Reply to tim wood Life is managed instability. So it is based on a separation of powers that establishes the third thing of a synergistic and complementary relation.
So Romanticism rather conventionally opposes reason and ... some antithetical version of unreason. The irrational, the felt, the spiritual, the animal, etc.
But life as a phenomenon is a fruitful combination of material dynamics at its most unstable or volatile, and then the overlay of reason, memory or control that can ride that wild horse in desired directions.
So life certainly answers to reason in the sense that there must be a stabilising hand that forms some bunch of unstable material potentials into a persisting organismic identity.
A tree, perhaps ironically, seems about the most managed, the least lively, kind of living thing. A tree is like sedimentary being, growth fixed in woody permanent layers. What we see is it’s logical structure - the shape that had the optimal fit to its small gap in the forest canopy.
Isn’t that how we respond to trees? They are nature’s greatest living sculptures. They impose a form on the life that lives within their forest.
[R]eason is just another weapon of control. ...the invention of the reasonable, the acceptable, the sane, even the human, is greener and more recent than humans suspect."
The discovery of reason by the Greeks is one of the foundations of philosophy proper, I would have thought. The problem is not reason - I think it's the insistence that reason must always be validated by, and in that sense subordinated to, human sensory capacities (which is what 'empiricism' amounts to).That is because scientific reason, nowadays, only recognises the kinds of things which can be validated in those terms; to that extent, 'reason' is a 'weapon of control', but only because of that. Otherwise, reason is an indispensable faculty of the intelligence.
Page 132. "Life will not answer to reason. And meaning is too young a thing to have much power over it."
Interesting topic for me. I find a partial truth to this quoted text. But I’m digging toward something deeper than life as we know it; I’m thinking of being per se. The presence of being is itself arational (as here contrasted to irrational, or “error-endowed reasoning”)—the presence of being eludes the very principle of sufficient reason, and so is beyond the very purview of reason.
Reasoning: the provision of causes, motives, and explanations for what is, i.e. for being per se whether in whole or in part.
Is the arational a product of reasoning so concluding it to be or, conversely, is reasoning both map and, yet further, an ultimately transient terrain for the underlying arational, for the mystery of being of which life directly and intimately partakes?
Given my affinities, I’m again reminded of the pre-Socratic notion of logos, the reasoning pertaining both to the physical cosmos and to individuals which are aspects of it.
When considering both the cosmos and its individual beings, reasoning can at least in part be said to ratio paths to take from those not to take. Yet, for us individuals, reasoning only serves as a means of discerning what is true from what is not. It is not in and of itself the truth which is being pursued by application of reasoning (including truths as they pertain to the cosmic logos/reasoning/causation of which physicality is constituted).
With these musings in mind—which I don’t deny are themselves one individual's reasoning—I can’t help but speculate that at the deepest of metaphysical levels truth is the arational itself, the being of being, and not the reasoning we use to best hold onto that which is both immediately and metaphysically true.
So, paraphrased in a way that makes more sense to me: “Being will not answer to reason. And meaning is too young of a thing to [hold an ability to comprehend] it.”
Reasoning: the provision of causes, motives, and explanations for what is, i.e. for being per se whether in whole or in part.
But it would be a narrow definition of reasoning to identify it with just something people pursue as a method of inquiry. The primary datum of experience is that nature itself appears intelligible, or rationally structured.
And the principle of sufficient reason/principle of locality might speak to atomistic patterns of causal action. But physics also needs its matching holistic principles - of least action and cosmological homogeneity - for a complete description of nature's causal structure. It must see form and purpose as part of the total picture that would be a generalised Logos.
I’m again reminded of the pre-Socratic notion of logos, the reasoning pertaining both to the physical cosmos and to individuals which are aspects of it.
Yep. And the Pythagoreans and Hercliteans matched Logos to Flux, Peras to Apeiron, Limits to Chaos. So they did the flip I suggest. It is reason - as in the reasonableness of orderly structure - that manages or suppresses the basic instability of "existence", or flux/apeiron.
Existence, in this metaphysics, is emergent actuality, the substantial state that persists long time because there is the organisation to channel the naked chaos into a steady directed and temporal flow.
With these musings in mind—which I don’t deny are themselves one individual's reasoning—I can’t help but speculate that at the deepest of metaphysical levels truth is the arational itself
Arational suggests neutrality. And that would fit with an understanding of chaos or flux as a meaningless and undirected foment of fluctuations. It is essentially neutral in being neither formed nor having matter. And neutral as it cannot stand opposed to the rational structure that must inevitably arise from it.
To be irrational is to be already actually existing as an antithetical structure of some kind. It is essentially a dualist view of nature, like mind vs body, or spirit vs world.
And meaning is too young of a thing to [hold an ability to comprehend] it.”
In the scheme I sketch, meaning becomes formally cashed out as mutual information. The logos and the flux must be in a meaningful balance - so not dualistically separated but semiotically engaged. And the mutual information of two variables is a measure of the mutual dependence between them.
The problem is not reason - I think it's the insistence that reason must always be validated by, and in that sense subordinated to, human sensory capacities (which is what 'empiricism' amounts to).
But even the experiencing eye is imposing an intelligible structure on the world. The Ancient Greeks knew that as well. Empiricism is simply the formalising of this semiotic business - the production of the signs by which we construct an orderly representation of the world as it suits us to understand it.
So the scientific method is just about making the epistemology of being "a reasoning mind" something that is explicit and thus perfectable. We don't have to hide behind direct realism. It is OK to admit that reality is a pragmatic interpretation.
And from that prosaic truth, you can always continue on to the exciting ontic implications. Reality itself might also operate semiotically - interpreting itself into being in a "mind-like" fashion as a set of definite signs.
(Every material event is evidence for something. And it turns out to be evidence of thermalisation in progress. Every event is a tick of the cosmic thermal clock.)
But even the experiencing eye is imposing an intelligible structure on the world. [...] So the scientific method is just about making the epistemology of being "a reasoning mind" something that is explicit and thus perfectable. [...] And from that prosaic truth, you can always continue on to the exciting ontic implications.
That's quite the assertion to start your line of thought with -- If we grant you that, haven't we already given you all the rest? That is, thrown away the whole ball game?
Why is experience a matter of imposing intelligible structure on the world? Why isn't it, say, a matter of disclosing the world?
The presence of being is itself arational (as here contrasted to irrational, or “error-endowed reasoning”)—the presence of being eludes the very principle of sufficient reason, and so is beyond the very purview of reason.
I agree. We reason about and within this raw presence, but I don't see how we can get behind or under being to make it rational or necessary.
I can’t help but speculate that at the deepest of metaphysical levels truth is the arational itself, the being of being, and not the reasoning we use to best hold onto that which is both immediately and metaphysically true.
I think a distinction can be made between 'transrational', 'non-rational', and 'irrational'. Reason doesn't have to be omniscient in order to be effective - in other words, it can be effective without being all-knowing.
But even the experiencing eye is imposing an intelligible structure on the world. The Ancient Greeks knew that as well. Empiricism is simply the formalising of this semiotic business - the production of the signs by which we construct an orderly representation of the world as it suits us to understand it.
So the scientific method is just about making the epistemology of being "a reasoning mind" something that is explicit and thus perfectable. We don't have to hide behind direct realism. It is OK to admit that reality is a pragmatic interpretation.
That is true, but it's not the whole story. I think in Greek metaphysics, there is also a sense of what is beyond reason, or where reason originates. The Greeks were interested in more than simply a pragmatic or utilitarian understanding, useful though this undoubtedly is.
What bothers me nowadays is the tendency to confuse a sense of the transcendent source of reason, with the simply irrational. There's more than a few posters here who consistently do that. Whereas, in the classical tradition proper, there is a sense that reason is part of an hierarchy, and whilst it might not be the very highest form of understanding, it in some sense can be used to point at what is beyond itself. But what is sublime, or 'beyond reason', is not irrational in the Dionysian sense of being merely chaotic or spontaneous.
I dunno. Hit a Swiss watch with a hammer and likely it's destroyed. Hit a man with hammer, and unless you hit him pretty hard, he might just hit you back.
So what I said then? Mechanisms are fragile because they depend on material stability. Organisms are robust because they are the management of material instability.
Trees - news to me - are apparently amazing, dynamic and engaging in behaviours often described in anthropomorphic terms.
Life at all levels uses communal signalling. It’s important to microbial ecosystems too. So again, the same semiotic story of self organising constraints.
Can there be reason without intelligence, without a brain?
Notice you automatically equate the two - which is of course reasonable. But still questionable. The Greeks, as you say, wouldn’t have thought of it this way - I seem to recall Aristotle thought the heart was the seat of the intelligence, and the brain was for cooling the blood. I think the automatic equation of intelligence and the brain is very much a product of post-Enlightenment rationality. [Which is not to suggest that I don’t think Aristotle’s view is clearly out-moded.]
But the nature of intelligence, or mind, is what is at issue, as it seems intuitively linked to reason itself. I think nowadays there is a tacit consensus that this is something that can be understood through the lens of evolutionary biology - the brain an evolved organ, intelligence its proper function. Hence, the reflexive association of intelligence with the brain.
Where I feel compelled to question that, is because in the overall story, the human brain is a novelty, something that has only come to exist in the blink of an eye, in evolutionary terms. And yet ‘the furniture of reason’ - those attributes and qualities of experience which the ability to count, to compare, to differentiate or equate disclose - are not themselves the product of evolution, or of anything, as far as we can tell (the world being found always already with some structure, as noted above.)
What evolves, I think, is the capacity to reason, but I don’t believe this amounts to an explanation of what reason actually is. Which is why I’m loathe to admit that intelligence is a product of the brain, because the brain is a product of evolution, and according to many, evolution itself is the product of chance and necessity. So in this understanding there is a radical discontinuity between intelligence and the Universe it finds itself in - an understanding which is diametrically opposite that of the initial Greek intuition [as discussed in Horkheimer’s book, The Eclipse of Reason].
The analogy that I prefer is that the brain is more like a receiver that ‘tunes in’ an intelligence that exists in some inchoate form. That is why reason can, in fact, reveal so much more about the Universe than what one might expect, if one were simply to try and account for the faculty of intelligence in purely naturalistic terms.
But it would be a narrow definition of reasoning to identify it with just something people pursue as a method of inquiry.
What I held in mind is that conscious reasoning—the process of consciously finding and structuring causes, motives, and explanations for givens—is more than a pursuit of some people. Lesser animals quite arguably engage in it; e.g. predators to catch their prey and those preyed upon to escape their predators. My point here being that, most especially in humans, conscious reasoning is an innate aspect of our being—one that matures with age from infancy when we first try to achieve our ends, and that easily becomes meta-cognitive (cognition about cognition and the like) for adult humans.
And the principle of sufficient reason/principle of locality might speak to atomistic patterns of causal action. But physics also needs its matching holistic principles - of least action and cosmological homogeneity - for a complete description of nature's causal structure. It must see form and purpose as part of the total picture that would be a generalised Logos.
Yet form and purpose are integral aspects of reasoning—for they each are causes, motives, or explanations for givens.
What I was intending is that “why being itself holds presence” is something that cannot be satisfactorily accounted for by causes, motives, or explanations.
As to the metaphysical issues you bring up in your reply, as is no surprise from former discussions, overall we agree upon a lot when it comes to metaphysics. Our pivotal disagreement, if I remember right, is however one of ultimate metaphysical ends—this being entwined with the top-down causal mechanism(s) that holds everything together on a global level. We’ve been though this argument previously without any proper resolution between us. So I’ll cordially refrain from going down the same traveled path.
I think a distinction can be made between 'transrational', 'non-rational', and 'irrational'. Reason doesn't have to be omniscient in order to be effective - in other words, it can be effective without being all-knowing.
Hm. I’ve so far thought that we can arationally discern things (else: noninferentially discern). For example, whenever we know that we are perceiving some given X, we know this arationally—i.e., without an immediate dependence on consciously known causes, motives, or explanations for this so being. We of course use reasoning to explain why we perceive things, to justify that our perceptions of givens are true, and so forth. But our knowing that we are perceiving what we perceive—i.e. that we seem to be experiencing that which we experience—is an arational apprehension/cognizance. Same with our intuiting an intuition, our thinking a thought, our sensing a sensation, and so on. All these, again, occur independently of our conscious apprehension of causes, motives, and explanations for that which is being noninferentially discerned; hence, independently of consciously occurring reasoning. And, I would argue, it is one of the most important forms of knowledge we hold, for these arationally attained knowns serve as a foundation to most, if not all, of our inferences concerning what is--the latter being contingent upon reasoning.
With me approaching the issue from this state of contemplation, can you better clarity the differences between “transrational” and “non-rational”?
"[R]eason is just another weapon of control. ...the invention of the reasonable, the acceptable, the sane, even the human, is greener and more recent than humans suspect."
How that struck me was that is was an expression of a kind of suspicion of, or rejection of, 'the tyranny of reason', in the sense usually implied by 'scientific reason' - similar to Apokrisis' remark on the Romantic rejection of reason.
And I have noticed a tendency to call reason into question. I think this is a often associated with 'green left' ideologies - the notion that science is just the instrument of the military-industrial complex or 'big pharma' and really has no privileged perspective to offer - science is just one among a number of possible ways of understanding.
Whereas I have formed the view that the faculty of reason is one of the distinguishing characteristics of humans - after all the Greeks called us 'the rational animal', and in that context the qualifier 'rational' is pretty important. So, I don't want to disparage reason. One can after all fall back into irrational ways of thinking. That is obvious looking at world affairs - there is an abundance of irrationality on display in virtually every news bulletin.
But at the same time, I think that reason has limits (and that furthermore, empiricism has separate and also important limits). So I'm trying to distinguish between what is irrational or non-rational, on the one hand, and what 'surpasses reason' on the other (by which I'm referring more to the intuitive or spiritual aspect of philosophy.) So you mentioned 'the a-rational', 'the being of being' - I certainly think there is in that sense, an intuition of being that surpasses reason (this is something you can find in Thomist and also Buddhist philosophy). But I want to differentiate between what surpasses reason, and what falls short of it. Hope that makes sense.
(Incidentally, there's a review of the novel the OP mentions here and it does look a fascinating novel.)
Trees - news to me - are apparently amazing, dynamic and engaging in behaviours often described in anthropomorphic terms. See two books, The Secret Life of Trees, The Hidden Life of Trees.
The Hidden Life of Trees is very informative. Wohlleben is very knowledgeable, and the book offers a vast supply of facts. It appears like a tree is "upside down", its roots are actually its brain. The plant's brain is not seen by us, because it is subterranean, and because of this we assume that a plant has no brain.
Where I feel compelled to question that, is because in the overall story, the human brain is a novelty, something that has only come to exist in the blink of an eye, in evolutionary terms.
If you would read the above mentioned book, you would see that the human brain is not all that different from the brain of a tree. The big difference being that the human brain is above ground, in the air, allowing the human being the freedom of motion which plants do not have. That freedom of movement requires that animals think about completely different things from what plants think about, so their brains are quite different.
And this all quickly becomes a rabbit-hole. It leads to a more fundamental question: do we decide what things are? Or do we come to understand what things are? Or is this latter question simply unfathomable?
We can decide what things are, in some sense, but that doesn't mean reality has to care about the decision. This is the old separation between thought and being, or in a modern form facts and things. Language isn't how things are even though it can capture how things are, to greater or lesser extents depending on the use.
Sustaining this difference is a mark of materialism. That is, simultaneously asserting the indifference of reality to thought but also that reality differentiates thoughts and embeds this indifference relationally in our conduct. Thought aimed at knowledge is the place where the in-itself of our actions meets the for-us of language; resistance felt is inspiration gained.
Is reason more accessible? For present purpose and as preliminary, let's set two criteria for reason, the presence of either being sufficient as evidence for the presence of reason - this subject to change. First, if a living thing can respond to a threat and protect itself and warn other to protect themselves (which trees apparently can do), then that thing reasons. Second, if a living thing appears to manifest self-awareness, then that thing reasons.
Trees reason (lots of things reason). But I do not think trees are self-aware. After some thought, I'm forced toward thinking this approach is a dead end. Not a dead end as a product of thinking toward some end or for some purpose, but a dead end in terms of grasp of the essential.
I don't think trees think. More likely they're biological machines. But not even machines with a telos, unless by telos is meant an accident.
To present a different interpretation:
I’m thinking that only in self-awareness does one become aware of one’s own goals and, hence, or one’s own teloi. Most of the time, however, for better or worse we humans act and live in manners devoid of this self-awareness, devoid of a self-consciousness concerning what makes us us. We do this when we’re in the zone, consumed with praxis fitting in all ways as it ideally should—not needing to ponder which way is best but, instead, simply being. Otherwise expressed, it is when we know without language or analysis (without any meta-narrative) who we are at the given juncture and what we should do so as to satisfy our will’s impetus. We certainly are readily endowed with a self-awareness capacity—in which we indulge most always whenever there is any form of uncertainty as to what is or should be (by which I don’t mean that we necessarily doubt anything during such times). But it is typically when life is fluidly lived, rather than being though about, that we feel most exalted in living. If a concrete example is needed: engaging in that lusted for first kiss while lost in the immeasurable timespan of the moment, this rather than contemplating how to best go about things to actualize it and make it successful (including while kissing). I get that a philosophy forum is not the best place to make this observation; theorists are us, and its part of our cherished praxis; all the same, I’m arguing that self-awareness is an optimal means toward the end of fruitfully living in manners ideally devoid of its presence, this where only raw awareness is and where it’s presence as life becomes sharpened and intensified without uncertainty or obstructions.
Then, in these times of awareness that is devoid of self-awareness, we still reason—but not via thoughts. In a sense it becomes an autonomically intrinsic aspect of who we are as a responsive agency. It yet has an aim, or telos. When our will is obstructed at such times we in due measure become displeased, volitionally suffer, because that which we are innately striving for becomes in due measure harder to obtain. And this is where self-awareness obviously is indispensable for us.
In rough parallel, all plants generally speaking hold (non-self-) awareness of gravity and sunlight, as well as of the threshold between self and non-self. They all respond to obstacle standing in the way as parts of the non-self. And they all are driven by an un-thought of telos to reach that which they are unthinkingly striving for. I personally believe the same awareness of givens and striving toward something that is to be obtained is applicable to all life. Hence, that all life is telos driven. To say the obvious just in case, just as human awareness far surpasses that of the great apes (biological slang for all apes other than the gibbon), a plant’s awareness can only be far less developed by overwhelming magnitudes relative to a humans. If its of benefit to the clarity of this stance, I sometimes liken it to that Freemason pyramid found on the US dolor bill: The top of the pyramid that is a quantum leap from the rest represents sapience; beneath it there is the remaining pyramid of sentience/agency that extends down to the lowest degrees of awareness which are also the most numerous; the entire pyramid mirroring an ecological pyramid of life.
Not that any of this resolves what life is via reasoning. But it portrays a different rationale for lifeforms such as trees: Here, trees are themselves telos-driven awareness, albeit of far lesser magnitudes by comparison to humans—a type of awareness that is obviously not endowed with the behavioral plasticity which self-awareness facilitates—this instead of being telos-devoid machines.
The same rabbit-hole you address still remains. Though I’m stanchly preferential to us coming to understand what things are—rather than making things up as we go along. In the case of life, to me, what telos-driven awareness is.
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looks like my timing isn't half bad :razz:
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 27, 2018 at 01:25#1743030 likes
It makes a difference. If we decide what things are, then we can reasonably differ. If on the other hand we know what something is, then we cannot reasonably differ.
There is no fundamental difference between deciding what things are, and knowing what things are, because all we can do is decide what something is, and having made that decision constitutes knowing what that things is. However there is a difference between assigning a name to a thing, and assigning a name to a property of a thing.
Consider what constitutes "deciding what things are". We assign a name to an object, say "tree", and we have decided that that thing is a tree. We have decided that this thing is going to go by the name "tree". But is it really a tree you might ask, and how do we "know" that it is really a tree. So we look to a definition, what is required of a thing in order that it be called "tree". Here though, all we have is more words, such that "what" a tree is, is just more names which make up a description. However, the descriptive words refer to properties of the thing. Therefore, "knowing" that it is a tree is just a matter of deciding what the properties are, in the sense of giving them names which are consistent with the words used to define "tree". And there can be no fundamental difference between deciding what a thing is, and knowing what a thing is, in the sense that both are a matter of assigning words, though one is assigning a name to the thing, and the other is assigning names to the properties of the thing.
Do you sense the indifference of life itself, here?
So we have the very same issue with "life" itself. First, we can ask are we pointing to a thing, and assigning the name "life" to it, or are we saying that there is a property of things which we call "life". We cannot point to the thing called "life", but we can say that it is a property of many different things. Therefore we need to avoid this talk of "life", as if what it is, is a thing, rather than a property of things.
What life is, is not a thing, it is a property of things.
So again, the same semiotic story of self organising constraints.
Constraints cannot organize themselves because that would be self-causation, meaning the thing exists prior to its own existence, to cause its own existence. A constraint cannot cause anything unless it exists. So it cannot cause its own existence because that would mean that it exists before it exists.
If not biological machines, then what? The words we use are just our words, but what words can you provide that gets us closer to the tree?
'Machine - an apparatus using mechanical power and having several parts, each with a definite function and together performing a particular task.'
The analogy of 'machine', or of organic beings as machines, is one of the dominant metaphors of materialism. And if 'life' is anything, it is the ability to maintain homeostasis, to grow, heal, reproduce and mutate. Machines do none of these things, as they lack any kind of internal organising principle, save what is put there by their manufacturers (i.e. humans).
Trees reason (lots of things reason). But I do not think trees are self-aware. After some thought, I'm forced toward thinking this approach is a dead end. Not a dead end as a product of thinking toward some end or for some purpose, but a dead end in terms of grasp of the essential.
I don't think trees think. More likely they're biological machines. But not even machines with a telos, unless by telos is meant an accident.
And this all quickly becomes a rabbit-hole
It's simply muddled. How can something that can't think, reason? How do 'lots of things reason'?
Consider what constitutes "deciding what things are".
In the context of the Western philosophical tradition the effort to discern the true identity of things was in terms of being and essence; that is where the whole idea of 'the essential' originated. Of course, modern philosophy in its derogation of tradition has largely abandoned that way of looking at things, despite its role in the formation of science itself. But as we have discussed many times, in the classical tradition, any particular was the combination of its intelligible form and the material from which it is made. Now I'm not saying that because I necessarily believe that it's true, but at least it orients the conversation in respect to the subject of philosophy, rather than trying to invent fundamental definitions - basically trying to reinvent philosophy from scratch - as though none of these problems have ever been considered previously.
"It" here, being the thing which causes, refers to constraints. So the constraints do more than constrain, they actually cause the existence of the parts constrained?
It's a feedback loop. The whole shapes the parts, the parts make the whole.
As you commonly profess a triadic metaphysics, don't you think that you are missing something in this model? You have two dichotomous elements, the parts and the whole. You say that the whole shapes the parts. What you are missing is (to refer to the op) "the reason" why the whole shapes the parts. Or to put it in more scientific terms, "how" the whole shapes the parts. This is where we find "constraints", they exist as the third element in your triadic system, property of neither the parts nor the whole, or perhaps both.
So for example, let's suppose that in an instance of this type relation, the whole is the community, what we call "society", and the parts are the individual human beings. Now let's assume that there are some sort of "constraints", laws, mores, rules, conventions, etc., which we assume regulate the activities of the parts, making them properly parts of the whole. The individual human beings can only be said to be parts of the whole if they act accordingly, otherwise they might go off as independent agents, misfits, exercising their own free will to be reclusive as a hermit, or in some cases one might choose to be destructive and wreak havoc on the established community, possibly aligning oneself with some odd sort of "whole".
