the mastery of nature runs very strong in the modern sciences, and there, "what we want," is crucial. The problem is that this view also tends to occlude, or deny questions about what we [I]ought[/I] to want.
I would suggest keeping relativism and anti-realism separate. They are two distinct things. Almost every thinker is a relativist and contextualist to some degrees (as respects both truth and values). If you're a child's parent, it's good to scoop them up if they have fallen and start to cry. If you're a stranger, not so much. The appropriateness of the action depends on the context. Likewise, it might be extremely rude, and thus judged to be bad, not to bow to one's elders in some cultural setting, but not in another culture. Platonism, or Christian and Islamic "Neoplatonism," had no real issues with this sort of relativism.
Normally, when "relativism" is invoked as a sort of boogeyman or target of critique, it is a radical form of relativism that implies anti-realism. But you can have one without the other. For instance, health can be judged good, and peanuts a healthy food (i.e. health promoting), but this obviously doesn't hold for the person with a fatal peanut allergy (e.g., "everything is received in the manner of the receiver.").
Does the cosmos have a perspective? I am not sure if I would say that anything is true from the perspective of the cosmos either. At least, if I am understanding the idea correctly. Maybe I'm not. What would it mean for something to be good, beautiful, or true from "the perspective of the cosmos?"
The metaphysical accounts of goodness I am most familiar with instead tie it to being (and unity, i.e. the way in which anything is really any distinct thing at all). So, the goal-directedness of life is a paradigmatic example here. But this also means that the measure of goodness will tend to be beings, self-determining wholes, with the highest measure being persons. The cosmos is often considered an ordered whole here, but not as a person, and so not as the highest measure of goodness. A key idea here is that aims unify parts into true wholes, and it is persons who most properly possess aims and unify themselves towards them, although obviously human persons can participate in organizations (a common good), and these are no doubt important as well.
The point is that if the concept "the universe" is not representative of what we commonly refer to as the independent objective reality, then this statement of yours is rather meaningless. It takes a false premise "the universe", and derives a conclusion from it. According to this conception, the conception of "the universe", which I am saying might be a falsity, there was a time when the universe was without living beings. If the premise is false then the conclusion is unsound.
Quoting boundless
I think that this is sort of backward thinking. We know "the good" as that which is intended, the goal, the end. As such, there is always a multitude of goods. In the manner proposed by Aristotle, we can ask of any specific good, what is it good for, and create a chain, A is for the sake of B which is for the sake of C, etc.. If we find a good which makes a final end, as he proposed happiness does, then that would be the ultimate purpose. However, "truth" really doesn't fit the criteria of the ultimate purpose.
Quoting boundless
I don't see how this is meaningful.
Quoting boundless
I don't think that such speaking would be coherent. Suppose that there is true potential, such that as time passed, there was some degree of real possibility as to what happens from one moment to the next. If one possibility is actualized instead of another, then some form of agent must have chosen that possibility as the one to be actualized, and this implies teleology. The alternative would be to say that one possibility rather than another is actualized by chance, because it cannot be a determinist cause or else it would not be real possibility. But it is incoherent to think that it happens by chance, because this would mean that something happens without a cause, which is unintelligible, therefore incoherent.
Quoting boundless
As I said, evidence of purpose is subjective. If you look at Christian theology, any sort of existent is evidence of teleology. This is because in order for us to perceive something as existent, it must be somehow organized, and organization is only produced on purpose. This is why, for them, all physical existence is evidence of teleology.
What do you think qualifies as evidence of teleology?
I did what I will admit was a quick scan and I didnt see any answer to my specific request which was show me some evidence that no amount of chemical evolution can cross the barrier that divides the analogue world of chemistry from the digital world of life
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Nicely put.
I think it would be more appropriate to say "knowledge" in English perhaps; "all men by nature desire to know." This is why the life of contemplation is the highest form of life for Aristotle (Ethics, Book X). The mind, being "potentially all things," can possess all perfections in this way (at the limit). All appetites are ultimately towards a sort of union, and knowledge is the highest form of union.
The biologist-philosopher's statement is neither "positivist" (i.e. only fact / observation-statements are meaningful) nor "dogma" (i.e. not defeasible or fallibilistic) but aptly describes the practices-efficacies of (a-telic) modern physical sciences in contrast to pre-modern 'idealist' metaphysics (e.g. Plato-Aristotle, neoplatonists, fideists, scholastics). The latter attempts to fill the current / persistent gaps in the former with mechanism-free mysterious woo :sparkle: which is an appeal to ignorance rather than lucid acknowledgements that "we don't know yet". I've no doubt Pigliucci, as well as most philosophically sophisticated modern scientists, would agree that the physical sciences are applied metaphysics which actually work (i.e. reliably generate good explanations for physical phenomena and processes).
Quoting Tom Storm
:up: :up:
Thanks for this link.
How is "scientism" related or relevant to my last post?
It's not 'applied metaphysics' but 'misapplied science', as I've already made amply clear in the OP, and which I won't repeat.
Not when it's applied to physical objects. But as I said in the OP, physics achieved its enormous successes by concentrating on what could be quantified and physically measured, to the exclusion of other factors. That is what I mean by the great abstraction.
[quote=Thomas Nagel]The scientific revolution of the 17th century, which has given rise to such extraordinary progress in the understanding of nature, depended on a crucial limiting step at the start: It depended on subtracting from the physical world as an object of study everything mental consciousness, meaning, intention or purpose. The physical sciences as they have developed since then describe, with the aid of mathematics, the elements of which the material universe is composed, and the laws governing their behavior in space and time.
We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.
However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order our structure and behavior in space and time but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience how it is from the point of view of its subject without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.
So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory.[/quote]
I'm assuming the anti-realist says something like: "Murder isnt wrong in any objective sense; saying its wrong is just an expression of personal preference or emotion."
Whereas the relativist says: "Murder is wrong according to contingent community standards, such as local values, cultural norms: views about harm and wellbeing, but those standards arent universally binding."
Both views agree that morality is something humans create through their agreements or social practices, right
Regarding 'weak emergence' and 'reductionism', I know that there is a subtle distinction between them. A strict 'reductionist' would say that weakly emergent features are mere illusions. Instead, an 'emergentist' would say that they are 'real' but everything about them can be explained in terms of the properties of the part. Honestly, I don't think that there is a meaningful difference between the two positions. Rather the difference is on the emphasis on aspect (the undeniable 'apprearance' of the features for the emergentist) or another (the fact that the feature is totally explainable in terms of its parts for the reductionist).
Some time ago, I had a discussion with apokrisis about the emergence of life. IIRC, he or she argued for a non-reductionist physicalist model of such an emergence. Such an emergence was understood as a sort of phase transition, which of course generally is a paradigmatic example of weak emergence. unfortunately, I don't recall the specifics of their model but I am sure that it wasn't understood in a mechanicistic way.
I guess that I think that I should point out that IMO even something like 'Newtonian mechanics' isn't necessarily reductionistic. Consider a very simple, isolated system of two particles interacting via a force. You can 'derive' the conservation law of the linear momentum by considering the second and the third laws of newtonian dynamics. Generally, the proof assumed those laws and derive the conservation law, after all. But, I think that, with equal reason, one can, instead, point out that one might regard the conservation law as fundamental. If one does that, the result is that the time variation of the linear momenta of the particles is of equal magnitude and opposite in verse. So, the laws of dynamics can be derived by the conservation laws. But conservation laws refer to global properties of a (closed) physical system. if they are fundamental, then, they 'influence' the behavior of the 'parts'. So, really, even Newtonian mechanics doesn't have to be understood in a mechanicistic way.
Similarly, when one introduce the 'spontaneous symmetry breaking' to explain the phase transition, arguably, a similar thing happens. After all, IIRC the lagrangian refers to the whole system.
This doesn't necessarily imply that a reductionist reading of these things is wrong. Just that it's not the only possible 'reading', IMO.
Anyway, I'll read the article before talking about strong emergence...
Ok, but how do you explain the fact that scientific evidence seems to indicate just that?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well, perhaps it's a bit off topic, but I would say that what you said about the good is also valid about the truth. When we learn things, we know some 'truths' but we aren't satisfied, we want to know more. It's possible that there is an 'ultimate truth' and if we knew that truth, we would find rest in it. Just like the case of the good.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well, if the probabilistic interpretations of quantum mechanics are right potentialities can be actualized randomly in a way that satisfies the Born Rule, which seems intelligible to me. So, I don't think that it's impossible that potentialities can be realized by 'chance'. That said, one can still ask why the potentialites were 'there' in the first place. So, even if they are realized by chance, it doesn't totally exclude teleology IMO.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well, I am sympathetic with this theistic argument, which BTW is not exclusively Christian. But, I am not sure if we can say that the evidence here is 'beyond reasonable doubt'. I actually don't think so and non-theist can rationally reject this reasoning. This doesn't mean that the theistic argument is false, just it isn't compelling even in 'beyond reasonable doubt' sense.
Perhaps you agree with that, as you characterise the evidence as 'subjective'.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well, I think that many different things can qualify as teleology. Of course, when we human beings act with a rationale, our actions are teleological. We act with a purpose in view which we believe it's possible but isn't realized yet. I would say there is also teleology in the actions of a bacterium, which in a rudimentary way strives for its survival and the survival for its specie (not in a conscious way, of course). Perhaps there are even more subtler kinds of teleology. But I am not sure.
This doesn't resolve the issue we were discussing. When we put life in general within the context of purpose, assuming that life is purposeful, then knowledge itself is pragmatic, useful toward further ends.
Quoting boundless
That is not a fact, and can be equally disputed as it can be asserted. That conclusion is what called misapplied science. The fact that you say it "seems" to indicate that, is evidence that you are speculating, not applying science. In reality scientific evidence, indicates that our representation, which is called "the universe" is faulty, therefore a false premise, as I explained above. We do not, for instance, have an accurate understanding of mass and gravity.
Quoting boundless
I think that this is very misguided. Human beings, as all living beings, are fundamentally active. That is their primary nature. To propose that the ultimate end is "rest" is contrary to the nature of life, and better associated with death. Perhaps you believe that the end of all life is death, but that would be annihilation of all living things, and by nature we reproduce and carry on, despite individual death.
Quoting boundless
The Born Rule in no way indicates randomness. It indicates the very opposite. If probability can be successfully used to predict outcomes, this indicates that there is an underlying reason for the specific outcome. To say that the outcome is "random" or "chance" is implicitly contradictory to what is indicated by the success of the probabilistic method.
It appears to be your opinion that outcomes which can be successfully predicted through statistic could be chance occurrences. I think this is incoherent for the reason described. What you are arguing is that a meaningful pattern could be created by chance. I would argue that this is fundamentally contradictory. For a pattern to have any sort of meaning it is required that the pattern demonstrates something about its cause. The cause may be efficient cause, like a physical process, or final cause, such as intent. But to say that a pattern demonstrates predictability, is meaningful in that way, but does not demonstrate anything about its cause, is incoherent.
Quoting boundless
Yes I do agree. Nothing in philosophy is "beyond reasonable doubt", because philosophy is based in doubt.
Quoting boundless
Notice how teleology, as you explain it, concerns itself with actions. How do you cross that category division, to say that the purpose of action is rest?
All this is exactly right. Strong emergence is not compatible with reductionism. That's the subject of the paper I linked. Perhaps I was confused. I thought you used reductionism/weak emergence as the necessary alternative to intention/teleology without considering another alternative - strong emergence. Was I wrong about that?
Quoting boundless
As I understand it, reductionism's focus is on analysis of the properties of higher level phenomena from physical principles at lower levels while emergence focuses on constructing the properties of higher level phenomena from lower level principles. The difference between weak and strong emergence is that, for weak emergence, it works but for strong emergence it doesn't. The thermodynamic properties of gases can be determined based on the behavior of the gases themselves but also on the basis of the behavior of their molecular components - both reductionism and constructionism. On the other hand, the properties of biological phenomena can not be determined based on physical properties alone. At least that is the claim.
Quoting boundless
I like this description. @Apokrisis is a smart guy. When he says "non-reductionist physicalist model" I think he means one without reference to just the intentionist/teleological explanations this thread is about. Keeping in mind that I often misunderstand him.
Quoting boundless
I don't think it's reductionistic at all. That's because the properties and behavior of phenomena described are determined by the physical principles at the same level of scale. Newton's cosmology is based on observations of the sun, moon, earth, and other planetary bodies acted on by the forces that act on them directly, e.g. gravity.
Of course the things we and other animals experience are meaningful to us and to them, insofar as we and they have needs we and they strive to meet.
Spinoza used the term 'conatus' to signify a natural tendency of things to persist? to survive. Nietzsche, who considered Spinoza to be a kindred thinker, expressed a similar idea with his 'will to power'. If life has a meaning beyond mere survival it consists in the volition to thrive, to reach one's potential (by 'one' here I include animals).
If there is a good we all strive for it is potence. Potence is naturally desirable (considered good) and impotence is naturally undesirable (considered bad). This is not to say that all animals ( or even humans) think consciously about such things.
The idea of a transcendent meaning is incoherent (unless there be posited a creator). All meaning is immanent and relative to life as lived, at least for animals. Humans who posit gods and spiritual realms of course do create, and may live in accordance with, dimensions of imagined meaning.
Ok, I see. But, at the same time, if we deny that we should also explain why it seems to be the case. And, as in everything, we should take the more convincing view. Just saying this is not enough for me to deny that in this world there was a time when no living beings existed. A lot of scientific evidence points to that.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I used 'rest' in a more general way. Even if we remain active, we can rest. After all, when we truly rest, we are, in fact, active in some way.
I meant something like 'not agitated'. If we could find the 'ultimate truth', I can stil imagine that we might perpetually contemplate and deepen our understanding of it. What we can't do is to reject and trying to find something else in an agitated state.
I believe that there is a reason why 'bliss' and 'knowledge', truth and goodness are so often associated in religions.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ok, I can agree with this. Yes, it's not pure chance or pure randomness.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ok, fine. Stand corrected. But, at the same time, I don't think that causation implies intentionality, let alone a conscious one. One, however, can still ask why the potentiality of life was there in the first place.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
:up: Philosophy ceases when doubt ceases.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
See before. Rest does not imply cessation of action. It certainly, implies, however a cessation of an agitated action that seeks fulfillment/realization.
Think about philosophy. When knowledge is gained, philosophy ceases. This doesn't imply that there is no action at all. It does imply, however, a state of fulfillment.
Quoting T Clark
Well, I probably dismissed the concept of 'strong emergent' in a flippant way. My bad. I believed that strong emergence was actually a form of reductionism for some reason but I was wrong, of course.
I wanted to ask you your opinion about a point the author makes which I remember that also troubled me in my years at uni (I honestly don't remember if such doubts were resolved at that time and I simply forgot the answer). The author says that some (strongly) 'emergent properties', like violation of some symmetries, occur at the infinite limit of the number of the constituents.
So, the theory can explain the arising of those properties because they appear at that limit.
Of course, considering the limit cases is extremely important in physics. Newtonian mechanics is now understood as a limit case of relativity. And, in fact, one obtains Galileian trransformation by taking the limit where the velocity of light is infinite. But notice that there is a subtle difference here. The limit is taken to explain an approximation and to explain that, in fact, if you don't take that limit you actually get more precise results.
But in the case of 'many-body' systems, you need to take the limit in order to get better results. Honestly, I see this as an indication that the 'general' theory is at least incomplete, if not wrong - after all, literally speaking there is no system with an infinite amount of constituents and if the theory gives the right result only by taking that limit, there is a problem. I don't see it as a success of the theory in the same way, at least, the 'recovery' of the results of Newtonian mechanics is a success of relavity: in this case, you obtain better results by not taking the limit.
What do you think of that?
I guess that this would imply that 'strong emergence' implies that our understanding of the physical world is incomplete.
Quoting T Clark
Ok, thanks for the clarification. That's why I think that weak emergence and reductionism are the same thing seen in different ways. Strong emergence is however something else.
Quoting T Clark
Yes, at least not in the sense that of this thread. But certainly, his worldview is far more sympathetic of intentionality, purpose, 'holism' and so on than a purely mechanicistic worldview. I happen to not be a physicalist myself but I respect that.
Quoting T Clark
I'm not sure of what you mean here. My point was that, in the case of conservation laws, you can understand them in terms of the properties of their constituents and their interactions (i.e. in a 'reductionist' way) but at the same time you can also understand them in a 'holistic' way, that is that the conservation laws are what is fundamental and they determine the behavior of the 'parts' of the isolated system. Newtonian mechanics itself is neutral about which of these two 'pictures' is better. But I think that a strong case can actually be made for the 'holistic' one, ironically. It's after all more simple and it does explain better why the newtonian laws are valid for all forces, without assuming that it is a happy accident of sorts.
You're making the idea that properties manifest as the number of elements approach infinity seem more exotic than it is. The term is just shorthand for the number of elements necessary so that it makes sense to talk about specific macroscopic properties. For example - it doesn't really make sense to talk about the pressure of one molecule bouncing around inside a container. In a container full of air at atmospheric pressure, however, there are trillions of molecules bouncing around and off each other and talking about pressure is reasonable. Somewhere between one and trillions of molecules it starts to make sense to talk about pressure.
Quoting boundless
This is true, but a bit misleading. At normal human scale velocities, say 100 mph, length contraction will be less than 1/(1x10^14). Calling a value less than 1/(1/10^14) from the actual value an approximation or imprecise is a bit of a stretch.
Quoting boundless
Agreed.
Quoting boundless
I'm not sure he would agree with that. Then again, I'm not sure he wouldn't.
Quoting boundless
Newton's law of universal gravitation is specifically developed to address the gravitational attraction between massive objects. The physical properties considered - mass, distance, and time - are measured directly on those objects. There is no reduction.
Quoting boundless
I don't understand this. How can the law of conservation of energy be more fundamental than the idea of energy? Conservation of energy is a phenomenon that is understood by observing energetic interactions among physical objects. How can it be more fundamental? How do you observe conservation of energy? By making measurements of time, mass, and distance in various combinations.
:fire:
... like e.g. disembodied mind.
:100:
In my original response to this post, I wrote there are trillions of molecules in a container of air. Thats not right. When we deal with thermodynamic properties, we generally talk in terms of moles - 6x10^23 molecules. Thats almost a trillion trillion. Close enough to infinity for me.
:up: A prime example!
The meaning of the idea of the transcendent is an immanent one too?we don't know anything transcendent, and this is so by mere definition.
Immanent because inherent in everything you do, transcendent because it cant be simply defined.
:up:
... i.e. a composition fallacy.
I agree, but you don't seem to be getting the point. The problem is not with concluding that there was a time with no living beings, the problem is in assuming the concept referred to by "this world" as the premise. Assuming the conventional "this world" is begging the question, because a time with no life is implicit within that concept. So once you assume "the world", the conclusion is inevitable. The problem is with the concept "the world", in general.
To me, philosophy demonstrates that "this world" is a pragmatic concept which serves our mundane purposes, but it is far from reality. The evidence that "this world" is a false concept s demonstrated at the limits of the conception. Where accepted science fails us, it comes to a dead end. The dead ends are not simply a case of needing to go further with more application of the existing theories, they are an inability to go further due to limitations of the theory. This is evidence that much of realty escapes the theories altogether, and cannot be grasped by them, indicating that "the world" s not what it pretends to be. This implies that the theories are wrong, right from the base. Examples are dark matter, dark energy in physics, and the reliance on random chance in evolutionary biology, leading to the acceptance of abiogenesis.
Quoting boundless
There are some very good arguments n Christian theology which indicate that human beings are incapable of apprehending the ultimate truth. In general, this is the difference between human beings and God, and why we can never consider ourselves to be in any way equal to God.
Quoting boundless
I agree, but the thing is that once we rule out the possibility of a deterministic physical cause, tthen we seem to be left with two choices. Either its random chance, or some other type of cause. We know that final cause, or intentionality, is another type of cause. Also, we know very little about how final cause actually works as a cause in the physical world, only that it does, from the evidence. Since we cannot actually see final cause in action, only the effects of it, and since our judgements as to which specific types of things are the effects of final cause, are completely subjective, why not consider the possibility that final cause is far more extensive than what is commonly believed? Once we allow that final cause exists not only in human actions, but also in the actions of other living things, then why not consider that the actions of the heavenly bodies, as well as atoms and subatomic particles, which are "ordered", or "orderly", are not also the effects of final cause?
Quoting boundless
I don't think I agree with this. Knowledge is always being gained, but philosophy never ceases because there is always more to learn.
Your "just-so" history is not factual, but merely one among many other possible interpretations.
It can reasonably be said that it strictly has nothing to do with science except generally insofar as part of the scientific method consists in not believing anything without evidence. Since all and everything we can know is within the universe, i.e. immanent, not transcendent, could there ever be definitive evidence that the universe was created for a purpose, or any reason, other than wishful thinking, to believe that it was?
Are you actually willing to claim that the Universe has an overarching purpose or are you just trading on the ambiguity, the conflation, I pointed to?
Quoting 180 Proof
Exactly.
Youre not even addressing the OP, simply repeating the same positivist dogma you always fall back on.
Do you want to say something more than that? If so, what? I couldn't find it in your OP beyond some vague intimations.
Greek atomists proposed this "idea" a couple of millennia ago.
:chin: So what was Platonism (re: the forms, universals) if not a "great abstraction"? or Pythagoreanism?
:up: :up:
To briefly recap the OP
Meaning that the stark object-subject divide that characterised modern thought is now being challenged by science itself.
OK, I'll play along:
Quoting Wayfarer
You say "doesn't always require"?does it ever require? I agree that meaning and purpose would be impossible without our experience being intelligible to us in the ways it is, just as meaning and purpose for animals presumably could not be possible for them without their experience being intelligible to them in the ways it is.
Quoting Wayfarer
It's a judgement based on critical thought. The human notion of purpose presupposes agency. and agency presupposes perception/ experience. If the universe as a whole has no agency, no perception/ experience then how could it have a purpose?
Quoting Wayfarer
Who ever said that the basic nature of life is mechanical? Mere mechanism doesn't allow for change based on feedback other than degradation. 'Intentionality' is a slippery term. We think of human behavior as intentional. We also think of some animal behavior as intentional, but it seems a stretch to call the behavior of simple organism, or even plants or fungi, intentional. You agree that the inorganic universe is not intentional or purposeful, and if the vast bulk of existence is inorganic, then how do you reconcile that?
I'll leave it there for now, because if you won't answer the questions already posed, I don't want to waste any more time.
And yet, no doubt, this "being challenged by science" is an objective process. :zip:
.
The universe as a whole is the subject of scientific cosmology. Its what is examined through the astounding technology of the Hubble, James Webb and now Vera Rubin observatories. Of course you wont see anything like purpose or agency in the data that these instruments collect - but as I said, this is red herring. As I said, scientific method itself brackets out or disregards those kinds of considerations. But to refer back to the OP the familiar claim that the universe is meaningless begins to look suspicious. It isnt so much a conclusion reached by science, but a background assumptionone built into the methodology from the outset. The exclusion of purpose was never, and in fact could never be, empirically demonstrated; it was simply excluded as a factor in the kind of explanations physics was intended to provide. Meaning was left behind for the sake of predictive accuracy and control in specific conditions.
That this bracketing was usefulindeed revolutionaryis not in doubt. But the further move, so often taken for granted in modern discourse, is the assertion that because physics finds no purpose, the universe therefore has none. This is not science speaking, but metaphysics ventriloquizing through the authority of science. It is a philosophical sleight of hand that confuses methodological silence for ontological negation. And you continually pull on that to justify your claims that whatever cant be known by way of science is not a legitimate subject for philosophy.
Quoting Janus
Im interested in a perspective based on phenomenology - that the appearance of organisms IS the appearance of intentionality. It is how intentionality manifests. Its not panpsychism, because Im not saying that consciousness is somehow implicit in all matter. The fact that inorganic matter is not intentional in itself is not particularly relevant to that.
Quoting 180 Proof
Perhaps - but, ironically, the whole question of the mind-independence of the fundamental aspects of nature has been thrown into question by this objective process. Thats what the Einstein-Bohr debates were about - Einstein the staunch realist, the world is the way it is no matter what we think or see vs Bohr no phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.
Quoting Wayfarer
Why is it a "red herring"? We see purpose or agency in the data collected by observing animal behavior. Are you claiming there is purpose or agency there in the inorganic even though we cannot detect it? If you are claiming that, then on what grounds?
Quoting Wayfarer
That intentionality, at least in some "proto" sense comes into being with organisms (well at least with animal organisms) is hardly controversial. You are not saying that consciousness (and intentionality?) is somehow implicit in all matter, so that leaves me wondering what you are saying.
[quote=TLP 641]The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value existsand if it did exist, it would have no value.[/quote]
There are a few arguments, but one of them is something like this:
1. Modern science long rejected teleology, even among plants and animals
2. This turned out to be false, and it was based on background assumptions rather than any rigorous reasoning
3. Given that this conclusion about plant and animal teleology turned out to be unsound, do we have any reason to believe that the conclusion about teleology more generally is sound?
The question is, "What is the rational basis for an anti-teleological view, given that the anti-teleological view as applied to plants and animals turned out to be baseless?"
You will probably say what you always say, "They have the burden of proof, not me." But the question is whether the anti-teleological side has any reasonable arguments. They certainly thought they had good arguments in the past, and the current state of science sees most of those arguments as faulty.
Why quote an ambiguous passage from Wittgenstein instead of answering directly and in good faith? Perhaps Wittgenstein just means that the human interpretations of human experience, replete with all the values and meanings inherent in those interpretations is not to be found in the physical world. Again, hardly controversial.
Quoting Leontiskos
Science has long since gone beyond such a mechanistic view of animality. It's obvious that (some) animals ( including humans) can respond to their environments in novel ways. Such a thing is not possible for simple mere mechanisms. It doesn't follow that there is any overarching purpose behind animal behavior.
Quoting Leontiskos
It was the overwhelming evidence found in observational data and being unable in the face of it to cling on to entrenched prejudices that enabled biologists to see purpose, and even intelligence and reasoning, in animal behavior. What imaginable kind of data is going to provide the evidence to allow us to see universal teleology.
Quoting Leontiskos
The analogical reasoning from one case to the other is not valid. The argument against holding the veiw that there is an overarching purpose to the universe is simply that there is no evidence for such a thing. We don't have to outright deny the possibility, but without evidence that is what it remains; a mere possibility.
Quoting Leontiskos
Those arguments were not so much arguments as prejudices, if you are referring to intentionality in animals. Some, perhaps much, of that prejudice came form religious views that propounded the idea that humans are not animals and that animals did not have souls. Luckily good observations of animal behavior exploded that myth.
Again, that's not the claim.
Where does our anti-teleological approach come from, if not from the broad anti-teleological prejudice of the modern period?
This is a simplified version of the modern argument:
1. Teleology does not exist
2. If teleology does not exist, then plant, animal, human, religious, and any other kind of teleology does not exist
3. Therefore, plant, animal, human, religious, and any other kind of teleology does not exist
This is the biological argument:
4. If teleology does not exist, then plant, animal, human, religious, and any other kind of teleology does not exist
5. Plant and animal teleology certainly exists
6. Therefore, it is false that teleology does not exist
Now someone like yourself will be prone to say, "Ah, but (5) has only to do with plant and animal teleology, and nothing else." But your error is to fail to understand that (1) was not specific to plants and animals. (1) was a thesis that entailed all sorts of things; some of those things turned out to be false; therefore (1) is false; therefore we have no grounds for any of the entailments qua (1).*
@Wayfarer is correctly pointing out that the anti-teleological prejudice seems to be nothing more than the bad fruits from a faulty and expired worldview. In a historical sense this looks to be accurate.
For example, suppose someone is a Mormon but they realize it is false and they abandon the religion. Yet they retain all sorts of Mormon practices without realizing it. When this is pointed out to them, they realize that those practices also have no validity given that the practices derive from Mormonism and Mormonism is false (or defunct). You are a bit like the Mormon who demands that the person prove that those other practices are false. Yet the point is not that they are false, but that they are unjustified. This is an important move in a society which is still beholden to the recently deceased worldview. Understanding that something is unjustified is an important prerequisite for reconsidering it.
* We have undercut R and therefore invalidated P.
This is a strawman. I'm not claiming teleology doesn't exist. A teleological explanation is an explanation in terms of purpose rather than causation, and teleological explanations are better fitted to understanding and explaining human and some animal behavior.
The idea that the universe as a whole has a purpose?that it was brought into existence on purpose rather than that it just came into existence either without cause, or from some unknown cause, is not supported by any evidence. It seems reasonable to think the universe could not have brought itself into existence on purpose. The other possibility is that it always existed.