So the parts have freedom to act as they will, and they will only act as parts of the whole if they apprehend a "reason" to. But if we look from the perspective of the whole, we ask "how" does the whole constrain the parts. You can see that the question of "how" is answered with "reason", such that how the whole constrains the parts, is by giving each part a reason to behave as a member of the whole. Now we can ask what does it mean for a part to have a reason to act as a member of a whole.
This is not the same as asking the reason why a part is a member of a whole, such as why is an atom a part of a molecule, because the part (the human being) is a free agent with a free will. If it were the same, and the atom were such a free agent, it could choose (having a reason) which molecule it would be a part of. How would one molecule, as "the whole" give a free willing atom with choice, a reason to join with it, when the molecule which is produced by the joining doesn't even exist until after the atom joins up?
I think there’s a conflation here of two senses of ‘reason’. One being, ‘reason’ in the sense of ‘causation’ - the reason why plants grow towards light - and ‘reason’ in the sense of the faculty of reason - how it is we discern and abstract reasons, what the faculty of reason consists of.
As it happens, reason in the latter sense is often deployed to understand reason in the first sense. And it’s the hallmark of reason to understand the ‘why’ of things. Scientific reasoning is grounded in understanding causal links. Of course, in the history of ideas, the Aristotelian analysis of ‘four causes’, had largely been superseded in modern science, which eschewed the idea of telos
[Or did it? There’s an interesting Wikipedia article on the word teleonomy, a neologism invented to allow for the apparently purpose-directed attributes of organisms.]
Maybe telos lies in purpose - purposiveness apart from DNA.
This goes back to what I was saying earlier - about the abandonment of ideas of purpose as being a hallmark of modernity [as per the Horkheimer book I mentioned]. I mean, before about the nineteenth century, it was simply obvious, it was common knowledge, that everything happened for a reason, and that natural science was concerned with discerning those reasons. But ‘reason’ in the broad sense was underwritten by the Divine Will - the Universe was animated by purpose, having been an intentional creation. One of the casualties of the ‘death of God’ was precisely that loss of that sense of cosmic purpose - hence Camus and Sartre, atheist existentialism, a ‘Free Man’s Worship’ and much else.
In any case, in Western history, there was the expectation of ‘the eschaton’ - the return of Christ, around which history was oriented. You could say that with the erosion of that expectation, the underlying purpose fell into question as well: stuff just happens. Any suggestion of ‘reason’ in the pre-modern sense of there being a ‘divine purpose’ is axiomatically rejected; that is the overwhelming feeling of many people nowadays. The remnant sense of ‘higher purpose’ is ‘getting off the planet’ - heaven as the physical conquest of space, fantasies of inter-stellar travel, ‘warp speed’.
Telos. Either the living thing has it (in some sense) and we describe it, or it's all our description. DNA is a compelling argument for telos. The telos of the kitten is to become a cat. Yet in just that sense,telos becomes just a generic name for the kitten's becoming a cat, becomes a word meaningless in itself. No part of kitten or cat is telos.
Maybe telos lies in purpose - purposiveness apart from DNA. That would seem to require volition. But the will is free: is telos freedom? The idea is to get telos apart from mechanical functioning, yet still be a something part of the living thing, yet, in the case of plants, not be a product of mind. Something with the capacity, at least, to choose, but that the choice in some sense is not a choice. Can you give direction here or add some light? If you're content with telos as mechanism, then we're back to the machine.
Difficult questions. But I’ll try to support my views as best I can (turns out not in very few words).
Firstly, telos, to me, roughly means a given existing as a potentiality whose presence as such will both predate and cause the manifestation of effects which bring that addressed into closer proximity to its fruition. So contemplated, and once accepted as a metaphysical possibility, it could then in simplistic terms be either applied to givens devoid of awareness or to givens endowed with awareness.
For example, inanimate matter acts entropically—and can thereby be appraised as holding absolute entropy as its telos. Entropy is an entire subject onto itself, at least for me; while I’m not ready to start a thread on it, to me absolute entropy does not entail disorder but, rather, an undifferentiated and non-quantitative order of physical being wherein the identities of individual physical entities dissipate into … well, something like energy devoid of mass, time, or space. This being a little background to this premise: entropic givens pursue paths of least resistance within their environment toward absolute entropy—such that their behaviors are all choice-devoid paths toward the telos of absolute entropy. BTW, this hypothesized telos of absolute entropy to me mirrors a hypothesized possible end-state of awareness as a non-quantitative unity devoid of otherness which severs as the zenith of awareness's potential—something that I find myself easily projecting upon concepts such as Nirvana and Moksha in the East and “the One” in Neoplatonic traditions within the west.
The dyadic opposite to entropy is negentropy, i.e. life. Rather than dwell on very ambiguous concepts such as those of “mind” or “consciousness”—which can be difficult to argue apply to all life—I’ll instead address the attribute of awareness (something upon which our self-awareness is built). The simplest known life are prokaryotic organisms (archaea and bacteria)—although gametes to me are not too far away from this when contemplating simplest forms of awareness. These simplest lifeforms hold empirically evident awareness via which their capacity to respond to environments unfolds—needless to say, this in absence of a nervous system. And there, simplistically addressed, the teloi primarily considered are no longer universal to all that is but localized within and respective to individual lifeforms.
A big downside to my perspectives is the absence of a metaphysical understanding of how entropic givens have given way to negentropic givens. What can I say, this same problem faces everyone that accepts what empirical sciences agree upon, materialists holding no exception. There must be a behavioral quantum leap from entropic givens, such as rocks, to living systems, such as bacteria. This is where I find Apo’s metaphysics alluring. Still, to me, it’s about progressive evolutions—slow, difficult, and strife-filled—toward ever greater degrees of awareness, which is where I disagree with Apo on metaphysical levels concerning final ends. Either way, nucleic acids seem to be an in-between to that which is entropy governed and that which is negentropic—as can also be said of proteins (e.g. prions).
Staying on topic as regards life and, as example, trees, it in all its instantiations is purposeful. The sperm’s motions are easy to address, but the same also applies to the egg: both hold a telos of biological conception of a zygote. When both are healthy, both will respond to obstructions standing in the way of this telos being actualized. Viewed in light of biological evolution and the need to consume prey (organic sustenance so as to maintain homeostasis) and to escape predation, prokaryotic organisms too will react to environments in response to the telos of … for simplicity, survival (granting this concept is poorly understood: e.g. survival of genes irrespective to phenotypes, survival of phenotypes via genes, some other conceptualization?). In simple terms, those prokaryotic organisms who do not act and react in accordance with this telos then become extinct and are no more.
Obviously a bacterium’s teloi will be extremely less developed than a human’s. Still, to the extent that the bacterium acts and reacts via teloi, the same bacterium will then be endowed, I believe, with a rudimentary form of volition, i.e. will, that is aimed toward some end.
Doubtless the ends which determine actions and reactions—hence teloi—of a bacterium are a genetically governed aspect of the bacterium’s behavioral phenotype. I.e., the bacterium won’t be able to choose its aims as we humans often do (this only to an extent when metaphysically appraised). These same teloi will serve as a bacterium’s proto-forethought. Say the bacterium is faced with something to eat. Its telos here is to eat. Its actions and reactions shall adjust according to—in manners caused by—this preexisting telos (in conjunction with is awareness of its environment to which it reacts). It doesn’t think what to do to best manifest its goal. But, I argue, it does chose between mutually exclusive—hence contradicting—alternatives. More precisely: With its telos being determinate and its environment of a prey ever changing, its behaviors toward this telos must then be neither perfectly deterministic nor perfectly random. The alternative to both these extremes is that of a very primitive form of freewill as to what to do in order to satisfy its determined telos.
I get that this is uncharted territory, but this is where I’m currently at.
The bacterium, then, in a very primitive way, reasons without what we term thought. Roughly speaking, it in a very limited way takes into account causes and motives—motives here being nothing more than teloi—for what the prey is most likely to do next so as to satisfy/actualize its telos of eating its prey.
Again, the taking into account of causes and motives in one's responses to context is, technically, an intrinsic aspect of what reasoning is.
OK, not all prokaryotic organisms are predatory—so this same argument cannot apply to all species of prokaryotic organisms. But I hope it suffices to illustrate that awareness, individual specific teloi, and free choice (free will) can be argued present in very primitive degrees within the most primitive forms of life. None are then applicable to entropic givens. (Although, I’m fiddling about with notions of some form of pre-awareness process from which awareness can develop as it would pertain to some type of pan-semiotic or panpsychism system—this hoping to better bridge the gap between entropic givens and negentropic givens. No fun and no luck, at least so far.)
Trees then are more developed than bacterium. Same overall process can be argued to still apply. For example, a) roots growing with a gene-determinate telos within their behavioral phenotype of finding organic-matter-resultant things to consume within earth by aligning themselves with gravity and b) being neither fully deterministic nor fully random in their reactions to obstacles in the way of actualizing this telos—i.e. endowed with some prototypic free will as to how to react so as to best satisfy its individualized teloi.
I figure making the aforementioned any more concise would be to at best make it utterly unintelligible. So I’m leaving it as is.
But the kiss! I remember that! And I'm old enough now to recognize that as the miracle of chemistry in action. But there were choices. Chemistry was push; I had some choice of direction. Is there a telos here?
:smile: Yup, I can remember it too. Haven't found my permanent mate yet, so I’m still looking forward to it myself. As to a telos, I’m arguing that if there was motivation to the kiss (consciously apprehended or not) then there was a telos (and if not, it would have been metaphysically mechanical). I’ve never heard it being applied to psyche, but motivation to me is a form of retrocausation: the motive is the effect as existent potential that temporally precedes the all the specific causes for it becoming manifest—with these causes for one’s objective becoming physically objective being the very telos/motive-governed choices one makes. But again, we humans often get to choose which aims/motives/teloi we subsequently willfully pursue.
No, I think that everything has its reason. What would be the use of talking about anything that is purportedly beyond the intelligibility of human reason? Anything we can experience or imagine is, by virtue of its experienceability or imaginability, intelligible to us, and hence within the bounds of reason.
Firstly, telos, to me, roughly means a given existing as a potentiality whose presence as such will both predate and cause the manifestation of effects which bring that addressed into closer proximity to its fruition.
Anything we can experience or imagine is, by virtue of its experienceability or imaginability, intelligible to us, and hence within the bounds of reason.
Except for what has been described as 'revelation' - whether Biblical or other.
What would be the use of talking about anything that is purportedly beyond the intelligibility of human reason?
I think a sense of humility is in order in this regard. Maybe knowledge has limits, and being aware of those limits is part of what philosophy is concerned with. Maybe part of philosophy is being aware of the inherent limits of particular modes of knowing, for instance science itself; philosophy of science has quite a bit to say on that. Kant wrote extensively on the limits of reason. All of those subjects are legitimately in scope for philosophy, notwithstanding your 'ex cathedra pronouncements' ;-)
(Away from desk for rest of day, cheers.)
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 27, 2018 at 23:54#1744270 likes
This is thin ice. Observe - name - know. You imply that the knowing is of the thing; but all this knowing is, is of the observations. To you a tree, a glorious exemplar of life, worthy of appreciation for all kinds of reasons - leave it alone! To me, firewood; its cold; chop it down! Your "no fundamental difference" becomes an abstraction.
I can't see your point. You haven't explained how knowing what something is differs from deciding what to call it. I decide to call it "tree". You decide to call it "firewood". What would make you think that one of us knows what it is but the other does not?
I object too to a quality in your reduction that I'll call recursive, meaning that it - your process - always reaches back into itself, thus and thereby always secure in what it achieves because always solidly connected to its origins. And never free. Recursion never leaps. You have not allowed for the "I don't know" that enables the leap. Tree? Or firewood? Not both. Can you reconcile? I think you cannot, because both sides are based in decisions each side made. Will understanding finally tilt the scale one way or another? Maybe, through suspension of decision. The point is that when observation and analysis are done, there is always - still - a choice to be made.
I don't see how you can say that I haven't allowed for "I don't know what it is". Obviously, if you do not know what to call it, then you do not know what it is. Also, why can it not be both, "tree" and "firewood"? I see no reason for the claim that it cannot be both. There is no reason why we cannot both know what it is, each knowing it by different words. Further, there is no need to reconcile. I have my reason to call it "tree", and you have your reason to call it "firewood". There would need to be a further reason to make reconciliation necessary.
I think a sense of humility is in order in this regard. Maybe knowledge has limits, and being aware of those limits is part of what philosophy is concerned with. Maybe part of philosophy is being aware of the inherent limits of particular modes of knowing. All of those subjects are legitimately in scope for philosophy, notwithstanding your 'ex cathedra pronouncements' ;-)
Of course knowledge is limited, and the degree of limitation will depend in part on what you count as knowledge. It's important to maintain a distinction between knowledge and understanding. Knowledge grows and does so within the context of human understanding. Our understanding provides the conditions for the possibility of knowledge. So we can fairly precisely define the current limits of knowledge, but we cannot define the the limits of understanding, because it is the medium we cannot 'extract' ourselves from in order to identify any supposed limit.
In any case, you have changed the subject by talking about 'knowledge", when it was reason that was under discussion. Without reason there can be neither understanding nor knowledge of any kind. What do you mean by "modes of knowing"; could you give an example of some modes of knowing and their limits?
Finally, on what grounds do you accuse me of making "ex cathedra pronouncements"? As I see it, I am just here expressing my opinions as we all are. I am prepared to argue for my views reasonably when they come under fire. Are you prepared to argue for your views reasonably when they come under fire? Your fairly characteristic defensive "ex cathedra" comment does make me wonder whether you are here to protect your opinions or to test their mettle under the flames of critique.
The assymmetry here is that firewood is merely one small possibility of tree. "Tree' is the umbrella concept under which 'firewood' becomes intelligible.
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 28, 2018 at 00:06#1744320 likes
I couldn't count "interaction", because that's what you left out. Look: Quoting apokrisis
The whole shapes the parts, the parts make the whole.
All you have described is the activity of the whole, and the activity of the parts. There is no description of any interaction. As I said, this requires "how" or "why" the whole shapes the parts, and "how" or "why" the parts make the whole. Otherwise you have not described the interaction
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 28, 2018 at 00:07#1744330 likes
You seemed to be speaking as though it were purely arbitrary in relation to understanding whether someone referred to it as 'tree' or "firewood"
In relation to "knowing what it is", it is arbitrary. One can know what it is as "tree", or one could know what it is as "firewood". If you think that one is more properly "knowing what it is" than the other, then you need to refer to a further reason. But that reason is something other than knowing what it is.
The point is that knowing what it is as firewood is parasitic upon knowing what it is as tree, and obviously not vice versa.
I don't agree. You do not need to know that it is a tree in order to know that it is firewood. In fact, the knowledge of "what it is" quite possibly began with people knowing it as "firewood", before they came to know it as "tree" because much knowledge is derived from usage.
That's not remote from the original meaning. See Aristotle - The Importance of Telos
Yes, true. Still, I’m sometimes at odds about either referring to Aristotelian theory or not so doing when describing what I endorse. Not only is my knowledge of Aristotle mostly second hand—although I did read portion of his De Anima—but his concept of virtue as the human telos, while I ultimately agree with it, to me is too constrictive of human nature to be of much help on its own. We can choose other teloi in our attempts to best obtain satisfaction, happiness, flourishing and the like. As one example, the mass murderer that wills to get away with the perfect crime is not motivated by virtue in seeking his optimal happiness/flourishing, and sometimes perfect crimes have been committed in one way or another—the less grave the more common, such as in cheating someone or some community. Though the ugly part of human existence, these sometimes successful ambitions need to be taken into account as well—something that I so far don’t satisfactorily find in Aristotle. Taking this to a more metaphysical level, some humans would do anything either virtuous or vicious—here focusing on the latter—to get as close as they can to being unquestioned tyrants of everything that surrounds … in a sense, to becoming a singular, untouchable, omnipotent deity everyone else bows down to. Stalin comes to mind here as example. Anyway, telos as it is associated with Aristotle to my knowledge doesn’t address such choices between what could be depicted as metaphysically possible aims. And virtue often times can result in much sorrow and strife, as well as failure—again, not something which Aristotle tmk satisfactorily addresses.
I so far find this in the article you’ve liked to as well.
Though I neglected to say it this time around, I usually say “an Aristotelian-like telos”—since I agree with his notion of a first teleological cause to existence in total … for clarity, this, again, more along the lines of Neoplatonist notions of “the One” as a non-deity awareness/being of omni-benevolence, aka perfect love, to which we hold various proximities, and which in imperfect ways resides both within and without all of us, as some say. But—seeing how one thing leads to another—I’ll cut this short
No, they would have known that firewood falls or can be broken or cut from trees, that trees have other uses to animals and humans and so on. So firewood is necessarily connected with trees, but trees are not necessarily connected with firewood.
Why do you say that revelation is outside the bounds of reason?
That’s not my invention. 'Reason and revelation' are defined and understood as different domains in philosophy of religion. You can find extensive discussions of this in Aquinas and many other sources in traditional philosophy.
The whole point about 'revealed truth' is that we learn something from it, which you can't learn by any other means including reasoning. I'm not evangelising in saying that - I'm not saying that you should believe it. But for the purpose of the discussion, if this question is asked, 'what could be above the bounds of reason?', then 'revealed truth' is one possible answer.
What would be the use of talking about anything that is purportedly beyond the intelligibility of human reason?
That's a deep question, obviously. You could answer with Wittgenstein: 'that of which we cannot speak'. But the problem with that answer is that it indeed does leave a great deal to conjecture; as is well known, the Vienna Circle understood him to be advocating positivism on the basis of this aphorism, which he really wasn't at all. (Actually Wittgenstein was quite a religious philosopher, in a broad and non-doctrinal sense.)
Here is a paradigmatic statement of a truth beyond the scope of reason:
[quote=The Buddha]These are those dhammas, bhikkhus, that are deep, difficult to see, difficult to understand, peaceful and sublime, beyond the sphere of reasoning, subtle, comprehensible only to the wise, which the Tath?gata, having realized for himself with direct knowledge, propounds to others; and it is concerning these that those who would rightly praise the Tath?gata in accordance with reality would speak.[/quote]
In any case, in the three philosophical traditions that I am slightly familiar with (Christian, Hindu and Buddhist), there is a place for the 'beyond reason'. Of course, they are all clothed in very different metaphors and belief-systems. But in all of them, there is acceptance of the validity of reason - logic plays a part in all of them, indeed, they are the origin of a great deal of philosophy. But they point at what is beyond logic - in the poetic Buddhist metaphor, as 'the finger points at the moon'.
So there is that which falls beneath reason and rationality - mere unreason, the denial of obvious truths. But there is also that which is beyond reason - something which is so sublime and exalted in scope, that reason cannot reach it. To push the metaphor - trying to reason your way to it, is like shooting arrows at the moon.
"Cause," however, is a not-so-easy word. I find that absurd examples sometimes are instructive, or at least illustrative. You buy some dynamite from the hardware store to blast a tree stump in your yard. (You could actually do that in my lifetime!) You blow up the stump and sure enough, the police come and arrest you for "causing" an explosion. Of course, you did nothing of the kind. Ask yourself exactly what did cause the explosion.
'What exactly caused the explosion' was four-fold: dynamite has the power to explode (material cause); you lighting the fuse (efficient cause); your wish to remove the tree-stump (final cause i.e. the reason it
happened); and you used an explosive, not an emollient (the formal cause). That's a rough example in terms of the Aristotelian analysis of four-fold causation. But, the dynamite wouldn't have planted itself, as it lacks agency. If you said to the cops, 'hey the dynamite brought itself here and did that'....well.....
I'm not saying it because I'm an apologist for, or an expert about, Aristotle, but because his analysis provides a starting-point which is consistent with traditional philosophy. This also addresses Javra's point:
Taking this to a more metaphysical level, some humans would do anything either virtuous or vicious—here focusing on the latter—to get as close as they can to being unquestioned tyrants of everything that surrounds … in a sense, to becoming a singular, untouchable, omnipotent deity everyone else bows down to
But I think Aristotle himself recognised and argued against tyranny or the pursuit of power for its own sake - after all, he is the source of 'virtue ethics', the view that 'ethical action is its own reward'. I think Aristotle, though counted 'a pagan philosopher', recognised a kind of cosmic law-giver, even if not the God of Christianity.
Whether teleology can apply to motivation, free will, choices, the things that thinking beings do, is beyond me at this moment. Possibly it does, although it seems to me it must be external to the actor. In any case, our subject is a tree, which I think we agree cannot reason in your second sense.
The point is, at the time of the scientific revolution, a great deal of Aristotelian philosophy was rejected. After all, Aristotelian physics was shown to be mostly mere supposition, based on guesses as to what matter ought to do in keeping with a priori principles - stones 'wanted' to be near the earth, and so on. Galileo completely demolished it.
But Aristotelian ideas have made something of a comeback, in that now there is a recognition that something like 'four causes' model must have some merit. And the reason is that goal-directed activity is clearly intrinsic to any kind of living organisms. Life itself is incredibly purposeful. (It's only when it evolves to being bourgeois that it entertains the possibility that life has no purpose ;-)
Doesn't that bounce us back to the biological machine? Chemistry, sunlight, water....
Well, that is the answer of materialism, really - what we see are molecules in motion, impelled by merely chemical necessity, from which the illusion of agency springs (or apparently springs, as there really can be no agency.) This is Daniel Dennett, Jacques Monod, and other materialists. Personally, I think their entire philosophy is self-defeating.
The problem of 'agency' is a very deep one, obviously. I think there are deep issues around theism, the idea of a 'super-agent' who created and animated the Universe. But as I said in an earlier post in this thread: before the advent of modernity, we inhabited a living universe, a universe which was the expression of a living will, the 'theatre of the divine'. Whether this was the 'one God' of monotheism, or the deities of older traditions, what it naturally provided was a sense of agency and purpose, as well the sense of an 'I-thou' relationship with the Cosmos.
Now, if you asked one of the citizens of those times, whether they saw it that way, they might not even understand the question: it's only now, when we've grown accustomed to the notion that the Cosmos is a kind of lottery, that simply exists as a consequence of physics, that the thought becomes conceivable. In this context, for us, reason has become instrumentalized; reasons are only material and efficient, and maybe formal. But there's no general 'raison d'etre' - that is practically a definition of 'secular reason', isn't it?
But in terms of the Aristotelian tradition, as preserved by it's Thomist custodians:
Characterized by Forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.
In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. 1
It is precisely that which is most lacking in modern culture: the sense that overall the world makes sense, that there's a reason for it, and for us existing in it. Hence the talk in existential literature about the abyss, the void, the sense of meaninglessness and emptiness which haunts the modern world. In that context, 'reason' can only ever be utilitarian and instrumental; it lacks an anchor in the physical universe.
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 28, 2018 at 11:56#1745040 likes
No, they would have known that firewood falls or can be broken or cut from trees, that trees have other uses to animals and humans and so on.
I don't think so, they could just look at the things which we call "trees" as firewood. That's what we're talking about, calling the same thing by different words. I called it "tree", tim called it "firewood".
You are making them into two distinct things, but that's not what we were talking about. We were talking about knowing what a thing is. One person knows the thing as "firewood", another knows it as "tree", the same thing.
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 28, 2018 at 12:09#1745050 likes
Reply to Janus
The issue was whether there is a difference between having decided what to call the thing, and knowing what the thing is.
With reference to the causes of physical (inorganic and organic) and mental processes within a data-communication-information ontology, does the following seem reasonable?
1) Syntax (structural principles and/or data constraints) is formal cause.
2) Phenomena and/or noumena are material cause.
3) Entropy is the efficient cause of inorganic energy-mass transformation (inorganic message encoding/decoding).
4) Negentropy is the efficient cause of organic energy-mass transformation (organic message encoding/decoding).
5) Conscious (aware and responsive) agency is the efficient cause of symbol transformation (mental message encoding/decoding).
6) Message reaction is final cause.
Given:
1) Data (Form): asymmetries.
2) Communication: source production/encoding and/or transmission, conveyance, destination reception/decoding, or discovery of, and reaction to, data (Form).
3) Information: communicated data (Form).
4) Message: transmitted, conveyed, and received code.
5) Code: transformed, translated, or converted data (Form).
I argue that telos is a human template, an overlay of plausible explanation under a set of presuppositions. - All good and orderly in its place, but not the goal here!
If I’ve understood you properly given the context of your previous posts, you argue that there is no goal-striving to anything in nature, including to trees’ behaviors. Or are you saying that goals are not the goal of this thread as was outlined in the OP? In which case, I thought it obvious that I was obliging your questions to me with my answers. (to be clear, this in my longwinded last post to you)
If the former, however, OK—but on what rational grounds does this argument stand?
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 28, 2018 at 16:33#1745340 likes
Someone earlier referred to paths of least resistance. That's the best way I can think of to think about life in itself. Somehow - no doubt in its DNA - it follows a path of what is, for it, a kind of least resistance, or greater reward. No telos at all. Looking at Aristotle is worthwhile. Arguing Aristotle is just so much of how many angels fit on the point of a pin.
To say that it follows the path of least resistance already presupposes telos, because it is going somewhere, and to be going somewhere presupposes telos. It's like trial and error, this presupposes telos, because the agent practising trial and error must necessarily distinguish between error and success. Likewise, the thing following the path of least resistance must distinguish between resistance and non-resistance, in relation to where it's going (success). Otherwise it would just be swept along by natural forces. But this is not the case, it is an agent going somewhere, distinguishing success from failure, as the path of least resistance, in relation to this, going somewhere.
For the claim, sure. But is that claims in your backyard, or trees? Do you burn claims in your fireplace, or firewood? The OP is about how it is ante claims, before thinking. We can approximate that by trying to follow the lead of real being. Imagine you have one beloved tree in your backyard and I come to chop it down. What of your claims then? It cannot be both firewood and tree. Don't you see that?
No, I will not allow you to invert our positions here. The claim was yours not mine. I call it "tree", you call it "firewood". You are the one claiming that it cannot be both. Even if you cut the tree down, I would still call it "tree" and you would call it "firewood". You haven't provided an argument for your claim that we cannot both know the same thing under different terms.
See, you need to give me reason for me to adjust to your claim. Trying to force me, by cutting down the tree does not give me reason. The application of force only makes me more steadfast in my resistance to your claim.
Someone earlier referred to paths of least resistance.
Yeah. So how does every particle, every event, know how to follow the path of least action? How do you accommodate this “weirdness” that infects even classical physics in your metaphysical picture?
But that is just the failure of language to accommodate the tree's living. It - the tree - doesn't follow; it doesn't go. It just is, from moment to moment.
Science can talk of grades of telos - physical tendencies or propensities, biological function, psychological purpose. So finality or anticipation can be treated as something that comes in obvious grades of complexity.
Then you just need a general story on how complexity arises. That is where pan-semiotics slots in. There is information bound up in a system’s history of constraints that gives it the tendencies it will express in the future.
This only gets truly weird on the micro scale of quantum events where now - as in quantum eraser experiments - choices experimenters might make in the future can act as constraints on an event’s past. Time itself gets caught up in the least action principle.
But the point is that finality is profoundly part of physics. And it’s exact understanding still an open question.
It is not something to be dismissed. It is a forefront issue.
Due to time, I’ll be forthright in my views and not beat around the bush. My bad in advance if I’m currently too cranky.
There can be anthropomorphism at play in any of our judgments concerning awareness and will. Our judgments of these can just as readily be clouded, if not utterly flawed, by an ego-driven anthropocentrism which states that “if it is not that precise form which only humans can experience, then it cannot exist in any other form in any non-human lifeform”. This mindset can often be found in ethology (the empirical, scientific study of animal behavior): animals cannot hold emotions such as anger or fear because emotions as we know them are only found in us human, therefore no animal can hold emotions of any form, period! (who gives a sheit about their limbic system being pretty much the same as our own, especially when regarding primates). Same can be said with arguments for awareness, will, and reasoning: if it is not that specific form which only humans can do, then it cannot in any way exist in any other form anywhere else. The reasoning as to why this is never given, only the assertion.
An empirically demonstrable conclusion we all know of, but I don’t understand its significance when addressing a tree’s awareness in sensing, and consequent propensity toward, gravity and sunlight. Since it’s the capacity to sense—regardless of what and of means—which defines a sentient being as such, are you arguing that trees cannot sense either gravity or sunlight?
This is contingent upon how mind is defined; Varela et al. (who uphold the concept of autopoiesis) would disagree. But granting that here a mind is implicitly defined as that which necessarily correlates to a central nervous system, no, trees cannot have a mind thus defined because they are not planarians, arthropods, or chordates (with vertebrates as a subset of the latter).
This is an unsupported assertion. I’ve often heard it said even of mammals. As though dogs have no memory of where they’ve been and who they’ve interacted with in the past and no anticipation of what is to come in the future. But they don’t think of beginnings and ends to the universe like we do, so our anthropocentrism then quickly concludes that they only live in a non-temporal present. (this is contrary to evidence, if it needs to be said) Of course trees have no theory of time and space. But to say that their behaviors are not governed by before and afters (time) or by distances and proximities (space) is … at best utterly unsubstantiated.
In terse overview of what I’m here upholding, trees are not humans, nor are they vertebrates—and so do not have attributes only applicable to humans and vertebrates. This, however, does not argue against trees holding awareness conjoined goal-strivings—to be clear, of a non-human, non-vertebrate kind.
Addressed differently, what set of processes differentiates trees from rocks if not awareness conjoined with goal-striving being found in the former but not the latter? And if trees are to be indistinguishable from rocks in being solely governed by entropy, then on what grounds does one argue that trees are lifeforms rather than inanimate matter?
'Reason and revelation' are defined and understood as different domains in philosophy of religion.
Do you believe reason and revelation are independent domains just on the basis of religious authority? Or do you have your own reasons? I would prefer to see an argument from you.
The whole point about 'revealed truth' is that we learn something from it, which you can't learn by any other means including reasoning.
I think it depends on what you mean when you say that things are learned by means other than reason. In one sense it is true that nothing is learned by pure reason, because there is no pure reason. Things are learned by experience, but experience in itself yields nothing without the concepts that are derived from reason, or to put it more accurately, there is no experience without concepts derived from reason, and I would argue that this includes religious experience or revelation.
Can you think of any example of knowledge derived from religious experience or revelation which is truly beyond reason? Surely as soon as anything is articulated it becomes reasonable if it is to be at all intelligible, no? (Pure nonsense may evokes some feelings, but as soon as you want to talk about those feelings I would say that you have entered the domain of reason).
That's a deep question, obviously. You could answer with Wittgenstein: 'that of which we cannot speak'. But the problem with that answer is that it indeed does leave a great deal to conjecture;
Nothing I have read of Wittgenstein (and I have read quite a bit over the years) indicates to me that he thought that ethics, aesthetics and religion are beyond reason, but merely that they cannot be precisely articulated in propositional or empirical terms. Literary works, for example, are not "beyond reason" even though they are not characteristically concerned with presenting deductive or inductive arguments to support standpoints.
Thinking in Sellarsian terms you have the "scientific Image" of the world and human life (the space of causes) and the "manifest image" of the world and human life (the space of reasons). Sellars wants to give priority to the former, but really the former is derivative of the latter, which is a point that I believe Wittgenstein would have endorsed and disagreed with Sellars about.
The space of reason is the whole of life, and this agrees with Hegel's "the Rational is the Real" and also with Peirce's understanding of reality as semiosis, as well as Kant's "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind?".
I don't think so, they could just look at the things which we call "trees" as firewood. That's what we're talking about, calling the same thing by different words. I called it "tree", tim called it "firewood".
You are making them into two distinct things, but that's not what we were talking about. We were talking about knowing what a thing is. One person knows the thing as "firewood", another knows it as "tree", the same thing.
The problem with your argument is that a living tree is not merely firewood and in fact is not even suitable in its present green condition to serve as firewood. It is therefore highly implausible that anyone would have seen a tree to be nothing more than firewood. And even if someone did they would be seeing a tree, from a narrow perspective of utility, as firewood, not seeing it first as firewood and then broadening their perspective to see it as a tree.
So, contrary to your last statement knowing something as firewood and knowing it as a tree is not the "same thing" at all, but these knowings constitute two very different perspectives on one thing;and the 'one thing' is the tree, not the firewood.
Nothing I have read of Wittgenstein (and I have read quite a bit over the years) indicates to me that he thought that ethics, aesthetics and religion are beyond reason
What I meant was that you might argue that what is 'beyond reason', is that of which W. said 'that of which we cannot speak'.
But he does seem to contemplate the transcendent in his writings. I was thinking of this:
If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.
Again - I think that is vain. Reason has limits and scope. To say that is not to deprecate reason; I think the traditional understanding is that reason points to something beyond itself, which is what I'm referring to as beyond reason or trans-rational.
I gave one already, from Buddhism. Another would surely be the myth of the Burning Bush and the dispensation of the Ten Commandments.
Explain exactly how you think they are beyond reason.
As to Wittgenstein's,[i]"The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value -- and if there were, it would be of no value.
If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.
It must lie outside the world."[/i]
it needs to be put in context. For the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus the "world is the totality of facts, not of things". The totality of facts is the shared public world, the world that can be represented propositionally. Obviously, though, this by no means constitutes the limits of reason, it is more of an empirical horizon. I am sure that Wittgenstein would never agree that ethics, aesthetics, or religion cannot be reasoned about. Indeed what content is there in those domains that is non-conceptual? How could there be non-conceptual (non-reasoned) content at all?
What, then, are it limits and scope, and what exactly lies beyond it? The point, for me, is that experience is always already mediated by reason, and thus it is always already meaningful.This is not to say that experience is literally a process of reasoning, but that everything that can have any meaning beyond mere sensation or feeling has its roots, its genesis, in reason. Of course there 'is' 'something' 'raw' 'prior' to reason, but 'it' cannot be anything without reason; that is the point I am trying to make.
(Wittgenstein is speaking differently about something else when he says that in the world there cannot be any value; he is referring to a world considered merely as a sum of empirical propositions; the prosaic world of everything that is merely "the case').
"Life will not answer to reason. And meaning is too young a thing to have much power over it." I am simply trying understand what "life" in this sentence means.
'Life' here must 'mean' something imagined to be absolutely unfathomable, indeterminate. In fact life does "answer to reason" insofar as it is intelligible at all. We might imagine there to be something unintelligible 'lying beneath' the intelligibility of life, but what could that 'something we know not what' ever really be for us beyond whatever we can think or imagine about 'it'?
Or is it just some kind of mechanics that is obvious when well-explained.
Well that is the big question. Can you succeed where others have failed?
We can of course find approximative and perturbative mathematical techniques that do work well enough to solve problems as if they were simply a matter of determinist mechanics. But that then is to ignore the metaphysical mystery of how nature arrives at its rather more exact solutions.
In passing, your definition of telos as encompassing what you have listed seems to broaden and stretch telos beyond the limits of any original significance. If telos is that broad, then it means merely that there's a cause - and that's already presupposed!
Or else it deflates the rather inflated notion of telos that folk have in the first place. I prefer to look at it that way.
It avoids being a mind~world dualist, while accepting that mechanistic physics is only talking about half the cause in its stress on the material, rather than the formal, causes of physical being.
"Life will not answer to reason. And meaning is too young a thing to have much power over it." I am simply trying understand what "life" in this sentence means.
Life will not answer to reason (logic) because reason and hence science can't encompass the fullness our experience of life and I don't think this has sunk into our psyche's, we simply have not understood the implication. I don't think life can explain itself because life is based on luck, on an accident, which as such does not submit to an answer.
I'm thinking that DNA is the current flavour of formal causes. Do you have a different candidate?
Yes, DNA is the canonical example of formal cause or top-down constraint here. So my position - the semiotic one - is about generalising that.
Thus I recognise a major discontinuity in nature, as well as an underlying continuity, when it comes to telos.
Life and mind are different in that they have the memory mechanisms to encode the information that constrains their material dynamics. Organisms are different in that they have autonomy and what we would mean by true purpose. Physical systems only have tendencies or propensities as they reflect the information that is encoded externally in their environments.
So I am not arguing anything mystical.
My response to the OP quotes was that they looked to get things the wrong way round. The material world is already reasonable or intelligible because its dynamism is formed or shaped by constraints. Life and mind are just the same story, with the twist that organisms can remember habits of constraint and so start to act from their own stored context of goals, purposes and reasons.
I lean toward regarding the "mystery" as an artifact of a certain kind of thinking.
But the “how” of the least action principle is an important question to tackle if you are interested in developing new physics.
Unlike a particular or accidental mystery - like perhaps the glass of water on your desk - it is a general or universal level mystery. If you want an emergent or thermal model of time, for instance, then the metaphysical issues raised by the principle of least action are at the centre of that.
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 29, 2018 at 02:57#1746360 likes
Here's the thing: the tree has no eyes. It has no mind. It cannot have any kind of conception of itself - I don't even know if "itself" is right. It has no space or time. It reacts to things according to its DNA and it also does things. I imagine that its reactions are a complete description of its experiences - experiences that are neither more nor less than signals in transit through the body of the tree.
What the tree is doing is not properly described by "reaction". The tree is growing, and growing is not reacting. One is goal oriented activity, the other is not.
Agreed! But that is just the failure of language to accommodate the tree's living. It - the tree - doesn't follow; it doesn't go. It just is, from moment to moment.
Nor is it correct to say that the tree "just is", because it is always active, growing, producing leaves, photosynthesizing, loosing leaves, producing flowers, producing seeds, etc..
I point out to you that there is a difference, I think a fundamental difference, between a living, growing, possibly beautiful and inspirational, tree and the pile of firewood it could be. It cannot be both. You appear to deny that. Please make clear how I could come and take ax to your tree and reduce it to firewood, and it is still your growing, living tree. If you're playing word games, I'm not interested.
All right, now you given me the reason which I asked for. Now I can agree with you that there is a difference between knowing the thing as "tree", and knowing it as "firewood". You've disclosed that "tree" refers to a living growing thing, whereas "firewood" refers to an inanimate thing to be burned. Now you've given me an acceptable principle of differentiation, one is alive, the other is not. I would say that your argument is that to know the tree as a living thing is to have a better knowledge of it than to know it as an inanimate thing, and I agree. Do you agree with me, that we ought to have a certain respect for living things which we do not owe to inanimate things, we being within the class of living things ourslves?
The problem with your argument is that a living tree is not merely firewood and in fact is not even suitable in its present green condition to serve as firewood. It is therefore highly implausible that anyone would have seen a tree to be nothing more than firewood.
OK, if your point is like tim's, that the "tree" is alive, and the "firewood" is not, then I agree with you. As I said, to make this differentiation requires a further reason, and you have given it by distinguishing the one as being alive, and the other as not. Now the question is how does this differentiation qualify as knowledge? On what principle does the distinction between a living thing and an inanimate thing, i.e. being able to say that the tree is alive and the firewood is not alive, qualify as knowing something? Unless this distinction can be justified, then it is just another case of an arbitrary determination to say that one is alive and the other is not.
The question then becomes, is there any way to hear - discern in some way - what arborism might be saying, expressing it in tree terms?
What it is definitely saying is that trees have a metaphorical ‘point of view’ which is a literal awareness of other, and that there therefore is something it is like to be a tree. But your hypothesis is maybe putting the cart before the horse. We’re yet working on establishing that trees can sense things.
From your reference: "The term was introduced in 1972 by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela to define the self-maintaining chemistry of living cells." What has this to do with mind?
The connection can be found here and here within the article I’ve linked to. One doesn’t need to read Thompson’s book to get its basic meaning—it's entitled Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Although it’s a very interesting book to read, if one holds an interest for the topic(s).
I’ll do my best to address the rest after you answer these three questions I previously asked which address the very issues you’ve specified:
javra:Since it’s the capacity to sense—regardless of what and of means—which defines a sentient being as such, are you arguing that trees cannot sense either gravity or sunlight?
[…]
Addressed differently, what set of processes differentiates trees from rocks if not awareness conjoined with goal-striving being found in the former but not the latter? And if trees are to be indistinguishable from rocks in being solely governed by entropy, then on what grounds does one argue that trees are lifeforms rather than inanimate matter?
Notice I’m not speculating on what it’s like to be a tree (e.g., we obviously hold no conceptualization of what it could be to flourish only when other creatures eat our body parts so as to spread our zygotes about in order that they might grow—animals eat fruit to spread the tree’s seeds about when addressing the function/purpose of fruit). Rather, I’m attempting to rationally argue that trees are sentient beings by virtue of being living things. Or at least attempting to figure out how it could rationally be supported that trees are not sentient.
For me poetry is a kind of reason, so we may be operating with different conceptions. I would say that poetry is as much from the trees as it is from the human. The reasons of things are intrinsic to the things; I don't think of them as arbitrary human fabrications.
All living systems display homeostasis, which non-living systems do not.
I hear you, but that really doesn't say very much. And, it is a bit of a deceptive principle, perhaps an oversimplification, because we need to inquiry as to what is the purpose, or the reason for this homeostasis. Then we see that living things grow, multiply, and carry out activities in the world, so the concept of "homeostasis" does not properly represent what the living system is doing. Despite the fact that we say "all living systems display homeostasis", it is not a fact that the concept of "homeostasis" displays what the living system is doing.
It’s more that he thinks that what passes for philosophy in modern culture is superficial.
Well neither he nor you are likely to gain more than a superficial understanding of modern philosophy if you are disinclined to study it adequately on account of a pre-judgement that it is superficial. This is a really good example of putting the cart before the horse.
Then we see that living things grow, multiply, and carry out activities in the world, so the concept of "homeostasis" does not properly represent what the living system is doing.
It’s only a marker for the key difference between living systems and minerals. Homeostasis is a chraracteristic of even the simplest organic forms but is absent from the most complex inorganic forms.
—
I know that one of the books Apokrisis mentions from time to time on the question of the nature of life is a book by the name of ‘Life Itself’ by Robert Rosen which I understand is a well-regarded book. As it is rather a specialised biology text, I am not intending to read it, but it might be of interest to others here. There’s a pretty detailed review here which list some of Rosen’s philosophical premisses, a key one being his resistance to mechanistic reductionism.
Well neither [Maritain] nor you are likely to gain more than a superficial understanding of modern philosophy if you are disinclined to study it adequately on account of a pre-judgement that it is superficial. This is a really good example of putting the cart before the horse.
Maritain’s understanding of modern philosophy is not at all superficial. He was very highly regarded in both the Continental and American academies and there are still active Maritain centres in many countries. There are many aspects of his style that I don’t care for [and I’m emphatically not a Catholic], but the reason I cite him in respect of the question of ‘the limits of reason’ is because of his thorough grasp of the relationship between reason, science, faith, philosophy, and religion. I’m working my way through his book The Degrees of Knowledge, which is a challenging text, but one of the only current books that retains the idea of an ‘hierarchy of understanding’. [Actually the modern Catholic intellectuals, which include him, Pierre Duhem, Stanley Jaki and Stephen M. Barr, have a philosophically profound understanding of such questions, in my view, because they’re not tied to Biblical literalism of American Protestantism and can therefore evaluate the science purely in its own terms, and also because of the heritage of Thomism.]
I find that empirical presuppositions have so totally soaked into the cultural atmosphere that most people reflect them without even being aware that this is what they’re doing; they’re the air we breathe. That is why the particular lecture I mentioned, The Cultural Impact of Empiricism is worth a read. I know you’re most likely not to agree with it, but it provides a concise statement of the shortcomings of empiricism as philosophy.
I have read Maritain's Introduction to Philosophy and I have had The Degrees of Knowledge on my shelves for many years, but have only dipped into it on account of being put off by what I see as a simplistic adherence to a notion of intellectual intuition that he uses as a foundation to support his arguments against the Moderns (including Kant, who famously denied intellectual intuition).
This idea that is foundational in Maritain, that the intellectual intuition of being is a direct seeing that is superior to any discursive reasoning is an assumption that cannot cogently be argued for, and can be, in the last analysis, nothing more than purely a matter of faith. I don't believe that good philosophy can rightly be founded on a such a simplistic faith (if anywhere, it is perhaps more appropriate to theology).
Maritain's rejections of modern philosophy are based on this simplistic faith in intellectual intuition as far as I can see: he simply thinks that Kant, Hegel, Bergson, Heidegger and so on, just didn't really get it. If you want to read a much more profound Catholic thinker who incorporates modern philosophy and phenomenology into his own systematic thought, try Bernard Lonergan's Insight.(The Degrees of Knowledge appears to be somewhat meandering to me, so I wouldn't waste my time).
As you probably know, I am no materialist, at least in any 'naive' sense, since I think the whole matter/ mind problem is misconceived. I have the intuition that it may take centuries of deep, complex philosophical thought with the help of good science (if humanity lasts long enough) to untangle the knots of common-sense human confusion around this issue.
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 29, 2018 at 23:12#1747560 likes
It’s only a marker for the key difference between living systems and minerals. Homeostasis is a chraracteristic of even the simplest organic forms but is absent from the most complex inorganic forms.
My opinion, as I stated, is that "homeostasis" is a false representation of what these living systems are doing. Homeostasis implies equilibrium, but the living systems are growing and reproducing. Growing and reproducing, which is what living beings do, cannot be represented as homeostasis which is a form of equilibrium.
I know that one of the books Apokrisis mentions from time to time on the question of the nature of life is a book by the name of ‘Life Itself’ by Robert Rosen which I understand is a well-regarded book. As it is rather a specialised biology text, I am not intending to read it, but it might be of interest to others here. There’s a pretty detailed review here which list some of Rosen’s philosophical premisses, a key one being his resistance to mechanistic reductionism.
I do not know Rosen very well at all, but I know that apokrisis argues to dissolve the distinction between living and non-living systems. From what I've read, Rosen argues to maintain a distinction between living systems (as anticipatory systems) and inanimate systems, by describing living systems according to function rather than by describing them as material activity. So although apokrisis may mention Rosen, I don't think that apokrisis has respect for Rosen's principles.
I am aware of Lonergan but he's another philosopher who would take a great deal of time to study. (And Lonergan and Maritain are both categorised under the same heading in Wikipedia.) But I visit the Lonergan.org site from time to time and read some of the posts. Again, I notice that Catholic philosophers distinguish between reality/being/existence which is central to my interests (e.g. here.)
This idea that is foundational in Maritain, that the intellectual intuition of being is a direct seeing that is superior to any discursive reasoning is an assumption that cannot cogently be argued for, and can be, in the last analysis, nothing more than purely a matter of faith
I don't agree at all. I think 'the intuition of being' is understood as a genuine understanding or form of knowledge. (I discovered Maritain through a book I got at Adyar ages ago, God, Zen and the Intuition of Being, James Arraj, which compares the 'intuition of being' to satori in Zen Buddhism.) So, in the absence of having such an insight, it might be a matter of faith that there are such insights. But it certainly isn't fideistic.