Current scientific consensus seems to be that the universe did come into existence, but we cannot say anything about how it came about, because observational data cannot come to us from anywhere but within the already existent universe.
It seems to me you are clutching at straws attempting to confirm something you want to believe.
I'm not about to trust your judgement as to why Wittgenstein said what he did.
I think that this re-conception of intentionality is the key to understanding your position. Once we understand that conscious intention is just one form of intention, that opens up an entirely new range of possibility for how we understand and study the nature of "telos", teleology.
Restricting intention to human consciousness, such that only human actions can be understood as teleological, is a foundational, metaphysical mistake, which is common and prevalent in the modern western society.
When we understand the common defining term of "intention" as purpose, and see that all sorts living beings act with purpose, then we must accept the reality that restricting intention to conscious human action is a mistake. And, this mistake is very misleading metaphysically. Removing intention from those constraints (consciousness), and respecting it simply as a cause of action (final cause), which is inconsistent with the deterministic causes understood by physics, allows us to develop a much more productive, or constructive, conception of intention.
This allows us to better grasp the reality of intention in its spatial-temporal relations, and in relation to physical existence in general, rather than dismissing final cause, and free will as an illusion. This dismissal is inevitable if we cling to the deterministic causation of physics, and physicalism in general, rejecting the reality of teleological causation.
Further, releasing intention from the constraints of consciousness allows us a much less confusing approach to the principles of panpsychism. "Consciousness" is generally understood as a property of higher level living beings, dependent on a brain. When panpsychism proposes consciousness as fundamental to the universe, this is commonly apprehended as incoherent, due to the fact that "consciousness" as we generally conceive it, is dependent on a brain. So when we release intention from the constraints of consciousness, and understand how intention relates to temporality in a way not at all understood by human knowledge, because temporality is not at all understood by human knowledge, this allows intention as a "consciousness-like" aspect of reality, to be pervasive in its causal role.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, meaning was intentionally left out from the development of physics, and this formed the division between physics and biology. Physics was specifically designed to deal with the mechanical motions of bodies. The early physicists who pioneered the way, did not exclude the reality of the spiritual, or immaterial, they recognized the division, and knew that physics was being designed exclusively to understand that one aspect of reality, the bodily.
Modern biology, on the other hand, had a highly ambiguous start in this respect. As the material and immaterial were understood to be united within the living being, a division between material causes and immaterial causes could not be apprehended, therefore could not be upheld. As a result, there was a clear separation between the causal propositions of Lamarckian evolution, and the causal propositions of Darwinian evolution. Lamarck proposed habit as a fundamental cause, then Darwin replaced habit with chance, perceiving "habit" as unscientific. To this day, this causal question has not been resolved, and modern understanding of genotypes and epigenetics is pointing back toward Lamarckian principles.
Quoting Wayfarer
This ought to be restated. It is not the case that "physics finds no purpose". It is intentionally designed, and employed, so as to avoid purpose. This is what I was talking about earlier in the thread. We can adopt as our purpose, to avoid purpose as much as possible, and this is supposed to be our way toward "objective truth". But purpose is pervasive, and you can easily see how having as your purpose to avoid purpose, does not actually avoid purpose. Furthermore, it becomes evident that all of those determinists who cling to the causation described by "physics" and insist that free will is an illusion, actually have things backward. In reality, the idea that physics can avoid purpose, and provide us with objective truth is what is an illusion.
.and doing it badly, first, in that the impossible is not analytically contained in the merely insufficient, and second, effect is always analytically conjoined with cause, but purpose, and by categorical subsummation a priori, intent, is not necessarily conjoined with effect.
Just tickled by the catchy phrase, I was. Nothing particularly noteworthy in what I said. Common knowledge sorta thing, I hope.
You're right, here, I was a bit overstating the case. But I would say that pressure is weakly emergent. It's perfectly understandable in terms of the properties of the particles. Same goes for temperature.
So, honestly, I am not sure that I understood how is defined the concept of strong emergence. If the emergent features can be understood in terms of the lower levels, it would be 'weak' emergence. In fact, pressure and temperature would be quite good examples for me to explain weak emergence.
Quoting T Clark
Yes, but note that when the differences between newtonian mechanics and relativity become noticeable, the evidence favors the latter. But anyway the point I was making is moot.
Quoting T Clark
Ok!
Quoting T Clark
Yes, but it is assumed that the mass of, say, the Earth is the sum of the masses of its components. The distance between, say, Earth and the Sun is approximated as a distance between the distances of their centers, because being almost spherical, their gravitational effects are approximately like the one of a point particle of their mass. And so on. Also, it is assumed that the gravitational force of the Earth or the Sun is the combined effect of the forces that each of their constituents cause.
Quoting T Clark
Try to see it this way. You can define energy as a property of both an individual object or a system of objects. If you consider the energy of a closed system you find that it's conserved. And this constrains the behavior of energy of the single parts of the system.
So it's not that the law is more fundamental than the property. Rather, the law seems to show that the energy of the total isolated system is more fundamental than the energy of each part.
I believe that linear momentum is an easier example to understand my point. In a bottom-up picture of my original example, you need to justify why all forces follow the laws of dynamics. It seems an happy accident. Instead, if you take the total linear momentum as more fundamental than the linear momentum of each particle, you need only to assume that the total momentum is conserved to find that all interactions between the parts must behave in a certain way in order that the variation of the momentum of each particle is exactly the opposite of the other.
Quoting T Clark
Yeah.
So there is something intangible, or non-physical, about the contents of conscious experience, and it is within this intangible something, that purpose exists. Does that jibe?
Quoting Wayfarer
I dont quite follow how meaning was left behind for the sake of predictive accuracy. Are you saying, scientists saw no need to wonder what the bat (for instance) is subjectively experiencing when they could make predictive models about bat behaviors that need not include any such considerations?
Quoting Wayfarer
Although I like the metaphor bolded above, to be sure I follow, could it be restated as: the finding of no purpose in the universe is not something a physical scientist can say, but only something a metaphysician can say, despite the fact that many physicists play metaphysician and say it as if it is physics. Is that the dryer meaning of the bolded?
Quoting Wayfarer
It will as long as there are new minds that come to be. Give a mind long enough time (in the modern academy) and maybe purpose can be weeded out of the conversation (straining incredulity). But there is no therapy for questions of meaning, for the minds ability to consider itself. There are only answers, or opiates/lies/distractions - like a ventriloquist distracts.
Ok, I see.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But this seems too convoluted for me. It would be much easier to say that the universe is simply fine-tuned in a way that it either necessitates or allows the emergence of life. In such a case, life isn't an unintelligible accident that 'just happened' for no reason.
Why physical laws allow life? I don't know and I find it a fascinating mystery which isn't solved by the 'multiverse' either. Just saying that there are other worlds with different physical constants or even physical laws and our world just happens to be one that allows life isn't a good explanation to why life was even possible in the first place. Of course, one might say that there is no 'why' but it is undeniable that life is allowed by physical laws. This is of course a tautology of sorts. But it makes you wonder if there is some reason of this allowance. I don't think the existence of such a 'reason' can be discovered by science.
Regardless of the existence of the 'deeper reason', since life are allowed, in no way reductionism is implied. That is if the 'laws of nature' allow life and are a sufficient explanation of it, it would seem to me that properties of the entire world ('laws of nature') explain the arising of life. Hence, life would be explained in terms of the properties of the whole, in the same way as we can understand the behavior of the momenta of single particles as a consequence of the behavior of a whole isolated system, as I explained before:
Quoting boundless
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, but I don't think that there are Christian theologians that say that the blessed can fall away from the communion of God. Since God is the Good, whoever finds communion with the Good stops seeking fulfillment outside that state. This doesn't entail a total cessation of activity or that God is totally known by the blessed but that they do not fall from such a state because they find their fulfillment.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, it's a possibility. As I wrote before, there is a possible a 'deeper reason' why physical laws allow life. I don't think that it is something that science can determine. It's not also something that it can exclude.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are probably right. I should have added an 'if'. If doubt ceases, philosophy ceases.
i) there is a 'deeper reason' for that allowance that is transcendent
ii) there is no such a 'deeper reason' but the 'laws of nature', properties of the world, allow the arising of life
In both cases, life isn't a random accident. In fact, even if the second option is right, it still means that the allowance of life is a property of the 'fabric of the universe'.
The OP is not about you. You asked about the rationale of the OP and then immediately objected because of something you're not claiming. Do you think the OP was written against Janus in particular? And that if something in the OP does not apply to you then the OP lacks rationale?
Yes, this is correct.
Quoting boundless
Its exactly the same. This is not a scientific way of speaking, its statistics. This is how statisticians talk about distributions of data points. As the number of points of a property that is normally distributed increases to infinity, the graph of the data points approaches a normal curve. If theres only one or two data points, its impossible to tell whether the data is normally distributed or not. Typically, it doesnt take a vast number of points to estimate the distribution. For example polls, intended to measure the opinions of all Americans typically include the data of only a few thousand.
Quoting boundless
I dont see how this is relevant.
Quoting boundless
You and I have a different understanding of what the words reductionism and emergence mean and how the processes they designate work. Im not going to change my understanding and I dont think you are either. Theres probably no reason for us to continue this part of the discussion.
Exactly. Following Descartes, Enlightenment philosophy generally valorized the ego the self-aware, reflective individual mind as the seat of certainty and meaning. Husserls term egological is relevant here, because it names the modern presumption that consciousness means the kind of consciousness I am aware ot, usually understood introspectively. But this neglects more the more fundamenal forms of intentionality in life what Jonas or Merleau-Ponty would recognize as the intentionality disclosed in embodied being. In other words, the mistake is not just empirical, but metaphysical: it misplaces the source of purposiveness by identifying it too narrowly with discursive, self-aware cognition (the ego). And an awful lot revolves around this mistake.
You're coming at it from a slightly different perspective, but I'm overall in agreement. (I'm exploring this topic through phenomology, which I've only begun reading the last couple of years. My current reading list is The Phenomenon of LIfe, Hans Jonas; The Embodied Mind, Varela, Thompson and Rosch; Mind in Life, Evan Thompson, Incomplete Nature, Terrence Deacon; and Dynamics in Action, Alice Juarrero all of which I hope to finish this year.)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That's what the original post says!
Quoting Fire Ologist
:100: But a crucial fact is, the intangible and non-physical is not Descartes 'res cogitans', a thinking thing, which leads to the fallacious Cartesian dualism. I'll offer a passage here from a recent (but unsung) cognitive science book that I found very useful.
[quote=Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order: How the Mind Creates the Features & Structure of All Things, and Why this Insight Transforms Physics (p. 6). Kindle Edition. ]For the scientist, the universe consists of matter and incandescent plasma. These, however, are images invented by the human mind. Behind these images, and evoking them, are the constraints of nature that channel the scientists thinking and determine the outcomes of experiments. In fact, what we regard as the physical world is physical to us precisely in the sense that it acts in opposition to our will and constrains our actions. The aspect of the universe that resists our push and demands muscular effort on our part is what we consider to be physical. On the other hand, since sensation and thought dont require overcoming any physical resistance, we consider them to be outside of material reality.[/quote]
This beautifully illustrates that even the concept of physical reality is not independent of subjective orientation it's already intentional, already laden with the phenomenological structure of purpose and resistance (and this, even though Pinter's not writing from an explictly phenomenological perspective). This embodiedness is precisely what the "egological" framework doesn't see, as it has already reduced objects to abstractions.
Quoting Fire Ologist
The "great abstraction" referred to in the original post isnt about biology, but about physics specifically, the revolution in natural philosophy during the 17th century that led to a mechanistic, mathematically formalised view of nature. This model prioritized predictive accuracy over interpretive meaning, redefining what counted as knowledge by bracketing off subjective or qualitative aspects of experience altogether.
Interestingly, Immanuel Kant himself expressed doubts about whether biology, in this mechanistic framework, could ever qualify as a true science:
[quote= Alicia Juarrero, Dynamics in Action]Since only external forces can cause bodies to change, and since no external forces are involved in the self-organization of organisms, Kant reasoned that the self-organization of nature has nothing analogous to any causality known to us.[/quote]
In other words, because the physical sciences were built around time-reversible laws (like Newtonian mechanics), they couldnt easily account for the purposive, self-organizing activity of living systems which unfold over time and exhibit goal-directed behavior.
And indeed, biology didnt fully establish itself as a predictive science until Darwins Origin of Species and later the discovery of genetic mechanisms. Before that, it was largely classificatory a science of kinds, not causes. But even today, there remains a live tension between the mechanistic framework inherited from physics and the teleological character of life. Hence the argument that purposiveness, which was deliberately set aside in the development of modern science, must now be acknowledged not as epiphemonenal but as central.
It might be easier for you to say this, but that is a matter of avoiding the point. Instead of acknowledging that the concept which we know as "the universe" is a false concept, you are accepting it as true, and proceeding from that premise. Of course it's easier that way, because you have your starting point already laid out for you. However the falsity of it misleads you.
Quoting boundless
Actually, these "laws" you refer to are the product of human knowledge. Human beings have created these laws in their efforts to describe activities observed.
Quoting boundless
If 'laws of nature' are proposed as what the laws of physics are meant to describe, or represent, then we must ask how is it the case that physical bodies can obey the laws of nature. Would you propose that material bodies have access to some set of laws, which they read, or learn in some way, and then conduct themselves in a way so as to obey these laws? If not, then what would you propose as the process by which material things would interpret and obey a set of 'natural laws'?
Quoting boundless
Why would you conclude this, it makes no sense to me. To begin with, "God" is not defined as "the good". The good is what a human beings seeks, and we do not necessarily seek God. Further, if one does seek God, it is impossible for a human being to know God in an absolute way, so that person would always be seeking to be closer to God, never reaching the fulfillment you refer to.
Quoting boundless
But this method only works to an extent. If you divide a hadron into quarks and gluons, the hadron has a lot more mass than the sum of its parts. This is a feature described by the energy mass equivalence. The mass is a product of force, the strong force.
Wow, you do a lot of reading.
A very interesting and important theme I will say. And, when you get to the part about the criteria by which we judge whether specific instances of mental causation are good or bad, that is probably the most important theme there is.
Back to the Euthyphro dilemma. Is it good because it is loved by the gods, or is it loved by the gods because it is good?
Maybe Im a bit confused. Are you saying that it makes sense to think of non-sentient objects as capable of having intention? I think that is at the heart of the argument being made in the OP. I agree that some animals at least are capable of having intention.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If you define intention as a synonym for purpose, then youre just restating the position of the OP - a circular argument. If you define it as a mental state, which is one of the primary meanings of the word, then clearly only an entity with a mind can have intention.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think youve restated the argument in the OP, as I understand it, very clearly. Do you find that way of looking at things compelling?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think this is right. @Wayfarer and I are both fans of Burtts The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, which makes this case strongly. What those early physicists did was metaphysics, not science.
Galileo, in particular, overthrew the antiquated system of Ptolemaic cosmology and Aristotelian physics - but then, he also leaned heavily on Plato, from whom he inherited the idea of dianoia as the centrality of mathematical and geometrical knowledge. So these themes and ideas intermingle.
The cardinal difference between Galileo and his forbears was first the exclusion of the final cause - that for which something exists. That is what teleonomy or teleology are concerned with, and which the new physics eliminated altogether. And second, the exclusive emphasis on what can be measured and quantified, which was absolutely crucial.
On the one hand, that opened the door to very much of what was to become modern science; but on the other, it tended to suggest the picture of the Universe and mankind as the product of blind physical causation, which became stock-in-trade for later scientific materialism.
Which is why Edmund Husserl said that Galileos genius both reveals and conceals. Reveals, because objectivity and quantitative methods yielded huge results; but conceals the "Lifeworld" (Lebenswelt). The core of Husserl's critique of modern philosophy is that Galileo's mathematical idealization conceals the pre-scientific, lived world of immediate experience (the "lifeworld") from which all scientific concepts ultimately arise. The lifeworld is the world as it is experienced by us in our everyday lives with its qualitative perceptions, practical concerns, and subjective meanings. And modern science gave rise to this split (or bifurcation) between lived experience and scientific abstraction, which is very much what this thread is concerned with.
I am not saying that explicitly. There are a number of different ways in which intention can be the cause of the movements of things, without intention being within the thing that is moving. Since we observe the activities of things, and notice that many are moved by intention, while the intention which moves them is external to them, (including chains of causation), it makes sense that non-sentient objects could be moving in intentionally designed trajectories without us being aware of the intention which sets them on their way.
Quoting T Clark
Yes, I am in agreement with the op. But intention really shouldn't be synonymous with purpose. Purpose is the defining word for intention. Generally, the defining word is the broader category. So for example, human beings is defined by mammal, which is defined by animal which is defined by living. In this case, conscious is defined by intention which is defined by purpose.
Often though, there is an inclination to make intention synonymous with purpose. This would mean that all cases of purpose are intentional. However, I think it is probably more productive in the long run to maintain a conceptual separation. This would mean that not all instances of intention are conscious, and also that not all instances of purpose are intentional. This allows versatility to the concept of "purpose", providing freedom from the restrictions of an end, or goal, which "intention" imposes. Purposeful acts could be carried out without being directed toward any specific end, such as in the case of some forms of trial and error perhaps.
Quoting T Clark
Yes, I think it is the only reasonable way of looking at things. What we notice through sensation is specific ways in which things are, and this allows us to generalize. But in order for things to exist in specific ways, rather than absolute randomness, these ways must be designed, and the things somehow ordered to exist in these ways. So, as is the case with human artifacts and all artificial things, the design is prior in time to the thing, and the thing is brought into existence in accordance with the design.
However, like I mentioned above, I think we ought to allow that "purpose" extends beyond the limits of design, which is the restriction that the concept "intention" tends to impose. The need for this is evidenced by accidentals, which are not a part of the design, but are still purposefully caused. Simply put, an accident is not part of the intent, yet it is part of the purposeful act. It is the part which is not consistent with the designed end. And, since accidents still have purpose, as we learn from accidents and they can be very educational, they are in some way purposeful yet not intentional.
Accidents appear to be a significant part of the evolutionary process, in features like mutations for example, and people tend to think of them as chance though they are purposeful. Accidentals are what account for the uniqueness, peculiarities, and idiosyncrasies of the individual. I believe that we must allow that all the vast array of difference which we observe in life, and which I think manifests as the beauty of life, (the number of different colours found in flowers for example), are just as purposeful as all the sameness which we observe.
I wouldnt want it to be thought that the OP is advocating any form of intelligent design. That wasnt the intention. The word 'design' almost always implies a designing agency, which is not what I mean by purpose. Rather, Im pointing to the deeper philosophical issue of how order emerges from apparent chaos a question that has animated metaphysics since the Presocratics.
I accept the basic, naturalistic account of evolutionary biology. Where I differ is in how its interpreted, and what meaning (if any) can be drawn from it. On one side are the ultra-Darwinists figures like Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Jacques Monod who argue that life is a kind of biochemical fluke, a cascade of chance mutations filtered by the blind algorithm of natural selection (as outlined in Dennett's 'Darwins Dangerous Idea' and Monod's 'Chance and Necessity'). On the other side are proponents of intelligent design such as Michael Behe and Stephen Meyer ('Signature in the Cell').
I dont subscribe to the Biblical creation narrative, though I respect its symbolic depth. Nor do I advocate a cosmic designer in the ID sense though I also dont think the ID theorists are entirely wrong in their intuition that something more is driving the process than blind mechanism.
I dont want to wade too far into that controversy, which has produced a vast and contentious literature. But I am drawn to the idea of a naturalistic teleology, as Thomas Nagel very tentatively sketches in Mind and Cosmos namely, that sentient beings are in some sense the cosmos become self-aware.
Accordingly, the one teleological principle Im willing to defend even if its heresy in mainstream biology is orthogenesis: the idea that there has been, over evolutionary time, a real tendency toward greater awareness, self-consciousness, and intelligence. I dont claim this as a comprehensive cosmology, but as a metaphysical intuition that can help accommodate diverse perspectives of the evolution of consciousness.
See also The Third Way.
I often think while observing the insect world, that there seems to be an excess of awareness. A vibrant interactivity going on. A kind of bursting with life, which seems to outstrip the basic necessities of finding food and procreating, in their specific evolutionary niche.
Ok, but then I question if there is a meaningful distinction between strong and weak emergence.
Quoting T Clark
Probably. I would say that we have a similar understanding, however. But certainly this part of the discussion can go too much off topic. In brief, I would say that I believe that perhaps a better reading of physical theories is that what is fundamental is actually the whole universe, i.e. it is an ontological precedence over its parts.
Another point is that, perhaps, in order to have an acceptable explanation of life and consciousness, physicalism needs at least to be 'expanded' or corrected in some ways.
Perhaps. But I still don't have enough reasons to say that 'the universe' is a false concept. Ironically, I believe that, despite the 'reductionist' reputation that physics has, perhaps a more parsimonious reading of our physical theories is that the 'whole universe' is actually the most fundamental entity (if there is something transcendent of it, it can't be known scientifically).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In a sense, I agree. But we can create them because we undeniably observe regularities in natural phenomena. Of course, we cn be wrong that this intelligible order we observe really exists but I would say it is more reasonable to say that than the reverse.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
How so? In all (or at least most) theistic religions and philosophies, it is assumed that God is what fulfills our deepest yearning. As St. Augustine said at the beginning of the Confessions "our hearts are restless until they rest in You [God]". It is natural to say that God is also the highest Good - or even Goodness itself, it that is true.
I don't think that 'being fulfilled' implies that activity stops. It just means that the will stops seeking fulfillment outside God. This doesn't imply that the will can't seek to deepen its participation in God's goodness. Perhaps we are using the word 'fulfillment' in different ways. To me it means that the will doesn't seek anymore satisfaction outside God. But this doesn't imply that the will can't deepen its participation in the communion with God. Same goes for knowledge: knowledge can be deepened but the mind doesn't seek knowledge outside God once it is in communion (or union depending on the theistic model).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I agree with that. In this case, the mass of nucleons isn't just the sum of the masses of its components but it is also given by the mass of the interactions.
This BTW shows that in contemporary physics that mass can't be interpreted as a measure of the quantity of matter. In fact, I would even say that mass is an abstract property no more real than energy.
This is what I dismiss as incoherent. We know that order does not simply emerge. The second law of thermodynamics supports this knowledge. Therefore we need to assume an "agency" of some sort as the cause of order. If the agency is said to act with purpose, but not with design, this wouldn't really make sense to most people. How could there be purpose without a goal for direction? However, I fully understand and respect the problem which you are bringing to my attention. I believe I've addressed this in my reply to T Clark above.
I proposed a distinction between intention and purpose. "Intention" implies an end or goal which is sought through action and this is how "design" is commonly used. But we also commonly allow that there are purposeful acts which lie outside the boundaries or constraints of the concept of "intention". This is exemplified by the reality of accidents, and accidentals. An accident is not a part of the intentional design yet it is still purposeful. And accidents are very useful in the production of knowledge as we learn from them. Trial and error for example is full of accidents, and knowledge often progresses through a determination of what is impossible. And this is how I class the so-called random mutations of evolution, as purposeful accidents.
That is how I understand the problem of the appearance of emergent order. Accidentals are the results of purposeful actions of an agent, which appear to be chance occurrences. The issue however, is that this does not completely remove the need for intention and design, in an absolute sense. Accidentals fall outside of the intentional goal which lies behind those purposeful acts that are apprehended as accidents. So it is still necessary to conclude a designing agency, i.e. an agent with a goal of some sort, telos. Even orthogenesis, which you propose, requires a designing agency to support the existence of an overall goal. The problem being how to support the reality of a goal, or end, without it being derived from a designing agency.
Quoting boundless
I do have those reasons, and I mentioned some, the failure of science where the current theories reach their limits. These are issues like dark matter and dark energy in physics, and the need to assume random mutations and abiogenesis in biology. As I said, what these failings indicate is not that we need to extend conventional theories further, but that the theories need to be replaced with something fundamentally different, a paradigm shift. Therefore the current concept of "the universe" is a false concept.
Quoting boundless
That is the whole point. Evidence indicates that something does transcend what is known as "the universe", and what can be known scientifically. That is why the need for metaphysics is very real, and why physicalism must be rejected. Observation based knowledge is severely handicapped in its ability to apprehend the totality of temporal reality. All observations are of things past, and the future cannot be observed in any way whatsoever. This means that observation based knowledge, empirical sciences, are only accurate toward understanding half of reality, the past, while the future lies entirely beyond scientific apprehension. We can predict what will come to pass, based on observations of the past, but this in no way indicates that we understand the nature of what is in the future.
Quoting boundless
I think death is what is implied by that statement of Augustine, where he says "rest in You".
Quoting boundless
No the mass is not given by "the mass of the interactions", it is given by the force. This is the basis of the energy-mass equivalence. And "force" is an extremely difficult concept to grasp, especially if we remove the mass required for momentum, to conceive of a force without any mass, to allow that the energy-mass equivalence represents something real. If the energy-mass equivalence is real, then there must be a force, called "energy", without any mass. This force would turn out to be nothing but the passing of time itself. Since the principles of physics don't allow us to conceive of a force without some sort of momentum, in application the photon must be assigned some mass, to account for its momentum, this is "relativistic mass".
The Fine Tuning Problem is a relevant example that is often pointed to in terms of cosmic teleology. Nagel addresses this sort of thing for instance, we have a number of prominent physicists, with a "multiverse" (i.e. everything possible happens) being another common way to try to explain the observations. Just for one example, the extremely low entropy of the early universe is a prerequisite for life, and yet, based on any non-informative prior it seems like it should be exceedingly unlikely. And this is true for a great many observations, for phenomena that do not appear to be directly related. Hence the idea of "fine tuning."
I had a thread before on how the Von-Nuemann-Wigner interpretation of quantum mechanics actually explains this as well as Many Worlds, since only those paths that resulted in consciousness would ever collapse and be "actualized/crystalized" (the growing crystalizing block universe). This would make consciousness, and thus intentionality, and presumably final causality, fundamental to the universe as well though.
Or there is the Fifth Way, which is often misunderstood, but represents an argument from observation related to teleology.
I wasn't trying to use your affection for Burtt as an argument against your position. It just struck me after reading @Metaphysician Undercover's comment that he is right - Galileo et. al. were creating a new mathematical science, but they were keeping in the intention/goal directedness in the picture, even though it wasn't stated explicitly. It was bound up in their religious understanding. I guess the problem for you is that aspect has been lost as the world has become more secular. For me, that isn't a problem. I'm not a theist and I'm comfortable with a metaphysics without intention, at least in the limited realm of science.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think that's only true for people who don't recognize that the metaphysics of science does not make sense as an organizing principle for all of reality. No metaphysical position does, including the teleological approach you favor. There is no one size fits all metaphysics, at least not an effective one.
This seems like the whole infinite regress problem. A rock is moving with intention, but the intention came from outside it. Where did that intention come from? From the other rock that knocked into it? Where did it's intention come from? How far back do we have to go? When is intention actually inside something non-sentient?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This all seems very convoluted to me. A distinction without a difference. I just don't get it. I don't think there's any reason for us to trudge down this path any further.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Boy. This is a disappointing response. Puts an end to the conversation.
Well, of course there has been. When you start at zero complexity, zero consciousness, the only place to go is up.
This is from Antonio Damasio's "Feeling & Knowing: Making Minds Conscious." Damasio is a well-known cognitive scientist.
As I noted, you and I are just too far apart on this.
Quoting boundless
I strongly disagree.
Quoting boundless
We've been through this. The physicalism you seem to be talking about is the reductionism you and I both reject.
Nuff said.
Mass is energy. Energy is mass. Your conception of what is real and what is not doesn't make much sense to me.
Evolutionary theory treats adaptations as responses to local conditions, not steps on a ladder. While some lineages have become more complex, others havent many species have stayed much the same, or even simplified over time (think crocodiles).
The concern is that orthogenesis smuggles in telos without providing a mechanism ( :yikes: ) and so risks anthropocentrism imagining that evolution was aiming at us. Darwinian theory never tires of assuring us that many species are much more successful, in evolutionary terms, on account of them having survived for far longer periods of time than h.sapiens (that, after all, being a measurable criterion, unlike higher self awareness.)
Thats exactly why the issue is relevant to the broader question of purpose. The mainstream rejection of orthogenesis isnt just based on empirical considerations it reflects a deep philosophical commitment within modern biology to explaining everything in terms of material and efficient causes (genes, mutations, selective pressures), while rejecting any appeal to formal or final causes as unscientific, a hangover from archaic patterns of thought.
Imagine that you could look inside a computer, to observe the micron-scale transistors blinking on & off, processing billions of bits of meaningless 1s & 0s. The close-up view would look no more purposeful than an icecap that melts from a mountaintop, into a series of streams that meander across the landscape, motivated only by gravity*4, guided by contingency, and eventually merging with the sea at gravitational equilibrium. Aristotle would say that the water seeks its proper place --- perhaps like an elephant, impelled by some mysterious purpose, journeying to the mythical graveyard.
The seeking-the-sea analogy may sound absurd, unless you back-off and look at it from a cosmic perspective. For example, the computer is motivated by bits of electricity (efficient cause) and guided by computer logic (formal cause). But the purpose behind the process is the Intention*3 of the Programmer (first cause). And the output (final cause) may not be known until the computation runs its course.
Likewise, when you look at biological Evolution*1 from close-up, it may seem pointless. But, from a cosmic perspective, when you compare the Big Bang scenario to the blue-green world we ambitious upright apes have civilized, the system has changed over time, dramatically. Hence, the cosmos presents the "appearance"*1 of a positive, teleological Purpose. Unfortunately, it is still processing (incomplete & imperfect), and may not have reached its final form. So we can't see the End, or the beginning. Hence, the "telos" is implicit, but unknown. :nerd:
Excerpts from a Quora Forum question : Is evolution a random process without any direction or purpose? If so, what is the significance of evolution? https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-purpose-or-direction-to-evolution
*1. The whole point of modern evolutionary theory is that it explains the appearance of purpose (or telos, if you prefer) emerging from a purposeless process. There is nothing within evolution that indicates the existence of telos.
Note --- Darwin didn't attempt to explain the intention or goal of the evolutionary mechanism. It just endlessly cranks out widgets for no reason. But his example of artificial Selection by human farmers, to "improve" their plants & animals, necessarily required some vision of a future goal, and intentional motivation to manipulate natural systems to serve human needs & desires
*2. The key is whether purpose requires intent. If purpose requires a pursuit of a goal or telos, then intent would be required. This form of intent is subjective and presumes a host, such as an intelligent agent. Hence, evolution can have no purpose, scientifically speaking.
Note --- For pragmatic Science, teleology is taboo. But Philosophically speaking, why not entertain a theory of teleology, if no more complete explanation is available? The arrow of time is pointing at what & where?
*3. Evolution is a process... processes don't have aims in themselves... although they may be set up to purposely get a given result by an intelligent thing, or have intelligent things as parts in the process.
Note --- A digital computer has no philosophical goals. It simply computes until the computation ends. But a program has an intended function : the purpose.The "intelligence" is in the programmer, not the program. Likewise, teleology is in the First Cause, not in the mechanism.
*4. your premise is not right. Evolution has no goal. Evolution is just an observable fact. Like gravity. Gravity has no goal, it just has effects i.e. attraction. Evolution has no goal. But it has effects. The effect of the evolution, as we know, is the passing of the genome. This effect demonstrates itself in the species as heritable traits.
Note --- Every Effect has a Cause. This quote considers only the Material and Efficient causes. But ignores the First (intention) and Final causes (goal). Teleology assumes that an on-going process has all four causes.
*5. Everything looks designed. The difference is in the choice of the engine driving it. Evolution says its random mutation and natural selection exclusively. Others say that those evolutionary processes were directed by a designer, presumably God. The science is the same, the appearance of design is the same. The difference is how it was done - randomly or directed. That is, belief in God or not.
Note --- The impression of design is an inference in the mind of the observer, who has experienced intentional creativity in human culture. Darwin could avoid the implications of divine Selection, by assuming the world was eternal, and that gradual evolution was going nowhere fast. But today, the journey from formless Bang to a civilized planet presents the "appearance" of design & direction. But who or what is selecting for fitness, and filtering-out unfit forms. Can we call that Natural Design, and leave the "who" as an open question?
Screen grab of a lecture given by Terrence Deacon some time in the past. Excerpted from How Nature's Heirarchical Levels Really Emerge (video).
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Forgotten that thread, thanks for mentioning!
I think the deeper philosophical issue here revolves around the problem of self-organisation or what Aristotle might call self-motion. How can living systems arise from non-living matter? How can purposeful activity emerge in a world governed by entropy? How can something move or structure itself?
Thats precisely the question Im exploring through Terrence Deacons Incomplete Nature. His project is to show how order can, in fact, emerge from thermodynamic chaos not through external design or miraculous intervention, but through specific kinds of constraints and relational structures that arise in far-from-equilibrium systems. He calls this emergent teleology, and while its a naturalistic account, it isnt reductionist in the usual sense.
But even if we accept Deacons account of how purposive structure can emerge naturally, there remains the deeper metaphysical question: whence those constraints?
Thats where something like the Cosmological Anthropic Principle strikes a chord the idea that the fundamental constants (or constraints?) seem to lie within a very narrow range necessary for complex matter to exist and for life to arise. Whether one interprets that as evidence of design, necessity, or simply a selection effect is, of course, open to debate.
Or more to the point, its an open question and I think thats as it should be.
//ps - that linked video above is by Jeremy Sherman - he's a kind of Deacon acolyte, presents many of Deacon's ideas in informal videos on Youtube. Has a sense of humour and a quirky style -looks worth knowing about.//
It struck me just now why I find the teleological approach to understanding the world so distasteful. It's disrespectful to the universe - to reality, to the Tao - to try to jam it into human boxes. It's arrogant and self-indulgent. I really do hate it.
The Tao doesnt strive, but it does flow, and whatever flows, has to flow somewhere. Water 'seeks the low places' not because it was told to, or because it suits human ends, but because of what it is. To notice that is not to impose a purpose, but to witness the natural pattern in things.
Id agree that when teleology becomes a way of carving up nature to fit our needs or narratives, then its missing the point. But if its a way of attending to the inner coherence of things then it might be closer to reverence than to imposition.
[quote=Tao Te Ching, trs Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English]Water benefits all things and does not compete. It stays in the lowly places which others despise. Thus it is close to the Tao.[/quote]
And it's not too far distant from the Aristotelian:
[quote=Aristotle, Politics, IEP;https://iep.utm.edu/aristotle-politics/#H5]The word telos means something like purpose, or goal, or final end. According to Aristotle, everything has a purpose or final end. If we want to understand what something is, it must be understood in terms of that end ...Consider a knife. If you wanted to describe a knife, you would talk about its size, and its shape, and what it is made out of, among other things. But Aristotle believes that you would also, as part of your description, have to say that it is made to cut things. ...The knifes purpose, or reason for existing, is to cut... ...This is true not only of things made by humans, but of plants and animals as well. If you were to fully describe an acorn, you would include in your description that it will become an oak tree in the natural course of things so acorns too have a telos.[/quote]
I think its probably needless to say I dont agree with this.
Quoting Aristotle, Politics, IEP
A knife is designed and made by humans to cut. I think that is a bad analogy for the kind of goal or purpose you have been talking about. It implies there is a designer and a creator, an idea which, as I understood it, you have rejected.
Be that as it may, I wasnt trying to reopen the argument, I was trying to explain why I reject itso strongly.
But he also refers to natural things, acorns and foals. Elsewhere the distinction is made between artifacts and organisms, but here the distinction is not that important in this context - only that artifacts have purposes imposed by their designers while organisms have purposes that are intrinsic to them.
Thats why I said I think its a bad analogy. As I said, I dont really want to reopen this whole argument.
But is it an analogy at all? Isnt it pointing to something real not metaphorical, but actual?
Let me try a different analogy. One of the motivations for developing differential calculus or at least one of its consequences was its application to aiming artillery shells. This had a huge impact on warfare, military capability, and by extension, the political outcomes of military campaigns.
Now, if youre an artillery officer, all you need to know is how to aim and thats what Newtonian physics helps with. Your tables and calculations tell you how to fire accurately. Thats one kind of aim and its the kind physics is concerned with. And it made a huge difference!
But theres also another level of aim: why youre firing, why you joined the army, what the war is about and none of that appears in the physics. Yet its still part of the aim. Physics models the trajectory, but not the reason.
In the same way, when Aristotle speaks of telos, hes not always invoking a designers intention or a conscious goal. Hes pointing to the formative structure of things the way they unfold, and what they tend toward in their becoming. The acorn doesnt intend to be an oak tree, but neither is its development just accident and brute cause.
Its not just a matter of aiming shells. The analogy extends to science itself. The amazing discoveries of modern science calculus, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics give us incredible power to manipulate and control. We can aim more accurately, build better tools, send probes to the outer planets.
But the question of what all this is for? Thats not a scientific question. Its a philosophical, moral, or spiritual one. And its exactly the kind of question that the language of telos is trying to keep alive not in a dogmatic sense, but in the sense that human beings and living systems dont just happen, they mean.
It don't make sense, and you can't make peace.
Actually "final cause" was intended to put an end to the infinite regress. Any chain of causation would begin from an intentional act. If it wasn't begun in a freely willed act of a human being, it began as a freely willed act of God. I don't think God can be classified as "sentient".
Quoting T Clark
I find it odd that you say this, because I think the exact opposite is the case. "The universe" is just a human concept, it refers to the way that we perceive and understand reality. This is analogous to the ancient humans who had a geocentric universe. Our current conception is really not much further advanced.
To say that reality is confined to this human box called "the universe" is an arrogant self-indulgent attitude of certitude. It suggests that we have reality all figured out, and it all fits into this concept, "the universe". But the reality of intention and free will don't fit into this concept, and this demonstrates to us that a significant part of reality actually escapes this determinist concept of "the universe".
Furthermore, the concept of God is meant to remove reality from that human box. It acknowledges that there are all those aspects of reality which do not fit into the human box. It is required, to account for how weak and fallible the human box actually is, and defend us against that confident, arrogant attitude that human beings have it all figured out, and it all fits into this box called "the universe". So contrary to what you say, the scientific approach is to jam reality into the box of human experience, empiricism, while the teleological approach, which accepts the reality of free will and intention, allows for a vast aspect of reality beyond what we can experience with our senses.
Quoting Wayfarer
I look at all of this type of concept, "matter", and "entropy", as products of how we relate to aspects of the world which appear to remain the same as time passes. But along with that which remains the same as time passes, there is also change. And change cannot be caused by that which remains the same, it must have another source. Therefore there is no question of how does life arise from matter, or emerge from a world governed by entropy, because those principles only apply to that part of the world which stays the same, while life is a cause of change, therefore it is a completely different part of reality.
Consider that "matter", and "a world governed by entropy", are principles, laws of physics. Laws of physics apply to an aspect of reality which we know as inanimate. However, there is a very significant part of reality which we simply do not know about, and this includes the cause of change, which itself includes life. And when I say "change" here, I'm talking about 'real change', not the deterministic actions of matter, which are predictable by science, which are not real change because they are just a continuation of that which remains the same. If you believe in free will, then you believe in 'real change', change which is not a continuation of that which remains the same, and is therefore not predictable by science.
When we accept free will, and 'real change', there is no issue of how could life arise from non-living matter, because "matter" is a concept which does not allow for real change and doesn't apply. Therefore it is impossible that life arose from matter because the concept "matter" doesn't extend to that aspect where life is derived from. That's why there is dualism. Furthermore, there is no issue with purposeful activity arising from a world governed by entropy, because "entropy" is a similar concept which applies to that aspect of the world which remains the same. But "entropy" is much more interesting because it is the word that applies to the part of reality which escapes that which remains the same. As time passes, energy is supposedly conserved, as a law of that which stays the same. In reality, some escapes as entropy, so "entropy" refers to this part of reality where real change is possible, and happens.
Quoting Wayfarer
It appears to me like you are getting sucked in by physicalism. Stop that, and look at the true nature of free will.
Quoting Wayfarer
We need to respect the fact that fundamental constants or constraints do not cover the entirety of reality. There are aspects of reality which escape these, these constants do not apply. This is where we find "entropy" for example. The energy of a system remains constant (fundamental constraint) however, some actually gets lost (entropy). So "entropy" really refers to an aspect of reality which doesn't play by the rules.
Hah. I'm usually arguing a case a step more sophisticated. And this is indeed an issue I am wrestling with right now in its most general physicalist sense.
In short, I argue from the point of view of systems science with its basically Aristotelean understanding of hierarchical order and causality. The key thing is how a new state of global order can only emerge by simplifying the local degrees of freedom as the "stuff" from which the new state of global order is being constructed from.
So strong emergence becomes the emergence of a new level of topological organisation that imposes itself on the materiality that underpins it, and thus allows itself to be that which it is. Some globally persistent new state of order.
A simple example is to have the functional thing of an army, you have to turn a random mob of humans into a battalion of soldiers. The army as a "thing" has to be able to shape the parts that make it. Humans in all their free variety have to be turned into the standardised and replaceable units that can't help but then embody the identity of an army as a military machine.
So of course you have to start with some raw material. But that matter has to be transformed by top-down formal and final constraints. And the way this happens is not by the emergence of new properties in some magical fashion. It is by the suppression of the wide and rather random variety of properties that the raw material may contain. You have to knock the rough humanity out of the civilians and limit their behaviour to that befitting their new imposed sense of military purpose. Turn them into the cogs that fit the larger machine.
So for hierarchical order, less is more. Raw matter lacks limitation. Limitation is what then can shape it into something that is like the cells of a body, or the neurons of a brain, or anything else that comes to seem like a unity of purpose expressed as the assembly of standardised parts into a functional whole.
Talk about emergence gets slippery because it is too often framed in a reductionist fashion a collection of parts already have the necessary properties and so their assembly into a whole is already fore-ordained. The whole adds nothing more in causal terms.
But the systems view says nope. You need global constraints to shape the raw material into the functional units which now come together in a natural way to express that global purpose driving the whole show. It is necessary to form or shape the local degrees of freedom to ensure you already start with the "right stuff".
Emergence strikes the wrong note in these discussions as it implies a flowering of some internal potential. A something from nothing metaphysics that then always begs the metaphysical question.
A systems view flips this on its head. Emergence is really the opposite thing of a narrowing of possibilities at one level of being so that the explosion of possibilities can appear at a new higher level of topological order.
The problem for a bar magnet is that all its dipole iron atoms jiggle freely in all directions. But impose a magnetic field and this global restriction forces them to abandon their former rather random civilian life and line up with a military precision. A constrained dipole can become the organised point in a magnetic field.
So I think that is the root of it. Stop thinking of emergence as the surprise of getting something out of nothing. Think instead about getting something useful or higher level in its order out of the active limitation of the random everythingness of all the other things that raw and unconstrained materiality might be getting up to for not good or functional reason.
Emergence is the collective whole that arises when some source of open-ended potential is turned into a tightly-marshalled collection of degrees of freedom.
And this systems approach applies just as much to physical systems like magnets and phase transitions as its does to living and mindful systems.
The only difference is that physical systems can't encode their global constraints. They just are globally constrained in this emergent fashion. The Big Bang expanded and cooled and went through a rapid series of phase transitions that organised it in the way we know.
Life and mind then lucked into codes genes and neurons that could act as internal memories for the kind of constraints that would organise them into organismic selves. They could represent physical constraints which have to exist concretely in space and time as information that could now be deployed at any place or moment of the organism's own choosing.
So that was a huge shift from an entropic to an informational system. But then just more of the same in terms of the causal holism that is the deep metaphysical story of any "system" in the sense that Aristotle defined.
Heaven forbid :yikes: But to truly win a battle, you must fight your opponent on his strongest grounds.
Quoting apokrisis
Brilliant post, as always your framing of emergence via the simplification of local degrees of freedom to allow for global order is spot on, and Im strongly drawn to that systems-theoretic rehabilitation of formal and final causation. In fact a lot of what I'm reading now arises from my encounter with your posts on biosemiotics (along with phenomenology).
But theres one phrase I want to call out: life and mind then lucked into codes. That feels like the crucial hinge in the story.
The emergence of codes systems of symbolic representation that are arbitrary, rule-based, and capable of being interpreted seems to me not just an evolutionary convenience but an ontological shift, a change of register. Theres a crucial distinction here that Howard Pattee describes (here): even if a system is entirely physically describable, its function as a code, a memory, or a measuring device is not derivable from that physical description. It requires selection among alternatives, and that involves interpretation, choice, or constraint relative to a purpose.
Thats not just a matter of epistemic framing; its an ontological distinction between a system as matter-in-motion and a system as meaningful, functional, or intentional.
So when we say life lucked into codes, were brushing up against the point where selection, memory, and meaning enter the scene. And its not clear even in the most sophisticated systems models that these can be accounted for within physicalism. Hence my interest in Deacon and Juarrero, who cover these kinds of issues.
I believe that this is a key insight here.
I wonder, however, that perhaps we can even think of an even more general notion of 'goal-directed action' or final cause. Before continuining with my post, I'll now make a distinction between 'laws of nature' and 'order of nature'. 'Laws of nature' are our theoretical descriptions of the regularities of phenomena. 'Order of nature' is, instead, the order that we might assume there is in nature as an explanation of the regularities themselves. I don't think we can 'prove' that this order exist but it seems a reasonable hypothesis to assume there is.
I believe that if one assumes the existence of such an 'order' there are interesting consequences here. Of course, we must assume that the 'laws of nature' allow the existence of life. We and other living beings exist, so we should infer that a supposed 'theory of everything' should not contradict this. But if the 'laws' reflect an 'order' and if we assume that such an order is intelligible, we have to assume that life has always been a potentiality in this order. If this is true, we can't really understand that 'order' without understanding life.
All analogies have a limited value but the analogy of the acorn seed and the oak is relevant here. When the right conditions are met, from an acorn seed an oak can arise and develop. In the same way, when the right conditions are met, living beings come into existence. If there was not a potentiality, however, the arising of life would not be intelligible and if we assume that nature is intelligible, this would imply that the arising of life would be simply impossible.
Of course, the reductionist might argue this alone doesn't prove much. For instance, he might argue that life might be a 'potentiality' in analogous way that we might say that 'pressure of a gas' is a potentiality. But 'pressure of a gas' is a property that can be fully comprehended by examining the properties of the particles that compose the gas. I honestly have never found a convincing argument that shows that life and consciousness can be understood in a similar way as 'temperature', 'pressure' and so on 'emerge' from the properties of the constituents of an inanimate object. The issue is contentious.
But, of course, even if it were right that life and consciousness do not 'emerge' in the same ways that pressure, temperature etc do, not even in this case we should conclude that they do not emerge. I believe that here the Aristotelian concepts of 'potentiality' and 'act' help. If life and cosnciousness can't be understood by solely pointing to the properties of the physical constituents of a living and/or conscious being, then, perhaps, the 'potentiality' might be understood as a property of the intelligible order of nature or the universe itself, i.e. the whole that 'contains' both the beings and their parts. So, perhaps, we can't fully understand life and consciousness without understanding the intelligible order of the cosmos itself.
Notice that even for the non-living things, we can understand their 'behavior' in reductionist and holistic terms. The pressure of a gas can be understood as arising - 'emerging' - from the properties of its constituents. But it can also be understood as a potentiality of the intelligible order of the universe. We can understand the behavior of a gas with reference to the laws of nature. Another example might be the evolution of the universe described in cosmology. We do have a model of how the universe* evolved, how the expansion, the decrease of temperature and so on allowed the formations of stars, galaxies and so on. These features can be understood in terms of the properties of their parts but also as features that emerged from the evolution of the cosmos. The same goes, perhaps, for life and consciousness. It seems unlikely, though, that this 'emergence' of life and consciousness can be understood in reductionist terms.
If life and consciousness can't be understood in reductionistic terms, then, reductionism is not a good way to understand things. This doesn't exclude all forms of physicalism, just the reductionist/mechanicist ones. Also the question "why there is the potentiality for the 'emergence' of life and consciousness in the first place?" remains. Perhaps, there is a transcendent reason for that potentiality. But I don't think that it can be 'proven'. But if reductionism is false and a non-reductionist phyiscalism were right, then I believe that 'telos', 'potentiality', 'act' should be considered something that pertains the order of the cosmos.
I hope to respond to the rest later.
*Edit: I think it's important to note that here I am saying that when we talk about the evolution of the universe, we talk about the universe as a whole. What is fundamental in the description is the whole, not the parts. Ultimately, features like stars, galaxies and so on 'emerge' because the universe evolved in such a way. This doesn't negate the fact that we can understand the properties of, say, a star in a 'reductionist' manner. But what I am suggesting is that reductionist picture is not the whole story. In fact, what is fundamental in the description is the whole cosmos, not the 'particles' or the 'parts' present in it. Perhaps, this 'holistic' description might help us to understand how life emerged. So, maybe, a physicalism that takes the whole cosmos as the fundamental reality can explain life. But such a physicalism is quite different from the reductionist/mechanicistic one. To summarize: ultimately, life arose because the universe evolved in a certain way and in that evolution at a certain point the conditions necessary for the arising of life were met. At that point, the potentiality for life, enfolded in the 'order' of nature, actualized.
Edit 2(final): a beatiful quote from the physicist-philosopher David Bohm summarizes what I was saying, I believe: It may indeed be said that life is enfoldes in the totality and that, even when it is not manifest, it is somehow 'implicit' in what we generally call a situation in which there is no life." (Wholeness and the Implicate Order, chapter 7, p. 246)
Agree that it's a hard problem!
Quoting boundless
However, and this is something that I picked up from one of the sources I mentioned earlier, organisms try to persist - they try to keep existing. Inorganic matter has no analogy for that.
Many decades ago, I had the set of six books by Swami Vivekananda on yoga philosophy. Vivekananda's concept of 'involution preceding evolution' is an aspect of his philosophical framework that bridges Eastern spiritual thought with Western scientific ideas. In this understanding, involution refers to the process by which consciousness becomes increasingly involved in or identified with matter, transitioning from subtle to gross manifestations. This is essentially the descent of consciousness into material form.
Evolution, then, is the reverse process - the gradual awakening and return of consciousness to its original state. Rather than consciousness emerging from matter (as materialism suggests), Vivekananda proposed that consciousness is already present in a latent, involved form, and evolution is simply its progressive unfoldment and manifestation. 'What is latent becomes patent'.
He thought that this framework reconciles Darwinian evolution with Advaita. He saw biological evolution as one layer of this broader process, where increasingly complex organisms provide better vehicles for consciousness to express itself. The ultimate goal of this evolutionary journey is the complete realization of our true nature - what Vedanta calls mok?a.
Can't see it gaining many followers in evolutionary biology but to me it's an attractive, alternative paradigm.
The problem with this example, is that ultimately the principles which turn the mob into a battalion, come from the minds of individuals, members of "the mob" who are the leaders. So your portrayal, global constraints (the army), shaping the raw material (the soldiers), to express the "global purpose driving the whole show" is incorrect. There is no such "global purpose". The purpose comes from the local minds of the individuals who are the leaders of the army. Purpose does not come from this global thing called "the army".
Your inclination to avoid reductionism, yet maintain physicalism is misleading you. To properly understand reality we must follow the reductionist principles, which are correct, to their base, where we find that something further, the immaterial intent is beyond that, as the thing which creates or produces matter itself. This is why @Dfpolis in his Aristotelian representation, places the basic intent to create, as internal to matter itself. It must be local, rather than global. But I think that the proper interpretation of Aristotle puts the basic intent of final cause as transcendent to the matter, but in a local sense. This allows final cause to give matter its basic form, transcending it internally, with the form coming from beyond the boundaries of matter to the inside, while Df thinks its immanent to the matter.
Each individual member of the army must have the desire to follow the plan, and be a member of the army, or else they go rogue. So final cause must be portrayed as inherent to the local freedom of each part, rather than as a global constraint.
Fair enough. Nevertheless, it has been an interesting discussion for me.
Quoting T Clark
Yes! I think that reductionist versions of physicalism have serious problems. But this isn't the case for non-reductionist versions. After, 'physicalism' can be a very broad category.
For example, at the end of my previous post I mentioned David Bohm. I don't think that he was a physicalist but I do believe that his ideas of 'implicate order' and 'explicate order' are not incompatible with physicalism per se, only with its reductionist variants.
Quoting T Clark
Well, the ontological status 'mass-energy' is a rather controversial topic, I believe. For instance, this is how the famous physicist Richard Feynman introduced the concept in his Lectures:
I believe that our concept 'mass-energy' either corresponds or represent a property that physical systems have and which can be measured. I don't think it is a 'thing' or anything substantial. I'm not sure what you are taking issue with.
The points I was making do not rely on a particular ontological position about 'mass-energy', 'momentum' etc. If they are simply 'abstract ideas', as Feynman put it, nothing really changes.
... And I don't beleive that questioning those things you mentioned is enough to abandon the concept of the 'universe' as a totality. Dark matter and dark energy give us testable predictions. We might not have a good understanding of them but this doesn't mean that we won't in the future. Abiogenesis is the consensual view among the scientific community. Unfortunately, I have not a training in biology so I'm not sure if there are valid alternatives. I believe that there is perhaps something missing in our current understanding of biological evolution. But evolutionary theory had an incredible success and it can't be denied. I believe that there are rooms for 'refinements', so to speak. In fact, I believe that problems occur when one wants to insist on a reductionist reading of evolution.
Anyway, if you believe that our understanding of the history before the arising of life is wrong, what do you think happened? How do you explain the arising of life?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
How do your points here about the past square with what you said before with respect to our understanding of cosmology, biology etc?
In any case, I would agree that our understanding of 'reality' is limited and, also, that the reductionist 'paradigm' doesn't help.
At the end of one of my previous posts I mentioned a quote by physicist and philosopher David Bohm: It may indeed be said that life is enfoldes in the totality and that, even when it is not manifest, it is somehow 'implicit' in what we generally call a situation in which there is no life." (Wholeness and the Implicate Order, chapter 7, p. 246). Now, if life is understood as an implicit potentiality within the intelligible order of the cosmos - and not something to be understood in terms of the properties of the particles that 'make up' living beings - I believe that a physicalist model of life is possible. I believe that reductionism is wrong but reductionism is not the only possibility for a physicalist.
Of course, this might not be true. But unless there are convincing arguments that show that the 'potentiality for life' (or consciousness) requires a transcendent cause non-reductionist physicalist models aren't excluded, that is models where the 'fundamental reality' is the whole. After all, even, say, a star might be understood in a 'reductionist' way but, at the same time, according to our present cosmological model, the very coming into existence of a star is possible because the universe has evolved in a certain way.
Admittedly, what I am saying here is sketchy at best. But, again, all theories start as sketchy ideas.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't want to derail the thread to a discussion about theology but I just note that, apparently, 'death' wasn't what Augustine had in mind given that he was a Christian. Of course, you might say that, perhaps, if 'heaven' is a static state perhaps it is equivalent of death. I am not sure about that but I do think that it is an interesting point.
On the other hand, I believe that St. Gregory of Nyssa had a quite dynamic understanding of the state of the blessed (which he called 'epektasis'), where the participation of the blessed in the communion with God will forever increase. In a sense, this means that the desire for the Good will never be satisfied. But at the same time, the blessed do not fall away from the communion because they know that they can't find ultimate peace, happiness and so on anything except God. In a sense, however, I would say that even in this dynamic model the blessed yearning for the good is satisfied in the sense that they stopped to seek elsewhere the source of their happiness. Would you agree at least with this?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Force and interaction are synonyms in physics. And nowadays fundamental interactions are understood in terms of exchange of particles. The best known example is the photon which is the mediator of the electro-magnetic interaction. The photon has energy, therefore it has mass via the mass-energy equivalence. It does not have 'rest mass' (or 'rest energy') because it travels at light speed. But a photon has a quantity of energy.
I am pretty sure that the mass of the nucleons is understood as due to the masses of the quarks and, also, of the masses of the mediators of the forces between them.
Right!
Quoting Wayfarer
Interesting, thanks. It seems more or less what Bohm said even if, I believe, the starting point was the opposite (however, I don't believe that Bohm's view were physicalist...).
Anyway, I believe that you can build a physicalist model that incorporates principles like potentiality, actuality and so on. I believe that some reject them because they believe they imply something transcendent, idealism or whatever. But it isn't necessarily the case.
I am not a physicalist myself but I respect physicalist models that are not reductionistic. I even believe that, once reductionism is abandoned, even a physicalist can make sense of many things associated with 'spirituality'.
Please do not give your interpretation of my position, as you do not understand it. (1) I do not hold that matter has any intent, let alone an intent to create. I hold that the laws of nature are intentional, but they are intrinsically immaterial. (2) I hold that this intentionality has an end-of-the-line of explanation, a source, normally called "God." So, the local intentionality of physical processes has a transcendent source. Thus, while the laws of nature are immanent (found within the processes they guide), their Source is so not confined.