I have the intuition that it may take centuries of deep, complex philosophical thought
Having dispensed with all the centuries of deep, complex philosophical thought that preceded us, it probably will - although, what with climate change and over-population, we're probably not going to have it.
I don't agree at all. I think 'the intuition of being' is understood as a genuine understanding or form of knowledge.
Yes, of course it is so understood by Maritain and possibly by Zen adherents, but the point is that the belief that what is experienced in such states yields actual knowledge about the metaphysical nature of reality must still, in the final analysis, be just that; a belief, a matter of faith. And i am not saying there is anything wrong with that, but it has no place in philosophy, since it is subjective or at best intersubjective as culturally mediated, and hence not truly universal in its scope.
I know very well those states, having experienced them myself, both during my 18 year period of daily meditation practice and through the use of hallucinogens. I have known that sense of direct knowing, but the question always remains as to what it means, what is its philosophical significance. Think of the differences between Gautama's and Jesus' insights into the nature of reality, of God, of the afterlife, and so on.
Having dispensed with all the centuries of deep, complex philosophical thought that preceded us, it probably will - although, what with climate change and over-population, we're probably not going to have it.
Contrary to your viewpoint here, Lonergan embraced modernity, and saw the inadequacy in ancient philosophy, a fact to which this quote from the SEP entry on Lonergan attests:
Lonergan aimed to clarify what occurs in any discipline - science, math, historiography, art, literature, philosophy, theology, or ethics. The need for clarification about methods has been growing over the last few centuries as the world has turned from static mentalities and routines to the ongoing management of change. Modern languages, modern architecture, modern art, modern science, modern education, modern medicine, modern law, modern economics, the modern idea of history and the modern idea of philosophy all are based on the notion of ongoing creativity. Where older philosophies sought to understand unchanging essentials, logic and law were the rule. With the emergence of modernity, philosophies have turned to understanding the innate methods of mind by which scientists and scholars discover what they do not yet know and create what does not yet exist.
For Lonergan metaphysics must be based upon phenomenology and epistemology; whereas for Maritain phenomenology and epistemology shall be judged through the lens of a purely presumptive absolutist metaphysics. This is backward looking. All those "centuries of deep, complex philosophical thought that preceded us" were practised in the absence of modern scientific knowledge; so we are in a totally different position than the ancients were: we cannot afford to ignore science, even though it obviously cannot subsume philosophy and the humanities and supply all the answers.
So you keep saying, but you invariably take issue with every counter-materialist argument I try and come up with.
That's because I think your "counter materialist arguments" are mostly based on the very misconceptions and common-sense confusions I referred to earlier. And that, along with a deeply held preferential bias.
Homeostasis implies equilibrium, but the living systems are growing and reproducing. Growing and reproducing, which is what living beings do, cannot be represented as homeostasis which is a form of equilibrium.
Life is managed instability. So homeostasis is central to that. The central problem is not about how to grow or how to fragment. It is about how to hold together in controlled fashion.
From what I've read, Rosen argues to maintain a distinction between living systems (as anticipatory systems) and inanimate systems, by describing living systems according to function rather than by describing them as material activity.
Of course I make the same semiotic distinction. And note how it is functionality that is then the basis of any deeper underlying continuity. The telos they have in common is entropy dissipation.
Life is managed instability. So homeostasis is central to that.
What is central to homeostasis is stability. So if life is instability, whether that instability is managed or not, this excludes homeostasis, as instability excludes stability. That's the problem with "homeostasis", it really doesn't describe life.
If by sentient you mean "can sense," then yes. Some definitions of sentience go beyond that. Beyond sensing, I'm agnostic. More accurately, skeptic. I doubt, but I hold judgment in reserve. The problem is that the areas beyond sensing are not here well-defined for our purposes, and not anywhere well-defined, that I can find. It seems to imply human-like consciousness. If there's such a thing as plant consciousness, I'd like to know about it.
Unfortunately, I’m not clear on what the “yes” answers when taken in context of the paragraph. “Yes” that trees cannot sense gravity and sunlight? From the paragraph in total it might be a “yes” that trees can sense these things.
Two things I can think of that are minimal life functions are using fuel to create energy, and reproducing.
Despite teleology being deemed erroneous by the prevailing materialist metaphysics of the day, you’ll notice that in our mode of thinking teleology will be intrinsic to both aspects you address: something being done for the purpose of some given X; e.g. “using fuel” for the purpose of (i.e., because of the need of) “creating energy”, or “reproducing” for the purpose of (as one example) “preserving one’s own identity”. In both examples, the latter is the telos to the former activity.
This cannot be said of entropic givens governed by efficient causation; e.g. the billiard ball moved left when hit on the right by the cue for the purpose of [?] … It doesn’t work. Well, with the one single exception of “for the purpose of following paths of least resistance toward absolute entropy”—but this purpose would be universal to all entropic givens, and so can be easily ignored in favor of the efficient causation which is specific to givens (e.g., the billiard ball moved the way it did because it was hit by the cue).
Start with your understanding of sentience. It's neither argument nor instructive if you beg the question with a fortuitous definition.
By sentience I merely mean “the capacity to sense things” or, as is stated in the first part of Wiktionary’s first definition, “experiencing sensations”. There is no other word for this property—and, although the word can be anthropocentrically addressed, we already hold the word “sapience” for humans … as it is indirectly used in “Homo Sapiens”.
Sensations, or the experience of things sensed, will hold a valence that is either positive, negative, or else is an ambivalence (as here used, neither positive nor negative but somewhere in-between; e.g., indifference or uncertainty). It is valence that propels actions and reactions in relation to stimuli. Roots, for example, hold a positive valence toward gravity—gravity being something that the tree senses (that stimulates it and is therefore a stimuli for the tree).
How much of this do we agree upon? While there can be more to say, if there is little agreement so far the rest will likely not be meaningful.
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 30, 2018 at 01:07#1747740 likes
It is homeostasis that is the process "excluding" instability and thus creating - dynamical - stability.
You said "life is managed instability". If homeostasis excludes instability, then it excludes life if life is managed instability. Either life is not managed instability, or it is not homeostatic. Which do you believe?
You said "life is managed instability". If homeostasis excludes instability, then it excludes life if life is managed instability. Either life is not managed instability, or it is not homeostatic. Which do you believe?
I love your difficulty with simple sentences.
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 30, 2018 at 01:34#1747760 likes
Reply to apokrisis
It's blatant contradiction that I have difficulty with. You would too if you were a disciplined philosopher. Instead, you make contradictory statements, and then rather than trying to explain yourself you pretend to be bewildered at how it could be difficult for me to understand such contradictions.
I see that you have removed your comment that it might be possible that they see something I don't. Perhaps they may, perhaps they may not, but in any case if they do think they see something I do not, and they purport to be doing philosophy, then they should be able to say what that "something" is, otherwise if they were to claim that without backing it up, it is not philosophy they are practising, but pointless, and indeed empty, one-upmanship.
(Already wrote this darn thing. So I'll post it despite Apo having already answered.)
Hey, for my part, the philosophical problem with homeostasis you address is the same problem we hold for the continuity of an ever changing self. There is some organic structure which remains relatively stable over time—be it organism, somatic cell, or something else—by means of self-regulating an internal equilibrium of things (such as temperature in the case of mammals—but the list can be very long) despite in some ways always changing both internally and as an overall organic structure—and this in relation to an ever changing environment it is situated within and to which it acclimates. This philosophical topic of homeostasis can get into the metaphysics of identity given a world of change, can be addressed by top-down and bottom-up causal processes, and—considering the self-regulation involved—is an unique attribute of living things (to me, an inherent part of the thread's theme regarding reason and life).
tim wood:It always seems that life is hard to define with respect to minimal criteria.
We've been through this before in the "What is life?" thread.
Life: The condition extending from cell division to death, characterised by the ability to metabolise nutrients.
Artificial Life: The artificial condition extending from cell division to death, characterised by the ability to metabolise nutrients.
Natural Life: The natural condition extending from cell division to death, characterised by the ability to metabolise nutrients, respond to stimuli, mature, and adapt to the environment.
Human Life: The natural condition extending from fertilisation to death, characterised by the ability to metabolise nutrients, sense and respond to stimuli, be aware, mature physically and mentally, reproduce, and adapt to the environment.
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 30, 2018 at 11:38#1748380 likes
Ever ridden a bike? Is there no homeostatic balance involved in managing its instability?
If stability is the goal, and it is achieved, then instability has been removed. If it is a case of managing instability, then stability is never achieved, nor is stability intended, because instability is required for the desired movements.
In living systems, is it the case that instability is managed, and therefore utilized toward achieving various goals, or is it the case that stability is the goal? Teleologically there is big difference between describing life in terms of stability (homeostasis), and in terms of managed stability. Homeostasis assumes that stability is the goal, the end, whereas "managed instability" leaves the goal, or end, as undetermined. With "managed instability" we remove the implied goal of "stability", to describe life in a more realistic way. But then we leave unanswered the question of the goal "instability is managed toward what end?". To determine this intent we must ask, what is doing the managing, because this is how we proceed toward determining intent, by identifying and understanding the agent.
Adult male cow manure. It refers to a stable balance. The balance is the goal that the system recovers to after perturbations or excursions.
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 30, 2018 at 12:25#1748420 likes
Reply to apokrisis
Right, that's what I said, in homeostasis stability is the goal. There's no adult male cow manure here. Now, let's proceed to discuss "managing instability". Stability is not the goal here, because instability is required as the thing to be managed. Do you agree? If stability is achieved then there is no more instability to be managed. Do you agree?
What I read in your post is a statement of your beliefs sans justification for them. It bares notice that the same argument for “chemical interactions via efficient causation devoid of something experiencing” can just as easily be applied to all life, humans included. It’s the basic stance of many physicalists, including Dennett, replete with an illusion of human consciousness. This is where the heavy-duty metaphysical arguments are needed, or so I’ve always thought. But that’s not what this thread is about.
Still, if it is as you believe, then there is nothing regarding life that is not thoroughly within the realm of a strictly efficient-causation-grounded reasoning.
OK. It turns out that your beliefs conform to a causally deterministic physicalism. My own do not—and, as with the physicalist, I find a dualistic metaphysical divide between the processes of human life and those of lesser lifeforms untenable. Yet since this is a difference of metaphysical views concerning causal mechanisms—one which you don’t appear interested in arguing for via justifications—I personally don’t find anything to further debate in this thread.
To say life is managed instability is to explain the nature of the connection between matter and symbol, or metabolism and replication.
The usual bottom-up view of causation presumes life needs stable material foundations. It builds itself up from concrete parts.
However the reason why the symbol part of the equation - the stuff like the genetic memory that can encode constraints - can actually work is that it acts to regulate the unstable. If the physics has rigid stability, how could information push it in any direction? But if the physics is balanced on an instability, a point of bifurcation, then it is like a switch that can be tipped by the barest nudge.
So that is how semiotic control can arise. That is how symbols can control states of matter. The matter has to be in a state that is inherently unstable and hence able to be nudged in a direction that is some higher level informational choice.
That is the trick of life. It is the combination of information and matter, a system able to be directed with a purpose because the matter is poised to be tipped and has the least amount of telos concerning its actual state as is possible.
Stable matter knows what it wants to be. It is deterministic. But instability is freedom just begging to be harnessed. It solves the mystery of how symbols could affect the actions of anything.
And how life goes is how mind goes. The same applies when it comes to closing the explanatory gap between matter and symbol there.
Without pattern no sign, without sign no pattern replication, without pattern replication no stability (regulated instability), without instability no change, without change no pattern.
Do you think that plant life is representative of all forms of life, or that there might be attributes and characteristics that animals and humans that trees don't.
The same applies when it comes to closing the explanatory gap between matter and symbol there.
I generally agree with your analysis, but the issue that I have is with the idea that mind is the output or consequence of fundamentally physical processes.
The mainstream neo-darwinian view is that life began in the apocryphal 'warm pond' by some as-yet undetermined process involving some combination of heat, pressure, and complex chemistry. It somehow reaches the threshold of being self-sustaining (which, I believe, is the subject of books such as Life's Ratchet.)
After this point, the Darwinian algorithm kicks in, and evolution proper begins. Over vast aeons of time, living forms evolve to the point of self-awareness and language use.
However, this still does seem a generally physicalist account, in that it seems to assume that the biochemical gives rise to, or is prior to, the symbolic - that the ability to speak and abstract is itself the product of biochemistry. So I don't see how here the distinction between information and matter is really maintained - the former is simply an outcome of the latter.
I generally agree with your analysis, but the issue that I have is with the idea that mind is the output or consequence of fundamentally physical processes
But aren’t I saying the process is fundamentally informational, as well? And that the source of the stably persisting identity of a mindful, purposeful, organism is to be found nowhere in the matter of which it is composed?
So this is a dualism without the causal problems. This is a dualism where the complementary nature of stabilising ideas and labile hardware gets rid of the usual “dead matter” descriptions of life and mind.
The mainstream neo-darwinian view is that life began in the apocryphal 'warm pond' by some as-yet undetermined process involving some combination of heat, pressure, and complex chemistry
That is old hat now. The other really good new popularisation is Nick Lane’s The Vital Question which shows how life must have started around some active chemical flow. Luke warm alkaline ocean vents are a good candidate.
So the problem with a warm pond is that it stabilises - goes to equilibrium - very quickly. But a sea vent is a themal/chemical flow. It is an active instability. And Lane makes the argument for how life first arose as a managing force in that kind of scenario.
However, this still does seem a generally physicalist account, in that it seems to assume that the biochemical gives rise to, or is prior to, the symbolic - that the ability to speak and abstract is itself the product of biochemistry. So I don't see how here the distinction between information and matter is really maintained - the former is simply an outcome of the latter.
Well it ain’t a generally material account if it says that symbols or information are nature’s other aspect. So it may be generally physicalist, but it is a semiotic physicalism. It is a full four causes physicalism. And that is hardly a regular notion of physicalism - for the guy in the street anyway. Actual physics has already jumped on the information theoretic/dissipative structure bandwagon and so is cool with this paradigm.
What, here, do I have to justify? I think you want to expand this list into areas where, if you make a claim, it's you who have to justify it.
In the list you’ve provided, the need for justification would apply to (4). You state as fact that telos is “simply abstract fiction” when applied to trees. If this proposition is true, what is its justification? Can you justify it by any other means than the supposition of a causally deterministic physicalism fully composed of infinite chains of efficient causation?
One should keep in mind that awareness of other and its processes is not located within something physical, like in a pineal gland when it comes to vertebrates. Awareness is a gestalt form that is—I’ll say “fully correlated” to keep the causal process as ambiguous as possible—fully correlated with its substrata of physical information. This applies to living humans—at least when not addressing eliminativism. On what rational grounds would it not also apply to living dogs, insects, nematodes, sponges, fungi, plants, and prokaryotes?
I’ve done my best to try to introduce arguments for telos to you—this in a longwinded post that someone hereabouts bothered to write and to post to you. Its introductory arguments have been wholly ignored as though never posted, and I don’t like repeating arguments that then go unaddressed.
I’ve also warned against anthropocentric mindsets when it comes to awareness and goal-seeking. But your arguments keep coming back around to anthropocentric concepts of each, and this without bothering to enquire into what non-anthropocentric aspects of these would be. Awareness of other is not necessarily something visual, nor something contingent on the presence of a skull, nor something one must be capable of thinking about. Goal-searching does not need to be about consciously formulating a plan and then setting out to achieve it; it is often enacted instinctively even in us self-aware humans. We ourselves are aware of gravity via our vestibular ducts that facilitate balance—and most often are not conscious of it. And this only one example. We ourselves do things essential to the purpose/goal of sustaining life—from our breathing and blinking to our drive to eliminate wastes when present—without a prevailing conscious apprehension of purpose in so doing. Nevertheless, we are aware of gravity and we do breath so as to facilitate the cellular respiration required for the metabolism of our bodies’ individual cells.
I’m not looking for bickering. From the sum of our previous posts, however, it appears to me that we’ve been talking past each other. It happens sometimes, but there's not much point to further debate when it does. I’m more than OK with currently letting things be as they are.
Metaphysician UndercoverApril 30, 2018 at 23:55#1749610 likes
However the reason why the symbol part of the equation - the stuff like the genetic memory that can encode constraints - can actually work is that it acts to regulate the unstable. If the physics has rigid stability, how could information push it in any direction? But if the physics is balanced on an instability, a point of bifurcation, then it is like a switch that can be tipped by the barest nudge.
So that is how semiotic control can arise. That is how symbols can control states of matter. The matter has to be in a state that is inherently unstable and hence able to be nudged in a direction that is some higher level informational choice.
That is the trick of life. It is the combination of information and matter, a system able to be directed with a purpose because the matter is poised to be tipped and has the least amount of telos concerning its actual state as is possible.
Stable matter knows what it wants to be. It is deterministic. But instability is freedom just begging to be harnessed. It solves the mystery of how symbols could affect the actions of anything.
And how life goes is how mind goes. The same applies when it comes to closing the explanatory gap between matter and symbol there.
Right, that's why homeostasis, and its assumed goal of "stability" is an inappropriate description of living systems. The systems do not have stability as a goal at all, because stability would rob them of the capacity to do things. As you say "the matter has to be in a state that is inherently unstable". Why do you find it so difficult to agree with me, even when you are saying the same thing anyway?
Theories of homeostasis dictate that living systems have the goal of setting up stable equilibriums, that's how the living system is described, as a stable equilibrium. But what you have just said is completely opposed to this idea, the living systems are setting up unstable material conditions, not stable conditions.
Theories of homeostasis dictate that living systems have the goal of setting up stable equilibriums, that's how the living system is described, as a stable equilibrium. But what you have just said is completely opposed to this idea, the living systems are setting up unstable material conditions, not stable conditions.
What don't you get about the difference between the general and the particular?
An organism must be able to both persist and to adapt. In the long run, it must be stably centred or balanced - hence homeostasis. In the short run, it must be able to adjust that general balance in locally useful ways.
The child first learns to stay upright on a bike. Then it learns to lean into corners.
Actually this is more an issue with novice motorcyclists or pillion passengers. It takes some persuading for newbies to let their bodies "fall over" with the bike rather than keep nicely upright on a sharp bend.
So what you miss here is that the "contradiction" is the point. As usual, we are talking about the symmetry-breaking logic of a dichotomy. You need contrasting limits to allow for the further thing of hierarchical organisation.
An organism has autonomy because it can make an active distinction between its long-term central balance and its moment-to-moment fine adjustments.
It is not my problem if your understand of biological terminology insists on a more inflexible reading - one that is either/or rather than and/both.
Metaphysician UndercoverMay 01, 2018 at 01:03#1749710 likes
An organism must be able to both persist and to adapt. In the long run, it must be stably centred or balanced - hence homeostasis. In the short run, it must be able to adjust that general balance in locally useful ways.
There is no "long run" for an organism. They are born, eat, get active, reproduce, and die. This idea that homeostasis is necessary for an organism to persist and adapt is a falsity. Individual organisms do not persist, and adaptation is the result of change, brought about through reproduction. This describes instability.
What don't you get about the difference between the general and the particular?
We are discussing particulars. If each particular displays itself as an instance of instability, then it is extremely faulty inductive reasoning to draw the conclusion that in general, these instances of instability are an example of stability.
The child first learns to stay upright on a bike. Then it learns to lean into corners.
To stay upright on a bike requires forward motion, pedaling, and this is a form of instability, not stability. The hardest part of learning to ride a bike is giving up the fear of leaving the stability of the solid ground, to propel oneself forward into a realm of instability.
An organism has autonomy because it can make an active distinction between its long-term central balance and its moment-to-moment fine adjustments.
There is no such thing as an organism's "long term central balance", that's a fiction. And to think that an organism could recognize such a thing within itself, and distinguish this from its moment to moment activities is simply nonsense. Even the most rational of living beings, the human being, with the power of self-reflection, cannot distinguish a long term central balance within oneself.
It is not my problem if your understand of biological terminology insists on a more inflexible reading - one that is either/or rather than and/both.
My training in logic has taught me that "both", when it comes to contradictory attributes for the same subject at the same time, is unacceptable. If you want to do your biology in this contradictory way, then I think that is your problem.
To stay upright on a bike requires forward motion, pedaling, and this is a form of instability, not stability.
What a horrendous self-contradiction. You claim that to be moving forward steadily is unstable? Next thing you will be claiming Newton was wrong about inertia!
What a horrendous self-contradiction. You claim that to be moving forward steadily is unstable? Next thing you will be claiming Newton was wrong about inertia!
The forward motion is dependent on the pedalling. Where does this "steadily" that you've fictitiously inserted come from?
Reply to Metaphysician Undercover Is the motion constant and long-run in terms of its direction or not? Make up your mind. Either the bicycle is going forward or it ain't. Simple logic.
As to being representative, I suppose that a life form is representative of all forms only in so far as they share similar characteristics, and in terms of those characteristics, but not beyond.
These are obvious answers, though. What are you aiming at?
You seem to have said more than once in this thread that 'the tree' is emblematic of 'living things generally' and that, as 'trees' seem to be something that might be understood in terms of molecular interactions, then so too might the doings of intentional beings such as humans. That seems to be the tendency of your thinking, anyway.
Furthermore, although Apokrisis does indeed say that his interpretation of telos
where two of those four causes are the 'formal' and 'final' causes that were found in Aristotelian philosophy, but had been missing presumed dead in the early modern biological sciences. And I, for one, am still skeptical that they can be restored to science, within the confines of an entirely physicalist understanding of biology.
You’re wanting to further engage on the issue. There’s a lot in your last post that I disagree with. I’ll take one issue at a time. We so far seem to agree that a tree can respond to stimuli. So I’ll start with this.
1) We have stimuli (which stimulate actions) on the one hand and something which is responding to it (via actions and reactions) on the other. The two—the stimulus and that which responds to it—cannot logically be identical.
Do we agree?
2) You presume that what is responding are specific parts of the tree’s DNA (which cause immediate actions on their own, to use your terminology) rather than the tree as the total metabolizing process of a multicellular organisms—a total self-regulating process that results from the set of its individual molecular subcomponents (including nucleic acids) found within its many individual cells.
Is this correct?
If (1) and (2) are deemed correct by you, please explain how DNA can respond to anything when addressed as a physical molecule operating in isolation—explaining this in manners either accordant to the empirical sciences of biology or to metaphysical logic.
Why I disagree with this just mentioned hypothesis: A living cell is negentropic, metabolizing, and homeostatic. These attributes apply to a total gestalt process that results from all molecular subcomponents interacting with each other. In rough parallel to a brain that is removed from the rest of a body being dead, a cell’s nucleus removed from the rest of the cell is non-negentropic, non-metabolizing, and non-homeostatic; i.e. non-living, and hence dead. This same attribute of nonliving is even more applicable to portions of DNA isolated from the nucleus. A tree is a multicellular organism, meaning that what is negentropic, metabolizing, and homeostatic is the gestalt process resulting from the collection of all individual tree cells simultaneously interacting with each other. Therefore, when a tree responds to stimuli, it cannot be due to some portions of its physical DNA holding immediate mechanical effects upon both the tree’s behavior and physiology. Rather it is due to the negentropic, metabolizing, homeostatic process of the tree in total—itself a gestalt, or at least collective, manifestation of the negentropic, metabolizing, homeostatic process of its individual cells (of which nucleic acids serve as only one molecular constituent of). This, in turn, entails that that which responds to stimuli is not individual portions of DNA but the negentropic, metabolizing, homeostatic process of the tree as a living multicellular organism.