Umm... No, not as I see it. Isn't that the whole point of this discussion.
Quoting Wayfarer
The artillery officer, the war planners, and the politicians are all human. I've never claimed human actions can't have purposes and goals.
Quoting Wayfarer
You and I are just making the same arguments over and over. You say the acorn and the artillery officer are analogous. I know you disagree with me, but by now you must recognize that's an argument I find weak, to put it kindly.
Quoting Wayfarer
And the obvious answer from where I stand is it's not for anything. It's not that you're wrong. As I've said previously, this is metaphysics. It's not true or false, it's more or less useful. I don't find your way of seeing things as useful and I think it's misleading.
I have no problem with a religious point of view where God is the final cause giving the universe, the world, reality, or whatever you want to call it, meaning and purpose. That's not my way of seeing things, but it's something I understand. My problem is with all this talk about teleology without God.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You can call it the universe, reality, the world, existence, the Tao, or whatever you want. I'm just talking about everything there is even before all those things are things.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
As I wrote previously, if you think God is the source of purpose and meaning, there's no need for this discussion to go any further. I recognize and respect a religious argument, even though it's not how I see things.
For me also. There's no better way to understand what you believe than to bump up against something you don't believe.
Quoting boundless
For what it's worth, I don't call myself a physicalist, although you might. I call myself a pragmatist.
Quoting boundless
I doubt Feynman thought "the ontological status 'mass-energy' is a rather controversial topic." That's certainly not what he wrote in that quote you included.
This is the common view. However, Galileo did not show "that bodies do not fall because of their purpose". He showed that their falling could be mathematically described. Of course, Aristotle was wrong about the purpose of bodies. It is not to find their natural place. It is to respond to the presence of other bodies in the specific ways physicists have learned to describe mathematically.
Contrary to popular opinion, there is no conflict between mechanism and teleology. Instead, they are simply two ways of describing the same process. If bodies follow mechanistic (determinate) laws, they will come to a determinate state (end) at any time. A determinate end requires determinate means (mechanisms) to attain it. Thus, every physical end requires a mechanism to attain it, and every mechanism attains ends. So, the only difference between mechanism and teleology is in the mind -- in how we choose to conceive a process. There is no difference in the process itself.
Excellent OP, btw.
The problem is that we can see that physical processes are intentional without first assuming that God exists. In physics, we distinguish physical states (the distribution of "matter" broadly considered) from the dynamics or laws specifying how those states develop over time. As I just explained to Wayfarer, these laws inevitably attain ends. We might, for example, say that the evolution of a species was encoded as an end in the initial state of the universe and the laws of nature.
Consider an analogy. Say I have the intention to go to the store. Barring exceptional circumstance, maintaining that intention will get me from my house to the store. In the same way, what gets us from the initial state of the universe to the advent of a species is not simply the initial state, but the continuing and determinate way that state evolves, i.e. the laws of nature. So, the laws of nature are the same kind of thing as my intention to go to the store. This is true independently of theological stance. It is only later, when we ask for an explanation of natural intentionality, that we come to some source, and call it "God."
This is a great response. @Wayfarer, @Metaphysician Undercover, @boundless, and I will all be able to say "See, Apokrisis agrees with me."
Quoting apokrisis
A lot of the things you write about are either over my head or come from a really different direction than my way of seeing things. We've talked about emergence a few times before and one thing that has stuck with me most is the idea of constraints. I was reading about early criticisms of the idea of emergence and it was claimed that it requires backward causation. It struck me how wrong-headed that is. Constraint isn't causation. When I stop my car so I won't run into the car stopped ahead of me, that car doesn't cause me to stop, it keeps me from going.
Quoting apokrisis
You wrote "Life and mind then lucked into codes." That makes sense to me, but I have been confused by some things you wrote in the past. When you wrote about biosemiosis in the context of coding in DNA, I always got the feeling you were talking about the kind of teleosis that Wayfarer et. al. are.
Yes, that's a fair point. Although I think this is precisely because the sunny Popular-Mechanics style realism doesn't fully eliminate teleology or teleonomy; it just sort of lets the issue float out there, unresolved. So, if we're discussing Newtonian physics, likely the rules will be "no teleology allowed." If the article is on the social sciences, then of course there is teleology! If it's biology, it sort of varies (probably not in molecular biology, and probably "yes" in zoology).
I think this is actually a good thing! This sort of view has not allowed what was often originally intended as a merely methodological bracketing exercise to become absolutized into a full blown metaphysics. Maybe it has done this at the cost of inconsistency, or at least ambiguity, but these strike me as the lesser of two evils.
Sure. It's not a "Pop-Mech" kind of question, and we can do science for most practical purposes without having to engage with it.
:up: Also, note that I am also conscious that sometimes I use terms in an idiosyncratic way. I try to avoid that as much as possible, but our discussion helped me to be more carefult about that.
Quoting T Clark
No. From this discussion alone I would not have concluded that you are a physicalist or not. Furthermore, IIRC you also made some posts in the past about Taoism from which I would have said that your view isn't physicalist, i.e. a view that ultimate reality is physical. Taoism seems to assert that there is an ultimate reality that transcends conceptual categories.
[BTW, as an aside I don't know if you are familiar with David Bohm's philosophical views (starting from his 1957 book "Causality and Chance" onward). I believe that, perhaps, it's the closest you can get to Taoism among modern physicists.]
That said, it is also true that is some cases it is even difficult to classify metaphysical views in neat categories.
Quoting T Clark
I quoted Feynman because he says that the conservation of energy is an 'abstract idea', which IMO implies that he also viewed that energy itself is an 'abstract idea', i.e. a concept that is useful to us but not necessarily something that 'represents' something external.
At the same time, you also find some presentations of the concept that give the idea that energy is actually a 'thing', especially when you hear someone explain how matter and spacetime affect each other in GR.
Until quite recently, it was perhaps quite reasonable to interpret 'mass' as 'quantity of matter'. But with the mass-energy equivalence even mass becomes quite elusive and is now regarded as a synonym of energy. It's also true that some now interpret the mass-energy equivalence in a way that, more or less, suggests that energy is a measure of the quantity of matter.
In any case, I believe that the precise ontological status of physical quantities like 'mass', 'energy', 'momentum', 'electric charge' etc is still a matter of debate among scientists and philosophers.
Quoting T Clark
Well, I also agree that @apokrisis made a good post but honestly, I need to re-read it. Many things are above my paygrade in that post. So, before commenting I need some time.
It is not so easy. Are human ends and purposes completely separated or cut off from the processes and activities of nature? (Leaving aside kicking the ball into the long grass by declaring it metaphysical.)
Thank you.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Perhaps its as simple as this: properties like mass, velocity, or charge lend themselves to unambiguous measurement and quantification. Purposes, goals, and aims, on the other hand, resist formalization except in the purely mechanistic sense of trajectories or optimization functions. So modern science quietly brackets teleology, not necessarily because its false, but because it isnt easily mathematized. But not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted, counts.
Of course. But then how is that any different in terms of baseline causality when the baseline causality itself is a model of such topological emergence?
As I said, the reductionist stumbles where they get to the bit about what grounds any natural system. If you take a simpleminded constructive approach to the existence of things, then even the existence of raw matter becomes impossible to explain. There always has to be the something that already exists to get existence going in more complex ways. And so the reductionist winds up with the essential mystery of how some ultimate simplicity could itself appear out of ... nothing at all.
Physicalism has this huge explanatory gap if your brand of physicalism is reductionist.
A systems causality already accounts for ultimate simplicity as it says that emergent complexity is what simplifies things in the first place. As Peirce puts it, logically the initial conditions of systematic Being is vagueness or firstness. A chaos of fluctuation that is neither simple nor complex. But as constrained regularities start to form, so does the simplicity of fundamental degrees of freedom begin to show.
This is the story of the Big Bang. Hot possibility became constrained by gauge symmetry. Quantum impulse started to fall into simpler and simpler classical shape. The greatest possible such simplicity the (U)1 gauge of a photon was the last to emerge and take over the show. A lot of constraints such as the complicated way that the scalar Higgs field broke the vector electroweak force, with its SU(2) symmetry needed to evolve so that the Cosmos as a hierarchical structure could strait-jacket quantum possibility as classical electromagnetism and leave us in a Newtonian realm of what seem the simplest possible excitations. The U(1) that speaks to essentially the symmetry of a circle whose only remaining complication is that it can be either a left-handed or right-handed version of that circle.
So if you demand simple beginnings, only top-down constraints can deliver them. And the story of physicalism already has its own stunning "shifts in register". You have the topological phase transition which is the point where the quantum turns emergently into the classical. Or where the Poincare invariance that sets up Special Relativity as a basic global constraint on dimensionality gives way to the emergence of vector gauge particles like eventually the photon as an "inner dimension of quantum spin" that classical Poincare symmetry can't in the end constrain away.
The whole of physics is about hierarchies of topological transitions where the addition of further levels of constraint keep making reality more and more atomistic or mechanical in nature. Reductionism seems true as it so wonderfully captures the apparent simplicity of life at our highly constrained scale of being existence at the level of a world of "middle-sized dry goods". A world of material objects bumping about in an empty vacuum.
But dig into this physicalism and it all starts to fall apart rather quickly. The reductionist has to find this a great mystery. A systems theorist says instead that is only what should be expected. It is hierarchy theory all the way down until you reach Peircean-strength vagueness.
So you are expressing surprise that information can take control in a world based on entropy. But the systems view says that by definition, what is not constrained is free to happen. And if it can happen, it must happen.
So if the physics results in some powerful local entropic gradient like a sun shining down on an orbiting planet then if a dissipative structure can arise to "eat" that energy flow, it will. The rocky surface of the Earth already does that job, turning 5000 degree sunlight into 70 degree C infrared radiation being bounce back into outer space. But the evolution of a planetary biofilm a bacterial self-constructing life form can manage rather better and take that radiation cooling down to a global average of 20 degrees C.
Given the readiness of the physical world to invest in such biological structure, the telic pressure for life to arise becomes irresistable. Yes, for such an information-based machinery to evolve is quite a leap in terms of complexity. But equally, if it could happen, it had to happen. The desire was there and there was nothing physically-preventing the evolution of that kind of biological hardware.
Physicalism is essentially permissive because it is also essentially constraining. It focuses the definite freedoms of nature by removing all the redundancies. Anything that the historical accumulation of complications does not restrict then become the sharply felt possibilities that get concretely expressed.
All that life and mind do is extend this game from a purely entropic realm one without a self-model to the more complex situation of a system an organism that uses a self-model so as to arrange the physics of the world to its liking.
The organism is ultimately bound by the same universal imperative thou shalt entropify. And it develops a sense of self only to the degree that this increases its success as an entropy producer.
Humans prove this fact to the degree we have grown heedlessly self-centred with the most colossal carbon footprints. :grin:
It is exactly that easy
Quoting Wayfarer
I declare it metaphysical for two reasons. First, because it is. Second, because if I treated it as if it were supposed to be some sort of actual description of the real world, it would be impossible for me to take it seriously.
Yes, thats how I see it.
Quoting boundless
Not really. Ive heard his name here and there on the forum, but I dont really know what his beliefs were.
Quoting boundless
Are speed, distance, time, and force abstract ideas? Do they exist? How about goals, purposes, and intentions?
Quoting boundless
I dont think theres any serious debate among scientists. Philosophers? Among philosophers everything is always a matter of debate.
This is a rubbish argument. What distinguishes the coward from the conscientious objector? You are introducing "desire" as a vague preference that could be construed in many ways. What social framing are you going to impose on the situation to make it clear how one is going to interpret the idea of "going rogue"?
My argument is that causality is hierarchical. So finality would "inhere" in the parts or rather shape the scope of freedoms possessed by those parts to the degree those parts were actively part of the collective system.
Your mistake is to try to turn this relational story back into the substance-based ontology of the material reductionist.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Shake hands with God. The prime mover.
No thanks.
Thanks I follow the systems logic you're articulating (well, up to a point) but I think there's something more that needs considering: the emergence of interpretation, signs, meaning. Once codes arise symbolic systems that are rule-based, context-sensitive, and capable of being read we've crossed a threshold. This isn't just more complex thermodynamics; it's the birth of agency.
If organisms interpret signs and act based on goals, then something new is in play: not just constraint, but intention. This shift isn't captured by the idea that life merely entropifies better. That framing suggests a kind of nihilism reducing agency, purpose, and value to entropy-optimization strategies. It risks explaining meaning by dissolving it. So the question can be asked: are you actually dealing with the problems of philosophy? I mean, the problem of agency is surely central to the question of human identity.
Quoting apokrisis
...hence also the intention! Saying "it had to happen" isn't that far from saying "it was meant to be." And once you admit something like "desire" into the lexicon even metaphorically you're no longer in a purely entropic domain. You're on the threshhold of semiosis, value, and, again, agency. In fact I think the question can be asked if semiotics is really a physical phenomenon at all. As Marcello Barbieri argues, the emergence of biological codes such as the genetic code was not merely an incremental extension of chemical complexity but an ontological leap. Codes linking signs to meanings are not derivable from physical laws alone. Thats what makes them novel and marks the boundary between life and non-life, mechanism and meaning.
(Although I will hasten to add, I only heard of Barbieri in the first place through researching your posts on biosemiotics.)
Ok.
Oh, Banno youre so cute.
It also makes a good first line for a haiku, or whatever those haikus that arent really haikus are called. Hey, Javi [@javi2541997], whats the right word?
We disagree then.
Quoting boundless
I don't. And, I don't think anyone can. But I don't pretend.
Quoting boundless
Do you think that you apprehend inconsistency in what I wrote? If so, please point it out to me so I can address it.
Quoting boundless
As you'll see from my reply to apokrisis, I believe in reduction, but not in physicalism. I believe that reduction is what ultimately demonstrates the necessity of dualism, which I believe in. The modern trend for physicalists is to turn away from reductionism, because it cannot succeed without dualism. At the base of material existence is the immaterial, as cause. So I think that this turning away from reductionism, is a mistake. The physicalists cannot bear the consequences, the necessity of dualism which reduction leads to, so instead of facing that reality, they retreat to a new form of physicalism, which, as it is physicalism, is equally mistaken.
Quoting boundless
It still looks like death to me.
Quoting boundless
Not at all.
Quoting Dfpolis
Sorry about that. I just stated what I remembered you telling me in a discussion we had a couple years ago.
Quoting Dfpolis
Do you not believe in real possibility, real choice? If you believe that the universe unfolds in a determinate way, then you deny the possibility of real choice.
Quoting T Clark
I agree, I have the same problem. This teleology without God is the "new physicalism". It appears to me, that traditional physicalism, which was basically reductionism, ran into a problem. At the base was found to be possibility, which necessitate the assumption of choice. And classical metaphysics had already posited divinity to account for the foundational choices. Physicalists of course will not accept a divinity, so the modern trend is to reject reductionism because it leads to the reality of the immaterial. Now, physicalists like apokrisis will assign some sort of "telos" to global constraints, making the basic choice not a true choice, but a constrained act. But this is not compatible with intention as we know it, which is found in the freedom of the individual to choose, not in the constraints of "the society" in general. The constraints of society do not cause the individual's choices and actions.
Quoting apokrisis
This is why the divinity is needed to explain the existence of matter. Matter being that which stays the same as time passes. But instead of recognizing the need for final cause at the base, to account for the existence of matter itself, the physicalist abandons the whole reductionist enterprise, and proposes a bogus form of telos, as the concept of "global constraint". However, this fails as states "Constraint isn't causation". So you don't actually avoid the need for an external final cause, the divinity, you hide it by proposing a bogus teleology which is not actually causal.
Quoting apokrisis
Desire is what drives final cause. And there is no need for "social framing" as this motivation to act transcends all social frames. Are you afraid to face this reality?
Quoting apokrisis
By your own words, constraints are global. So it's contradictory to say that what shapes (constrains) the freedom of the parts, inheres within the parts, as you seem to be saying here.
Quoting apokrisis
You ought to try it. At least the concept of "God", as First Cause, is consistent with the truth, according to the knowledge which we have. This is unlike your idea of "top-down constraints" which provides no actual cause.
But biology crosses this threshold at the level of the molecule that can be read as a message. Hierarchy theory was how theoretical biologists made sense of the thermodynamical basis of life and mind for a good reason. The genetic code is the easy bit to understand. How genes can be "read/interpreted/implemented" is then what the field focuses on with biosemiosis.
So you can say "agency" is just something absolutely different in kind. But then biology can shrug its shoulders and say they see this magic property in every enzymatic reaction. Codes build the molecular machinery that can clamp chemistry in exactly the right positions so that quantum tunneling takes over and achieves an entropic step that would be "impossible" for regular classical chemistry.
You make the usual big deal that something smells about physicalism because there is this explanatory gap between the quantum and the classical realms of substantial existence. And yet as I have repeated often enough biophysics now spells out exactly how life, and therefore mind, exists by being able to sit right on the quasi-classical junction between these "two worlds", mining quantum uncertainty for the purpose of achieving classically stable outcomes.
The explanatory gap instead turns out to be the missing link when it comes to "agency". If quantum physics has a measurement problem because apparently measurements must be something that happen in a human head, well now biology says decoherence of thermal potentials is no big deal as your whole body is a hierarchy of decoherent action. Every part of every cell is dancing the dance of flipping quantum-level switches on entropy flows. We microregulate chemistry right at the nanoscale by "making measurements" in informational fashion.
So step one for biology was realising that life did in fact have its symbol-processing secret. Step two is reconnecting that informational story to the material world as it "truly is". And the topological change in state that is the boundary between the quantum and the classical is exactly where life and mind inserts itself into the thermally-constrained physics of the world.
Thermodynamics of course is being rewritten too. You say: Quoting Wayfarer
But you are still thinking of thermodynamics as the science of closed systems gone to their heat death equilibrium. The formerly warm bath now forever gone cold. Biologists rely on the new science of dissipative structure and topological order as cosmologists have also started to do.
A dissipative structure is a system that self-organises so as to be able to accelerate an entropic process. It spends energy on constructing the machinery that will then unlock, or at least waste faster, some environmental entropy gradient. This is an entirely new vision of thermodynamics. One that is more complex in the proper topological sense. Not merely just more complicated.
Collections of things can get complicated. It takes the emergence of hierarchical order to make things more complex complicated in the causal sense and not just the constituent sense.
Quoting Wayfarer
As a natural philosopher, I look for naturalistic accounts of existence. And the great thing is that this approach allows one to explain not just what agency is but why agency needs to be treated as a transcendental property by systems of human social organisation. Transcendence is an essential myth for enabling humans to live as if they were indeed constrained by some higher authority which intends to greatly limit the scope of their personal freedoms.
This is just basic political science. All complex societies need to place even their kings under some higher transcendental principle. It could be commanding gods, it could be the rationality of a constitution, it could be the unquestionable facts of a moral logic. But no large society can exist in stable and productive fashion unless it invents for itself the top-down level of constraints the bounding information to which it can swear absolute fealty.
Transcendence needs to be mystical as it has to be "beyond human". With the Enlightenment, we did sort of try just believing in the transcendence of rational pragmatism. But that never really dealt with the way that the same demystifying scientific spirit was busy unlocking the Pandora's box of fossil fuel and all the runaway industrial age thermalisation that could follow. So we half started crafting the well organised society and then that project got run over by the steamrolling economic forces of manufacturing and financialisation.
Economics is about organising the wholesale entropification of the planet. Dollars are how we encode the value of all that results. Rationality opened the door for entropy and it came galloping through. Now we worship entropification in rather direct and obvious fashion. It became the transcendental principle that rules the human world.
So you say I somehow ignore the central problems of philosophy? I as usual reply that I see them as all fully figured out. And barely understood by anyone.
Which is no surprise. Entropy is in charge of the show. Pragmatic rationality had to die to allow that next step in the human condition to be fully realised. Neoliberalism finally stripped away the sensible constraints and we've been off to the races ever since.
And is this the metaphysical project you want to support? Of course not. But then it is not a genie that can be put back in the bottle by a return to the mystic transcendent principle of some earlier agricultural social order where it was just empires of wheat rather than corporations of oil that the entropic bonanza driving the show.
Quoting Wayfarer
As I say, if I have to wave a specific banner, it would be dissipative structure. That is thermodynamics as a semiotician and hierarchy theorist would recognise it.
Quoting Wayfarer
And yet it was Barbieri who correctly focused in on the ribosome as the precise connection between the biological information and its entropic consequences. The molecular machine that makes the molecular machinery.
In stunning self-confirming fashion, the ribosome itself recapitulates the evolution of biosemiosis. The most primitive parts of a ribosome are made out of RNA. And then as it learnt how to start sculpting the proteins it was producing, it added on the simple strands, them the more complex twists, that turned the ribosome from a rudimentary constraining tunnel made of RNA to a fantastic bit of precision engineering with a large collection of proteins components that could add enzymatic steps like splicing and proof-reading the protein strands it was producing.
So you might want to keep finding great gaps in knowledge that speak to there being "two totally different things". But science progresses fast. And biosemiosis cashed out in a big way when we discovered that biology is basically about classical machinery that is able to regulate quantum potentiality for its own private purpose. Life can live on the edge of critical instability the quasi-classical realm where classical stability is "half-melted" and it cost next to nothing to tip a chemical reaction in some other direction.
Physical existence came with the quasi-classical possibility to be switched on and off in a mechanical fashion. And being possible, this is what had to happen. Systems of switching evolved.
RNA was in at the start as a dual-purpose deal. It was both the code and the structural material and a bit shit at both. But once a feedback loop got started, these two functions were properly split apart and became the actually separated worlds of DNA and proteins. Coding as informational constraint and building material as structural constraint became divided in terms of the chemistry best suited to serving those functions. A vague causal division became a physically decisive one. The ribosome became its own fossil record that tracked this evolutionary change.
Quoting Wayfarer
How could information regulate matter unless there was this epistemic cut?
What you are quibbling over is to what extent this is also a true ontological cut as the conventions of realism/idealism, or mind/world, would seem to require of folk who like to consider themselves card-carrying philosophers.
I as usual just argue that holism rules. And that holism itself depends on the ontological fruitfulness of dichotomies. That is symmetry breakings and the topological transitions that symmetry-breaking brings.
If you want to understand semiosis, this is why it winds up back at the triadicity of Peircean logic and hierarchical causality. You start with the "oneness" of vagueness, extract the "twoness" of the dichotomy that can part its waters on complementary fashion, and then watch how it grows to form the causally-balance wholeness that is a state of stable hierarchical order.
You can't keep advancing a semiotic argument here and yet fail to see that semiosis itself puts the dichotomy at the heart of everything. For the physical realm to take a further step up in its topological order, it had to discover the Hegelian "other" which was its own negation. Just by being "the physical" it already spoke to the possibility of "the immaterial".
The task then is not to get strung up in the usual Hegelian simplicity about how the "immaterial" ought to be cashed out. Science's job has been to show how physics is way less material than Newtonianism might have conceived of it, and how life and mind are also way less "spiritual" than the Catholic Church as an instrument of agriculture-age social power liked to look at it.
And as I keep saying, biosemiosis can tell you all about how the epistemic cut is actually implemented in everyday flesh and blood terms. It ain't an ontological-level dualism. It is just a very highly developed epistemic dualism. A cut that forced events like RNA's primitive level of functionality being handed over to a proper coding machinery, coupled to a proper structural material, leaving RNA to act as the shuttling messenger between the two sides of this dichotomised equation.
Incredible as it might seem, all the mysteries have just evaporated over the past 20 years when it comes to life and mind science. Natural philosophy as the systems science legacy of Aristotelean metaphysics got it right. We won. :razz:
Piffle. Things stay the same when further change ceases to make a difference. Once things hit the bottom, they can't fall any further.
In that light, the true problem for metaphysics is answering the question of how instability can get started. And this in turn leads back to some notion of Apeiron or Vagueness. A state of unlimited everythingness that is exactly the "right stuff" if you understand causality in terms of the evolution of systems of hierarchical constraint.
Biologists do that. Biology doesn't shrug.
Quoting apokrisis
Right - the beginning of intentionality, as I said in the OP. The origin of the self-and-world divide.
I really think your physicalist biosemiotic theory could be leavened with some phenomenology. It's a missing element, as far as the philosophical content is concerned.
I'm neither 'quibbling' nor 'hung up'. And this is a philosophy forum, with a broader remit than science.
Much more my cup of tea. :halo:
Senry?. :smile:
These do not generally include a season word and they are often cynical.
I hold that purely physical systems evolve deterministically, because they have no intrinsic source of intentionality. However, we are not purely physical. We are sources of new intentionality (co-creators of the future). Thus, our intentionality modifies that of the laws of nature to produce personal action. This is possible because the brain has evolved as a control system, and it is the nature of such systems to produce large outputs from small inputs. Thus, small perturbations by our intentions can produce macroscopic behavior.
There is no reason to think that most non-human creatures are conscious of anything. Positing that they are is a pure, unsupported extrapolation. It is much better to confine our conclusions to those supported by evidence.
Ok, I think you would find his thoughts germane.
Quoting T Clark
I have a very clear experience of having goals, purposes, and intentions. Perhaps, I am deceving myself but I would take my immediate experience as a strong evidence for that.
Regarding forces, well, our understanding of them changed dramatically over the centuries. Clearly, one can't hold the Newtonian model of forces literally nowadays. That concept of force is without a doubt useful, but it doesn't seem a faithful description of something real.
Regarding distance, speed, time well, I would say we have to be carefule here. Our experience of change is as real as our experience of having goals, I would say or even more immediate. Notice however that perhaps 'time' in physics isn't necessarily the same thing of that. Honestly, however, it is difficult for me to imagine a physics 'without time'. How could one even think of a 'dynamics'?
Distances is a different business. In the newtonian model, space is absolute and distances are also absolute. But perhaps distances are more like relations between things. So, I guess this doesn't mean that are 'abstract ideas' but, still, it doesn't seem obvious to me what is the right way to understand them.
Anyway, in general, I think that it is difficult to pin down the 'right interpretation' of what physical quantities really are.
Quoting T Clark
Well, perhaps many scientists are simply uninterested in these topics. But, again, if you think of, say, relativity reflecting on what distances are have been fundamental for development of science.
Yes!
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ok, I see, thanks. When I remarked about the 'refinements' I meant that IMO the arising of life is still partly unexplained. So, I sort of agree here.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well, it seemed to me that you said that scientific theories are good for explaining the past but you also denied that there is a time 'before' the arising of life.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Interesting. Why? I mean, I can understand having misgivings about a static state as being 'life' but a 'dynamic state' can be regarded as life. What do you find objectionable here? I think that it is also a pretty universal theme that the 'multiplicity' of goals we have in our life here is a detriment.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I see. To be honest, I am torn. On the one hand, I am inclined to agree with you here. Given the success of reductionism, it is reasonable to think that the 'physical' is reductionist. I am not sure, however, if the 'physical' is necessarily reductionist.
I do agree with you that reductionism fails with life and mind and this is a big issue that physicalists have to face.
As I said before, I am not myself a physicalist. Dualism has its own advantages but it's not without problems. For instance, how can we explain the mind-body interactions if the mind and body are different substances? Would such an interaction 'respect', say, the conservation laws that seem to always hold?
If I were to make a physicalist model of the emergence of life, I would think as a sort of 'phase transition', where we have the formation of 'systems', which as you say, are wholes that constrain and influence the 'behavior' of their parts.
So, you go from a situation where the wholes (except the universe) are reducible to a situation where there are structures which are not reducible and the 'world' becomes truly 'divided' into systems which are undivided wholes which are able to give global constraints on their parts and have a relative autonomy from what is 'outside'. But in order to explain such a transition in a model, you need to say that, in some sense, such a transition is a potentiality that, once the right conditions are met, becomes actual.
If such a potentiality is not to be found in the parts of these systems, then the alternative I can think of is that it is to be found in the order of the 'cosmos'. In this case, the emergence of life is a potentiality enfolded in the regularities of the whole universe which remains implicit until the right conditions are met.
I don't think that assigning a property to the 'whole' - indeed, the whole universe - is something alien to physics. In fact, the conservation laws can be thought as being properties of 'isolated systems', rather than a (weakly) emergent features of their parts.
Of course, I have no idea of how such a 'potentiality' could be 'expressed' in a theory. I don't know if it is even possible. But I would say that if the cosmos itself is a whole that can constrain the behavior of its parts, then it is more understandable how at least some features which we associate with life can 'emerge' or, perhaps, it's better to say 'actualized'. Does this make sense to you?