If you find errors to this argument I’ve provided, either due to a disparity with the data obtained from the empirical sciences of biology or due to erroneous metaphysical logic, please inform me of what these errors are. But please ensure that these disagreements you might hold are based on facts or on logic, and not on imaginative hypotheticals.
An interesting tidbit I just haphazardly came across - this due to the wonders of directed advertising. Among all the other things that trees do, turns out trees also sleep at night … in an non-anthropocentric way.
One of the anecdotes I remember from the popular science book, Supernature, is that oysters kept in a tank in the bottom of a mine, in the middle of the continental USA, still open and close with the tides, even though they’re nowhere near the ocean. Everything in nature moves in rythm.
Reply to apokrisis
Please provide a one or two sentence definition for each of the following terms as used in your post:
1) Matter
2) Symbol
3) Encode
4) Genetic Memory
5) Information
6) Purpose
7) Stable
8) Instability
Is the motion constant and long-run in terms of its direction or not?
No of course not. How many times do have to say it? It starts with the pedaling, and may stop with the brakes at any moment, and the direction changes with the steering. There is nothing "constant and long-run" here. It's a fiction which you've made up to support homeostasis. And I really don't know why you're so bent on supporting homeostasis when you clearly prefer to describe life's systems in the more realistic terms of instability. It's as if you cannot let go of the old, outdated, demonstrably false descriptions.
What you're calling me to justify, near as I can tell, is the proposition that attributing motive, purpose, telos, to trees is at best a convenient fiction, unless it is just general and abstract terminology used to describe either reacting to stimuli or acting per DNA. The only grounds for objection are that you maintain that the tree has, possesses, exhibits motive, purpose, telos, and these not to be confused with mere response to stimuli or its DNA.
Doesn't "acting per DNA" demonstrate purpose, telos?
What, actually, has happened? The surface of the tree reacted to a high temperature.
How can you say that reactions are not purposeful? Just because they are high speed, and occur immediately after, in response to, an external action, does not suffice as an argument to exclude purpose or telos. If someone says to me "there is a bear behind you", and I react by turning around, that it is a reaction does not mean that the turning around is not purposeful.
This is susceptible of description in teleological terms, and it would be a very convenient way to describe it. But where is the mediation? What mediated What/where is the awareness? Where is any evidence that the tree did anything other than immediately react to stimuli?
The fact that we cannot draw a direct causal chain, in terms of efficient causation, from the thing which occurs, to the reaction, indicates that there is mediation, allowing for intent, telos, final cause . Some living actions and reactions are quite rapid, so we tend to think that the external occurrence "causes" the internal response, without mediation, but I don't think that this is the case. Javra argues this quite well.
Can you justify attributing awareness, mediateness, to living things that don't have the capacity?
Neither of your definitions of teleology call for "awareness". You should consider that being aware is just one type of teleological (purposeful) activity.
Or if all you mean is that the so-called behaviour serves a purpose, then it's teleological, then have at it. But I think Apokrisis correctly assesses this usage:
Or else it deflates the rather inflated notion of telos that folk have in the first place. — apokrisis
I don't see how this is the case, but apokrisis is commonly guilty over-generalizing in a fallacious way. As I said much earlier in the thread, in regard to "reason", we need to distinguish between an agent acting for a reason (purpose), having the reason or purpose for action within itself, and the reason (purpose) which we project onto a thing from outside, saying that the thing did this for this reason, or that it is good for this purpose, to us. Apokrisis continually conflates these two, and refuses to recognize a distinction between them.
It starts with the pedaling, and may stop with the brakes at any moment, and the direction changes with the steering.
So all this stopping, starting and changing. Doesn’t it seem contradictory of you to assert that the forward motion represents the instability here when that instability is what you are imposing on its ... stability.
What would be the story if you weren’t so constantly busy stopping, starting and changing?
I have a problem with "self-regulating" because it implies a self. Will you accept "internally regulated"?
Internal entails a threshold between that which is within some given and outside of this same given. Where this very given whose internal aspects are solely address is an autopoietic system resulting from the simultaneous interaction of all subcomponents, the autopoietic processes of this system is the self that is being addressed. For clarity, because autopoiesis is negentropic, metabolizing, and homeostatic, it is that which we consider to be life. In the case of a tree, the living tree as opposed to a dead structure of wood protruding out of the ground.
What do you have in mind by the term “self” that serves as metaphysical impediment to its use in the context just outlined?
So its known, the term “self” is common to biology in addressing that which pertains to a living organism (to the “self” in relation to the "non-self"); see for example Wiktionary definition of “self” #4, including its example.
In any case I still hold to the mediate/immediate distinction.
I would like for you to better spell out this distinction via causal processes. What I currently understand by it is that, from your belief system, “immediate” entails effects fully caused by efficient causation—something like billiard balls hitting each other at molecular and sub-molecular levels of reality. If my current interpretation is accurate, I as of yet do not understand what alternative causal process your belief system ascribes to “mediated” actions and reaction. Are they also fully composed of efficient causation, only that there just happens to be a medium in-between the stimuli and the outcome (with this something in-between also being a product of efficient causation)? If not, what causal mechanism other than that of efficient causation is at play in mediated reactions?
I'll also say that intra-tree communication occurs only via channels within the tree, presumably by a cell-to-cell transmission of an electro-chemical signal.
So its known, electro-chemical signals solely define neurons and, hence, the processes of nervous systems. To the best of my knowledge they are not applicable to any known plant cell(s), which is one of the reasons that plants are such alien lifeforms to us nervous system endowed lifeforms.
A collection of physical, biological, psychological or symbolic elements that creates a whole, unified concept or pattern which is other than the sum of its parts, due to the relationships between the parts (of a character, personality, entity, or being)
Where on earth do you find even a smidgen of reification in what I’ve said (here keeping things simple by only addressing gestalts)? Here; again summed up just for this purpose:
Life is a gestalt process. Any portion of the physical substrata which serves as a constituent of the gestalt process of life will be dead or dying when isolated from its interactions with all other material subcomponents from which life emerges as a gestalt process.
But in my view they are not things. They can't be dissected with a scalpel or stored in a jar.
Yes, this is one of the attributes which gestalts hold (see definition above).
Since the issue of final causes, i.e. teleology, won’t go anywhere prior to resolving the basic issue of what is doing the responding to stimuli, I won’t currently address these portions of your last post.
Metaphysician UndercoverMay 02, 2018 at 02:13#1753300 likes
I think of this set of distinctions in terms of causes, but that involves agency. Mainly, I agree. And further, I read that modern science has no use for causes, although it may still use the word for convenience. An analysis of cause, taken down to the root of it, shows an animistic bias that science has learned is illusory. It seems that between time t-1 of Cause c-1 and event E at time e-1, there is always an intermediate t-2, t-3 of intermediate causes c-2, c-3, until you arrive at simultaneity of C an E. There is no discrete agency of cause. (I'll review the argument and correct it if I've neglected a detail.)
This difficulty with "cause" is why we're better off looking for the reason for an occurrence, why it occurred, rather than its cause. The distinction I was trying to make is the difference between the reason which is internal, inherent within the thing which is acting, and the reason which is assigned to the thing from an external source.
So for example, a person works at a job, as a member of a team, working on a project. The person's reason for working, the reason inherent within the person, might be to make money, and earn a living. The reason assigned to the person from the external source, the team manager, is the function which the person plays in the project. This is an example of how very different the internal and external reason for the activity might be. From the person working's point of view the work is carried out for the purpose of earning a living, that is the reason for the activity, and from the external point of view the work is carried out for the purpose of completing the project, that is the reason for the activity. Two very different reasons for the very same activity.
The function of a thing is the reason for a thing's activity in the external sense, a purpose which is assigned to it, in relation to a larger whole. So all the components of my computer have a function, a purpose, a reason for their activities in relation to the computer itself. However, the components do not have an internal reason, like a human being does, they do not have their own reason for being there. Their reason for being there has been assigned to them. However, despite the fact that inanimate things do not display their own internal reasons, we can infer that living beings other than human beings have their own internal reasons for behaving as they do. Clearly other mammals which have brains and think have their own reasons for their actions as well. Don't you think that trees and other plants have their own reasons for their actions as well?
think the only argument - disagreement - I have lies in what I take to be a reification of motive, purpose, telos, and now gestalt. As explanatory concepts - as ideas - they're all wonderful. But in my view they are not things. They can't be dissected with a scalpel or stored in a jar.
If a thing has its own reasons, internal to it, for behaving like it does, what else can we attribute these reasons to, other than motive, purpose, or telos? Don't you recognize that not all things are physical things, capable of being cut with a scalpel, or stored in a jar? This is a fundamental principle of philosophy, to learn the distinction between material and immaterial things, as Plato said, sensible objects and intelligible objects. You can deny the reality of immaterial things, but then how do you account for your own motives, intention, and purpose, and other ideas? And once you see the need to allow for the reality of the immaterial, you'll come to realize that there's no reason to limit the existence of the immaterial to strictly within your own mind.
Plants grow around ponds. If you want to say that the plants want water, nothing wrong with that as poetical description. The trouble comes if you say that the plants actually want water. It's one thing to say they "act" like they "want' water. It's another to say they actually want water. That's the distinction I make, that I think you - and a lot of people - do not make. I assume you can make it when it's laid out like this, and I repent in sackcloth and ashes that I did not make this clearer, earlier.
This is irrational nonsense. The plants display every action necessary to demonstrate that they want water, yet for some undisclosed, and most likely irrational reason, you deny that they want water. Must they say "I want water" in order for you to know that they want water? Sorry, plants can't speak English. If a person was dying from thirst, and making noises in some foreign language, would you say that the person acts like it wants water, but it doesn't really "want" water? What kind of a nonsense argument is this? When something carries out the actions required to call it by a certain name, we call it by that name. We don't say that the thing is not "really" acting in the way determined by this name, it's just making the appropriate actions which correspond to what that name signifies, but for some unknown reason it's not "really" acting in the way signified by the name.
Metaphysician Undercover:However, despite the fact that inanimate things do not display their own internal reasons, we can infer that living beings other than human beings have their own internal reasons for behaving as they do.
Clearly other mammals which have brains and think have their own reasons for their actions as well. Don't you think that trees and other plants have their own reasons for their actions as well?
Starting with a definition of human life, I would find it difficult to extrapolate a definition of plant life and natural life using the term "awareness". Because I define human awareness in terms of human anatomy, physiology, and mental capacity (i.e., sensory stimulation/perception, interoception/sensation, and cognition). Also because my knowledge of plant (and other) biology is inadequate to the task.
A possible solution is to use the term "awareness" defined differently for each species, and avoid equivocation by stipulating types of awareness (e.g., plant awareness, animal awareness, bacteria awareness, etc.). Then use "awareness" in a definition of natural life without stipulating type.
Starting with a definition of human mind, I would find it easier to extrapolate a definition of plant life and natural life using the term "mind" instead of "awareness".
For example, abstracting "human mind" (the set of conditions experienced, and functions exercised, by a human being which produce its behaviour) to "mind" (the set of conditions experienced, and functions exercised, by an organism which produce its behaviour).
tim wood:...think the only argument - disagreement - I have lies in what I take to be a reification of motive, purpose, telos, and now gestalt. As explanatory concepts - as ideas - they're all wonderful. But in my view they are not things. They can't be dissected with a scalpel or stored in a jar.
Is your mind a thing, or immaterial, or both, or neither?
I burned my hand this morning under some hot water. My hand moved involuntarily. Later, when my toast was done, I had a choice between raspberry and blueberry jam; I chose both. The hand movement I call immediate, unmediated. The behaviour of choosing which jam, mediated.
Perhaps another way. The immediate action just happens, it couldn't be any other way. The mediate action represents a decision, and the action could have been this or that.
Yet this does not address my question of which causal mechanisms are at work. But be this as it may.
So now we’re at the apparent impasse of what life is in general. I presented this summation:
Life is a gestalt process. Any portion of the physical substrata which serves as a constituent of the gestalt process of life will be dead or dying when isolated from its interactions with all other material subcomponents from which life emerges as a gestalt process.
And instead of having this proposition regarding the existential reality at hand—that of life—replied to, you provide examples regarding human thoughts so as to evidence that gestalts are strictly products of human cognition and imagination.
I’m not, for example, addressing the concept of a table as something which is other than the sum of its conceptual parts. I’m addressing the ontic reality of life as being something that is other than the sum of its ontic parts. This too is in keeping with the definition of gestalts, which are forms (the second definition on Wiktionary) And no, to me this is not axiomatic; it is, as you say, a conclusion obtained from discernments of what is.
(BTW, other terms and positions could be used to address this same conclusion, such as holons and the position of holism; but by now I presume so doing would only needlessly complicate matters.)
You maintain that a human’s life (this being a very applicable example of a life) is not an ontically gestalt process—is not a process which is other than the sum of its parts. These following four questions might help me to better understand your worldview:
1) Is a human’s life then nothing but a product of human cognition and imagination, holding no ontic reality of its own (other than as an abstract human thought)?
2) If no, is a human’s life in your opinion then present strictly within parts of the human body—such as, for example, strictly in the body’s individual cells?
3) If no, is there an ontic distinction between a humans’ life and the same human’s total but dead corpse—this even when many of the given body’s individual cells are yet living?
4) If yes, what is the ontic distinction in your opinion between a human’s life and the same human’s life-devoid body—if not that of the human’s life being a gestalt process which vanishes when the processes of its physical substratum no longer interact in a certain way (decomposition too is a process of the physical organic substratum)?
I don’t know how these questions will come across, but our worldviews now appear too far apart for me to presume what your answers to any of these questions might be. I’d usually take it that we could agree that a human’s life cannot be dissected with a scalpel nor placed into a jar—but I’m no longer certain of even this.
Starting with a definition of human life, I would find it difficult to extrapolate a definition of plant life and natural life using the term "awareness". Because I define human awareness in terms of human anatomy, physiology, and mental capacity (i.e., sensory stimulation/perception, interoception/sensation, and cognition). Also because my knowledge of plant (and other) biology is inadequate to the task.
A possible solution is to use the term "awareness" defined differently for each species, and avoid equivocation by stipulating types of awareness (e.g., plant awareness, animal awareness, bacteria awareness, etc.). Then use "awareness" in a definition of natural life without stipulating type.
Starting with a definition of human mind, I would find it easier to extrapolate a definition of plant life and natural life using the term "mind" instead of "awareness".
For example, abstracting "human mind" (the set of conditions experienced, and functions exercised, by a human being which produce its behaviour) to "mind" (the set of conditions experienced, and functions exercised, by an organism which produce its behaviour).
I don't like "awareness", or "mind" as defining terms for life. What's wrong with "self"? Living things seem to have an inherent selfishness, whereby they separate themselves from what is other than themselves with some sort of boundary.
Metaphysician UndercoverMay 03, 2018 at 00:27#1755650 likes
Certainly plants do some things and do not do other things. I attribute to dumb instruction through DNA. Maybe that's not exactly accurate, but I'll stick with the dumb part.
Well the word "dumb" doesn't say much. If a plant does something through instruction from its own DNA, then isn't this its own reason? Why is this reason a dumb reason?
Their processes require water to operate, for the plant to remain alive. I deny they want water: they need water.
Again this doesn't make sense. You say that plants need water. And, when they are dry, they show by their actions, that they need water. But you say that they do not want water. Do you know what "want" means? Let's say, for the sake of argument, it's like desire, can you agree to that? Do you not think that the dry plants are desiring water? What about animals, other than human beings? Do they desire food, water, and sex? Why do plants not desire as well? Just because you cannot imagine what it would be like for a plant to desire doesn't mean that the plant doesn't desire; especially since the plant acts like it desires.
I'm taking "want" to be something that humans and arguably a lot of animals do. You're free to define "want" any way you please, but how can anyone understand you if you use private definitions without warning that you're doing so?
Actually, it is you who is trying to enforce odd, arbitrary restrictions on the use of terms. You suggest that human beings, and some other animals "want", while other life forms do not "want". Unless you can produce some principles for this division it is completely arbitrary, and is nothing but a display of the quirkiness of your own personality.
Please keep in mind that, so far as I am concerned, these metaphorical descriptions are fine in the right context, where they're understood as metaphor.
I'm not speaking in metaphor, I'm speaking literally. When a plant is dry, it literally wants water. It demonstrates this by its actions of extending its roots, in search of water. There is no metaphor here, it's a simple fact of life. Plants grow their roots to follow where the water is because they want water. How else can we describe this activity?
You, on the other hand want to restrict the use of "want", to some colloquialism that you are more familiar with, and any usage outside your customary vernacular, you insist is metaphor.
Example: Unicorns are not ontic—and, hence, not ontically real—despite being real as human concepts of the imagination, i.e. despite being real concepts of what could be ontic in some fictional, alternative world.
You can either like or dislike my use of the adjective “ontic” to emphasize the difference between 1) that which is in ways independent of thought and theory (that which is ontic) and 2) that which is strictly a product of the human mind's theorizing.
Yet something is to me extremely amiss with the overall replies you’ve provided to my questions.
Whatever it might be—an ongoing lack of attention to what I write, an ongoing lack of charitability, I don’t know—I’ve encountered it too often on this thread between us. We have been and continue talking past each other … And, for better or worse, I no longer hold any interest in this discussion. Goodbye for now.
Metaphysician Undercover:I don't like "awareness", or "mind" as defining terms for life. What's wrong with "self"? Living things seem to have an inherent selfishness, whereby they separate themselves from what is other than themselves with some sort of boundary.
I'm certainly open to the possibility of defining life in terms of self. Perhaps you could elaborate somewhat on your conception of self and/or provide an example of its use in a definition of life. I haven't given the notion of self much consideration outwith a sociological context, and as it pertains to experience, so I would be interested in your take on it to see if it is something I can work with. PM me if you like. Cheers.
Otherwise, I'm outta here (too much of a reality disconnect from the OP for my taste). Perhaps the apparent intransigence is down to an attempt to see the world through Heideggerian-tinted glasses. Whatever it is; good luck with it.
Despite teleology being deemed erroneous by the prevailing materialist metaphysics of the day, you’ll notice that in our mode of thinking teleology will be intrinsic to both aspects you address: something being done for the purpose of some given X; e.g. “using fuel” for the purpose of (i.e., because of the need of) “creating energy”, or “reproducing” for the purpose of (as one example) “preserving one’s own identity”. In both examples, the latter is the telos to the former activity.
An organism must be able to both persist and to adapt. In the long run, it must be stably centred or balanced - hence homeostasis. In the short run, it must be able to adjust that general balance in locally useful ways.
It can be convenient and useful to refer to trees as acting in accord with purpose, or motive, or telos, but these accounts are simply abstract fictions, there being nothing in the tree purpose or motive or telos occurs.
The above are mostly intended to be representative quotes. I think the trouble in this discussion comes from trying to fit the square peg of purpose into the round hole of benefit.
I think the trouble in this discussion comes from trying to fit the square peg of purpose into the round hole of benefit.
But why wouldn't there be a direct connection between purpose and benefit? What would a benefit-less purpose even be? What would a benefit be except that it served some purpose?
An organism must be able to both persist and to adapt. In the long run, it must be stably centred or balanced - hence homeostasis. In the short run, it must be able to adjust that general balance in locally useful ways.
I think that really captures something nicely: I picture the difference between a boulder rolling down a hill at a fallen tree and a deer running down a hill at a fallen tree: the boulder just plows into it, but the deer leaps gracefully over it.
Think of the different ways of drinking water:
1. A towel placed on a spill will "drink" the water, but this is a purely mechanical effect. The towel has no agency here; it's not "doing" anything. Absorbing spills is the function of the towel, the reason for which it exists, the use to which it is put, and that's one sense in which the word "purpose" is used. But the towel absorbing water is not intentional or purposeful on the part of the towel. And the water is not of benefit to the towel.
2. A deer seeks out water periodically because water is of benefit to the deer. Is this intentional, purposeful behavior? Well, the actions the deer takes to get water might be, might not -- I don't know much about the inner life of deer. Trees send roots into the soil because water is of benefit to trees, and I have no reason to think trees have inner lives. The mechanical process by which roots take up water is probably not much different from the towel's.
3. We drink water much as deer and trees and towels, but we can also choose not to, for any number of reasons. When we do so, we have agency, our action is intentional and purposeful, but it is not our purposefulness that makes water have benefit for us.
One of the things I learned from our last conversation about purpose is that an action can be construed as serving any number of purposes, and that the goals actions serve can also in turn be construed as means for reaching other goals. Purpose is a never-ending hall of mirrors.
What I want to do here with "benefit" is cut that off: water is of benefit to the tree as a tree, for it to persist, as you said, as a tree, doing whatever it is trees do, whatever it would make sense for trees to think and talk about if they thought and talked. The towel is a particular, but it is not an individual, and so nothing can be of benefit to the towel. Purpose in the sense of function, you can find all over the place; purpose in the other sense, I think only makes sense for us and whatever critters have inner lives enough like ours.
It should be clear by now that I mostly mean benefit as benefit-to-the-organism whose behavior we're looking at. So I'm happy allowing humans, for instance, to have purposes that do not benefit them. Guy saves a guy at the cost of his own life -- I don't need to concoct some benefit to him to "explain" that. It's just what he chose to do.
What would a benefit be except that it served some purpose?
See that's where I think there's just too much slippage between the senses of "purpose". Water benefits trees, it has a use within a tree, serves a purpose -- but we're just talking functionally here. There's nothing like intentional behavior in the water or in the tree, so I don't see any purpose in that sense.
Reply to Srap Tasmaner Again, I would take the baseline position that mind, life and physics have purpose or finality in this specific deflationary sense - a sequence of distinctions that reflects the underlying levels of semiotic mechanism in play.
So finality is the nested hierarchy of {propensities {functions {purposes}}}. Or to use the jargon, {teleomaty {teleonomy {teleology}}}.
And that reflects broadly physics with its information-constrained tendencies, biology with its genetically-constrained functionalities, and humans with their culturally or linguistically constrained purposes.
The notion of physical telos is the most alien to the usual reductionist way of view causality. But as I say, physics has to smuggle in the notion of generalised tendencies. The second law of thermodynamics especially stands for a universal and irreversible direction for change. Everything must entropify.
And then an informational view of physics - one where holographic event horizons are the "living" context that shape local events - is spelling that out in terms of spatiotemporal structure. You are getting thermal models of time and holographic models of gravity from applying this kind of constraints-based thinking.
1. A towel placed on a spill will "drink" the water, but this is a purely mechanical effect.
Alarm bells should go off any time your philosophy starts to employ human-made objects as putative examples of natural systems. Chairs, doors, towels and all those kinds of things are artificial and unnatural in exactly the way that a reductionist and mechanical metaphysics describes. They are material objects denuded of any purpose or self-organising form.
And that is because it is us, their users, who want to be in complete control of any form or function that is involved in their existence. They are our instruments and the best instruments are the ones with no minds, no degrees of freedom, of their own. A machine is a system so mechanically constrained that it has no possible choice about what to do. And so does nothing until we inject it with our purposes - like using a towel to mop up a spill.
So yes. The towel acts completely mechanically. That is how we designed it and how we employ it. It is useful to us to the degree it has no use to itself. It is a passive tool of our desires. We get complete choice. The towel could be twisted into a hat or used to flick an arse. And it can't protest that that is outside its proper job description.
So you have picked a good example of an inanimate and unnatural object - one that lacks even the ordinary tendencies of normal physical objects. A river or any other natural feature is doing a job - entropifying. Give a towel a thousand years in a cupboard and it may not even have decayed appreciably. Same with a chair or door. These are machines in that they lack inherent purpose, thus allowing us to supply any purpose they could possibly have.
2. A deer seeks out water periodically because water is of benefit to the deer. Is this intentional, purposeful behavior?
Of course. The deer has to feel thirsty, remember where the water might be, make decisions about how safe the water hole is.
At a biological function level, there is a reason for systems for maintaining a state of hydration. Then at a mental level, the deer is modelling the world in terms of its physical propensities (the tendency for a waterhole to be in some place) and its organismic purposes (the desires of the hungry wolves that might lurk in the bushes). The full range of telos - from the physical likelihood of boulders rumbling down slopes to out-guessing other minds - is part of the way the deer sees its world.
The mechanical process by which roots take up water is probably not much different from the towel's.
Except trees grow roots in the direction of the moisture they seek. It is mindful or purposeful behaviour in that they can detect and follow gradients of what they need.
And why do we make towels from cotton? Why is the best insulation wool or duck down? Is there some functionality in the form of the materials that you are overlooking? Do they work "mechanically" because evolution found some kind of optimal solution to a purpose it had?
So a bit of googling finds....
...Cotton is pure cellulose, a naturally occurring polymer. Cellulose is a carbohydrate, and the molecule is a long chain of glucose (sugar) molecules. If you look at the structure of a cellulose molecule you can see the OH groups that are on the outer edge. These negatively charged groups attract water molecules and make cellulose and cotton absorb water well. Cotton can absorb about 25 times its weight in water. Chemists refer to substances like cotton as hydrophilic, which means that they attract water molecules.
The nylon molecule, too, has a great number of places where it can form bonds with water molecules, but not as many places as the cotton molecule. Nylon absorbs water, but not nearly as much as cotton. It only absorbs about 10 percent of its weight in water.
...There are two primary reasons: structure and chemistry. First, the easier-to-explain structure. A cotton fiber is like a tiny tube formed of six different concentric layers (see diagram). As individual cotton fibers grow on the plant, the inside of the “tube” is filled with living cells. Once the fiber matures and the cotton boll opens up to reveal its puffy white contents, these cells dry up and the fiber partially collapses, leaving behind a hollow bean-shaped canal, or “lumen” (see the ultra-magnified image below). This empty space holds lots of water.
Lumens also help provide cotton with its exceptional “wicking” ability, drawing water up along the fibers through capillary action—like sucking on a straw. (Synthetic fibers like nylon are solid, with no internal spaces within the fiber to contain water. Whatever water is absorbed is contained on the fibers’ surfaces.) Lumens also radically increase the surface area of the fiber for water to interact with, which leads to the chemistry part of this.
So biology has in fact designed a material with just the right qualities we have in mind. And then we turn it into a "spill mopping device" that now exists completely outside the world of nature - the world of evolution and entropification.
3. We drink water much as deer and trees and towels, but we can also choose not to, for any number of reasons. When we do so, we have agency, our action is intentional and purposeful, but it is not our purposefulness that makes water have benefit for us.
Yet water has benefit to us - to the degree we might be dehydrated. Too much water is not a benefit, but lethal.
So a very elaborate hierarchy of mindfulness has evolved to keep us suitably hydrated. It starts way down at the cellular level as the same problem had to be cracked by single cell life. And the hierarchy of increasingly high level semiotic control has developed to the point that deer can worry about lurking wolves, or we humans can say no - we are thirsty, but for some reason or other (could be fasting or politeness or who knows), we decide not to. There is some other purpose we can think of that delivers some more contextual benefit (whatever that was).
There's nothing like intentional behavior in the water or in the tree, so I don't see any purpose in that sense.
Well I would say that if a tree has chemoreceptor mechanisms to direct its root growth, then that is pretty purposeful - a lowest state of mind. You could call it functional if you like. But having roots would seem the more general functional imperative. How the roots grow then becomes an expression of that intention. A choice has to be made to serve the purpose and provide an actual benefit to have those roots.
So look close enough at nature and we can see that it does have this general hierarchical story - the very one in which long-term stability becomes the basis for short-run adaptations. A general set of habits must be established that freeze an intentionality in, so that more particular states of intentionality can be formed to achieve more localised benefits.
I have to admit this language works, as a practical matter and as a shortcut for people always already aware of its shortcomings, although the number of people unaware and deceived by it seems large, even on this site! But it adds nothing to any understanding of what the tree does. This language will not do at all for any theoretical account of the tree's activity. Descriptive, metaphorical, convenient where the convenience is understood as such, sure. Adding to the confusion is stretching the metaphors to suggest that the metaphor has tecnical meaning - which of course as metaphor it cannot have.
I think that this is exactly the opposite of reality. The language of intention, with words such as "want" are appropriate for this subject. It is the designating of this as metaphor, which is driving a wedge of separation between the activities of various life forms, plants and animals, that is misleading, and given to misunderstanding. There is no scientific evidence to support such a wedge of separation, which is driven by bias and superstition, while science and evidence demonstrate a close relationship rather than a division of separation.
This is language (imo) that is on the right track. The same author (I think) remarked above that the lives of trees are alien to the lives of us and animals in general. This language starts to set out that alien nature and to give some account as to what it is and how it works.
But this is obviously false. Evolutionary theory proves that plants and animals are descendent of the same ancestry. DNA and genetics demonstrate that plants and animals are actually very closely related. To say that the lives of trees is alien to the lives of animals is simply false, unless you mean it in a sense like you would say that your life is alien to my life.
The primordial life of trees was the original topic. We never got there - or have not got there yet. Maybe it's not possible, or maybe possible only through the rigorous language of theoretical science. But certainly not possible if the only way I can understand that life is in terms of my Uncle Gilbert!
I am not arguing, that when we discuss the lives of trees, we must of necessity, use the terms of telos or intention. It is possible to discuss many aspects of living beings without using such terminology. However, if we are discussing the reasons why a particular living being, plant are whatever, acts in one way rather than in another way, then we cannot exclude the terminology of telos or intention, or even designate it as metaphorical, without justification for this exclusion.
You seem to want to make this exclusion without justification, implying that such talk is unscientific. In reality, the exclusion which you request is what is unscientific, because it is supported by nothing other than bias, while the science demonstrates that such an exclusion is uncalled for.
The primordial life of trees was the original topic. We never got there
Possibly because this is a 'philosophy forum', mainly concerned with the nature of reason and life in a philosophical sense; not a biological sciences forum, which is probably where that particular question might belong.
If you've followed this thread, you will have recognized that some folks vehemently insist that the correct understanding of plant life is to describe it in terms of human capacities and the capacities of living things that possess a considerable brain and a central nervous system
No - not ‘plant life’. The other question in the (rather complicated) OP was a much broader one about the relationship of language and meaning, life and reason. That's what I responded to. But because you seem to want to steer the debate towards naturalism, then any attempt at analysis in anything other than those terms was dismissed. I think, perhaps, the introduction of 'the life of trees' was to enable you to then deal with the rather more obscure questions about the relationship of life, meaning and reason, in a rather positivist fashion:
The trouble with metaphysical mysteries is that they have no bound. Can you solve for me the metaphysical mystery of how my glass of water got on my desk? Not how, but the metaphysical mystery of how. See how quickly it becomes nonsense? The question becomes, is it ever not nonsense?
The quote from the original post, that ‘meaning is too young a thing to have much power over [life]’ reflects the perspective which understands the human mind as something which has appeared at the very end of evolutionary time. The quote about reason, likewise, followed by your question about language, and whether life is ‘an abstract noun’. All of which brings to mind the following:
[quote=Max Horkheimer, The Eclipse of Reason ]In traditional metaphysics, ‘the natural’ was largely conceived as the evil, and ‘the spiritual’ as the good. In popular Darwinism, the good is the well-adapted, and the value of that to which the organism adapts itself is unquestioned, or is measured only in terms of further adaptation. However, being well adapted to one’s surroundings is tantamount to being capable of coping successfully with them, of mastering the forces that beset one. Thus the theoretical denial of the spirit’s antagonism to nature – even as implied in the doctrine of interrelation between the various forms of organic life, including man – frequently amounts, in practice, to subscribing to the principle of man’s continuous and thoroughgoing domination of nature.
Regarding reason as a natural organ does not divest it of the trend to domination, or invest it with greater potentialities for reconciliation. On the contrary, the abdication of the spirit in popular Darwinism entails the rejection of any elements of the mind that transcend the function of adaptation and consequently are not instruments of self-preservation. Reason disavows its own primacy and professes to be a mere servant of natural selection. On the surface, this new empirical reason seems more humble toward nature than the reason of the metaphysical tradition. Actually, however, it is arrogant, practical mind riding roughshod over the ‘useless spiritual,’ and dismissing any view of nature in which it is taken to be anything more than a stimulus to human activity. The effects of this view are not confined to modern philosophy.[/quote]
I accept as a definition of science that it is organized, self-critical thinking about a determinate subject matter. Philosophy as science I take to be organized self-critical thinking about the thinking about a determinate subject matter.
Agree. But there's been a deep change in the conception of the nature of reason - which is that reason has been instrumentalised, understood in terms of its adaptive or utilitarian power, as per the above. Reason no longer stands on its own two feet - and it can't, because the 'furniture of reason' has a kind of reality which today's empiricism can't admit or even comprehend. Hence, my reference to Aristotelianism. I know it’s ancient, but it’s philosophy.
Metaphysician UndercoverMay 06, 2018 at 12:42#1763340 likes
Is there any reason to think that a plant in need of water might refuse it?
No, but I don't see how that's relevant to the issue of whether a plant wants water. Learning how to refuse one's wants and desires is morality, and I would not expect plants to be moral beings. I expect that plants have a reason for wanting water, but I do not expect the plant to judge a particular water as to whether it is good or bad water, prior to taking it up. Even animals must smell or taste something before they decide whether to eat it.
But there's been a deep change in the conception of the nature of reason - which is that reason has been instrumentalised, understood in terms of its adaptive or utilitarian power, as per the above. Reason no longer stands on its own two feet - and it can't, because the 'furniture of reason' has a kind of reality which today's empiricism can't admit or even comprehend. Hence, my reference to Aristotelianism. I know it’s ancient, but it’s philosophy.
That quote from Horkheimer provides a good description of why I don't like "homeostasis" as a description of what living systems are doing. Through its principal descriptive term, "stability", the same principle of "adaptation" is implied. it's implied that the living system adapts toward a stable existence. But this completely neglects the evidence which we observe all around us, in the vast array of living creatures, that the living systems are actually seeking "mastery" over their environment, not equilibrium. This becomes very clear in human reasoning.
The problem I see is that people like tim want to reverse the relationship between the desire for mastery, and human reasoning, such that the desire for mastery is derived from human reason instead of vise versa. A quick glance around the animal kingdom will show this desire for mastery as prevalent, demonstrating that this reversal is wrong. Human reasoning comes from the desire for mastery. This attitude of reversal is drawn from a faulty understanding of evolution which models evolutionary changes as based in chance and adaptation, with the chance changes providing for adaptation. That completely neglects the living creature's innate desire to have mastery over its environment, which is so obvious, and well expressed by the human capacity of reasoning. Once we separate human reasoning from the desire for mastery, it becomes very evident that all the living creatures, trees included, express this desire.
Metaphysician UndercoverMay 07, 2018 at 01:41#1764050 likes
Trees - news to me - are apparently amazing, dynamic and engaging in behaviours often described in anthropomorphic terms. See two books, The Secret Life of Trees, The Hidden Life of Trees.
If you read Wohlleben's "The Hidden Life of Trees", you will find that he describes all of the various activities of trees (and there's very many of them, it's a relatively long book), in terms of intention. He is clearly not using the words metaphorically. It takes a bit to get used to this way of writing, where he describes the activities very technically and scientifically, with intention thrown in on top. We don't commonly get "intention" mixed in with scientific jargon, so it takes a few chapters to get used to. However, it is very logical, very interesting, and makes very good sense to write in this way. And the amazing thing is that the critics, as much as they may reproach him, they have no argument against him because they are science minded individuals, and Wohlleben cites all the science, as supporting what he is saying.
Comments (172)
So Romanticism rather conventionally opposes reason and ... some antithetical version of unreason. The irrational, the felt, the spiritual, the animal, etc.
But life as a phenomenon is a fruitful combination of material dynamics at its most unstable or volatile, and then the overlay of reason, memory or control that can ride that wild horse in desired directions.
So life certainly answers to reason in the sense that there must be a stabilising hand that forms some bunch of unstable material potentials into a persisting organismic identity.
A tree, perhaps ironically, seems about the most managed, the least lively, kind of living thing. A tree is like sedimentary being, growth fixed in woody permanent layers. What we see is it’s logical structure - the shape that had the optimal fit to its small gap in the forest canopy.
Isn’t that how we respond to trees? They are nature’s greatest living sculptures. They impose a form on the life that lives within their forest.
The discovery of reason by the Greeks is one of the foundations of philosophy proper, I would have thought. The problem is not reason - I think it's the insistence that reason must always be validated by, and in that sense subordinated to, human sensory capacities (which is what 'empiricism' amounts to).That is because scientific reason, nowadays, only recognises the kinds of things which can be validated in those terms; to that extent, 'reason' is a 'weapon of control', but only because of that. Otherwise, reason is an indispensable faculty of the intelligence.
Interesting topic for me. I find a partial truth to this quoted text. But I’m digging toward something deeper than life as we know it; I’m thinking of being per se. The presence of being is itself arational (as here contrasted to irrational, or “error-endowed reasoning”)—the presence of being eludes the very principle of sufficient reason, and so is beyond the very purview of reason.
Reasoning: the provision of causes, motives, and explanations for what is, i.e. for being per se whether in whole or in part.
Is the arational a product of reasoning so concluding it to be or, conversely, is reasoning both map and, yet further, an ultimately transient terrain for the underlying arational, for the mystery of being of which life directly and intimately partakes?
Given my affinities, I’m again reminded of the pre-Socratic notion of logos, the reasoning pertaining both to the physical cosmos and to individuals which are aspects of it.
When considering both the cosmos and its individual beings, reasoning can at least in part be said to ratio paths to take from those not to take. Yet, for us individuals, reasoning only serves as a means of discerning what is true from what is not. It is not in and of itself the truth which is being pursued by application of reasoning (including truths as they pertain to the cosmic logos/reasoning/causation of which physicality is constituted).
With these musings in mind—which I don’t deny are themselves one individual's reasoning—I can’t help but speculate that at the deepest of metaphysical levels truth is the arational itself, the being of being, and not the reasoning we use to best hold onto that which is both immediately and metaphysically true.
So, paraphrased in a way that makes more sense to me: “Being will not answer to reason. And meaning is too young of a thing to [hold an ability to comprehend] it.”
But it would be a narrow definition of reasoning to identify it with just something people pursue as a method of inquiry. The primary datum of experience is that nature itself appears intelligible, or rationally structured.
And the principle of sufficient reason/principle of locality might speak to atomistic patterns of causal action. But physics also needs its matching holistic principles - of least action and cosmological homogeneity - for a complete description of nature's causal structure. It must see form and purpose as part of the total picture that would be a generalised Logos.
Quoting javra
Yep. And the Pythagoreans and Hercliteans matched Logos to Flux, Peras to Apeiron, Limits to Chaos. So they did the flip I suggest. It is reason - as in the reasonableness of orderly structure - that manages or suppresses the basic instability of "existence", or flux/apeiron.
Existence, in this metaphysics, is emergent actuality, the substantial state that persists long time because there is the organisation to channel the naked chaos into a steady directed and temporal flow.
Quoting javra
Arational suggests neutrality. And that would fit with an understanding of chaos or flux as a meaningless and undirected foment of fluctuations. It is essentially neutral in being neither formed nor having matter. And neutral as it cannot stand opposed to the rational structure that must inevitably arise from it.
To be irrational is to be already actually existing as an antithetical structure of some kind. It is essentially a dualist view of nature, like mind vs body, or spirit vs world.
Quoting javra
In the scheme I sketch, meaning becomes formally cashed out as mutual information. The logos and the flux must be in a meaningful balance - so not dualistically separated but semiotically engaged. And the mutual information of two variables is a measure of the mutual dependence between them.
But even the experiencing eye is imposing an intelligible structure on the world. The Ancient Greeks knew that as well. Empiricism is simply the formalising of this semiotic business - the production of the signs by which we construct an orderly representation of the world as it suits us to understand it.
So the scientific method is just about making the epistemology of being "a reasoning mind" something that is explicit and thus perfectable. We don't have to hide behind direct realism. It is OK to admit that reality is a pragmatic interpretation.
And from that prosaic truth, you can always continue on to the exciting ontic implications. Reality itself might also operate semiotically - interpreting itself into being in a "mind-like" fashion as a set of definite signs.
(Every material event is evidence for something. And it turns out to be evidence of thermalisation in progress. Every event is a tick of the cosmic thermal clock.)
That's quite the assertion to start your line of thought with -- If we grant you that, haven't we already given you all the rest? That is, thrown away the whole ball game?
Why is experience a matter of imposing intelligible structure on the world? Why isn't it, say, a matter of disclosing the world?
Assertion or psychophysics 101? It's just standard psychological science.
I agree. We reason about and within this raw presence, but I don't see how we can get behind or under being to make it rational or necessary.
Quoting javra
I share this speculation, and I enjoyed the way you expressed it.
I think a distinction can be made between 'transrational', 'non-rational', and 'irrational'. Reason doesn't have to be omniscient in order to be effective - in other words, it can be effective without being all-knowing.
Quoting apokrisis
That is true, but it's not the whole story. I think in Greek metaphysics, there is also a sense of what is beyond reason, or where reason originates. The Greeks were interested in more than simply a pragmatic or utilitarian understanding, useful though this undoubtedly is.
What bothers me nowadays is the tendency to confuse a sense of the transcendent source of reason, with the simply irrational. There's more than a few posters here who consistently do that. Whereas, in the classical tradition proper, there is a sense that reason is part of an hierarchy, and whilst it might not be the very highest form of understanding, it in some sense can be used to point at what is beyond itself. But what is sublime, or 'beyond reason', is not irrational in the Dionysian sense of being merely chaotic or spontaneous.
Assertion; or perhaps: Huge philosophical leap smuggled in the guise of "that's just the way things are, it's elementary..."?
So what I said then? Mechanisms are fragile because they depend on material stability. Organisms are robust because they are the management of material instability.
Quoting tim wood
The usual semiotic stuff like genes, membranes, neurons and the other non-holonomic constraints.
Laws are holonomic constraints. They apply universally. Life arises because codes can encode for local and personal laws - habits in other words.
Quoting tim wood
Life at all levels uses communal signalling. It’s important to microbial ecosystems too. So again, the same semiotic story of self organising constraints.
Good questions. It seems to me that it's both. The world is disclosed or found always already with some structure.
Notice you automatically equate the two - which is of course reasonable. But still questionable. The Greeks, as you say, wouldn’t have thought of it this way - I seem to recall Aristotle thought the heart was the seat of the intelligence, and the brain was for cooling the blood. I think the automatic equation of intelligence and the brain is very much a product of post-Enlightenment rationality. [Which is not to suggest that I don’t think Aristotle’s view is clearly out-moded.]
But the nature of intelligence, or mind, is what is at issue, as it seems intuitively linked to reason itself. I think nowadays there is a tacit consensus that this is something that can be understood through the lens of evolutionary biology - the brain an evolved organ, intelligence its proper function. Hence, the reflexive association of intelligence with the brain.
Where I feel compelled to question that, is because in the overall story, the human brain is a novelty, something that has only come to exist in the blink of an eye, in evolutionary terms. And yet ‘the furniture of reason’ - those attributes and qualities of experience which the ability to count, to compare, to differentiate or equate disclose - are not themselves the product of evolution, or of anything, as far as we can tell (the world being found always already with some structure, as noted above.)
What evolves, I think, is the capacity to reason, but I don’t believe this amounts to an explanation of what reason actually is. Which is why I’m loathe to admit that intelligence is a product of the brain, because the brain is a product of evolution, and according to many, evolution itself is the product of chance and necessity. So in this understanding there is a radical discontinuity between intelligence and the Universe it finds itself in - an understanding which is diametrically opposite that of the initial Greek intuition [as discussed in Horkheimer’s book, The Eclipse of Reason].
The analogy that I prefer is that the brain is more like a receiver that ‘tunes in’ an intelligence that exists in some inchoate form. That is why reason can, in fact, reveal so much more about the Universe than what one might expect, if one were simply to try and account for the faculty of intelligence in purely naturalistic terms.
What I held in mind is that conscious reasoning—the process of consciously finding and structuring causes, motives, and explanations for givens—is more than a pursuit of some people. Lesser animals quite arguably engage in it; e.g. predators to catch their prey and those preyed upon to escape their predators. My point here being that, most especially in humans, conscious reasoning is an innate aspect of our being—one that matures with age from infancy when we first try to achieve our ends, and that easily becomes meta-cognitive (cognition about cognition and the like) for adult humans.
Quoting apokrisis
I agree with this.
Quoting apokrisis
Yet form and purpose are integral aspects of reasoning—for they each are causes, motives, or explanations for givens.
What I was intending is that “why being itself holds presence” is something that cannot be satisfactorily accounted for by causes, motives, or explanations.
As to the metaphysical issues you bring up in your reply, as is no surprise from former discussions, overall we agree upon a lot when it comes to metaphysics. Our pivotal disagreement, if I remember right, is however one of ultimate metaphysical ends—this being entwined with the top-down causal mechanism(s) that holds everything together on a global level. We’ve been though this argument previously without any proper resolution between us. So I’ll cordially refrain from going down the same traveled path.
Rarely do I get compliments, so I'm relishing it. Thank you and cheers.
Hm. I’ve so far thought that we can arationally discern things (else: noninferentially discern). For example, whenever we know that we are perceiving some given X, we know this arationally—i.e., without an immediate dependence on consciously known causes, motives, or explanations for this so being. We of course use reasoning to explain why we perceive things, to justify that our perceptions of givens are true, and so forth. But our knowing that we are perceiving what we perceive—i.e. that we seem to be experiencing that which we experience—is an arational apprehension/cognizance. Same with our intuiting an intuition, our thinking a thought, our sensing a sensation, and so on. All these, again, occur independently of our conscious apprehension of causes, motives, and explanations for that which is being noninferentially discerned; hence, independently of consciously occurring reasoning. And, I would argue, it is one of the most important forms of knowledge we hold, for these arationally attained knowns serve as a foundation to most, if not all, of our inferences concerning what is--the latter being contingent upon reasoning.
With me approaching the issue from this state of contemplation, can you better clarity the differences between “transrational” and “non-rational”?
For sure - I was reacting, mainly, to the second of the two quotes in the OP:
Quoting tim wood
How that struck me was that is was an expression of a kind of suspicion of, or rejection of, 'the tyranny of reason', in the sense usually implied by 'scientific reason' - similar to Apokrisis' remark on the Romantic rejection of reason.
And I have noticed a tendency to call reason into question. I think this is a often associated with 'green left' ideologies - the notion that science is just the instrument of the military-industrial complex or 'big pharma' and really has no privileged perspective to offer - science is just one among a number of possible ways of understanding.
Whereas I have formed the view that the faculty of reason is one of the distinguishing characteristics of humans - after all the Greeks called us 'the rational animal', and in that context the qualifier 'rational' is pretty important. So, I don't want to disparage reason. One can after all fall back into irrational ways of thinking. That is obvious looking at world affairs - there is an abundance of irrationality on display in virtually every news bulletin.