This view understands interpretation not as conscious self-awareness, but as a more basic responsiveness to environmental signals a kind of primitive subject-hood inherent in the way organisms engage with their surroundings, qualitatively distinct from the behavior of non-living matter. All organic life 'interprets' in a way that the inorganic domain does not, so as to preserve itself. The point is not to attribute conscious awareness to single-celled organisms or plants, but to acknowledge that the rudiments of agency selecting among possibilities in response to internal states and external cues emerge much earlier in the history of life than previously assumed.
[quote=Evan Thompson, Mind in Life (précis)]Life is not just self-organizing and adaptive; it is also purposive and sense-making. Even the simplest organisms enact a world of significance in their adaptive and goal-directed activity. They are not merely pushed around by physical forces; they regulate themselves in relation to what matters to their continued existence.[/quote]
Quoting apokrisis
Yet I am still here.
Doesn't that require a judgement of whether the change makes a difference or not? Anyway, it appears like you believe that change is not caused, it just happens.
Quoting Dfpolis
Well, the question would be whether a purely physical system, in any absolute sense, is actually possible. As scientists, human beings can design what they like to think of, as purely physical systems. This is what I talked about earlier in the thread, we can have as our purpose, the intent to remove purpose, and this provides us with the closest thing we can get to objective truth. But the purpose of removing purpose can't quite remove purpose in an absolute way.
So, we have to consider the reality of every aspect of a "physical system", to see how successful we can really be. I believe that the reality of entropy demonstrates that no physical system actually evolves in a completely deterministic way. That aspect of the activity of a physical system, which escapes determinability is known as "entropy". Therefore "purely physical systems" refers to an impossibility, if that implies completely deterministic evolution..
Quoting boundless
I didn't actually deny that. I said it was an unsound conclusion. I do not accept it, nor do I deny it. I just think that it is an assumption which has not been adequately justified to be able to make that judgement.
Quoting boundless
Look at the passage. It says "the participation of the blessed in the communion with God will forever increase". The only thing which provides for the premise of "forever" is death. After death, we may be united with God, forever.
Quoting boundless
The interaction problem was long ago solved by Plato who proposed a third aspect as a medium of interaction.
Conservation laws do not hold, to the contrary, they are always violated. This is the nature of entropy, that part of reality which is in violation of conservation. It's a loss which we just write off, and work around.
The conservation laws are ideals which do not actually represent physical reality, because physical reality doesn't match that degree of perfection prescribed by ideal conservation. As an analogy, consider how the ancient people thought of the orbits of the sun, moon, and planets, as perfect circles. By logic, perfect circles are eternal, so these orbits were eternal circular motions. That was an ideal, which did not actually represent the reality of physical motion, which is less than perfect. Likewise, conservation laws are ideals which do not actually represent the reality of physical interactions, which are less than perfect with respect to conservation.
How is it "qualitatively distinct from the behavior of non-living matter" if such responses can be wholly explained on physical principles? We understand, for example, the electrochemistry of neurons and how they combine to form neural networks responsive to the environment. Indeed, this connectionist theory is the basis of many artificial intelligence programs.
It is a mistake. or perhaps an abuse of language, to confuse complex data processing with interpretation, which seeks to penetrate the intentionality represented by semantic material -- here environmental signals. To penetrate meaning is to become aware of meaning, and awareness is consciousness.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is precisely the error to be avoided. Just as there is no evidence to support consciousness in such creatures, there is no evidence to support the consciousness of alternative courses of action in such creatures. Think about it. One immanent state can only yield one course of action. To have choices, several future states (alternative courses of action) must be immanent. This multiplicity cannot be found in a being's determinate physical state, but it is experienced in our intentional life. We mentally entertain alternatives, which makes them immanent, and then commit to one, which makes it actual. That is how agency works. This requires a mental life supporting awareness of alternatives, for only awareness gives the alternatives existential immanence. In sum, agency requires consciousness.
As I have said, physical systems have material states, and intentional laws. What they do not have is an intrinsic source of intentionality. This seems to apply to the entire universe prior to the advent of conscious beings, and to most of the universe since.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Of course such systems reflect the intentionality of their makers. Still, there is no reason to think they have an intrinsic source of intentionality.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
To ignore or abstract from purpose is not to remove it. Abstraction does not make knowledge less objective, only less complete. Ignoring aspects of reality, such as purpose, can be useful when what we abstract away is not relevant, but we should not fool ourselves into thinking that it yields complete understanding.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Entropy measures the number of microscopic states (we do not know) that can produce a macroscopic state we may know. As such it reflects human ignorance, not physical indeterminacy.
:joke:
Ok, thanks for the clarification. I disagree, but I think I understand your view better now.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
OK. But that future state would be a type of 'life', right?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Interesting. Could you give me a reference, please?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well, this is a big claim. Conservation laws have been repeteadly confirmed in experiments. Of course, I can conceive that they might be wrong, but I have good reason that they are correct or at least point to some kind of constant order.
Regarding entropy, it's not the same thing. As @Dfpolis said, entropy has more to do with our ignorance.
Seems to prefer the "how?" questions of Physical Science to the "why?" questions of Meta-Physical Philosophy. Ironically, some "how?" thinkers will admit that our evolving world presents the "appearance of purpose"*1, even as they dismiss that "appearance" as an illusion, or delusion.
Physicist Stephen Hawking wrote a book*2 intended to debunk the appearance of design based on evidence for an evolutionary mechanism programmed only by Natural Laws, requiring no programmer. But he seems to have assumed that the rules & limitations that guide the machine to perform its function, simply self-exist in a manner similar to the ancient notion of spontaneous generation of life. Which ignores the common law that "nothing comes from nothing".
Apparently, "why?" questions are taboo for believers in Scientism, because they may open the door for all sorts of spiritual creeds and mystical beliefs. Yet, secular philosophers have no problem separating their Meta-Physical notions (program ; design) from their Physical understanding of how the world works (self-organized mechanism). To tabooers, Teleology seems to be a slippery slope down to a slavish Hell of faith-blinded religious pietism, with mindless zombies bowing & praying to their dictatorial sky-lord. Personally, I no-longer feel the gravity of that un-founded fear. :smile:
*1. The whole point of modern evolutionary theory is that it explains the appearance of purpose (or telos, if you prefer) emerging from a purposeless process. There is nothing within evolution that indicates the existence of telos.
thttps://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-purp ... -evolution
Note --- Nothing in the step-by-step mechanism points to its purpose or ultimate function. Goals & Functions are holistic, not particularistic. Intention is an inference, not an observation. Meaning is mental, not physical.
*2. Stephen Hawking's Book The Grand Design attempts to disprove the existence of God using Science and Mathematical models. In this book, it is claimed that the Universe is a result of the Laws of Physics alone, and God is not needed to explain how it began.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=the+grand+design
Book Review : At best this book attempts to explain from a Physicists perspective, yet it fails to do so at so many other different levels. Thus it is incomplete and conjecture at best. Something as elegant, sophisticated, complex, and aesthetically beautiful, and massive in scale as large as the universe could not have materialized just spontaneously on its own.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stephen-hawkings-book-grand-design-review-farzan-j-chishti
I knew I could count on you. Thanks.
The enactivist approach doesnt deny the role of electrochemistry or physical principles active in living organisms. But it emphasises that the behaviour of organisms is not wholly explainable by mechanism - which is a metaphor - but as a self-organizing, value-directed engagement with the world.
AI programs may simulate intelligence, but they arent beings they dont enact a world from within. They're not alive, and the distinction is crucial (I have a draft on this topic.)
Thats the point phenomenology and enactivism insist on: that organisms are subjects, not just systems. They have to negotiate their environment in order to survive and to maintain homeostasis. And homeostasis is not represented in the principles of physics.
Aristotles hylomorphism (form + matter) is explicitly non-reductive. The form of a living being is not a shape, but a principle of organization and activity a telos. A heart isnt just a pump; it's something that beats for the sake of circulating blood within an organism. That for the sake of is not captured by efficient causality alone. He opposed Democritus precisely because atomism treated form as accidental, whereas Aristotle saw form as essential the organizing principle that makes something what it is.
Soul is the first actuality of a natural body that has life potentially. De Anima, II.1
Quoting Dfpolis
If organisms were nothing but deterministic physical systems, how would anything ever have evolved? Evolution doesnt work on pre-programmed machines it works on organisms that can vary, explore, adapt, respond in ways that are not reducible to mere stimulus-response mechanics. Again this is where Aristotle was prescient - he saw that the principles which govern organisms must allow for things to both change and yet somehow retain their identity. Darwin wrote that Aristotle 'shadowed forth' the idea of evolution (although not, of course, of natural selection.)
Ironically, your own point that one immanent state can only yield one course of action undermines the possibility of behavioral variation, which is essential for natural selection. If a given physical state leads only to one behavior, then theres no room for differential response and without that, there's nothing for evolution to select from. The very possibility of evolution requires that multiple courses of action can emerge from structurally similar, or even identical, physical configurations. Thats not just a point about consciousness its a foundational insight for biology.
Quoting Dfpolis
I would say prior to the advent of life - which is self-organising in some fundamental way.
Finally you might be getting it. :up:
Cause is about the constraint of fluctuation. The world seems organised and intentional because in the end, not everything can just freely happen. Order emerges to constrain chaos.
As quantum field theory says, Nature is ruled by the principle of least action. All paths are possible, but almost all the paths then have the effect of cancelling each other out. That Darwinian competition selects for whatever path is the most optimal in thermal dissipative terms.
And this is a fact proved to many decimal places. Quantum calculations of physical properties like the magnetic moment of an electron take into account all the more attenuated background probabilities that faintly contribute to the final measured outcome. The tower of cancellations that results in the final sum over histories.
So it is not about what I might believe. It is about what science knows.
The electro-magnetic Potential of an AA battery is "found" in the order (organization ; structure : chemistry) of the metals & bases within. But scientists can't see or measure that statistical possibility (property) in situ, yet they can measure the Current flowing in a complete (whole) circuit, of which the battery is the power source. From that voltage measurement, they infer the latent prior potential. As you implied, the Potential is in the whole system, not the parts.
A human person is said to have Potential if she has the necessary qualities (intelligence, training, motivation) that can be put together for success in her future life trajectory. The Potential (power to succeed) is not in the parts, but emerges from the interaction of those elements. Cultural success emerges from applied human Potential. Similarly, the holistic process we call "Life" emerges from a convergence of natural laws & causal energy & material substrates that, working together, motivate inorganic matter to grow, reproduce, and continue to succeed in staving off entropy. Likewise, a Cosmos has Potential if it exhibits creative qualities (Causation), and an inclination toward some future state (arrow of time).
Cosmic Potential*1 was expressed in theory by Plato (Forms ; world soul ; demiurge : necessity). None of which would be accepted by modern scientists, to explain the gradual & eventual emergence of a habitable planet from an ancient ex nihilo explosion of omnidirectional Energy, and its limiting Laws. So, I have posited a thesis of Cosmic Potential (EnFormAction*2) that combines Thermodynamics with Information Theory to explain, philosophically, how & why questioning beings have emerged from a universe of 27% Dark Matter, 68% Dark Energy, plus a remainder of 5% ordinary matter that we can detect with our senses and our sensors. :nerd:
*1. In Plato's cosmology, the "cosmic potentiality" refers to the underlying, non-physical principles that shape and govern the universe. It's not a tangible, measurable entity, but rather a set of ideal forms and mathematical relationships that provide the blueprint for the physical world.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=plato+cosmic+potential
*2. EnFormAction :
Ententional Causation. A proposed metaphysical law of the universe that causes random interactions between forces and particles to produce novel & stable arrangements of matter & energy. Its the creative force (aka : Schopenhauer's Will) of an axiomatic eternal First Cause that, for unknown reasons, programmed a Singularity to suddenly burst into our reality from an infinite source of possibility. AKA : The creative power of Evolution; the power to enform; Logos; Change.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
Note --- Scientists call that causal Will by various names, such as Energy, Power, Force, Vitality. They can't say what it is (what it's made of), they merely infer its abstract existence from its effects on matter.
Note2 --- I also call that implicit "source of possibility" an eternal Pool of Potential. But Potential alone, without Intelligence & Intention could not impart Purpose to the Actual Cosmos.
The Universe is a hierarchy of constraints. But note that constraints are more a passive than an active thing. It is like putting a fence around a flock of sheep. The fence is just there, but by its presence the sheep are more limited in their free action.
So the basic symmetries of Nature the Noether symmetries that create the conservation laws act like boundaries on freedoms. Spacetime is a container that expresses Poincare symmetry. It says only certain kinds of local zero-point fluctuations are possible. All others are prevented.
But then luckily for us, gauge symmetry means these fluctuations can still become quite complex. Point-like particles can have spins that range from 0, 1/2, 1, 3/2, 2 those five values. And from that we can extract the Standard Model of particle physics.
So from what the global constraints that Poincare symmetry can't prevent a residual variety of locally gauged spin states we wind up with a hot big bang Universe that develops quite a bit of chemical complexity on its way to eventual prolonged heat death.
As a model of causality, this emphasises contextuality. What develops is every stricter limitation on variety. But fencing things in also focuses what remains trapped inside. As global constraints sharpen, so too do the local freedoms that evade these constraints.
Physicists of course don't talk about sheep in pens. But quantum physics does like to talk about pendulums or weights on springs. A field of oscillators. Create a cavity and you will find its interior must resonate at that frequency. Its fluctuations can't be eliminated. But they can be made to line up into a neat little sine wave. Or particles as described by a gauged spin state.
A silly comment when Peirce explicity developed his semiosis by starting from phenomenology and extrapolating to logic and metaphysics. Remember how you like to seize on "objective idealism" as if Peirce's careful triadicism or hierarchical causality can be heedlessly reduced to your brand of dualism? The two forms of Cartesian substance.
So again, yes to an epistemic cut, but no to an ontological cut. Life and mind exist within the physical world and its generalised thermodynamic imperative. The Cosmos only exists because it expands and it cools. Life and mind the insert themselves into this larger story by accelerating the entropification.
To do this, life and mind of course have to be able to wall themselves off as small pockets of negentropy refuges constructed of information. Organisms have to be embodied. They must build a physical structure that is a molecular machinery with a metabolism that can digest their surrounds.
Biosemiosis is about how to recognised the continuity of the underlying thermal imperative while also properly accounting for the exact nature of the mechanical trick which allows an organism to form by milking entropic flows for its "own purpose".
A body is nothing more that a physical structure that can rebuild itself just slightly faster that it falls apart. A human uses as much power as a weak light bulb. It doesn't demand a lot of energy to keep one step ahead of the generalised decay rate of our environments.
But then there was nothing stopping humans developing more exalted notions about their purpose in being alive. Indeed if they could start ploughing fields and digging oil wells, there suddenly seemed no limit to how high they might fly.
The cult of endless growth is now a basic habit of thought baked into modern society. Philosophy in the popular understanding has become largely entrained to supporting this collective delusion.
There. Is that enough phenomenology for you? The reasons for why you experience reality in the way that you do. The insistence on personal transcendence. The requirement for an ontological-level separation from the brutish constraints of a thermally-organised world. :roll:
But notice that 'insert themselves' implies agency.
Quoting apokrisis
Why must they? What imperative drives that? Oh - that's right. It's something that could happen, therefore it did.
Quoting apokrisis
There's your materialism showing again.
Quoting apokrisis
It's not phenomenology at all. There's a glaring omission in your model, as philosophy, but as it's situated squarely in the middle of the blind spot of science, I'm guessing it's something you wouldn't recognize. That blind spot is the consequence of the methodical exclusion or bracketing out of the first-person ground of existence.
Incidentally, with respect to Peirce's phenomenology, he said ' to decide what our sentiments ought to be towards things in general without taking any account of human experience of life, would be most foolish ~ C S Peirce, Philosophy in Light of the Logic of Relatives. Yet in your model, human experience only exists by happenstance, and then only to expedite entropy.
I'm not proposing dualism.You interpret what I'm saying through that perspective, because the mindset you're working within is post-Cartesian, which started off by dividing the world into mind and matter, and then rejected the model as incoherent (which it is) - leaving only matter. But I'm not trying to re-introduce mind as a 'thinking substance'. What I'm saying, on the contrary, is that nothing is purely physical, that the physical itself is itself an abstraction from experience. And where do abstractions dwell?
I'm not disputing agency. I'm defining it properly in terms of naturalistic metaphysics.
Quoting Wayfarer
If you want to be right, then get it right. The maxim is: "If it can happen, it must happen". If something is not forbidden, it will occur.
This contrasts with the more usual, if something happens, it was made to happen.
Quoting Wayfarer
Or my brand of materialism. Just like my brand of agency, etc.
I am concerned about how our common terms ought to be better understood. You just sling them around as terms of abuse or a banner to rally to.
Quoting Wayfarer
That is nothing like my model. You continue to strawman everything I say.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. Where do they dwell? Follow your own argument through.
There are many things, abstractions among them, that are only perceptible by nous. They don't, therefore, dwell anywhere, in the literal sense, as they're not bound by time and space. But real, nonetheless. Hence, 'mind-created world'.
[quote=C S Peirce Collected Papers, CP 1.27] I do not mean that universals exist, but they are real. Real, I say, in the sense that they are not figments of the mind but have an objective being, though not a material existence.[/quote]
By what, by the way? We used to think that the laws of physics forbade powered flight.
You mean history shows we ignored the folk dumb enough to claim that. As soon as gliders and motors showed some concrete promise, there was a rush to patent the early concepts.
On the other hand, patent offices have the good sense not to accept schemes for perpetual motion machines. The laws of thermodynamics do "forbid" those at root ... if you insist on smuggling anthropomorphism into your choice of words as a back-door means of evidencing the beliefs you wish to believe.
Quoting Wayfarer
What is nous when it is at home? Where does the rational intellect reside? Could it be in Peirce's community of pragmatic inquirers. People willing to construct falsifiable beliefs that can actually be publicly tested by conformity with the evidence?
So abstractions exist in minds? But there are then trained minds and untrained minds. As an epistemological fact but not an ontological one! these do indeed create quite different versions of what they might consider "reality".
There is the phenomenological experience of those of us for whom the maths of symmetry and symmetry breaking might truly have a look and a feel of some Platonic reality. It is a full sensori-motor experience.
Then there are those who just hear the words, see the equations, and experience simply a bunch of confusing marks on a page. No world springs up in their mind that speaks to the abstractions to which these symbols might hold the key.
Exactly. In the spirit of Aristotle, the natural philosopher and systems thinker argues that substantial reality is the hylomorphic interaction of its matter and its form. That is, its global constraints and its local degrees of freedom.
Each side of this dichotomy is the proper cause of the other. So together, they become the co-arising.
Form shapes the matter and that shaped matter constructs the order specified by the constraining form. It is a neat feedback loop. Or more properly, a neat hierarchical set-up. Substantial being is what you get once you have a lower bound set of material freedoms in interaction with a globalised cogent state a state of rational order so pervasive that it puts strict limits on everything.
Which is why physics is obsessed with symmetries. Dimensionality itself already strictly limits the freedoms that can exist. If you understand symmetry maths you can just see the truth of that in direct mind-grasped way.
But symmetry maths is to be found in that particular community of pragmatic inquiry. You need to become a paid-up member if you want a phenomenological level view the one that feels maximally objective as it is at least not patently hostage to our everyday subjectivity.
How is this world not a world of zombies? Because there is no need for the we in us to be present. It all works as a well oiled machine without us.
Which will, however, not outlive it. The ghost is neither the machine, nor anything apart fro it. A figment, in fact.
Some of whom were eminent scientists.
Quoting apokrisis
The hallmark of phenomenology is its emphasis on the first-person character of experience. It begins by seeking to retrieve this dimension, which had been methodologically excluded by the quantitative orientation of modern science. This is the central concern of the opening section of Husserls Crisis of the European Sciences to show how the lived world (Lebenswelt), the world as it is experientially given, was eclipsed by the objectifying methods of natural science. Hence Husserl's remark that Galileo was both a 'revealing and concealing genius'.
(Phenomenology, in this sense, is more than a philosophy of subjectivity, but a disciplined attempt to return to the conditions of meaning and appearance that make objective knowledge possible in the first place. It does not reject science, but seeks to clarify its experiential and conceptual ground.)
But the point of the mind-created world idea is that we do of course see reality through mental constructs and theories, as well as sense-perception. It is the mind which synthesises these into the unity of subjective experience. And the sense of what is physical relies on that, which is not itself physical. That is the world as it is lived by us, the lebenswelt. Mental and physical, mind and world, are all aspects of that.
As far the epistemic cut is concerned, I think that it signifies an ontological discontinuity, as well as an epistemic one. It reflects a real discontinuity in nature herselt: between matter and meaning, mechanism and interpretation, dynamics and semiosis. But you will reject that because it suggests dualism, which you've made your distaste for abundantly clear - again because of the shadow of Descartes.
Quoting apokrisis
Where is the number seven? The law of the excluded middle? The Pythagorean theorem?
One of the texts I'm reading is The Phenomenon of Life, Hans Jonas (1966). The first essay in that anthology is about the fact that in the pre-modern world, life was seen as the norm, and death seemed an anomaly - hence the cults of the 'risen Christ' and similar religions. With the Renaissance, this began to invert, so that finally, dead matter is seen as the norm, and life the anomaly, something which has to be explained. And I think that's what your model does. But the problem is that there is really no room in it for the human being. Beings are just kinds of heat-sinks, mechanisms by which entropy seeks the path of least resistance. And that's why the only logical outcome of the model is death. After all, if the physical is all there is, then that is all that can be expected.
Biosemiosis inverts this framing. We are the machinery that can constrain the world to our own advantage.
We are modellers of the world for the purpose of regulating the world in a way that it must keep rebuilding and even replicating the delicate biological machine that is "us".
And moveover it feels phenomenologically like something to be such a machine or more correctly, such a modelling relation as the model is a model of an "us" in its "world".
That is the semiotic story. What we experience is the Umwelt of our own construction. A point of view that is a self in pragmatically-intentional interaction with its environment.
Consciousness boils down to the habit of predicting the state of the world in every next moment ... so as to be then capable of being surprised by what happens instead and thus learning to make better predictions the next time round.
This is just basic enactivism or Bayesian reasoning. The self is the place from which the expectations arise in the modelling relation and the world is the place from which those expectations are to some degree or other confounded, contradicted, bemused, surprised of best case rendered ignorable.
So the standard lay view is that consciousness is about a brain that extracts a view of the world from incoming data. A modern embodied approach to cognition flips it the other way round. We develop a robust sense of self to the degree we can already anticipate everything that the world might be just about to do. We feel purposeful and in control to the degree we can in fact ignore the world not even need to be consciously aware of it.
The sense of self is that part of the modelling relation which is already secure in its own predictive integrity. The world only intrudes into our stream of thought only by being surprising or unexpected in some way that we might find important or worth learning from.
You see this innate ability to filter out the world by coming at it with rock-solid preconceptions a lot on this forum. When the stakes are low, no one needs to learn anything new.
So we are not meat machines or Cartesian automatons. Biosemiosis says we are a kind of machine in that we can impose a machinery of decisional switches on our world. We can model our worlds in terms of information about the kinds of things we want to happen in the next instant, and then switch tracks to the degree it matters if they don't happen. Stop in surprise for half a second and generate a new set of expectancies. Rinse and repeat.
And a strong sense of self emerges from this prediction-based processing. We know we are the "we" who generated a sense of a world as it was just about to be. Then we are still the "we" who has to halt and start again if the world glitched and we had to restart it from a refreshed point of view.
If we really get to the point that we are almost completely filtering out the world, then we actually begin to lose that usual sense of self. We forget about being in the world and so aren't even now being reminded that we are also in "ourselves".
The Zen ideal for some reason. Sensory deprivation tanks cause the ego to dissolve. It is by having to push against the world that we also feel the us that is pushing. Once the world becomes fully ignorable, so also does our self-image lose its sturdy outline.
But as Gemini told you: "The main reasons for their doubt often centered on the perceived lack of a sufficiently powerful and light engine, or an incomplete understanding of aerodynamics (particularly the concept of airfoil lift)."
Your claim was that these scientists said the laws of physics forbade powered flight. As Gemini makes clear, they were doubting that the craft could be made light enough, or the engines strong enough, to achieve heavier-than-air flight. Balloons with propellors were the limit of what seemed feasible.
So nothing was said about the laws of physics. What was being argued was the practicalities of material engineering.
Quoting Wayfarer
Thanks for the lecture. But Peirce got it right by showing how the real story is about the hierarchical order of first, second and third person perspectives. First person leaves you stuck on the platform of idealism long after the train of useful discourse has departed the station.
Quoting Wayfarer
Why don't you tell me where you think they are?
Maths finds them not in Platonia some supernatural museum of ideas but in the necessary geometry of Nature. The forms that must rule a Cosmos as they are the symmetry and symmetry breaking operations by which dimensional Being itself can arise.
As Peirce taught, logic itself self-assembles in hierarchical fashion. Order isn't transcendentally imposed. It emerges from a Darwinian struggle to get anything done at all. The Comos exists as the universal growth of reasonableness. A geometry of free relations that has its own structural inevitability.
No need for a maker. Chaos can't help but fall into ordered structure. Anaximander saw that right from the start.
Quoting Wayfarer
Jesus Christ. The Renaissance was a moment in time. The rediscovery of Greek atomism was inspirational. It crystalised the reductionist mindset. Differential equations were invented and the Western world went Newtonian. The industrial age was unleashed.
But we have had 600 years of scientific and mathematical progress since then. Catch up a bit. Much of what I'm talking about concerns the past 50 years of intellectual advance the era when we properly got back to Anaximander and the metaphysical revolution he inspired.
Peirce didnt treat Firstness as something to be discarded its not simple subjectivity or a leftover from idealism. It refers to the irreducible immediacy of experience qualities as they are felt or intuited before they're interpreted or acted upon. Thats not something that can be explained away by pointing to Thirdness (rules, mediation) or even Secondness (facts, brute reaction). 'Peirce usually attempts to explain firstness, in general terms, as quality or feeling'. Hence, first-person. (Qualia, in fact!) Without Firstness, nothing shows up to be reacted to or interpreted in the first place.
Quoting apokrisis
They are principles and ideas which can only be grasped by reason, intelligible objects. So they're not existent, but they're real, in that they're the same for all who think:
Quoting apokrisis
[quote= Collected Papers, CP 6.287]Agapasm... is that mode of evolution in which the original germinal idea, in growing, continually puts itself into deeper and deeper harmony with its own nature, not as a mere development of a mechanical necessity but by virtue of a sympathetic and benevolent attraction, an agap?, an outgoing love.[/quote]
Quoting apokrisis
Appeals to progress don't begin to address the philosophical point at issue.
Where did I say it was discarded? It gets incorporated into the wholeness of triadic interpretance.
Redness becomes something we can name a species of the class "qualia" once we learn to look at the world in a certain light. It becomes the colour of a stop sign, a hue in a set of crayons, the opposite of green, etc.
That which is initially some unfiltered instant becomes sharply framed in terms of its particularity within a setting of generality. Firstness as an initial vagueness is transmuted into Firstness as some crisply fixed quality held within a system of interpretance. It becomes seen as a particular instance of the general thing we have learnt to label as "redness".
[quote=Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism (review)] Peirce understood nominalism in the broad anti-realist sense usually attributed to William of Ockham, as the view that reality consists exclusively of concrete particulars and that universality and generality have to do only with names and their significations. This view relegates properties, abstract entities, kinds, relations, laws of nature, and so on, to a conceptual existence at most. Peirce believed nominalism (including what he referred to as "the daughters of nominalism": sensationalism, phenomenalism, individualism, and materialism) to be seriously flawed and a great threat to the advancement of science and civilization. His alternative was a nuanced realism that distinguished reality from existence and that could admit general and abstract entities as [immaterial] reals without attributing to them direct (efficient) causal powers. Peirce held that these non-existent reals could influence the course of events by means of final causation (conceived somewhat after Aristotle's conception),and that to banish them from ontology, as nominalists require, is virtually to eliminate the ground for scientific prediction as well as to underwrite a skeptical ethos unsupportive of moral agency.[/quote]
Chalk and cheese.
I want to try and draw a line here. You came into this thread advocating physicalism, which as you know I disagree with. When I challenged it, you said
Quoting apokrisis
Well, first of all, Peirce is known as a theistic idealist and often said as much:
I'm not an advocate for dualism, but I think it has a big influence on the conversation. Because, the lurking question is: if not physicalism, then what? That is a question that you don't want to deal with, because the implications must be, to your mind, some kind of dualism, and that territory is forbidden. Pattee says that straight out in the first part of Physics and Metaphysics of Biosemiosis. (Peirce also rejected Cartesian dualism.)
From a draft I'm working on:
'One of the most far-reaching consequences of Descartes dualism was not just philosophical but cultural: it effectively divided the world between *res extensa*, the extended, measurable substance that would become the domain of science, and *res cogitans*, the thinking, immaterial substance reserved for religion and theology. At the time it was formulated, this demarcation helped defuse tension between the rising authority of mechanistic science and the theological dominance of the early modern Church. Matter could be studied freely, so long as the soul remained untouched (and that was an explicit entry in the original Charter of the Royal Society.) But the cost of this division was steep: it left the mind stranded outside the physical world, and set the stage for centuries of debate about howor whetherit could ever be brought back in. Physicalism had to insist that mind is the product of material causation, via neurology and evolution - it could have no reality in its own right, for these very reasons. And that still is probably the majority view. '
That is why the two fields of phenomenology and embodied cognition (or enactivism) are so important. They're not either physicalist or idealist (although phenomology was undoubetdly descended from Kantianism.) That is an emerging paradigm that has many areas in common with biosemiotics, although not so much with the physics-driven 'theories of everything' which you spend a lot of time writing about.
That's what I think is the cultural impetus behind the appeals to physicalism and antagonism towards anything perceived as spiritual or idealist. It's the consequence of this division.
Only in a very limited way. We are confined in the machine of the body with very little agency. Apart from a little bit I will call x.
Thats not the we, the machine can do all that itself. We play no role in its development, or maintenance. Apart from a little bit I will call x.
Etc etc.
It is the mind, facilitated by the brain that does all this. Perhaps what you mean by consciousness is self consciousness, which is where the mind becomes conscious of itself and becomes self reflective. This is not the root of consciousness, the root of consciousness was present in us long before we developed larger brains and became self conscious.
That self conscious being is little more than a toddler (who is concerned with x) compared to the complexity of the world and the body he or she finds themselves in.
Again the we is not required to perform these tasks, the body can and does do it all by itself.
Leaving just the we. I know, Ive been there.
What Im getting at here is that as beings, people, personalities, self aware minds. We are babies, toddlers with a primary school level understanding ( x ) of the world we find ourselves in. We are doing well in our primary lessons. Working out things about the material of the world we find ourselves in. Even things about our own make up, biology psychology etc. But compared to the complexity of the world we find ourselves in, this is a tiny peek, a scratch on the surface of whats going on. 99.99% of it we dont have a clue about, or dont even realise is there going on. And when it comes to why. Or how it came into existence, what mechanism, we dont have a clue.
There are other approaches to knowledge about these things from religions and eastern philosophies. Which approach from a different perspective. Again we are toddlers.
I see this situation rather like a complex machine like what you describe, into which embryonic minds are introduced (implanted) (I will call these y ) to learn lessons, to grow and develop for some reason. Maybe to learn about good and evil, cooperation compassion. To have agency, to overcome the tendencies to succumb to base urges and desires, to be baby creators.
Now heres the curious thing. My world and your world are identical, except for one thing, y.
I would suggest that a zombie world could be identical too.
At the end of the day, we dont know which it is, or if it is something else entirely. We really are in the dark.
You keep accusing me of exactly what I dont claim. You then post something that nicely supports my systems causality argument. :roll:
Seeing as you are a fan of AI replies these days, why not check up just how idiosyncratic Peirces understanding of the divine is.
So follow your cite to its source and you can see that divine mind is poetic licence and reflects Peirce speaking in the spirit of his time and place.
Quoting Wayfarer
Bollocks. The question I am engaged with is if not monism, then what? Peirce correctly gives the answer that monism is really to be understood as the holism of the triadic relation. The causal story of hierarchically emergent order. Cosmogenesis in short. What is ontically singular is the irreducibility of the triadic logic by which existence gets organised.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes of course religion and science agreed to divide the world between them in this way. But that is ancient history now.
My antagonism is about your constant efforts to frame any comment I might make as reductionist and scientistic. You may need me to dress up in 16th C garb, but Im too busy with how modern systems thinking actually makes sense of both mind and matter.
You said "That which is initially some unfiltered instant becomes sharply framed in terms of its particularity within a setting of generality. Firstness as an initial vagueness is transmuted into Firstness as some crisply fixed quality held within a system of interpretance. It becomes seen as a particular instance of the general thing we have learnt to label as "redness". The transformation of "unfiltered instant" into "some crisply fixed quality held within a system of interpretance" - reflects the nominalist tendency to treat qualities as products of classification, not as independently real (as Peirce does). That is conceptual nominalism: the idea that qualities only become real in or through being subsumed under general concepts or categories.
Quoting apokrisis
It's the same thing. Physicalism is monist, because it presumes only one fundamental substance, matter~energy. The epistemic cut then has to be represented as being an aspect of the physical world, because, if it's not physical.....
Quoting apokrisis
You always use that excuse to deprecate Peirce as idealist. 'Oh, he was a man of his times, he didn't know about systems science'. He was a thoroughgoing idealist, he said it himself many times. (He was before Moore and Russell's rebellion against idealism.) The 'holism of the triadic relation' is only an aspect of Peirce's ouevre, but it's the part biologists have appropriated for their purposes. I'm sure that Peirce would see the Cosmos as alive.
Sure. No problem with that at all. Besides, I never advocate for belief in God. There's no creator God in Buddhism. And that passage sounds like something you would find in many philosophies.
Quoting apokrisis
I didn't introduce those terms. I said 'physicalist', which is how you described yourself. About the fact, as I said, and to which you didn't respond, that your system has no real place in it for human beings, as several others have commented. And the fact that the only place for organic life in your model is as kinds of heat sinks. What is there to like about that?
How can Firstness be independently real? Either Peirces logic is understood to be irreducibly triadic or its not.
So that is enough nonsense now.
Quoting apokrisis
Well, good point. And, in fact, if they were 'active', then, it would be like saying that there is a 'World Soul' or that the universe is a living being. If that were the case, it would not be a physicalist model, anymore.
So, the only viable route for a physicalist to explain life and mind in physicalist terms seems to be what you are proposing here. A non-reductionist kind of physicalism where global constraints are properties of the wholes which allow, when the right conditions are met, the arising of life.
I am not convinced that this strategy works and fully explains the arising of life and mind due to the fact I am not convinced that these passive 'allowances' have enough explanatory powers. For instance, I can't imagine a mathematical model that explain the arising of 'life' as a particular state. But I can't say that it is impossible.
Certainly, even if it is correct, one might still ask why these allowances were there in the first place. Of course, there might be no 'because'...
(Slighty edited for clarification)
Don't you think that it is correct to say that the intentionality is intrinsic to the system? If something is made for a specific purpose, isn't that purpose intrinsic to the thing? I mean, I see how you would separate the cause from the effect, in the case of efficient causation, but in the case of final cause, wouldn't you say that the purpose of an intentionally designed thing inheres within the thing itself, as a defining feature. If something is not used according to its purpose, it is not the thing which it was meant to be.
Take language for example. If we do not assume that the meaning intended by the author, inheres within the written material, then we are free to interpret it in any arbitrary way. However, interpretation must stay true to the author's intent, therefore we must assume that the meaning, the purpose inheres within the words as expressed.
Quoting Dfpolis
That's pure sophistry. If the states are not known, then clearly you cannot assert with any justification that it is "not physical indeterminacy".
But if they were known, then it could not be called "entropy". Therefore it is impossible that they could be known, or else we could not call it "entropy". Since it is impossible to be known, it is necessarily physical indeterminacy.
Quoting boundless
Look into Plato's "tripartite soul".
Quoting boundless
Actually, every experiment done demonstrates that energy is not conserved. The loss is known as entropy. This is why we cannot have one hundred percent efficiency, or a perpetual motion machine, So contrary to what you say, conservation laws have been disproved repeatedly in experiments.
Quoting apokrisis
I get it. But as I've told you before, I find it irrational. I find denial of the principle of sufficient reason irrational. I think that anytime we stop trying to understand something, by assuming that it simply cannot be understood, that is irrational. Therefore we must assume that anything, and everything, can be understood. The principle of sufficient reason applies, or else when we find something difficult to understand we will conclude that it is one of those things which cannot be understood, and we will give up on trying. And that is irrational behaviour.
Quoting apokrisis
OK, but don't you think that there is a reason why "not everything can just freely happen"? I mean, if specific constraints apply, then shouldn't we assume that there is a reason why those constraints apply, and not others? So when "order emerges", wouldn't you think that there is a reason why it is this order instead of another order. That is the fundamental metaphysical question of being qua being, as laid out by Aristotle, why is there what there is, instead of something different.
To say that things just emerged that way, for the sake of constraining chaos, "order emerges to constrain chaos", doesn't answer the question. In fact, it's extremely ambiguous. On the one hand "emerges" seems to imply that things evolve this way by mere chance, but "to constrain chaos" implies that there is purpose behind this evolution from the very outset. But even if this is proposed as the purpose behind the evolution, from the very beginning, it is nothing but what you apprehend as the purpose, and that may be completely different from the real purpose.
Notice that if we assign purpose as behind it, we must assume a real purpose, that of the causal agency. This is what happens with the common theory of evolution. We assign the purpose of "survival". But this is just what we apprehend as the purpose, within our theory. But if we assign purpose, in this way, then we need to assume real purpose of a agency behind evolution, and our theory of "survival" may not correctly represent the real purpose.
Quoting apokrisis
This is an example of a theoretical purpose. it's just what the theory presents as "the purpose". But unless we know the agency which acts as causation, and know its reasons for acting that way, we cannot in any way claim that this is the real purpose.
Quoting apokrisis
Probabilities prove the accuracy of the statistics, they don't even approach the purpose for the action. So it is false to claim that QFT proves that nature is ruled by the principle of least action. A very small portion of nature, observation of which produces those statistics, supports that principle.
Quoting apokrisis
Now you are blatantly contradicting yourself. Above, you were saying that global constraints are emergent, they emerge to constrain chaos. But here you are positing foundational constraints, fundamental constraints on freedom which are not emergent but prior to, or coexistent with, basic freedom. Where do these constraints come from? If constraints are by nature emergent, then how can there be foundational constraints?
Quoting apokrisis
I would correct this to adequately represent what you say, as 'you are not disputing agency, but describing it in a contradictory, irrational way'.
Quoting apokrisis
This, the principle of plenitude, requires the physical reality of infinity, infinite time, for its validity. And acceptance of the physical reality of this principle produces all sorts of absurdities, like the infinite monkey theorem.
Quoting Punshhh
That's a good way of putting it. Life thrives in the eddies of negentropy. It appears like the activities of life are contrary to the overall flow of entropy, but in reality by apokrisis' philosophy, we must accept that these eddies are just a part of that flow.
Well, I was familar with the concept but admittedly I never tried to apply it to understand how to solve the interaction problem. I'll try to reflect on this.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well, what isn't conserved is usable energy, not total energy. The second law of thermodynamics is quite depressing in fact. It says that not only we can't 'generate' energy but also that we will never be able to use the total energy there is. Some of it will inevitably fall outside our control.
Questions of the meaning of life long predate the scientific revolution, so it is suspect to make it somehow responsible for a fundamental human question such as this.
What your essay seems to miss is the notion of hierarchy in purpose. Of course, biological life is full of purpose, at every scale. But at every point where purpose is found, one can ask what purpose does that serve?
Take for instance the poop machine.
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2012/05/poo-machine-by-wim-delvoye.html?m=1
At every stage of the poop machine, one can ask what its purpose is, and receive a perfectly reasonable answer. But at the final stage which produces poop, when you ask, "and what is the purpose of that?", you find only silence. The end result, and therefore the entire machine, is ultimately purposeless.
The same can be asked of life itself. Despite all the purpose we can identify in all the facets of life, one can still ask, what is the purpose of all of it? And here too, one may encounter silence. With or without science.
It is certainly true that living beings have organic integrity and self-directed (aka immanent) activity. So, as a result of their form, organisms act in a way that non-living matter does not. Still, this activity is potential in non-living matter. So, mechanists are correct in saying that the same laws guiding non-living matter guide the behavior of living matter. Still, those laws do not provide a full explanation. They allow, but do not imply life. To have life, we need to specify forms of matter that can live. It is those forms, as Aristotle saw, that make the difference between living and non-living matter.
I presented a conference paper on value in April. In it, I argued that valuing is a two step process. First, we must recognize something as valuable. Such recognition requires awareness/consciousness of our response to an object -- a form of self-awareness called "knowledge by connaturality." Most organisms give no evidence of being self-aware. Second, it requires commitment -- an act of will by which we make the valuable actually valued. Again, most organisms do noting to make us think that they possess a will. Instead, they respond automatically and mindlessly to their environment.
So, we can only say that non-conscious forms of life "interpret" or "value" only by anthropomorphizing, and doing so abuses language by stripping interpretation and valuing of their essential, conscious and intentional character.
Quoting Wayfarer
Again, this abuses language. Beings are subjects in light of their capacity to enter into subject-object relations -- specifically, knowing and willing. Things that simply interact, even if that interaction involves immanent, or self-directed, activity, are not thereby in a subject-object relation, and so do not qualify as subjects.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, but that does not make them subjects in the sense humans are.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, organisms have immanent activity. That is not the same as being able to value and interpret.
Quoting Wayfarer
Deterministically, by the laws of nature transforming the initial state of the universe. Deterministic genetic variation and mutation produce variant offspring that are selected by processes guided by the same laws of nature.
We have no reason to think that any non-conscious organism does more than respond to stimuli determinately.
Yes, its original purpose will be reflected in its form. That is not the same as the object, itself, having an intention = being a source of intentionality.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Please! I told you what entropy means. You can accept what I say, or not. But, if it means what I say, it does not mean that the system is subject to indeterminacy. I suggest you read a bit more about entropy.
Since Philosophy is primarily the study of Metaphysics (meaning), its practitioners are more likely to focus on the subject than the object on any topic. And, the "blind spot" is the blurry blob that we see out of the corner of the eye. Both kinds of observers may be missing something important. I won't jump in the middle of this finger-pointing, except to list a few excerpts from a recent non-technical article on the notion of a Blind Spot in Science. :cool:
The Blind Spot
by Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser & Evan Thompson
(two physicists and a philosopher)
https://aeon.co/essays/the-blind-spot-of-science-is-the-neglect-of-lived-experience
Note --- my bold & italics
# Two Worldviews : "Behind the Blind Spot sits the belief that physical reality has absolute primacy in human knowledge, a view that can be called scientific materialism. In philosophical terms, it combines scientific objectivism (science tells us about the real, mind-independent world) and physicalism (science tells us that physical reality is all there is)."
# Metaphysics : "Experience is just as fundamental to scientific knowledge as the physical reality it reveals."
# The black hole in Science : "Because physical science including biology and computational neuroscience doesnt include an account of consciousness.""
# What is Physical? : "We reject this move. Whatever physical means should be determined by physics and not armchair reflection. After all, the meaning of the term physical has changed dramatically since the 17th century. Matter was once thought to be inert, impenetrable, rigid, and subject only to deterministic and local interactions."
# What is Real? : "Alfred North Whitehead . . . . he argued that what we call reality is made up of evolving processes that are equally physical and experiential."
# Ding An Sich : "Scientific materialists will argue that the scientific method enables us to get outside of experience and grasp the world as it is in itself."
Note --- "Ding an sich : It denotes the idea of an object or reality as it exists independently of human perception and understanding, a realm beyond our direct experience". {Kant's version of Plato's Ideal)
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=ding+an+sich
# Methodological Exclusion : "In general terms, heres how the scientific method works. First, we set aside aspects of human experience on which we cant always agree, such as how things look or taste or feel."
# Exclusion Delusion : "To finally see the Blind Spot is to wake up from a delusion of absolute knowledge. Its also to embrace the hope that we can create a new scientific culture, in which we see ourselves both as an expression of nature and as a source of natures self-understanding. We need nothing less than a science nourished by this sensibility for humanity to flourish in the new millennium."
# Summary : "Such an approach not only distorts the truth, but creates a false sense of distance between ourselves and the world. That divide arises from what we call the Blind Spot, which science itself cannot see. In the Blind Spot sits experience: the sheer presence and immediacy of lived perception"
.
If it can be detected, it is usable. If you are proposing a type of energy which cannot be detected, then that's not really energy, is it? Energy, by definition is the capacity to do work. The idea that there is such a thing as energy which is not usable energy is just contradiction.
Quoting Dfpolis
"Selected" implies choice. Do you think that processes governed by deterministic laws are capable of making choices?
Quoting Dfpolis
I think you\ll need to explain this proposed difference to me Df. How would you characterize the difference between intentionality in the sense of an object having a purpose, with this purpose being reflected in its form, and an object being a source of intentionality?
To me, any human being, which you might say is a source of intentionality, was actually given that intentionality by its parents, and this is just another case of purpose being reflected in the form. See, your proposed classification "being a source of intentionality" requires that you show that intentionality can actually begin within a thing, as the source of that intentionality. But intentionality is hereditary.
Quoting Dfpolis
You said;
"Entropy measures the number of microscopic states (we do not know) that can produce a macroscopic state we may know."
Clearly, if entropy means that the system "can produce a macroscopic state we may know", and "entropy" refers to the measure of possible corresponding microstates, then indeterminacy is implied. The very nature of possibility is indeterminacy. It is not the case that the physicists believe that the actual corresponding microstate could be known. If that were the case, it would not be called "entropy" because the information would be available to them. Why do you deny the obvious? You are trying to shape the meaning of "entropy" for your own purpose. Indeterminacy is fundamental to the current understanding of physical systems. And "uncertainty" is understood as an aspect of the system which may be measured as entropy.
Thank you for your comments, and pleased to have found some common ground. Many of the contemporary theorists I'm reading refer to this aspect of Aristotle's philosophy (his Biology is, I think, considered relevant in ways that his Physics is not. Some say he anticipated the idea of DNA, though obviously not the molecular detail.)
Quoting Dfpolis
Here, however, is where I would draw attention to the emerging school of thought known as 'enactivism' or 'embodied cognition'. This school of thought enlarges the meaning of intent (or value or purpose) beyond that which only conscious subjects are able to entertain. There's quite a large literature on the subject, and it is difficult to summarise, so I've asked Google Gemini to create a primer for it, which explains some of the key concepts and texts. Strictly speaking, the main subject of its enquiries are cognition, rather than consciousness per se, however, as you can surmise, there is considerable overlap in these terms. So it is not a matter of 'abusing language' - the terms are being used in a broader way, and in a new context.
As a corrollary to this, I think the theorists in these schools would question whether organisms at any level of development act solely in accordance with the principles of physics and chemistry. As has been pointed out by the mainstream biologist Ernst Mayer '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.' Even simple organisms strive, persist, and preserve themselves which has been illustrated in the activities of the slime mould, which is a single-celled organism with no identifiable brain whatever (for which see How the Universe Thinks without a Brain).
Quoting Dfpolis
No contest! But, again I am working with a rather broader concept of subject-hood than conscious subjectiivity. (The term for the sense of 'being a subject' is 'ipseity' which is being extended somewhat through these new disciplines to encompass the awareness of organisms less developed than the higher animals.)
I fully acknowledge that this way of thinking is new to me, I still have much more to study and absorb, and I may therefore be mistaken in my presentation of these ideas. But I think to make that judgement some familiarity with the key texts and concepts is required.
Quoting Dfpolis
As I understand it, a better understanding of epigenetics undermines the idea that genetic variation is purely deterministic. Variation can be systemic, responsive, and developmentally mediated, not just molecular noise filtered by selection. Organisms are not just passive recipients of selective pressures they are active participants in shaping their own evolutionary and developmental environments.
Quoting hypericin
On the contrary, the idea that the Universe can be understood in terms of undirected physical interactions and processes is very specific to post-scientific revolution. And I question that pre-moderns would typically wonder about the meaning of it all, as existence in those times was very much circumscribed by custom and your place in the social hierarchy (not that this was necessarily a good thing.)
The real crisis of meaning is very much associated with the advent of modern technological and (post) industrial culture. And again the absence of meaningful social structures is not necessarily negative, as individuals are much more at liberty to pursue their own ends. But it cant be denied that feelings of alienation, disconnectedness, loneliness and anomie are characteristic of modern culture and that this is often underwritten by a sense of meaninglessness.
Quoting hypericin
I didnt say nor imply that there isnt a hierarchy of meanings. At the most basic level the organisms purpose, and the overall aim at which all of its constituent parts are engaged with, is persisting, staying alive. This drive animates (literally) all living creatures.
Self awareness is not required for step one, or step two. I observe my chickens doing this every day*.
I suggest that all biological organisms have these abilities, albeit in very simple forms, or in embryonic form. That humans and other primates act in the same way most of the time and that the difference between all organisms and humans is only a higher mind function, a more complex and integrated intellectual process, that these primates possess.
*two examples. If I give my chickens a choice of foods at the same time. They will have already decided which one is their favourite. They have remarkable acuity and often know from your actions if you are preparing their favourite food from subtle signs in your behaviour. Secondly when it comes to selecting a roost. They will spend hours looking for and deciding about a suitable roost. They will often try good candidates numerous times before deciding on the one they will use. Once the decision is made they show great determination to roost there even if you chase them away, you might place them in one of the other favoured roosts, but they will not roost there. Their minds are already made up.
Sorry I missed your post. Anyway, assuming that what you are saying here is right, we should ask ourselves to explain how it can be right. Life has goal-oriented behavior, how does that 'emerge' from something that doesn't have anything like that. And assuming that in some ways it can, can we give a theoretical explanation for that?
If there were some kind of 'latent intentionality' in the inanimate or even in the universe as a whole, it can be perhaps the emergence of living beings with goal-oriented behavior might more be easy to understand. If, however, there is such a thing, do we still have a 'physicalism'?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Perhaps 'unusable' is a wrong way to call it. 'Uncontrollable' would be better. You can't make a perfect thermal machine because some energy is dispersed as heat and that heat can't be recovered and used again as work.
In any case, the fact that the first principle of thermodynamics tells us that energy is conserved would suggest that the conservation of energy in a closed system doesn't contradict the second law, that is entropy increases in a closed system. It is quite difficult that all physicists got that wrong for centuries.
I think it is better, perhaps, to use terms like "agency" rather than "intent". The latter generally gets restricted to consciousness. The former may introduce ambiguity, because inanimate agency, as efficient causation, is acceptable language. But when we use "agency" we enable understanding of Aristotle's powers of the soul, the potentia. These are things such as self-nutrition, self-movement, sensation, and intellection. In our understanding of these 'powers', it is common to attribute them to the material aspect of the being, the concept of matter being used to account for that potential.
Rejection of dualist metaphysics leaves the agency involved with the powers of the soul, as efficient causation. However, under Aristotelian principles, the soul is required as the form, the actuality which actualizes the various powers. What is important in Aristotelian biology is the idea that the powers are not constantly in action, sensation takes a break in sleeping for example. This is why the powers are classed as potentials, requiring actualization from the soul itself. We can consider actualization as a form of selection, even choice, at some fundamental level, because something must select which potentials to actualize. Scientism and physicalism will reduce this selection process to efficient causation, and represent it as a sort of reflex action, the organism responds to the activities of its environment in the way of efficient causation. But clearly this cannot adequately account for the way that the organism selects from possibilities in response.
Aquinas made an extensive inquiry and investigation into the nature of "habit". That term as used by Aristotle refers to properties of an organism and the Latin reflects this as what the being "has". What the being has, is a propensity to act in a particular way, and this is a habit. Aquinas inquired as to where the habit is properly located, where does it reside. And, if my memory serves me properly he eventually saw the need to attribute habits to the potential for action, rather than to the action itself. This is a difficult concept, because properties are generally aspects of the form, which is the actuality. So here we are attributing an act, or the inclination to act in a particular way, to the potential itself. This readily translate to the idea that matter itself has a propensity to act in specific ways.
It is clear that you do not understand physics. So, you should not use it as the basis for your theories.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I have already explained that, in my view, the laws of nature are intentional. Whose intentions are they? Clearly, not those of the mindless matter they guide. So, they evidence an immaterial source usually called "God." So, God's choice of laws selects the variants in evolution. That means that purely physical processes are predetermined.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If you cannot understand the difference between a wine barrel having a purpose and a wine barrel thinking, further explanation will not help.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There is not reason for me to respond further.
What do you think of this quote?
Quoting Wayfarer
You didn't say there was no hierarchy. But you neglected to mention it, though it is crucial to the topic. See my example of the poop machine.
People today are well aware of biological purpose, including their own. I once saw a tee-shirt that read "Born. Work. Fuck. Die." As if to say,
"Yes, my life has a certain purpose. I spend much of my time meeting biological purposes: working to sustain myself, and reproducing, or at least trying to do so. And yet, what is the meaning of all that? If these purposes are not themselves grounded in a higher purpose, they collapse into purposelessness."
Even though the world is suffused with biological purpose, this does not answer the charge that life as a whole is without purpose.
The problem is, that specialized, technical uses of terms are fine in the narrow communities that employ them. However, they can be entirely misleading in a broader community, such is this one, where they have altogether different denotations and connotations. So, for example, when I use Aristotelian terms of art, such as "immanent activity," I explain them in common language, e.g. as meaning self-directed activity.
Not doing so abuses language. The reason is simple. Language only works if its signs, words and sentences, evoke the same meaning in the author and the audience. If they do not, the author will fail to communicate his/her thought. That happens here when you use terms like "interpret" as you do. Ask yourself how many people on this forum have understood and accepted your views? Hasn't your language stood in the way? Don't people object to your words and fail to understand your ideas?
It may very well be that you have important insights to communicate, but to do so, you need to reformulate your insights using terms with shared meaning.
Quoting Wayfarer
Vitalism died a century ago for lack of evidence. Yes, DNA presents us with a mechanism not discussed in physics and chemistry; however, it is compatible with physics and chemistry. It uses no new principles of action, it only makes actual a form of action that physics and chemistry see as possible and explainable, given the existential form. So, it seems to me, your theories are looking for the wrong thing. It is not the principles, which specify what is possible, that are transcended. Rather, it is that matter has taken a form not anticipated by those who developed the principles.
Quoting Wayfarer
The problem is that "awareness" is synonymous with "consciousness," and we have no evidence that these organisms do more than react in complex ways. While there are grades of contents we are conscious of, there are no grades of consciousness per se. Either one is aware of contents, or one is not. The idea of grades of consciousness is invoked to support the idea that consciousness evolved and is, therefore, reducible to physical principles. Since there are no grades, this is a fallacious line of thought.
We need to be very careful not to blur sharp lines.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree that organisms shape their environment. That is not incompatible with them acting determinately. They do not choose to do what they do, they just act according to their nature.
Thank you for your helpful comment. I agree that many animals go through my two steps. They sense alternatives, then process and select one. They also have clear preferences, at least about food.
Further, I agree that we can call these preferences "values." The question is whether their valuing is the the same as, or only analogous to, human valuing. It seems to me it is only analogous, because the difference is not "only a higher mind function, a more complex and integrated intellectual process," it is a difference in kind of mental process.
With whales having brains that weigh 15 or 20 pounds, we may not have the most complex neural processing of any species. What is clear is that we are conscious of some of the information our brain processes, and that consciousness cannot be explained by physical science (see my article on the Hard Problem of Consciousness).
Consciousness adds a new aspect to our valuing, because when we come to value something or someone, we not only have a new response to it, we have a new intentional relation. If I commit to someone, I make their good my good in a way that cannot be captured by a physical description.
Note: I am not saying that only humans are conscious, only that we lack evidence of consciousness in other species.
The Materialist explanation for the evolutionary emergence of animated & motivated matter is based on random accidents : that if you roll the dice often enough, strings of order will be found within a random process*1. But they tend to avoid the term "Emergence", because for some thinkers it suggests that the emergence was pre-destined, presumably by God. And that's a scientific no-no. So, instead of "emergence", they may call Life a fortuitous "accident".