But at the same time, I think that reason has limits (and that furthermore, empiricism has separate and also important limits). So I'm trying to distinguish between what is irrational or non-rational, on the one hand, and what 'surpasses reason' on the other (by which I'm referring more to the intuitive or spiritual aspect of philosophy.) So you mentioned 'the a-rational', 'the being of being' - I certainly think there is in that sense, an intuition of being that surpasses reason (this is something you can find in Thomist and also Buddhist philosophy). But I want to differentiate between what surpasses reason, and what falls short of it. Hope that makes sense.
(Incidentally, there's a review of the novel the OP mentions here and it does look a fascinating novel.)
It does. Thanks
The Hidden Life of Trees is very informative. Wohlleben is very knowledgeable, and the book offers a vast supply of facts. It appears like a tree is "upside down", its roots are actually its brain. The plant's brain is not seen by us, because it is subterranean, and because of this we assume that a plant has no brain.
Quoting Wayfarer
If you would read the above mentioned book, you would see that the human brain is not all that different from the brain of a tree. The big difference being that the human brain is above ground, in the air, allowing the human being the freedom of motion which plants do not have. That freedom of movement requires that animals think about completely different things from what plants think about, so their brains are quite different.
We can decide what things are, in some sense, but that doesn't mean reality has to care about the decision. This is the old separation between thought and being, or in a modern form facts and things. Language isn't how things are even though it can capture how things are, to greater or lesser extents depending on the use.
Sustaining this difference is a mark of materialism. That is, simultaneously asserting the indifference of reality to thought but also that reality differentiates thoughts and embeds this indifference relationally in our conduct. Thought aimed at knowledge is the place where the in-itself of our actions meets the for-us of language; resistance felt is inspiration gained.
:angry:
To present a different interpretation:
I’m thinking that only in self-awareness does one become aware of one’s own goals and, hence, or one’s own teloi. Most of the time, however, for better or worse we humans act and live in manners devoid of this self-awareness, devoid of a self-consciousness concerning what makes us us. We do this when we’re in the zone, consumed with praxis fitting in all ways as it ideally should—not needing to ponder which way is best but, instead, simply being. Otherwise expressed, it is when we know without language or analysis (without any meta-narrative) who we are at the given juncture and what we should do so as to satisfy our will’s impetus. We certainly are readily endowed with a self-awareness capacity—in which we indulge most always whenever there is any form of uncertainty as to what is or should be (by which I don’t mean that we necessarily doubt anything during such times). But it is typically when life is fluidly lived, rather than being though about, that we feel most exalted in living. If a concrete example is needed: engaging in that lusted for first kiss while lost in the immeasurable timespan of the moment, this rather than contemplating how to best go about things to actualize it and make it successful (including while kissing). I get that a philosophy forum is not the best place to make this observation; theorists are us, and its part of our cherished praxis; all the same, I’m arguing that self-awareness is an optimal means toward the end of fruitfully living in manners ideally devoid of its presence, this where only raw awareness is and where it’s presence as life becomes sharpened and intensified without uncertainty or obstructions.
Then, in these times of awareness that is devoid of self-awareness, we still reason—but not via thoughts. In a sense it becomes an autonomically intrinsic aspect of who we are as a responsive agency. It yet has an aim, or telos. When our will is obstructed at such times we in due measure become displeased, volitionally suffer, because that which we are innately striving for becomes in due measure harder to obtain. And this is where self-awareness obviously is indispensable for us.
In rough parallel, all plants generally speaking hold (non-self-) awareness of gravity and sunlight, as well as of the threshold between self and non-self. They all respond to obstacle standing in the way as parts of the non-self. And they all are driven by an un-thought of telos to reach that which they are unthinkingly striving for. I personally believe the same awareness of givens and striving toward something that is to be obtained is applicable to all life. Hence, that all life is telos driven. To say the obvious just in case, just as human awareness far surpasses that of the great apes (biological slang for all apes other than the gibbon), a plant’s awareness can only be far less developed by overwhelming magnitudes relative to a humans. If its of benefit to the clarity of this stance, I sometimes liken it to that Freemason pyramid found on the US dolor bill: The top of the pyramid that is a quantum leap from the rest represents sapience; beneath it there is the remaining pyramid of sentience/agency that extends down to the lowest degrees of awareness which are also the most numerous; the entire pyramid mirroring an ecological pyramid of life.
Not that any of this resolves what life is via reasoning. But it portrays a different rationale for lifeforms such as trees: Here, trees are themselves telos-driven awareness, albeit of far lesser magnitudes by comparison to humans—a type of awareness that is obviously not endowed with the behavioral plasticity which self-awareness facilitates—this instead of being telos-devoid machines.
The same rabbit-hole you address still remains. Though I’m stanchly preferential to us coming to understand what things are—rather than making things up as we go along. In the case of life, to me, what telos-driven awareness is.
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looks like my timing isn't half bad :razz:
Quoting tim wood
There is no fundamental difference between deciding what things are, and knowing what things are, because all we can do is decide what something is, and having made that decision constitutes knowing what that things is. However there is a difference between assigning a name to a thing, and assigning a name to a property of a thing.
Consider what constitutes "deciding what things are". We assign a name to an object, say "tree", and we have decided that that thing is a tree. We have decided that this thing is going to go by the name "tree". But is it really a tree you might ask, and how do we "know" that it is really a tree. So we look to a definition, what is required of a thing in order that it be called "tree". Here though, all we have is more words, such that "what" a tree is, is just more names which make up a description. However, the descriptive words refer to properties of the thing. Therefore, "knowing" that it is a tree is just a matter of deciding what the properties are, in the sense of giving them names which are consistent with the words used to define "tree". And there can be no fundamental difference between deciding what a thing is, and knowing what a thing is, in the sense that both are a matter of assigning words, though one is assigning a name to the thing, and the other is assigning names to the properties of the thing.
Quoting tim wood
So we have the very same issue with "life" itself. First, we can ask are we pointing to a thing, and assigning the name "life" to it, or are we saying that there is a property of things which we call "life". We cannot point to the thing called "life", but we can say that it is a property of many different things. Therefore we need to avoid this talk of "life", as if what it is, is a thing, rather than a property of things.
What life is, is not a thing, it is a property of things.
Quoting apokrisis
Constraints cannot organize themselves because that would be self-causation, meaning the thing exists prior to its own existence, to cause its own existence. A constraint cannot cause anything unless it exists. So it cannot cause its own existence because that would mean that it exists before it exists.
'Machine - an apparatus using mechanical power and having several parts, each with a definite function and together performing a particular task.'
The analogy of 'machine', or of organic beings as machines, is one of the dominant metaphors of materialism. And if 'life' is anything, it is the ability to maintain homeostasis, to grow, heal, reproduce and mutate. Machines do none of these things, as they lack any kind of internal organising principle, save what is put there by their manufacturers (i.e. humans).
Quoting tim wood
It's simply muddled. How can something that can't think, reason? How do 'lots of things reason'?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In the context of the Western philosophical tradition the effort to discern the true identity of things was in terms of being and essence; that is where the whole idea of 'the essential' originated. Of course, modern philosophy in its derogation of tradition has largely abandoned that way of looking at things, despite its role in the formation of science itself. But as we have discussed many times, in the classical tradition, any particular was the combination of its intelligible form and the material from which it is made. Now I'm not saying that because I necessarily believe that it's true, but at least it orients the conversation in respect to the subject of philosophy, rather than trying to invent fundamental definitions - basically trying to reinvent philosophy from scratch - as though none of these problems have ever been considered previously.
It causes the parts that construct it to exist.
It's a feedback loop. The whole shapes the parts, the parts make the whole.
"It" here, being the thing which causes, refers to constraints. So the constraints do more than constrain, they actually cause the existence of the parts constrained?
Quoting apokrisis
As you commonly profess a triadic metaphysics, don't you think that you are missing something in this model? You have two dichotomous elements, the parts and the whole. You say that the whole shapes the parts. What you are missing is (to refer to the op) "the reason" why the whole shapes the parts. Or to put it in more scientific terms, "how" the whole shapes the parts. This is where we find "constraints", they exist as the third element in your triadic system, property of neither the parts nor the whole, or perhaps both.
So for example, let's suppose that in an instance of this type relation, the whole is the community, what we call "society", and the parts are the individual human beings. Now let's assume that there are some sort of "constraints", laws, mores, rules, conventions, etc., which we assume regulate the activities of the parts, making them properly parts of the whole. The individual human beings can only be said to be parts of the whole if they act accordingly, otherwise they might go off as independent agents, misfits, exercising their own free will to be reclusive as a hermit, or in some cases one might choose to be destructive and wreak havoc on the established community, possibly aligning oneself with some odd sort of "whole".
So the parts have freedom to act as they will, and they will only act as parts of the whole if they apprehend a "reason" to. But if we look from the perspective of the whole, we ask "how" does the whole constrain the parts. You can see that the question of "how" is answered with "reason", such that how the whole constrains the parts, is by giving each part a reason to behave as a member of the whole. Now we can ask what does it mean for a part to have a reason to act as a member of a whole.
This is not the same as asking the reason why a part is a member of a whole, such as why is an atom a part of a molecule, because the part (the human being) is a free agent with a free will. If it were the same, and the atom were such a free agent, it could choose (having a reason) which molecule it would be a part of. How would one molecule, as "the whole" give a free willing atom with choice, a reason to join with it, when the molecule which is produced by the joining doesn't even exist until after the atom joins up?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Did you forget to count their interaction?
I think there’s a conflation here of two senses of ‘reason’. One being, ‘reason’ in the sense of ‘causation’ - the reason why plants grow towards light - and ‘reason’ in the sense of the faculty of reason - how it is we discern and abstract reasons, what the faculty of reason consists of.
As it happens, reason in the latter sense is often deployed to understand reason in the first sense. And it’s the hallmark of reason to understand the ‘why’ of things. Scientific reasoning is grounded in understanding causal links. Of course, in the history of ideas, the Aristotelian analysis of ‘four causes’, had largely been superseded in modern science, which eschewed the idea of telos
[Or did it? There’s an interesting Wikipedia article on the word teleonomy, a neologism invented to allow for the apparently purpose-directed attributes of organisms.]
Quoting tim wood
This goes back to what I was saying earlier - about the abandonment of ideas of purpose as being a hallmark of modernity [as per the Horkheimer book I mentioned]. I mean, before about the nineteenth century, it was simply obvious, it was common knowledge, that everything happened for a reason, and that natural science was concerned with discerning those reasons. But ‘reason’ in the broad sense was underwritten by the Divine Will - the Universe was animated by purpose, having been an intentional creation. One of the casualties of the ‘death of God’ was precisely that loss of that sense of cosmic purpose - hence Camus and Sartre, atheist existentialism, a ‘Free Man’s Worship’ and much else.
In any case, in Western history, there was the expectation of ‘the eschaton’ - the return of Christ, around which history was oriented. You could say that with the erosion of that expectation, the underlying purpose fell into question as well: stuff just happens. Any suggestion of ‘reason’ in the pre-modern sense of there being a ‘divine purpose’ is axiomatically rejected; that is the overwhelming feeling of many people nowadays. The remnant sense of ‘higher purpose’ is ‘getting off the planet’ - heaven as the physical conquest of space, fantasies of inter-stellar travel, ‘warp speed’.
Nothing surpasses reason, and what falls short of it are only attitudes.
So you think human reason is capable of omniscience?
Difficult questions. But I’ll try to support my views as best I can (turns out not in very few words).
Firstly, telos, to me, roughly means a given existing as a potentiality whose presence as such will both predate and cause the manifestation of effects which bring that addressed into closer proximity to its fruition. So contemplated, and once accepted as a metaphysical possibility, it could then in simplistic terms be either applied to givens devoid of awareness or to givens endowed with awareness.
For example, inanimate matter acts entropically—and can thereby be appraised as holding absolute entropy as its telos. Entropy is an entire subject onto itself, at least for me; while I’m not ready to start a thread on it, to me absolute entropy does not entail disorder but, rather, an undifferentiated and non-quantitative order of physical being wherein the identities of individual physical entities dissipate into … well, something like energy devoid of mass, time, or space. This being a little background to this premise: entropic givens pursue paths of least resistance within their environment toward absolute entropy—such that their behaviors are all choice-devoid paths toward the telos of absolute entropy. BTW, this hypothesized telos of absolute entropy to me mirrors a hypothesized possible end-state of awareness as a non-quantitative unity devoid of otherness which severs as the zenith of awareness's potential—something that I find myself easily projecting upon concepts such as Nirvana and Moksha in the East and “the One” in Neoplatonic traditions within the west.
The dyadic opposite to entropy is negentropy, i.e. life. Rather than dwell on very ambiguous concepts such as those of “mind” or “consciousness”—which can be difficult to argue apply to all life—I’ll instead address the attribute of awareness (something upon which our self-awareness is built). The simplest known life are prokaryotic organisms (archaea and bacteria)—although gametes to me are not too far away from this when contemplating simplest forms of awareness. These simplest lifeforms hold empirically evident awareness via which their capacity to respond to environments unfolds—needless to say, this in absence of a nervous system. And there, simplistically addressed, the teloi primarily considered are no longer universal to all that is but localized within and respective to individual lifeforms.
A big downside to my perspectives is the absence of a metaphysical understanding of how entropic givens have given way to negentropic givens. What can I say, this same problem faces everyone that accepts what empirical sciences agree upon, materialists holding no exception. There must be a behavioral quantum leap from entropic givens, such as rocks, to living systems, such as bacteria. This is where I find Apo’s metaphysics alluring. Still, to me, it’s about progressive evolutions—slow, difficult, and strife-filled—toward ever greater degrees of awareness, which is where I disagree with Apo on metaphysical levels concerning final ends. Either way, nucleic acids seem to be an in-between to that which is entropy governed and that which is negentropic—as can also be said of proteins (e.g. prions).
Staying on topic as regards life and, as example, trees, it in all its instantiations is purposeful. The sperm’s motions are easy to address, but the same also applies to the egg: both hold a telos of biological conception of a zygote. When both are healthy, both will respond to obstructions standing in the way of this telos being actualized. Viewed in light of biological evolution and the need to consume prey (organic sustenance so as to maintain homeostasis) and to escape predation, prokaryotic organisms too will react to environments in response to the telos of … for simplicity, survival (granting this concept is poorly understood: e.g. survival of genes irrespective to phenotypes, survival of phenotypes via genes, some other conceptualization?). In simple terms, those prokaryotic organisms who do not act and react in accordance with this telos then become extinct and are no more.
Obviously a bacterium’s teloi will be extremely less developed than a human’s. Still, to the extent that the bacterium acts and reacts via teloi, the same bacterium will then be endowed, I believe, with a rudimentary form of volition, i.e. will, that is aimed toward some end.
Doubtless the ends which determine actions and reactions—hence teloi—of a bacterium are a genetically governed aspect of the bacterium’s behavioral phenotype. I.e., the bacterium won’t be able to choose its aims as we humans often do (this only to an extent when metaphysically appraised). These same teloi will serve as a bacterium’s proto-forethought. Say the bacterium is faced with something to eat. Its telos here is to eat. Its actions and reactions shall adjust according to—in manners caused by—this preexisting telos (in conjunction with is awareness of its environment to which it reacts). It doesn’t think what to do to best manifest its goal. But, I argue, it does chose between mutually exclusive—hence contradicting—alternatives. More precisely: With its telos being determinate and its environment of a prey ever changing, its behaviors toward this telos must then be neither perfectly deterministic nor perfectly random. The alternative to both these extremes is that of a very primitive form of freewill as to what to do in order to satisfy its determined telos.
I get that this is uncharted territory, but this is where I’m currently at.
The bacterium, then, in a very primitive way, reasons without what we term thought. Roughly speaking, it in a very limited way takes into account causes and motives—motives here being nothing more than teloi—for what the prey is most likely to do next so as to satisfy/actualize its telos of eating its prey.
Again, the taking into account of causes and motives in one's responses to context is, technically, an intrinsic aspect of what reasoning is.
OK, not all prokaryotic organisms are predatory—so this same argument cannot apply to all species of prokaryotic organisms. But I hope it suffices to illustrate that awareness, individual specific teloi, and free choice (free will) can be argued present in very primitive degrees within the most primitive forms of life. None are then applicable to entropic givens. (Although, I’m fiddling about with notions of some form of pre-awareness process from which awareness can develop as it would pertain to some type of pan-semiotic or panpsychism system—this hoping to better bridge the gap between entropic givens and negentropic givens. No fun and no luck, at least so far.)
Trees then are more developed than bacterium. Same overall process can be argued to still apply. For example, a) roots growing with a gene-determinate telos within their behavioral phenotype of finding organic-matter-resultant things to consume within earth by aligning themselves with gravity and b) being neither fully deterministic nor fully random in their reactions to obstacles in the way of actualizing this telos—i.e. endowed with some prototypic free will as to how to react so as to best satisfy its individualized teloi.
I figure making the aforementioned any more concise would be to at best make it utterly unintelligible. So I’m leaving it as is.
Quoting tim wood
:smile: Yup, I can remember it too. Haven't found my permanent mate yet, so I’m still looking forward to it myself. As to a telos, I’m arguing that if there was motivation to the kiss (consciously apprehended or not) then there was a telos (and if not, it would have been metaphysically mechanical). I’ve never heard it being applied to psyche, but motivation to me is a form of retrocausation: the motive is the effect as existent potential that temporally precedes the all the specific causes for it becoming manifest—with these causes for one’s objective becoming physically objective being the very telos/motive-governed choices one makes. But again, we humans often get to choose which aims/motives/teloi we subsequently willfully pursue.
Quoting tim wood
Hope this longwinded post satisfactorily addressed this question.
No, I think that everything has its reason. What would be the use of talking about anything that is purportedly beyond the intelligibility of human reason? Anything we can experience or imagine is, by virtue of its experienceability or imaginability, intelligible to us, and hence within the bounds of reason.
That's not remote from the original meaning. See Aristotle - The Importance of Telos
Quoting Janus
Except for what has been described as 'revelation' - whether Biblical or other.
Quoting Janus
I think a sense of humility is in order in this regard. Maybe knowledge has limits, and being aware of those limits is part of what philosophy is concerned with. Maybe part of philosophy is being aware of the inherent limits of particular modes of knowing, for instance science itself; philosophy of science has quite a bit to say on that. Kant wrote extensively on the limits of reason. All of those subjects are legitimately in scope for philosophy, notwithstanding your 'ex cathedra pronouncements' ;-)
(Away from desk for rest of day, cheers.)
I can't see your point. You haven't explained how knowing what something is differs from deciding what to call it. I decide to call it "tree". You decide to call it "firewood". What would make you think that one of us knows what it is but the other does not?
Quoting tim wood
I don't see how you can say that I haven't allowed for "I don't know what it is". Obviously, if you do not know what to call it, then you do not know what it is. Also, why can it not be both, "tree" and "firewood"? I see no reason for the claim that it cannot be both. There is no reason why we cannot both know what it is, each knowing it by different words. Further, there is no need to reconcile. I have my reason to call it "tree", and you have your reason to call it "firewood". There would need to be a further reason to make reconciliation necessary.
Of course knowledge is limited, and the degree of limitation will depend in part on what you count as knowledge. It's important to maintain a distinction between knowledge and understanding. Knowledge grows and does so within the context of human understanding. Our understanding provides the conditions for the possibility of knowledge. So we can fairly precisely define the current limits of knowledge, but we cannot define the the limits of understanding, because it is the medium we cannot 'extract' ourselves from in order to identify any supposed limit.
In any case, you have changed the subject by talking about 'knowledge", when it was reason that was under discussion. Without reason there can be neither understanding nor knowledge of any kind. What do you mean by "modes of knowing"; could you give an example of some modes of knowing and their limits?
Finally, on what grounds do you accuse me of making "ex cathedra pronouncements"? As I see it, I am just here expressing my opinions as we all are. I am prepared to argue for my views reasonably when they come under fire. Are you prepared to argue for your views reasonably when they come under fire? Your fairly characteristic defensive "ex cathedra" comment does make me wonder whether you are here to protect your opinions or to test their mettle under the flames of critique.
The assymmetry here is that firewood is merely one small possibility of tree. "Tree' is the umbrella concept under which 'firewood' becomes intelligible.
I couldn't count "interaction", because that's what you left out. Look:
Quoting apokrisis
All you have described is the activity of the whole, and the activity of the parts. There is no description of any interaction. As I said, this requires "how" or "why" the whole shapes the parts, and "how" or "why" the parts make the whole. Otherwise you have not described the interaction
You seemed to be speaking as though it were purely arbitrary in relation to understanding whether someone referred to it as 'tree' or "firewood"
Why do you say that revelation is outside the bounds of reason?
In relation to "knowing what it is", it is arbitrary. One can know what it is as "tree", or one could know what it is as "firewood". If you think that one is more properly "knowing what it is" than the other, then you need to refer to a further reason. But that reason is something other than knowing what it is.
The point is that knowing what it is as firewood is parasitic upon knowing what it is as tree, and obviously not vice versa.
I don't agree. You do not need to know that it is a tree in order to know that it is firewood. In fact, the knowledge of "what it is" quite possibly began with people knowing it as "firewood", before they came to know it as "tree" because much knowledge is derived from usage.
Yes, true. Still, I’m sometimes at odds about either referring to Aristotelian theory or not so doing when describing what I endorse. Not only is my knowledge of Aristotle mostly second hand—although I did read portion of his De Anima—but his concept of virtue as the human telos, while I ultimately agree with it, to me is too constrictive of human nature to be of much help on its own. We can choose other teloi in our attempts to best obtain satisfaction, happiness, flourishing and the like. As one example, the mass murderer that wills to get away with the perfect crime is not motivated by virtue in seeking his optimal happiness/flourishing, and sometimes perfect crimes have been committed in one way or another—the less grave the more common, such as in cheating someone or some community. Though the ugly part of human existence, these sometimes successful ambitions need to be taken into account as well—something that I so far don’t satisfactorily find in Aristotle. Taking this to a more metaphysical level, some humans would do anything either virtuous or vicious—here focusing on the latter—to get as close as they can to being unquestioned tyrants of everything that surrounds … in a sense, to becoming a singular, untouchable, omnipotent deity everyone else bows down to. Stalin comes to mind here as example. Anyway, telos as it is associated with Aristotle to my knowledge doesn’t address such choices between what could be depicted as metaphysically possible aims. And virtue often times can result in much sorrow and strife, as well as failure—again, not something which Aristotle tmk satisfactorily addresses.
I so far find this in the article you’ve liked to as well.
Though I neglected to say it this time around, I usually say “an Aristotelian-like telos”—since I agree with his notion of a first teleological cause to existence in total … for clarity, this, again, more along the lines of Neoplatonist notions of “the One” as a non-deity awareness/being of omni-benevolence, aka perfect love, to which we hold various proximities, and which in imperfect ways resides both within and without all of us, as some say. But—seeing how one thing leads to another—I’ll cut this short
????
No, they would have known that firewood falls or can be broken or cut from trees, that trees have other uses to animals and humans and so on. So firewood is necessarily connected with trees, but trees are not necessarily connected with firewood.
That’s not my invention. 'Reason and revelation' are defined and understood as different domains in philosophy of religion. You can find extensive discussions of this in Aquinas and many other sources in traditional philosophy.
The whole point about 'revealed truth' is that we learn something from it, which you can't learn by any other means including reasoning. I'm not evangelising in saying that - I'm not saying that you should believe it. But for the purpose of the discussion, if this question is asked, 'what could be above the bounds of reason?', then 'revealed truth' is one possible answer.
Quoting Janus
That's a deep question, obviously. You could answer with Wittgenstein: 'that of which we cannot speak'. But the problem with that answer is that it indeed does leave a great deal to conjecture; as is well known, the Vienna Circle understood him to be advocating positivism on the basis of this aphorism, which he really wasn't at all. (Actually Wittgenstein was quite a religious philosopher, in a broad and non-doctrinal sense.)