However, another perspective on Abiogenesis*2 is that the Cosmos is inherently self-organizing. And that notion implies or assumes a creative goal-oriented process, and ultimately Teleology. My personal Enformationism*3 thesis is an attempt to provide a non-religious philosophical answer to the mystery of Life & Mind emerging from the random roiling of atoms. But if you prefer a "theory" from a famous & credentialed philosopher, check-out A.N. Whitehead's book Process and Reality*4. :smile:
*1. Order from Chaos :
Yes, order can indeed arise from chaos in various contexts, including evolution. While often perceived as random and unpredictable, chaotic systems can, under certain conditions, exhibit self-organization and lead to the emergence of new structures and patterns. This is observed in natural phenomena like ecosystems and even in the formation of stars and planets.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=evolution+order+from+chaos
*2. Abiogenesis :
The origin of life, or abiogenesis, is a complex scientific question with no single, universally accepted answer. However, the prevailing hypothesis is that life arose from non-living matter through a process of increasing complexity, starting with simple organic molecules and culminating in self-replicating entities enclosed within membranes. This process likely involved the formation of a habitable planet, the synthesis of organic molecules, molecular self-replication, self-assembly, and the emergence of cell membranes.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=how+did+life+emerge
*3. Enformationism :
A philosophical worldview or belief system grounded on the 20th century discovery that Information, rather than Matter, is the fundamental substance of everything in the universe. It is intended to be the 21st century successor to the ancient worldviews of Materialism and Idealism. An Update from Bronze Age to Information Age. It's also a Theory of Everything that covers, not just matter & energy, but also Life & Mind & Love.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
*4.Process Teleology :
Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy redefines teleology, moving away from a predetermined, goal-oriented view to one of creativity and becoming. In his system, the universe is not static but constantly evolving through processes of "becoming". Teleology, in this context, is not about reaching a preordained end, but rather about the ongoing creative advance and the integration of past and present within each moment of experience.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=whitehead+process+teleology
Sorry my chickens do this too. Its intrinsic in the pecking order relationship.
Im not here to argue, because I agree with 99% of what you say. What prompted my to respond was my misreading of consciousness. I use it in a different way and what you call consciousness, I call self consciousness(which we observe in higher primates and humans). Whereas I regard my chickens as conscious. While they are not self conscious, they exhibit pretty much every other mental process that happens in humans. Crucially they have sentience, a feeling and knowledge as present in the world. But in some way, difficult to pin down, they dont have that extra feedback loop of self consciousness, that we have. I dont see this (in the chicken) as a lesser experience, but rather a more stream of consciousness, direct involvement in their world. Whereas humans indulge in self reflection, pondering, self conscious absent mindedness etc.
It came to mind as I wrote, but in the context, it is not a counsel of despair, rather a spiritual admonition regarding the emptiness of worldly achievements
Quoting hypericin
What are the basic drives that animate animals according to darwinian biology - that would be the 'four fs' - fighting, feeding, fleeing and reproduction. And as evolution is now the secular creation story this attitude is a consequence. But human purposes being reduced to biological drives is a recipe for despair, it fails to honor what makes us different. And what your post reflects is actually the very crisis of meaning which has been precipitated by the collapse of values.
And central to that, is the sense of purposelessness driven by the narrative of a meaningless cosmos onto which individuals are purported to project meaning. 'Consume, be silent, die.'
Quoting Dfpolis
They are not insights of my own, rather Im trying to express those developed in the primer I generated. (I'm not wishing to come across as pedantic, but there are many new concepts and terms in this field which need to understood to make sense of the idea.)
Quoting Dfpolis
That's pretty well what I'm saying. It is not vitalism. Vitalism posits a special non-physical "life force" or élan vital that distinguishes living beings from inanimate matter. It's metaphysical and implicitly dualist.
Enactivism, by contrast, sees life and mind as implicit in the dynamic interactions between organism and environment. It avoids invoking any extra force, instead considering organisms as embodied, autonomous systems engaged in meaningful activity. This is why the term 'being' is specific to the organisms. Beings act, whereas things are only acted upon.
The claim isnt that rudimentary organisms possess rational or even sensory intentionality but that what we call intentionality at higher levels of cognition is rooted in the more basic organismic fact of self-directed activity. Even Aristotles notion of the soul as the form of a living body entails that living things are not simply moved but move for the sake of something even if thats just continued existence. This 'for-the-sake-of' structure is already a teleological and in that sense, proto-intentional orientation.
Being in a pecking order does not make the other's good your good.
Quoting Punshhh
Yes, "consciousness" can mean what I call medical consciousness -- a certain state of responsiveness as opposed to being "knocked out."
OK.
Rather, the claim is that a rudimentary, pre-conceptual kind of directedness a teleological orientation toward what is beneficial or harmful is already implicit in the way living systems maintain themselves. This isnt to collapse the distinctions between kinds of beings, but to suggest that what we know as intentionality in its mature form has developmental roots in the self-regulatory dynamics of life itself.
Enactivism doesnt deny the classical distinctions drawn from De Anima, but it provides a different way of framing the continuity between life and mind. It focuses on the enactive structure of living beings how they bring forth a meaningful world through their activity. In this sense, it can be seen as an interpretation of Aristotles principle of the soul as the form of a living body particularly in his account of perception and movement, where the organism is already responsive in a way that presupposes some mode of purposiveness.
But you could quite rightly say it is a kind of neo-Aristotelianism as it is very different to Aristotelian Thomism, but then, it also draws on a considerable amount of scientific discovery since those times. But hopefully an elaboration rather than a contradiction.
When a new bird is introduced to the flock, she finds her place in the pecking order by a stand off with the dominant bird in the flock. If she loses, then she will stand off with other birds around the dominant bird until she finds her level. She then adopts the good of the birds above her in the flock and offers it to those below her in the flock. She also forms alliances and friendships and learns, adopts and maintains the good, or bad behaviours in the flock.
Yes, thats closer to what I was thinking, but its inferior to the consciousness of an ant for example. This is because it is a diseased, or disordered animal, hence not functional.
I see consciousness as the me-ness, the sense of me, here, now, aliveness that is present in all organisms. This is a knowing, or inherent knowledge of their own presence. It is not articulated intellectually, but that is not a prerequisite for this kind of consciousness.
By contrast, the consciousness of a human is richer and more integrated with a computational ability which gives self awareness, reflectiveness etc. However I see this self consciousness as emergent from the computational ability in the brain, which is separate from the inherent consciousness of the organism.
So a human is no more conscious than the ant, but has many more developed sensory and mental abilities through which that consciousness is enhanced.
Well, I think that 'emergence' in fact doesn't have 'theological' or even 'teleological' connotations for most people. One example I made is how 'pressure' of a gas 'emerges' from the properties of the particles it is composed of. Yes, for the reductionist version of physicalism life is an 'accident'. Still, it is curious that in a reductionist model something like 'life' would eventually happen.
Quoting Gnomon
Well, that's a possibility. But it assumes that the cosmos is a sort of living being itself. IMO it is not a form of physicalism.
Time will tell.
Enactivism [I]can[/I] be consistent with more traditional Aristotleianism, Thomism (even of the existential variety), or more "Neoplatonic," thought, although it often isn't. Robert Sokolowski is an example of someone who is firmly within the tradition of phenomenology and enactivism and yet sees his work as consistent with Aristotle and Saint Thomas.
There is a slippery distinction here though. I'd like to say there are really multiple camps within phenomenology. They all take a lot from Husserl, but some stay closer to his original project and inclinations, some are more aligned with more broadly "post-modern" views and metaphysics (I know they don't consider them that), and then there are a lot of mostly, but not entirely, Catholic philosophers who see the project as consistent with realism (and tend to stress its Scholastic roots). But, all of them seem to have people who like enactivism, although they sometimes seem to draw quite different implications from it, or explain it in different ways, but the core themes and terms are the same.
None of them seem to have much use for Hegel's phenomenology.
Anyhow, to go back to the main topic, I think a difficulty in speaking about ends, telos, and human purpose is that terms like "transcendental," "absolute," and "platonic," which have come up in this thread, often get used in somewhat equivocal ways across traditions.
While goodness and truth are "transcendental properties of being," in the tradition coming out of (neo)Platonism and Aristotleianism, these are merely "logical/conceptual" distinctions. They don't add anything to being. They are being as considered from some particular perspective. Goodness (and so ends) is being considered in terms of desirability (i.e. the appetites, most appropriately, the will). Obviously, only living things have appetites, unless we speak in a quite analogous sense (e.g., "the air in a balloon 'wants' to expand"). So life and mind are quite relevant, in that only minds make conceptual distinctions and Good/True are conceptual distinctions. But conceptual distinctions also aren't arbitrary. This gets us a proper sort of perspectivism and relativism, without anti-realism re values and purpose.
Indeed, I am not sure you can have anti-realism re values without also ultimately having a sort of anti-realism re telos and purpose; they both become an illusion of sorts, leading physicalism back into a sort of mental/physical dualism.
A "weak"*1 scientific interpretation of evolution from simple to complex is specifically formulated to avoid any metaphysical (teleological or theological) implications. But a "strong"*2 interpretation directly addresses the philosophical implications that are meaningful to systematic & cosmological thinkers*3. Likewise a "weak" interpretation of the Anthropic Principle*4 can avoid dealing with Meaning by looking only at isolated facts. Both "weak" models are reductionist, while the "strong" models are holistic. The Strong models don't shy away from generalizing the evidence (facts). Instead, they look at the whole system in order to satisfy philosophical "curiosity" about Why such appearances of design should & could occur in a random mechanical process. :smile:
*1. Weak emergence describes a situation where a system's properties or behavior, though seemingly novel, can be fully explained by the interactions of its constituent parts and their underlying rules. It implies that while the emergent behavior is a product of the system's components, it's not fundamentally novel or irreducible. Examples include traffic jams, flocking behavior of birds, or the structure of a school of fish.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=weak+emergence
*2. Strong emergence describes a system property that arises from the interaction of its parts, but which cannot be predicted or understood from the properties of those parts alone, or from the interactions between them. It implies that the whole is more than the sum of its parts in a fundamental way, with novel behaviors or properties emerging that are irreducible to the lower-level components
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=strong+emergence
*3. Weak emergence and strong emergence are two ways of describing how complex systems exhibit properties not found in their individual components. Weak emergence refers to properties that, while not immediately obvious from the components, can still be explained and predicted by understanding the interactions of those components. Strong emergence, on the other hand, describes properties that cannot be predicted or explained solely by examining the components and their interactions, suggesting something genuinely new arises at the higher level.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=weak+emergence+vs+strong+emergence
*4. The Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP) suggests the universe's properties are specifically arranged to allow for the existence of intelligent observers, like humans. It implies that the universe's laws and constants are not just compatible with life, but that they necessitate it. This contrasts with the Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP), which simply states that we observe a universe compatible with our existence because if it weren't, we wouldn't be here to observe it.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=strong+anthropic+principle
My comments on about were directed at dfpolis, who seemed dismissive of the idea of 'intentionality' in any context other than that of a rational subject. I was trying to explain that enactivism indicates to a larger sense of intentionality. That was very much the point of this post. But two of the books I'm reading on systems science and biology (Deacon and Juarrero) both draw on Aristotelian biological and (to some extent) metaphysical concepts. Aristotle after all is part of the 'grammar of Western culture'.
I will acknowledge that one source of my interest was my reading of Nagel's Mind and Cosmos. This is (again) the relevant passage from his précis of that book:
That important aspect of nature left unexplained refers to the very issue at the heart of the so-called hard problem of consciousness: the first-person, felt nature of experience the immediacy of embodied existence. This, I think, is where phenomenology enters: it seeks to restore the primacy of first-person experience that the objective sciences methodologically bracket out.
What is bracketed, however, is not incidental. It is, quite simply, Being. (And tellingly, we ourselves are designated 'beings'.) Over the years, Ive engaged in many vexed discussions on this forum over whether there is an ontological distinction between organisms and things. I continue to maintain that there is and that this distinction begins to manifest as soon as life appears.
My view might resemble panpsychism in some respects, but it maintains a principled distinction between the organic and the inorganic. Call me romantic, but Im drawn to the idea that the appearance of life just is the appearance of mind not as an élan vital, a separable essence, but as that without which the constituents of life remain mineral. Life is not caused by mind as something external to it, but mind manifests itself as living organisms. And so the physical, as we understand it, is insufficient on its own: it is an abstraction, and something deeper subjective presence, embodied directedness has always been part of the picture, even if the objective sciences generally set it aside.
Such blatant refusals to discuss the topic, only indicate that you know that you are wrong so you will not approach the issue. Why twist the facts of physics to support your metaphysics? If the facts don't fit, then you need to change the metaphysics or else dispute the facts.
Quoting Dfpolis
We were not talking about "thinking". We were talking about having "intention". Can you not distinguish between these two?
I believe that thinking is an intentional activity, it is intentionally caused. Therefore intention is prior to thinking, as thinking is caused by intention, so thinking is not a necessary aspect of having intention. Do you not agree with this? Or, are you claiming that intention comes from thinking, is caused by thinking, so that all intention involves thinking? If you are proposing the latter, how would you justify this?
Yes. In other words the problem for the physicalist is: can we explain the 'strong emergence' of life and mind in purely physical terms given that reductionism seems to fail?
With all due respect you made some controversial claims here:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The second principle of thermodynamics tells us that entropy increases in a closed system. The first principle of thermodynamics states that the total energy is conserved. No physicist I know of have ever made the claim you make here, i.e. that the increase of entropy entails a violation of the law of conservation of energy. So, in my view, you are in the position to give a justification of what you are saying here. Unless you prove your claim (you can also link to a scientific paper if you want), it is reasonable to think that you are wrong here.
Just noticed that this article was published the same day as your OP:
Teleology: What Is It Good For?, by John O'Callaghan
This is not true at all. We've had many discussions in the past, and it is very clear that we have significant common ground. However, when specific points of difference become apparent, it appears like you choose to ignore my criticisms. You seem to be intent on throwing away all that common ground, along with any insight into specific problems which I may be offering. And for what?
Quoting boundless
I don't understand why this feature of the concept of "energy" is so difficult for so many people to grasp. It's actually quite simple and straight forward, yet the minds of individuals are inclined to simply reject it out of principle. So, let me explain, and you tell me where you have a problem to understand.
First, consider the condition "closed system". There is no such thing as a system which is absolutely closed. Second, experimental evidence has indicated over and over again, that the complete amount of energy is never conserved in any active system. That's why there is no perpetual motion system. So, the tendency was always to write off the lost energy, as lost to the system due to incomplete closure. Classically these were losses like heat loss due to friction, and other losses which could not be properly accounted for. No system could even approach an efficiency of a hundred percent, and the classical explanation was that this is because of absolute closure being physically impossible.
However, there are still some people who like to hypothesize an idealistic, absolutely closed system. We can theorize, that fi a system was absolutely closed, energy would be conserved within that system. But evidence indicates that even if such a system could be constructed, energy would likely still be lost to that system, and this loss was called entropy. This probable (probable because an absolutely closed system cannot be produced to test it) loss of energy, to the idealistic, absolutely closed system, (which would be a violation of the conservation law) is understood as a feature of the passing of time, and this is why we know time as asymmetrical.
Please indicate which parts you have difficulty understanding.
If so, then it is not an "objective (mind-independent) process"; otherwise, "thrown into question" is only subjective (i.e. a mere interpretation). Scientific realism (à la Deutsch)** contra "shut up and calculate" instrumentalism / positivism makes more sense (and is more parsimonious) to me.
**bad philosophy > bad physics > woo :sparkle:
Here's a passage from your link distinguishing internal teleology from external:
I believe that when we consider the way that internal teleology is 'given' to beings, it is necessary to conclude that this is a bottom-up process of creation rather than top-down. Top-down suffices to describe external teleology, but internal teleology, by which teleology is internal to each member, or part, of the whole, is necessarily bottom-up. According to the passage, what is given, is no specific nature whatsoever, but simply the will, or teleology to produce one's own nature. This would be a bottom-up process.
(Although I would add, I'm more focussed on these relatively new areas of embodied cognition/enactivism and less so on theological or scholastic arguments, although, that said, I don't feel any conflict between the OP and O'Callaghan's essay.)
For Deutsch, the wavefunction never collapses; instead, all possible outcomes of a quantum event occur in a vast, branching multiverse. This preserves the universality of quantum laws and avoids the ambiguities associated with observation or measurement. But at what cost? Many physicists and philosophers question it, not least because it postulates an infinite proliferation of unobservable worlds. The deeper irony is that while Deutsch defends objectivity, the very proliferation of interpretations none of which can be empirically distinguished suggests, as I already said, that the concept of objectivity itself is under philosophical pressure, not from mysticism or woo, but from within the context of scientific theory. (Not to mention the intrinsic ridiculousness of the many-worlds theory being 'parsimonious' :lol: )
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But you've cherry-picked that quote. O'Callaghan then distinguishes between 'creating' and 'making'. He says making 'presupposes something already existing upon which the maker acts'. That is the model for human artifacts. By contrast, 'God in creating all that is in every aspect in which it is, including the causal powers and efficacy of agents that respond actively or passively to other created agents, presupposes nothing other than Gods own being, power, knowledge, and goodness.' And that is nothing if not top-down!
Nice essay, summed up in this sentence;
The people who deny this teleological purpose are in a way blind to it. They see things only in the external. This results in a failure to understand what an organism is. In a sense they look at individual organisms, or species and see them as one of those body parts that Frankenstein was working with. But this denies the essence of life which courses through those organisms. They should remind themselves that all life of this planet is one family, literally brothers and sisters of one common parent* and that they are a result of one continuous lineage of life. One life begetting another all the way through our evolution.
*this does not require one individual common parent. But rather a pool of unicellular organisms at the point of the inception of life.
Yes, I cherry-picked the part where the difference between external and internal teleology is described, because I believe this is a very important distinction to understand. This is the difference I was trying to get Dfpolis to expound on earlier. In the case of living beings, where individual beings, are each observed to have one's own internal purpose (obvious in human intent), the causation here can only be accounted for as a bottom-up form of causation.
That is the point I made in reply to apokrisis' army example. To properly represent intentionality, each member of the army must, by one's own free will, have the desire to act the role. The whole, which is the army, is not caused to be, by some top-down form of causation, by which "the army" causes, through some force external to the individual participants, the unity of the parts. The thing called "the army" is caused to exist through a bottom-up process by which each individual apprehends the need, and willfully takes a role. Simply put, in order to represent the freeness of the free will, which is essential to intentionality, the causal process must be bottom-up. Otherwise, each individual part is portrayed as being forced by an external cause, to play a role in the whole, and free will is denied.
This representation of top-down teleology is the effect of determinist physicalism. By Newton's first law of motion, a body, which is any massive part, cannot be caused to move except by an external force. That is the premise of determinism, which denies that a body could be caused to change its motion through an internal cause, what we know as will. This determinist, physicalist perspective, induces the idea that intentional actions, such as the will to join the army, are caused by some sort of top-down form of causation which is external to the individual agent, because all causation is stipulated to be externally sourced. You can see how this is a misconception. Freely willed, intentional actions must be represented as derived from within the agent, internally sourced, and not be portrayed as caused by some external top-down force of constraint. Like @Punshhh pointed out, constraints are passive, they are not agential causes.
The fundamental problem, as I see it, is the pervasiveness of systems thinking, and the inability of systems theory to portray free bottom-up causation. In systems thinking, there is a separation between internal to the system, and external to the system. There is one proposed boundary which separates the two. What is not a part of the system is external to it, outside it. What is missing is a proper spatial representation which would distinguish what is not a part of the system to the inside. Systems theory has no proposal for a distinction between a boundary to the outside of the system, and a boundary to the inside of the system. This means that there is no epistemological principles describing a way to separate causation which comes form something which is not a part of the system, across the boundary to the internal, from causation which comes from something which is not a part of the system, across the boundary to the external. And because the determinist, physicalist way, is to represent all causation as external, then any causation which is not part of the system but across the boundary to the inside, must be represented as "external" causation. Conflating these two very distinct forms of causation is a misconception.
Yes. But in open systems neither principle is applicable. There are situations, however, where the model of a closed system is a very good approximation.
There is some controversy on the status of the universe. Some physicists do claim that, due to the expansion of the universe, the universe can't be considered a 'closed system'. There is disagreement here however.
Furthermore, there are those who also say that the 'universe as a whole' can't be considered as a physical system.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
One explanation is that. Yes, there are no perfectly closed system. But the other one, the one that takes into account 'entropy' isn't based on that. It tells us that a certain quantity of energy can't be controlled.
Friction is a good example of the increase of entropy, in fact.
Honestly, I think you conflate the two explanations here. But you do raise an interesting point about closed systems, yes. But the increase of entropy doesn't in any way negate the conservation of energy.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't understand here your point. Are you claiming that the absence of perfectly closed systems is the reason of irreversibility?
That is indeed "the problem" for explaining Purpose & Emergence in reductive physical terms. Which is why philosophers use holistic Meta-Physical terms, such as teleology to explain, not how, but why complex self-sustaining & self-organizing systems emerge from a world presumably ruled by the destructive & dissipating second law of thermodynamics (entropy). It's also why I coined a new term, EnFormAction, that refers to the constructive force in physics, formerly labeled dismissively as Negentropy. :smile:
EnFormAction :
The concept of a river of creative causation running through the world in various streams has been interpreted in materialistic terms as Momentum, Impetus, Force, Energy, Negentropy, etc, and in metaphysical idioms as Will, Love, Conatus, and so forth. EnFormAction is all of those.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
Enformy :
[i]In the Enformationism theory, Enformy is a hypothetical, holistic, metaphysical, natural trend or force, that counteracts Entropy & Randomness to produce complexity & progress. [ see post 63 for graph ]
1. I'm not aware of any "supernatural force" in the world. But my Enformationism theory postulates that there is a meta-physical force behind Time's Arrow and the positive progress of evolution. Just as Entropy is sometimes referred to as a "force" causing energy to dissipate (negative effect), Enformy is the antithesis, which causes energy to agglomerate (additive effect).
2. Of course, neither of those phenomena is a physical Force, or a direct Cause, in the usual sense. But the term "force" is applied to such holistic causes as a metaphor drawn from our experience with physics.
3. "Entropy" and "Enformy" are scientific/technical terms that are equivalent to the religious/moralistic terms "Evil" and "Good". So, while those forces are completely natural, the ultimate source of the power behind them may be supernatural, in the sense that the First Cause logically existed before the Big Bang. [ see ENTROPY at right ; Extropy ][/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
Holism ; Holon :
Philosophically, a whole system is a collection of parts (holons) that possesses properties not found in the parts. That something extra is an Emergent quality that was latent (unmanifest) in the parts. For example, when atoms of hydrogen & oxygen gases combine in a specific ratio, the molecule has properties of water, such as wetness, that are not found in the gases. A Holon is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part A system of entangled things that has a function in a hierarchy of systems.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
:sweat: i.e. WOO-of-the-gaps (from ... appeal to ignorance)
NB: bad philosophy > bad physics > :sparkle:
Top-down causation doesn't mean external coercion or denial of agencyquite the opposite. It refers to the way the organization or unity of a system constrains and enables the behaviour of its parts from within (hence organism, organic, and organisation.) In OCallaghans essay, its the Humpty Dumpty model: the organism is not built out of self-standing parts that can function on their own and just happen to join up; rather, the parts are what they are because of their roles in the whole. You cant reassemble life from pieces. The individuals capacity for intentional actionsay, to enlist in an armyis already shaped by the larger context: language, culture, history, embodiment. There has to be an army to join, otherwise it's just a mob. These are not external impositions, but the structured conditions that make intentionality possible in the first place.
Bottom-up causation, by contrast, is the Frankenstein model: assemble a bunch of pieces, energise them with a force, and voila! a system emerges from their interactions. But as OCallaghan points out, thats not how living systems worknot even armies. The army doesnt simply emerge from a collection of atomistic agents exercising unconditioned will. Rather, each agent is already a self-organizing being whose actions are meaningful within the constraints of larger wholesbiological, social, symbolicwhich are not imposed externally, but are intrinsic to what agency even is. But the external structure of the army - ranks, divisions, formations - are constraints that determine how individual members are to behave.
So invoking top-down causation isnt a denial of free willits an attempt to explain how form, meaning, and function arise in organisms, including human beings. You dont have to be a physicalist to see that.
One of the strengths of Aquinas philosophy, and a point OCallaghan emphasizes, is that God doesn't need to control or micromanage natural beings in order for their actions to be meaningful or purposeful. Instead, God creates beings with their own naturesinternal principles of motion, action, and teleology. This means that organisms act from within themselves; they are genuine agents, not mere instruments or puppets. Their purposes are real and intelligible because they arise from their God-given form or nature, not from external control.
In this view, natural causes are sufficient within their own order, which is precisely what makes natural science possible (and also why Aquinas saw no inherent conflict between religion and science). One can study organisms, physical systems, or even human agents without needing to invoke divine intervention at every step (which is why, incidentally, Thomist philosophers don't generally endorse 'Intelligent Design' ideas.) This the basis for Aquinas fifth way, where he says that even non-intelligent beings act toward endsnot because God is directing them, but because their nature is structured in such a way that they are inclined toward those ends. The teleology is internal, not imposed from the outside.
I have no disagreement with the idea that the law of conservation of energy is "a very good approximation. But the point is that it is not what is the case. Therefore it is not the truth.
Consider the following example. When Copernicus first modeled the heliocentric solar system, the model failed, because it modeled perfect circles, and this produced inaccuracies which were accounted for by unacceptable descriptions.
The point being that "a very good approximation", which leaves aspects of the concept of energy, such as "entropy", accounted for by unacceptable descriptions, is misleading, regardless of whether it is a good approximation.
Quoting boundless
The point is that if some energy cannot be controlled, then it cannot be detected, because detection is a type of control. And if it cannot be detected it cannot be called "energy". So "entropy" serves as a concept which consists of some energy which is not energy, and that is contradiction.
Quoting boundless
No, I am saying that a perfectly closed system is impossible and the law of conservation of energy is demonstrated as false because it requires a perfectly closed system for its truth. And, this is due to the nature of time, what is known as the irreversibility of time.
Quoting Wayfarer
Enabling is not causation. If, top-down causation "enables" behaviour, then this is not properly called "causation". Further, this is not consistent with what is known as final cause, intention, and free will, because these are known as agential causes, not instances of enabling. If top-down causation simply enables intentional acts, it is not a proper description of those acts, and therefore does not serve us as a representation of teleology, which is the study of those acts explicitly, not what enables them.
Quoting Wayfarer
The issue though, the philosophical problem which we are addressing, is what causes the parts to have a role in the whole. If we follow the model of final cause, intention, and free will, we must allow that each part purposefully, and freely accepts its role within the whole, without being caused to do so by the whole itself.
The issue can be understood like this. The whole does not have existence until after the parts have taken up their respective positions, to produce the whole. Therefore it is impossible that the whole can cause the parts to each have the role that it has. It is true, as you say, that the parts are what they are, because of the roles that they play in the whole, that is how they are defined, as those parts. However, it is impossible that the whole causes the parts (top-down causation) to have the roles that they have, because the whole has no existence until after the parts have taken their roles. This is why we look to final cause, as a type of bottom-up causation, whereby each individual, which will be a part of that future whole, voluntarily takes up a role toward the creation of the whole.
This is the difference between O'Callaghan's external teleology, and internal teleology. In the case of external teleology, the parts are ordered towards the creation of a whole, by an external cause, which acts in a top-down way. In the case of internal teleology, God creates intention, and each part creates itself (seemingly from nothing but its own intention), such that each part has intention inherent within, as the cause of it producing what it is. Notice that "what it is" is determined by its role in the whole which comes to be from its intentional acts along with those of the other intentional agents.
Quoting Wayfarer
This model does not work out, because it dictates that you always have to seek a larger perspective as you look backward in time. And that is contrary to the reality of life. When we look backward in time we see that the multitude of variety in current life evolved from a narrower and narrower source. In reality, the individual's capacity for intentional action is derived from biological sources, and that demonstrates a narrower and narrower context. All those aspects you mention, "language, culture, history, embodiment" are the products of individual intentional actions.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is an example of external teleology. But O'Callaghan is very explicit in distinguishing between external and internal teleology.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree, that when you portray "top-down causation" as enabling, or as conditions, or as constraints, it isn't a denial of free will. However, it does not provide proper "causation", which must come from the act initialized by the individual agent. Then the proper representation of "causation" would be bottom-up agency. But if you portray "top-down causation" as properly causal, then free will is denied by that form of causation, and we have determinism. The ambiguity between these two ways of portraying "top-down causation" allows metaphysicians like apokrisis to slip back and forth, in ambiguity and equivocation. You'll notice that sometimes apokrisis claims that the whole provides merely global constraints, to local freedom, which could then have local parts which act freely as intentional agents. But then apokrisis will assign intentionality to the constraints, as if the constraints are the actual cause of what the agent's actions actually are, being fundamentally random chance activity which is constrained externally,.
Quoting Wayfarer
Don't you see that this form of causation you describe here, whereby individual beings are agents, is necessarily bottom-up causation?
Quoting Wayfarer
If the teleology is not imposed from outside, but is derived from within, then this is bottom-up causation.
What you refer to here, as top-down causation, is what is known in Aristotelian principles as formal cause. Teleology studies final cause which is distinctly different from formal cause.
"Internal teleology", under O'Callaghan's description, which I posted above, refers to an agent which acts with intent, and that is final cause. "Internal teleology" is distinguished from "external teleology", the latter being the process by which intent is imposed onto things, giving them order as parts in the form of a whole.
I think you misunderstand what is meant by "internal teleology". It clearly refers to final cause, not formal cause which you describe with "the way the form or structure of a whole gives meaning and function to its parts". Final cause refers to an agent acting for an end, which is what O'Callaghan classes as "internal teleology". And he claims that God is required to account for the existence of internal teleology, because the existence of the teleological movement is prior to the very thing which bears it internally.
As for OCallaghan, his description of internal teleology clearly includes non-conscious natural purposivenesssuch as organs functioning for the sake of the organismnot just the deliberate intention of agents. Thats why Aquinas can say even non-rational beings act for an end. Hes not talking about conscious volition, but about nature acting according to its form, which is exactly what top-down causation refers to in this context.
So no, what Im describing is not determinist, nor external imposition, nor a confusion of causes. Its classical metaphysics. I think we've hit the point where clarification isn't really advancing, so Ill leave it there.
Note that physical laws seem to be passive constraints, however. They are holistic in a sense but not like the 'holism' you see in living beings, where the whole actively and purposively seem to 'guide' its parts.
So, your model seems to me a bit like the 'world soul' present in some hellenistic philosophies, i.e. the universe as a whole as a sort of living being. So it seems to me that you are proposing a dualistic model or a dual-aspect monism, where mind and the 'physical' are two aspects of the whole.
I would be careful here. Yes, it seems that there are no perfectly isolated systems, except perhaps the whole universe, but our experiments tell us that when the approximation is reasonable, the results are coherent with conservation laws. Also, when we know the deviations that we expect from a non-isolated system (i.e. when we know 'how much' the system is not isolated), we find a coherent result.
This certainly points to the fact that, at least, conservation laws do point to something true about the physical universe, even if the conditions where they hold without errors are never actualized. Or maybe they are valid when you take the entire physical universe all together.
Furthermore, the conservation of energy (and of linear and angular momenta etc) has been a very good source of discoveries. For instance, in particle physics, the neutrinos weren't observed initially. Some energy seemed to be missing. But the neutrino were discovered.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But note that entropy is not a form of energy. Even its physical dimensions (measurement units) are different. Also, there is nothing like an energy-entropy equivalence like there is a mass-entropy equivalence.
Entropy is more like how energy is distributed than a measure of the quantity of energy that is 'lost'.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Nope, you can measure the increase of temperature (and hence, internal energy) due to friction. But you can't recover it to use it again as work.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is an interesting, if contentious point. But it is unrelated to entropy. If there are no perfectly isolated systems, the law of conservation seem to never hold. But, again, note my points at the beginning of my response.
It appears like you are not well familiar with Aristotle's "Physics" within which he draws the distinction between formal cause and final cause. Nor, it seems are you familiar with the two distinct senses of "form", and "actual", which he explains in the "Metaphysics". "Actual" may refer to what is, in the sense of being, having existence, and in this sense it is consistent with formal cause. But "actual" may also refer to what is active, changing, becoming, and in this sense it is consistent with final cause.
With logic, Aristotle demonstrates that what is actual, i.e. being, or form in the sense of formal cause, is incompatible with what is actual, i.e. becoming, or form in the sense of final cause. Therefore final cause and formal cause are necessarily separate domains in living beings. The two are incompatible. Also, Aquinas maintains this distinction. And this is why the form of a material body, as 'what is actual', is distinct from the form which is known as the immaterial soul, as 'what is active'. Therefore dualism is propagated through the Aristotelian/Thomistic metaphysical tradition. Notice that O'Callaghan upholds this dualism with his distinction between external and internal teleology.
You however, are denying the dualism which is clearly a fundamental aspect of this metaphysical tradition, by affirming that formal cause and final cause are not separate domains in the study of living beings. But obviously, what a being is, in the sense of its material form, is a very distinct study from the study of the purpose of a being's activities. By classing them both into the criteria of 'formal cause', it appears to me like you are persisting in your conversion to physicalism.
Quoting Wayfarer
The key point is that purposeful action requires agency. Agency is the internal teleology. So if we describe the activities of organs as purposeful, then we need to assign an agent. Traditionally, from Aristotelian biology, the agent is the soul, and this supports vitalism. In Aristotelian principles, the soul is necessary as the source of activity, which actualizes the potentials of the living being, as the powers of the soul. Since the powers of the soul are not always active, they are therefore classed as potentials, requiring actualization, which is a selective process carried out by the agent, the soul. Purposeful action is defined by the selective process which is essential to it.
Quoting Wayfarer
What you are describing is a confusion of causes. You are conflating formal cause with final cause, and not recognizing the very significant difference between the two which is essential to classical metaphysics, and conducive to dualism. "Formal cause" refers to the constraints of what is. "Final cause" refers to the purposeful actions of an agent, which to be purposeful must be selective. Surely you recognize that these are distinct domains. However you seem intent on conflating the two. Under this conflation you represent final cause as a feature or type of formal cause, in the way that metaphysics of modern physicalism does.
Yes. Enformationism*1 is similar in some ways to ancient World Soul and Panpsychism worldviews. But it's based on modern science, specifically Quantum Physics and Information Science. The notion of a BothAnd Principle*2 illustrates how a Holistic worldview can encompass both Mind & Body under the singular heading of Potential or Causation or what I call EnFormAction. Here's a review of a Philosophy Now article in my blog. :smile:
*1. Dual Aspect Monism :
Another article in the Philosophy Now magazine attempts to find a balance between two extreme views of consciousness. . . . Physicalism and panpsychism sit either end of a metaphysical seesaw, and when one is in the ascendancy it is only by bringing the other unduly low. The author, Dr. Sam Coleman, proposes a different kind of stuff (essence) that is neither mental nor physical in itself, but which possesses properties capable of generating both the mental and the physical. The one fundamental stuff he's referring to is Consciousness, but for technical purposes I think that the scientific term Information fits the description better. As Claude Shannon discovered in mid-20th century, Information is not just ideas in human minds, it is also the substance of physical objects; it's both physical and mental. Coleman also offers a novel term to replace Panpsychism : Panqualityism. He admits that name is a merely a placeholder for unspecified neutral properties (potentials) that are able to emerge into reality as either physical or metaphysical, depending on the context. Yet again, Information already has this monist/dualist BothAnd property, which could explain how metaphysical minds emerge from the functioning of material brains. It might also suggest how a physical universe could emerge from a mathematical Singularity consisting of nothing but the information for constructing a universe from scratch : a program for creation.
https://www.bothandblog.enformationism.info/page14.html
*2. Both/And Principle :
My coinage for the holistic principle of Complementarity, as illustrated in the Yin/Yang symbol. Opposing or contrasting concepts are always part of a greater whole. Conflicts between parts can be reconciled or harmonized by putting them into the context of a whole system. . . . .
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html
*3. EnFormAction :
Ententional Causation. A proposed metaphysical law of the universe that causes random interactions between forces and particles to produce novel & stable arrangements of matter & energy. Its the creative force (aka : Schopenhauer's Will) of the axiomatic eternal First Cause that, for unknown reasons, programmed a Singularity to suddenly burst into our reality from an infinite source of possibility. AKA : The creative power of Evolution; the power to enform; Logos; Change.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
I just came across a quote in physicist James Glattfelder's 2025 book on The Emergence of Information, Consciousness, and Meaning. After discussing Energy & Entropy, along with Dissipative Structures, he concludes : "However, one of organic life's most stunning features still remains obscure, namely agency, intentionality, volition, and purpose. Phillip Ball reports on a workshop held in 2016 at the Santa Fe Institute investigating the uniqueness of terrestrial biology" :
"It's hardly surprising that there was no consensus. But one message that emerged very clearly was that, if there's a kind of physics behind biological teleology and agency, it has something to do with the same concept that seems to have been installed at the heart of fundamental physics itself : Information." :smile:
I do not think that your claim is reasonable. No experiment has provided 100% conservation, so it is actually unreasonable to say that results are consistent with conservation laws. For some reason, you think that stating that the law is an "approximation" makes the law reasonable. What if I told you that 9 is approximately 10, and so I proposed a law that stated 9 is always 10? Would it be reasonable to claim that this approximation justifies the truth of my law? I don't think so. Why would you think that approximation in the case of the law of conservation of energy justifies a claim that the law is true?
Quoting boundless
What this indicates is that we always expect deviation from the law/. So we find that consistency in the deviation is coherent. Isn't that just evidence that we all actually know that the law is false? Why would people want to deceive themselves, by trying to believe that the law is true, when they always, in fact, expect deviation? How is that in any way reasonable?
Yes, the use of conservation laws does "point to something true about the physical universe". The evidence indicates overwhelmingly, that conservation laws are false. That is the single most important truth that we can abstract from the ongoing use of conservation laws.
Quoting boundless
You misunderstand. The very act of measuring the temperature is in fact an instance of using that energy as work.
Of course. But then, I recall you discussing Deacon's Incomplete Nature. He also is very interested in teleonomic (as distinct from teleological) phenomena in biology, as well as ententional structures (a word he coined) in both organic and inorganic. (Incidentally I just now received my copy - second hand, looking like it's been on a shelf for a good while, but in fair condition. It's an important book in my view, not that I will agree with him on every philosophical point.)
I think the basic issue is that purpose, generally, is a much more ambiguous term than the metrics of classical physics (mass, velocity etc) which can be measured and defined very accurately. To introduce consideration of what things are for, or why they exist, is to immediately raise all these questions about purpose, aboutness, intentionality, and so on.
What Deacon and others are trying to do, is accomodate purposefulness in an extended naturalist framework - to see how purpose can be understood without appealing to divine creation, but also without reducing living things to machines or bits of matter.
I see what you mean. But suppose that a theory tells you that if the conditions are perfect you get 10 and if they aren't you get 9. You never get perfect conditions and you always get 9. This doesn't refute the theory, far from it!
So, if there is no 'isolated system' and you observe that energy isn't perfectly conserved it is hardly an objection of the law of conservation of energy if it gives consistent predictions also in the cases where it is expected that energy isn't conserved.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I disagree. What your objection actually point to is that there are no perfectly isolated systems, except perhaps the universe as a whole. Which is BTW interesting, but it doesn't refute the laws of conservation.
Your objection however does raise the problem of how to interpet the fact that idealizations seem never to find a 'realization' in nature. That's a perfectly fine area of inquiry but is different from what we were debating.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Honestly, I am not sure of what you are saying here. When you measure temperature (or internal energy) you don't tranform it to work.
Quoting Gnomon
Interesting, thanks!
I finally got around to reading this. It was well-written and I enjoyed it. might like it insofar as it sheds light on the bottom-up nature of his "model-building," and might like it insofar as it is closely related to "reverse mereological essentialism."
Quoting Wayfarer
:up:
Yes, and I would go a bit further and say that Darwinian evolution is teleological, in much the same way that craps is teleological. It's surprising that O'Callaghan did not make this connection in his essay.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, that's an interesting excerpt. :up:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Although O'Callaghan does not state it explicitly, I believe he holds that internal teleology is top-down. It is the internal natura of a living substance in which all of its parts participate.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Where do you find that in the passage?
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Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, I tend to agree. Here is a quote that captures the thrust of the bottom-up vs. top-down distinction:
Quoting Teleology: What Is It Good For?, by John O'Callaghan
Top-down sees the whole as primary the parts as secondary, whereas bottom-up sees the parts as primary and the whole as secondary.
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Quoting Punshhh
Yes, good point. :up:
Like Deacon, I try to stay close to the scientific evidence in order to avoid picturing the Cosmic Cause as a Biblical Creator, magically producing a world of mini-mes*1 (little gods) to serve his ego. Teleology seems to imply a human-like creator, for which the evidence is ambiguous. So, I typically refer to the First Cause as something like the Programmer of a computer program. In which case Teleonomy*2 might better apply. And the ultimate purpose may be more exploratory/experiential than definitive.
I do see evidence that the Universe began in an inexplicable state of high Energy & low Entropy, and is gradually complexifying and organizing into living & thinking things. Also, Time's Arrow seems to be pointing to some unknowable future state. However, modern science has found a fundamental element of unpredictability (uncertainty, nondeterminism) underlying that obvious progress. So, the evolutionary "machine" seems to have some degree of freedom to explore options as it progresses in a general direction. In any case, we are just guessing about the motives (if any) of the Prime Mover (if any). :smile:
PS___ My reason for quoting Philip Ball was to indicate his use of "Information" rather than "Consciousness" as a causal force. Not to promote Teleology or Teleonomy.
*1. What is Mini-Me a parody of?
Mike Myers has acknowledged that the character was directly inspired by the character of Majai in the 1996 film The Island of Dr. Moreau, who is similarly a miniature version of Marlon Brando's titular villain character. ___ Wikipedia
*2. Teleology and teleonomy [i]are related concepts, but they differ in how they explain goal-directed behavior. Teleology refers to explanations based on an inherent purpose or end goal, often implying a conscious or supernatural design. Teleonomy, on the other hand, describes goal-directed behavior resulting from a pre-programmed mechanism, like genetic coding, without implying a conscious or preordained purpose, according to a philosophy forum and Wikipedia. . . . .
Teleology suggests a purpose for a system, while teleonomy describes a purpose within a system.[/i]
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=teleonomy+vs+teleology
I would go further, in a very real sense we are one being. One instantiation of life and all that that involves.
The reference is to a book How Life Works: A User Guide to the New Biology. Yet another book I must look at :roll:
Quoting boundless
It would just mean that the theory is completely useless. If a necessary condition of the theory is perfect conditions, and it is demonstrated that perfect conditions are impossible, then the theory can be dismissed as useless, because that premise can never be fulfilled.
Quoting boundless
It's not the law of conservation which produces consistent predictions, as is obvious from the fact that it is inaccurate. Predictions can be produced from statistics, and the statistics might concern deviations form the conservation law. Then the conservation law would not state anything true about the world, it would just be a useful tool for gathering statistics.
Quoting boundless
Well, I disagree with what you've presented here. If the law of conservation is an idealization, and idealizations are never realized in nature, then we can conclude deductively that it is impossible that the law of conservation is true. It is necessarily false.
Isn't that exactly what we are debating, whether the conservation law is true or false? You've already decided that it is merely approximate, why not take the next step, and accept that it is false?
Quoting boundless
That's exactly what measuring the temperature is, work being done. The energy acts on the thermometer, and this is an instance of work being done. Therefore taking the temperature is an instance of work being done.
This is why I argue that the idea of energy which is not available to do work, is an incoherent idea. Energy is defined as the capacity to do work. So if we take something like the universe, and assume that it is a closed system, and claim that there is energy within this system which has no capacity to do work, then we must conclude that this energy could not be detected in any way. If it were detected, that would be a case of it doing work, which is contrary to the stipulation. Then what sense does this conception make, energy which cannot be detected as energy?
Quoting Leontiskos
Perhaps, but he doesn't state it, and maybe that's because he recognizes, like me, that the idea of internal teleology being top-down is incoherent. He distinguishes top-down causation from bottom-up, and he also distinguishes external teleology from internal. Then he leaves it to the reader to conclude whether internal teleology could be top-down.
Do you think you could explain how internal teleology could be top-down? What is the so-called internal nature of living substance which could act in a top-down way to keep the parts united? Top-down implies a force acting from the outside inward, yet the term is "internal nature". How could one's internal natur be produced from a top-down force?
If we propose a distinction of separate parts within an individual being, then the teleology must be pervasive to, i.e. internal to all parts. How could this telos get internal to the most basic, fundamental parts, genes, DNA, etc., through a top-down process? And if we take mind and intention as our example, then we see that each individual human being must willfully take part in human cooperation. And clearly this willful, intentional participation is bottom-up causation.
Furthermore, we have the problem which I explained to wayfarer. The whole has no existence, until after the parts unite in cooperation. Therefore the whole cannot be the cause of such cooperation. The cooperation is prior to the whole's existence. It is very telling the way O'Callaghan describes how internal teleology is a case of something coming from nothing. Since a material object always consists of parts, as having a form, the form itself, as intent, or 'internal' teleology, must actually create the parts. Surely this is bottom-up causation, as the whole itself has no existence yet, and all there is is intent. And the intent is internal, therefore it must be within, and this is bottom-up.
Quoting Leontiskos
The passage is difficult, so read it carefully. Pay particular attention to the conclusion "And he presupposes nothing about them at all, since without him, they are strictly speaking, nothing at all." What the creator gives to the being is "its nature", but this nature which is given, is the nature of a being without a nature.
Here:
Quoting Leontiskos
The clear, logical problem with "the whole as primary", is as I describe, the whole has no existence until the parts are united in its creation. Therefore the whole cannot be causal in its own creation. We can assume that something external puts the parts together, creating the whole, in a top-down fashion, but this would be nothing but what is called "external telos".
In the case of living beings we are dealing with internal telos, individual beings who act intentionally. Experience and knowledge indicate to us that intentional acts are based in a capacity to choose. This is what characterizes "purpose" that possibilities are selected. And we also know that the unity produced from the intentional acts of individual beings, is a result of that freedom of choice. When the parts freely choose, by the means of internal telos, to cooperate, unite, and produce a larger whole, this can only be described as bottom-up causation.
On the contrary, the whole is what gives unity and function to the parts. In living systems, it is the organism that organizes the parts, not the other way around. Outside the context of the whole, those parts arent really parts at all theyre just bits of organic matter. (Gametes and zygotes are special cases, already caught up in larger reproductive processes.)
Reductionism typically assumes bottom-up causation: that component parts determine the behavior of the system. But top-down causation recognizes that the formative influence of the whole the organism, the ecosystem, the developmental system constrains and governs the activity of its components.
Take the acorn: yes, its DNA encodes the blueprint for the oak tree. But that blueprint is itself a product of evolutionary history not just a list of parts, but a living record of how the whole organism has been shaped to grow, reproduce, and interact with its environment.
This has been pointed out to you again and again, but you keep reciting the same basic error to anyone who challenges you. Theres something fundamentally amiss in your grasp of this issue, so I would be obliged if you could maybe start your own thread on it, rather than persisting to make these plainly erroneous comments in this one.
Genes are generally understood to provide the information that governs the growth, development and functions of organisms. So, it seems you are right that it is not "the whole of the organism" (whatever we might take that to be) that governs its own growth and development. Should genes be considered "external" though?
I feel that we are going to have to agree to disagree here. Perhaps there are no isolated systems but the law of conservation of energy had been incredibly useful and, in fact, you can deduce the deviations and confirm them experimentally.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Galileo discovered that, without the friction of air, falling object would move under the influence of gravity with an uniform rettilinean accelerated motion. Still, here on Earth we can't be without air (except in some void chambers) and, therefore, the conditions of free-fall are not met. Does this mean that Galileo was simply wrong?
Approximation is key in physics. Same goes for idealizations. The same goes for the awareness of the limitations due to them.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Because I believe that even if there are no isolated systems, the usefulness of the laws prove to me that they do tell something true about the 'order of nature'. To use out of context St. Paul's phrase "we see through a glass darkly", but we aren't blind.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Even if the thermometer responds due to the work that the particles of the constituent do on it, you can't convert all the heat transferred via e.g. friction in a thermometer and then use that stored energy to do work again. The second principle of thermodynamics just says that: it is impossible to have total control of energy.
That's the physicalist misconception of telos. Notice that in O'Callaghan's external telos, it is not the whole itself which gives unity and function to the parts, it is the telos of an external agent. The physicalist does not like to portray telos as agential, therefore assigns agency to the whole. However, as I explained , it is logically impossible that the whole causes the unity and function of the parts, because the existence of the whole is posterior in time, to that unity.
Quoting Wayfarer
Living systems are instances of internal telos, therefore thee is no external agent acting to give unity and function to the parts, as there is in the case of external telos. And what we understand, through the example of human intention, free will, is that each particular, individual human being is a free willing agent which chooses to be a part of a larger collective, (the army example), and this is the way that the whole gains existence through the agency of the parts.
Living organism, and evolution in general, cannot be understood as having their unity caused by telos which is external to the parts, acting in a top-down way, such that the whole organizes the parts, because the causal activity of the telos must be accounted for. If we try to assign the causal action to the form of the whole, we are stymied by the interaction problem. However, known principles of physics, chemistry, and biology, allow that selection of telos may be involved in the activities of the fundamental parts. But that would be bottom-up causation.
Quoting Wayfarer
There is definitely a feedback relation between the teleological activity of the part, and its environment, what physicalists see as the whole, but ultimately final causation must be assigned to the parts. This conclusion is forced logically due to the nature of final causation, as selective. The environment may be portrayed as constraint to the free agent, but teleological agency which is an activity of selection from possibility must be assigned to the parts.
Simply put, governance is not teleological agency. Teleological agency is found within the thing which is governed. Constraints, as a form of governance, cannot provide us with the source of teleological agency. This is found in the free agent which is governed. And, if any type of "self-organization" is proposed, this fact must be respected. What we observe, is that the constraints of the self-organizing system, are actually created by the agency of the parts. There is an appearance of top-down causation, as the constraints seem to restrict the activity of the parts, but the constraint is ultimately self-willed, as will power. That the constraint must be self-willed is evident every time that a part outsteps the boundary of the constraint, which is very common in living organism, as genetic mutations etc..
Quoting Wayfarer
If you take O'Callaghan's internal telos as the model, you can understand that the acorn has internal telos. This is a freedom of selection which inheres within the activities which are carried out by it. We look at the DNA as a blueprint, a code of constraints. However, inherent within whatever agency is active in that process, is the selective capacity of telos. This is what allows for variation in what grows from the acorn. The purposeful activity occurs within, and is inherent to the individual active parts. That numerous different parts must have the selective capacity of agential telos is evident from the fact that variation can occur in a number of different ways.
The blueprint of evolutionary history is a self-produced code of constraint. This is analogous with habitual activity. Notice that will power allows the free willing agent to break a habit. Likewise, genetic mutation is a similar breaking of the habit. Notice that the causal agency, the telos which is responsible for breaking the habit, inheres within the part, so this is a form of bottom-up causation, even though we, in our observational analysis, observe it through top down constraint. The true agential telos acts in a bottom-up way.
Quoting Wayfarer
It's very obvious, that I would level the same charge against you. And, since you started this thread, I am offering my assistance to help you get it right. Together we can come up with a better understanding of the reality of the situation.
Right.
Quoting Wayfarer
A zygote is a good example. Its development will literally generate (more) parts which contribute to the pre-existing whole. What occurs is development of a whole, not assembly of parts.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Why think that? You won't find that claim anywhere in O'Callaghan's article.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think you're misunderstanding what is meant by "top-down." Can you give an example of what you believe top-down explanation would be?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Rather, when God gives a being a nature then that being has a nature. Sort of like when I give you a shoe you have a shoe. The second part of your quote has to do with the idea that there is no pre-existent thing which receives a nature, and that the substance receives both its nature and its existence simultaneously (both logically and temporally). It doesn't mean that the substance has no nature.
Quoting boundless
The ability to predict how everything will deviate from the proposition doesn't make the proposition true. That everything deviates from the proposition indicates that it is false. The usefulness of it, I do not deny.
Quoting boundless
The truth they say is 'I am false'.
Quoting Leontiskos
There is some ambiguity in usage of the term, but in general, "top-down" refers to a hierarchical system where action or information, derives from the higher level and moves toward the lower. In O'Callaghan's article, he distinctly describes it as an explanation which understands the parts, by their functions in relation to the whole. The whole being the top, the parts being the bottom.
The basic problem with this proposed top-down explanation, is as I explained, logically, it cannot explain causation of the whole. It is logically impossible that the whole organism could cause the parts to perform the functions required for the existence of that organism, because those functions must be carried out in order for that whole to exist. In other words, this would mean that the whole causes its own existence. Clearly, the top-down explanation cannot describe the cause of any living organisms which come into being from seeds or eggs. The organism does not cause its own being.
Furthermore, the top-down explanation is shown by O'Callaghan to only be an acceptable causal explanation , in the case of external telos. But this requires an external force, which acts as the "top". In the case of internal telos, he explains the the being is given a nature which is not a presupposed nature at all, i.e. no nature, therefore there is no proper "whole" at this time, which could act in a top-down way.
Quoting Leontiskos
We do find that, in his description of external telos.
This is the only way that "top-down" could be causal. The other way, which relates the parts to the whole by means of their roles, or function, is purely a descriptive explanation, and it requires either an external telos or an internal telos to account for causation. The external telos operates in a top-down way. The internal telos must operate in a bottom-up way because it could not operate in a top-down way for the following reasons.
The internal telos could not act causally in a top-down way, (whole ordering the parts) or else the organism would cause its own existence, which is illogical and inconsistent with evidence. And if God imposed the organism's existence upon it, that would be external telos. But O'Callaghan is clear to distinguish another form of purposeful causation, which is internal telos. There is no top-down option available for internal telos, one being excluded as illogical (self-causation), the other, "external telos", being excluded as insufficient to account for the capacity of intentional acts.
And, the evidence I've described to you is very clear, that internal telos must act in a bottom-up way. It is only through bottom-up causation that life on earth could have begun as a simple organism, and evolved into complex human beings. Otherwise, we are left with random chance, rather than telos as the cause. External telos has been rejected, and it is impossible that the internal telos of the human being could act causally, retroactively, to cause the simple life forms to evolve in that way, to create the complex human being. Therefore we are left with bottom-up causation as the only explanation for internal telos.
Quoting Leontiskos
I think you need to reread that section. It clearly says that the created being has no presupposed nature at all, the creator "presupposes nothing about them at all". This is basic, and crucial to the distinction between external and internal telos. If, the creator presupposes some specific nature, then that creator creates something according to the prescribed nature, and this would be a case of external telos, putting parts together to make something. However, the creator is described as presupposing "nothing about them". This means that the creator gives to the created, no specific nature at all. All that is given is existence as telos. The telos then creates its own natural being, according to what is required within its environment. And this is the bottom-up process of causation which we know as evolution.
Why is everyone afraid to admit the obvious reality that evolution is a bottom-up causal process? It is impossible that it could be a top-down process unless the hand of God acts at each instance of variance. So, O'Callaghan proposes internal telos, as a means of reconciling the obvious scientific truth of bottom-up causation, with the obvious philosophical truth of purpose within the acts of living organisms. Now we have bottom-up causation through the means of internal telos.
Or perhaps... it shows that it is approximately true. As I said, I think we have to just agree to disagree here. For me it is OK to say that some understanding of reality can be 'approximately true'. For you, apparently, either a statement has a perfect correspondence with 'reality' or it is simply false. I do believe, instead, that some statements can be 'partially right'.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I disagree.
The proposal that "the whole of the organism" is causal in an active sense does not make any sense at all. The concept of "the whole" is just a vague inapplicable idea, if the organism is actively changing in the process of growing, (becoming), without reference to a final goal, the end. Unless we assume an outside designer, who holds "the whole" in mind, and who is putting the parts together toward that end, the idea of top-down causation is inapplicable. The case of the outside designer is what O'Callaghan calls external telos.
In the case of living organisms, O'Callaghan says that they have internal telos, they act with purpose. When an organism acts with purpose this is an instance of selective intentional action. Since it is caused from within the agent, and the agent selects or chooses its action, an action which may or may not be conducive to a larger whole, the existence of any larger whole produced is created through bottom-up causation. A good example of selective (intentional) action, which may or may not be conducive to a larger whole, is sexual intercourse, which may or may not be reproductive. The fact that the selective act only possibly, or potentially, leads to the production of the whole, excludes the possibility that the whole is acting in a top-down causal way.
This I believe, is the key to understanding selective, purposeful acts. The effect is not caused by any determinist necessity, and so the act is selected by a completely different form of "necessity", which cannot be explained as the end causing the means, top-down). That the end causes the occurrence of the means in a top-down way ('the man walks for the sake of heath' in Aristotle's example), is an ancient, outdated, misunderstanding of telos, which is applicable only to consciously reasoned choices where the relation between means and end is understood as a logical necessity. Most selective acts of telos are not reasoned, therefore we have to consider a different form of "necessity" as the cause of those acts.