Here is a paradigmatic statement of a truth beyond the scope of reason:
[quote=The Buddha]These are those dhammas, bhikkhus, that are deep, difficult to see, difficult to understand, peaceful and sublime, beyond the sphere of reasoning, subtle, comprehensible only to the wise, which the Tath?gata, having realized for himself with direct knowledge, propounds to others; and it is concerning these that those who would rightly praise the Tath?gata in accordance with reality would speak.[/quote]
Brahmaj?la Sutta - emphasis added.
In any case, in the three philosophical traditions that I am slightly familiar with (Christian, Hindu and Buddhist), there is a place for the 'beyond reason'. Of course, they are all clothed in very different metaphors and belief-systems. But in all of them, there is acceptance of the validity of reason - logic plays a part in all of them, indeed, they are the origin of a great deal of philosophy. But they point at what is beyond logic - in the poetic Buddhist metaphor, as 'the finger points at the moon'.
So there is that which falls beneath reason and rationality - mere unreason, the denial of obvious truths. But there is also that which is beyond reason - something which is so sublime and exalted in scope, that reason cannot reach it. To push the metaphor - trying to reason your way to it, is like shooting arrows at the moon.
Quoting Janus
Hey, I did wink. But you did say:
Quoting Janus
;-)
Quoting tim wood
'What exactly caused the explosion' was four-fold: dynamite has the power to explode (material cause); you lighting the fuse (efficient cause); your wish to remove the tree-stump (final cause i.e. the reason it
happened); and you used an explosive, not an emollient (the formal cause). That's a rough example in terms of the Aristotelian analysis of four-fold causation. But, the dynamite wouldn't have planted itself, as it lacks agency. If you said to the cops, 'hey the dynamite brought itself here and did that'....well.....
I'm not saying it because I'm an apologist for, or an expert about, Aristotle, but because his analysis provides a starting-point which is consistent with traditional philosophy. This also addresses Javra's point:
Quoting javra
On the subject of which:
Quoting javra
But I think Aristotle himself recognised and argued against tyranny or the pursuit of power for its own sake - after all, he is the source of 'virtue ethics', the view that 'ethical action is its own reward'. I think Aristotle, though counted 'a pagan philosopher', recognised a kind of cosmic law-giver, even if not the God of Christianity.
Quoting tim wood
The point is, at the time of the scientific revolution, a great deal of Aristotelian philosophy was rejected. After all, Aristotelian physics was shown to be mostly mere supposition, based on guesses as to what matter ought to do in keeping with a priori principles - stones 'wanted' to be near the earth, and so on. Galileo completely demolished it.
But Aristotelian ideas have made something of a comeback, in that now there is a recognition that something like 'four causes' model must have some merit. And the reason is that goal-directed activity is clearly intrinsic to any kind of living organisms. Life itself is incredibly purposeful. (It's only when it evolves to being bourgeois that it entertains the possibility that life has no purpose ;-)
Quoting tim wood
Well, that is the answer of materialism, really - what we see are molecules in motion, impelled by merely chemical necessity, from which the illusion of agency springs (or apparently springs, as there really can be no agency.) This is Daniel Dennett, Jacques Monod, and other materialists. Personally, I think their entire philosophy is self-defeating.
The problem of 'agency' is a very deep one, obviously. I think there are deep issues around theism, the idea of a 'super-agent' who created and animated the Universe. But as I said in an earlier post in this thread: before the advent of modernity, we inhabited a living universe, a universe which was the expression of a living will, the 'theatre of the divine'. Whether this was the 'one God' of monotheism, or the deities of older traditions, what it naturally provided was a sense of agency and purpose, as well the sense of an 'I-thou' relationship with the Cosmos.
Now, if you asked one of the citizens of those times, whether they saw it that way, they might not even understand the question: it's only now, when we've grown accustomed to the notion that the Cosmos is a kind of lottery, that simply exists as a consequence of physics, that the thought becomes conceivable. In this context, for us, reason has become instrumentalized; reasons are only material and efficient, and maybe formal. But there's no general 'raison d'etre' - that is practically a definition of 'secular reason', isn't it?
But in terms of the Aristotelian tradition, as preserved by it's Thomist custodians:
It is precisely that which is most lacking in modern culture: the sense that overall the world makes sense, that there's a reason for it, and for us existing in it. Hence the talk in existential literature about the abyss, the void, the sense of meaninglessness and emptiness which haunts the modern world. In that context, 'reason' can only ever be utilitarian and instrumental; it lacks an anchor in the physical universe.
I don't think so, they could just look at the things which we call "trees" as firewood. That's what we're talking about, calling the same thing by different words. I called it "tree", tim called it "firewood".
You are making them into two distinct things, but that's not what we were talking about. We were talking about knowing what a thing is. One person knows the thing as "firewood", another knows it as "tree", the same thing.
The issue was whether there is a difference between having decided what to call the thing, and knowing what the thing is.
1) Syntax (structural principles and/or data constraints) is formal cause.
2) Phenomena and/or noumena are material cause.
3) Entropy is the efficient cause of inorganic energy-mass transformation (inorganic message encoding/decoding).
4) Negentropy is the efficient cause of organic energy-mass transformation (organic message encoding/decoding).
5) Conscious (aware and responsive) agency is the efficient cause of symbol transformation (mental message encoding/decoding).
6) Message reaction is final cause.
Given:
1) Data (Form): asymmetries.
2) Communication: source production/encoding and/or transmission, conveyance, destination reception/decoding, or discovery of, and reaction to, data (Form).
3) Information: communicated data (Form).
4) Message: transmitted, conveyed, and received code.
5) Code: transformed, translated, or converted data (Form).
If I’ve understood you properly given the context of your previous posts, you argue that there is no goal-striving to anything in nature, including to trees’ behaviors. Or are you saying that goals are not the goal of this thread as was outlined in the OP? In which case, I thought it obvious that I was obliging your questions to me with my answers. (to be clear, this in my longwinded last post to you)
If the former, however, OK—but on what rational grounds does this argument stand?
To say that it follows the path of least resistance already presupposes telos, because it is going somewhere, and to be going somewhere presupposes telos. It's like trial and error, this presupposes telos, because the agent practising trial and error must necessarily distinguish between error and success. Likewise, the thing following the path of least resistance must distinguish between resistance and non-resistance, in relation to where it's going (success). Otherwise it would just be swept along by natural forces. But this is not the case, it is an agent going somewhere, distinguishing success from failure, as the path of least resistance, in relation to this, going somewhere.
Quoting tim wood
No, I will not allow you to invert our positions here. The claim was yours not mine. I call it "tree", you call it "firewood". You are the one claiming that it cannot be both. Even if you cut the tree down, I would still call it "tree" and you would call it "firewood". You haven't provided an argument for your claim that we cannot both know the same thing under different terms.
See, you need to give me reason for me to adjust to your claim. Trying to force me, by cutting down the tree does not give me reason. The application of force only makes me more steadfast in my resistance to your claim.
Yeah. So how does every particle, every event, know how to follow the path of least action? How do you accommodate this “weirdness” that infects even classical physics in your metaphysical picture?
Quoting tim wood
Science can talk of grades of telos - physical tendencies or propensities, biological function, psychological purpose. So finality or anticipation can be treated as something that comes in obvious grades of complexity.
Then you just need a general story on how complexity arises. That is where pan-semiotics slots in. There is information bound up in a system’s history of constraints that gives it the tendencies it will express in the future.
This only gets truly weird on the micro scale of quantum events where now - as in quantum eraser experiments - choices experimenters might make in the future can act as constraints on an event’s past. Time itself gets caught up in the least action principle.
But the point is that finality is profoundly part of physics. And it’s exact understanding still an open question.
It is not something to be dismissed. It is a forefront issue.
Due to time, I’ll be forthright in my views and not beat around the bush. My bad in advance if I’m currently too cranky.
There can be anthropomorphism at play in any of our judgments concerning awareness and will. Our judgments of these can just as readily be clouded, if not utterly flawed, by an ego-driven anthropocentrism which states that “if it is not that precise form which only humans can experience, then it cannot exist in any other form in any non-human lifeform”. This mindset can often be found in ethology (the empirical, scientific study of animal behavior): animals cannot hold emotions such as anger or fear because emotions as we know them are only found in us human, therefore no animal can hold emotions of any form, period! (who gives a sheit about their limbic system being pretty much the same as our own, especially when regarding primates). Same can be said with arguments for awareness, will, and reasoning: if it is not that specific form which only humans can do, then it cannot in any way exist in any other form anywhere else. The reasoning as to why this is never given, only the assertion.
Quoting tim wood
An empirically demonstrable conclusion we all know of, but I don’t understand its significance when addressing a tree’s awareness in sensing, and consequent propensity toward, gravity and sunlight. Since it’s the capacity to sense—regardless of what and of means—which defines a sentient being as such, are you arguing that trees cannot sense either gravity or sunlight?
Quoting tim wood
This is contingent upon how mind is defined; Varela et al. (who uphold the concept of autopoiesis) would disagree. But granting that here a mind is implicitly defined as that which necessarily correlates to a central nervous system, no, trees cannot have a mind thus defined because they are not planarians, arthropods, or chordates (with vertebrates as a subset of the latter).
Quoting tim wood
This is an unsupported assertion. I’ve often heard it said even of mammals. As though dogs have no memory of where they’ve been and who they’ve interacted with in the past and no anticipation of what is to come in the future. But they don’t think of beginnings and ends to the universe like we do, so our anthropocentrism then quickly concludes that they only live in a non-temporal present. (this is contrary to evidence, if it needs to be said) Of course trees have no theory of time and space. But to say that their behaviors are not governed by before and afters (time) or by distances and proximities (space) is … at best utterly unsubstantiated.
In terse overview of what I’m here upholding, trees are not humans, nor are they vertebrates—and so do not have attributes only applicable to humans and vertebrates. This, however, does not argue against trees holding awareness conjoined goal-strivings—to be clear, of a non-human, non-vertebrate kind.
Addressed differently, what set of processes differentiates trees from rocks if not awareness conjoined with goal-striving being found in the former but not the latter? And if trees are to be indistinguishable from rocks in being solely governed by entropy, then on what grounds does one argue that trees are lifeforms rather than inanimate matter?
So, basically, your view is that ‘stuff just happens’. So really there’s nothing to be gained by discussion.
Do you believe reason and revelation are independent domains just on the basis of religious authority? Or do you have your own reasons? I would prefer to see an argument from you.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think it depends on what you mean when you say that things are learned by means other than reason. In one sense it is true that nothing is learned by pure reason, because there is no pure reason. Things are learned by experience, but experience in itself yields nothing without the concepts that are derived from reason, or to put it more accurately, there is no experience without concepts derived from reason, and I would argue that this includes religious experience or revelation.
Can you think of any example of knowledge derived from religious experience or revelation which is truly beyond reason? Surely as soon as anything is articulated it becomes reasonable if it is to be at all intelligible, no? (Pure nonsense may evokes some feelings, but as soon as you want to talk about those feelings I would say that you have entered the domain of reason).
Quoting Wayfarer
Nothing I have read of Wittgenstein (and I have read quite a bit over the years) indicates to me that he thought that ethics, aesthetics and religion are beyond reason, but merely that they cannot be precisely articulated in propositional or empirical terms. Literary works, for example, are not "beyond reason" even though they are not characteristically concerned with presenting deductive or inductive arguments to support standpoints.
Thinking in Sellarsian terms you have the "scientific Image" of the world and human life (the space of causes) and the "manifest image" of the world and human life (the space of reasons). Sellars wants to give priority to the former, but really the former is derivative of the latter, which is a point that I believe Wittgenstein would have endorsed and disagreed with Sellars about.
The space of reason is the whole of life, and this agrees with Hegel's "the Rational is the Real" and also with Peirce's understanding of reality as semiosis, as well as Kant's "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind?".
The problem with your argument is that a living tree is not merely firewood and in fact is not even suitable in its present green condition to serve as firewood. It is therefore highly implausible that anyone would have seen a tree to be nothing more than firewood. And even if someone did they would be seeing a tree, from a narrow perspective of utility, as firewood, not seeing it first as firewood and then broadening their perspective to see it as a tree.
So, contrary to your last statement knowing something as firewood and knowing it as a tree is not the "same thing" at all, but these knowings constitute two very different perspectives on one thing;and the 'one thing' is the tree, not the firewood.
No, it’s a matter of definition.
Quoting Janus
I gave one already, from Buddhism. Another would surely be the myth of the Burning Bush and the dispensation of the Ten Commandments.
Quoting Janus
What I meant was that you might argue that what is 'beyond reason', is that of which W. said 'that of which we cannot speak'.
But he does seem to contemplate the transcendent in his writings. I was thinking of this:
and also:
and
Quoting Janus
Again - I think that is vain. Reason has limits and scope. To say that is not to deprecate reason; I think the traditional understanding is that reason points to something beyond itself, which is what I'm referring to as beyond reason or trans-rational.
I've been perusing Jacques Maritain on this very question via an online text called The Range of Reason and also The Cultural Impact of Empiricism which I am finding generally congenial to my outlook.
Explain exactly how you think they are beyond reason.
As to Wittgenstein's,[i]"The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value -- and if there were, it would be of no value.
If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.
It must lie outside the world."[/i]
it needs to be put in context. For the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus the "world is the totality of facts, not of things". The totality of facts is the shared public world, the world that can be represented propositionally. Obviously, though, this by no means constitutes the limits of reason, it is more of an empirical horizon. I am sure that Wittgenstein would never agree that ethics, aesthetics, or religion cannot be reasoned about. Indeed what content is there in those domains that is non-conceptual? How could there be non-conceptual (non-reasoned) content at all?
Quoting Wayfarer
What, then, are it limits and scope, and what exactly lies beyond it? The point, for me, is that experience is always already mediated by reason, and thus it is always already meaningful.This is not to say that experience is literally a process of reasoning, but that everything that can have any meaning beyond mere sensation or feeling has its roots, its genesis, in reason. Of course there 'is' 'something' 'raw' 'prior' to reason, but 'it' cannot be anything without reason; that is the point I am trying to make.
(Wittgenstein is speaking differently about something else when he says that in the world there cannot be any value; he is referring to a world considered merely as a sum of empirical propositions; the prosaic world of everything that is merely "the case').
'Life' here must 'mean' something imagined to be absolutely unfathomable, indeterminate. In fact life does "answer to reason" insofar as it is intelligible at all. We might imagine there to be something unintelligible 'lying beneath' the intelligibility of life, but what could that 'something we know not what' ever really be for us beyond whatever we can think or imagine about 'it'?
I read a little bit of Maritain years ago, and I thought his grasp of modern philosophy was superficial at best.
Well that is the big question. Can you succeed where others have failed?
We can of course find approximative and perturbative mathematical techniques that do work well enough to solve problems as if they were simply a matter of determinist mechanics. But that then is to ignore the metaphysical mystery of how nature arrives at its rather more exact solutions.
Quoting tim wood
Or else it deflates the rather inflated notion of telos that folk have in the first place. I prefer to look at it that way.
It avoids being a mind~world dualist, while accepting that mechanistic physics is only talking about half the cause in its stress on the material, rather than the formal, causes of physical being.
Life will not answer to reason (logic) because reason and hence science can't encompass the fullness our experience of life and I don't think this has sunk into our psyche's, we simply have not understood the implication. I don't think life can explain itself because life is based on luck, on an accident, which as such does not submit to an answer.
Yes, DNA is the canonical example of formal cause or top-down constraint here. So my position - the semiotic one - is about generalising that.
Thus I recognise a major discontinuity in nature, as well as an underlying continuity, when it comes to telos.
Life and mind are different in that they have the memory mechanisms to encode the information that constrains their material dynamics. Organisms are different in that they have autonomy and what we would mean by true purpose. Physical systems only have tendencies or propensities as they reflect the information that is encoded externally in their environments.
So I am not arguing anything mystical.
My response to the OP quotes was that they looked to get things the wrong way round. The material world is already reasonable or intelligible because its dynamism is formed or shaped by constraints. Life and mind are just the same story, with the twist that organisms can remember habits of constraint and so start to act from their own stored context of goals, purposes and reasons.
Quoting tim wood
But the “how” of the least action principle is an important question to tackle if you are interested in developing new physics.
Unlike a particular or accidental mystery - like perhaps the glass of water on your desk - it is a general or universal level mystery. If you want an emergent or thermal model of time, for instance, then the metaphysical issues raised by the principle of least action are at the centre of that.
What the tree is doing is not properly described by "reaction". The tree is growing, and growing is not reacting. One is goal oriented activity, the other is not.
Quoting tim wood
Nor is it correct to say that the tree "just is", because it is always active, growing, producing leaves, photosynthesizing, loosing leaves, producing flowers, producing seeds, etc..
Quoting tim wood
All right, now you given me the reason which I asked for. Now I can agree with you that there is a difference between knowing the thing as "tree", and knowing it as "firewood". You've disclosed that "tree" refers to a living growing thing, whereas "firewood" refers to an inanimate thing to be burned. Now you've given me an acceptable principle of differentiation, one is alive, the other is not. I would say that your argument is that to know the tree as a living thing is to have a better knowledge of it than to know it as an inanimate thing, and I agree. Do you agree with me, that we ought to have a certain respect for living things which we do not owe to inanimate things, we being within the class of living things ourslves?
Quoting tim wood
Do you not see anticipation in photosynthesis, seed production, and growing in general? How can anyone deny that these are goal oriented, purposeful?
Quoting Janus
OK, if your point is like tim's, that the "tree" is alive, and the "firewood" is not, then I agree with you. As I said, to make this differentiation requires a further reason, and you have given it by distinguishing the one as being alive, and the other as not. Now the question is how does this differentiation qualify as knowledge? On what principle does the distinction between a living thing and an inanimate thing, i.e. being able to say that the tree is alive and the firewood is not alive, qualify as knowing something? Unless this distinction can be justified, then it is just another case of an arbitrary determination to say that one is alive and the other is not.
Quoting Wayfarer
Hmm, the Burning Bush might qualify to deny the distinction between a living tree and firewood.
Yes, well, you haven’t addressed a single one of my three questions to you.
Quoting tim wood
What it is definitely saying is that trees have a metaphorical ‘point of view’ which is a literal awareness of other, and that there therefore is something it is like to be a tree. But your hypothesis is maybe putting the cart before the horse. We’re yet working on establishing that trees can sense things.
Quoting tim wood
The connection can be found here and here within the article I’ve linked to. One doesn’t need to read Thompson’s book to get its basic meaning—it's entitled Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Although it’s a very interesting book to read, if one holds an interest for the topic(s).
I’ll do my best to address the rest after you answer these three questions I previously asked which address the very issues you’ve specified:
Notice I’m not speculating on what it’s like to be a tree (e.g., we obviously hold no conceptualization of what it could be to flourish only when other creatures eat our body parts so as to spread our zygotes about in order that they might grow—animals eat fruit to spread the tree’s seeds about when addressing the function/purpose of fruit). Rather, I’m attempting to rationally argue that trees are sentient beings by virtue of being living things. Or at least attempting to figure out how it could rationally be supported that trees are not sentient.
For me poetry is a kind of reason, so we may be operating with different conceptions. I would say that poetry is as much from the trees as it is from the human. The reasons of things are intrinsic to the things; I don't think of them as arbitrary human fabrications.
It’s more that he thinks that what passes for philosophy in modern culture is superficial.
Here is a simple hierarchy of the different levels of cause according to E F Schumacher:
Cause - Minerals
Stimulus- Plants
Motive - Animals
Will - Humans
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
All living systems display homeostasis, which non-living systems do not.
Noted
I hear you, but that really doesn't say very much. And, it is a bit of a deceptive principle, perhaps an oversimplification, because we need to inquiry as to what is the purpose, or the reason for this homeostasis. Then we see that living things grow, multiply, and carry out activities in the world, so the concept of "homeostasis" does not properly represent what the living system is doing. Despite the fact that we say "all living systems display homeostasis", it is not a fact that the concept of "homeostasis" displays what the living system is doing.
Well neither he nor you are likely to gain more than a superficial understanding of modern philosophy if you are disinclined to study it adequately on account of a pre-judgement that it is superficial. This is a really good example of putting the cart before the horse.
It’s only a marker for the key difference between living systems and minerals. Homeostasis is a chraracteristic of even the simplest organic forms but is absent from the most complex inorganic forms.
—
I know that one of the books Apokrisis mentions from time to time on the question of the nature of life is a book by the name of ‘Life Itself’ by Robert Rosen which I understand is a well-regarded book. As it is rather a specialised biology text, I am not intending to read it, but it might be of interest to others here. There’s a pretty detailed review here which list some of Rosen’s philosophical premisses, a key one being his resistance to mechanistic reductionism.
Quoting Janus
Maritain’s understanding of modern philosophy is not at all superficial. He was very highly regarded in both the Continental and American academies and there are still active Maritain centres in many countries. There are many aspects of his style that I don’t care for [and I’m emphatically not a Catholic], but the reason I cite him in respect of the question of ‘the limits of reason’ is because of his thorough grasp of the relationship between reason, science, faith, philosophy, and religion. I’m working my way through his book The Degrees of Knowledge, which is a challenging text, but one of the only current books that retains the idea of an ‘hierarchy of understanding’. [Actually the modern Catholic intellectuals, which include him, Pierre Duhem, Stanley Jaki and Stephen M. Barr, have a philosophically profound understanding of such questions, in my view, because they’re not tied to Biblical literalism of American Protestantism and can therefore evaluate the science purely in its own terms, and also because of the heritage of Thomism.]
I find that empirical presuppositions have so totally soaked into the cultural atmosphere that most people reflect them without even being aware that this is what they’re doing; they’re the air we breathe. That is why the particular lecture I mentioned, The Cultural Impact of Empiricism is worth a read. I know you’re most likely not to agree with it, but it provides a concise statement of the shortcomings of empiricism as philosophy.
I have read Maritain's Introduction to Philosophy and I have had The Degrees of Knowledge on my shelves for many years, but have only dipped into it on account of being put off by what I see as a simplistic adherence to a notion of intellectual intuition that he uses as a foundation to support his arguments against the Moderns (including Kant, who famously denied intellectual intuition).
This idea that is foundational in Maritain, that the intellectual intuition of being is a direct seeing that is superior to any discursive reasoning is an assumption that cannot cogently be argued for, and can be, in the last analysis, nothing more than purely a matter of faith. I don't believe that good philosophy can rightly be founded on a such a simplistic faith (if anywhere, it is perhaps more appropriate to theology).
Maritain's rejections of modern philosophy are based on this simplistic faith in intellectual intuition as far as I can see: he simply thinks that Kant, Hegel, Bergson, Heidegger and so on, just didn't really get it. If you want to read a much more profound Catholic thinker who incorporates modern philosophy and phenomenology into his own systematic thought, try Bernard Lonergan's Insight.(The Degrees of Knowledge appears to be somewhat meandering to me, so I wouldn't waste my time).
As you probably know, I am no materialist, at least in any 'naive' sense, since I think the whole matter/ mind problem is misconceived. I have the intuition that it may take centuries of deep, complex philosophical thought with the help of good science (if humanity lasts long enough) to untangle the knots of common-sense human confusion around this issue.
My opinion, as I stated, is that "homeostasis" is a false representation of what these living systems are doing. Homeostasis implies equilibrium, but the living systems are growing and reproducing. Growing and reproducing, which is what living beings do, cannot be represented as homeostasis which is a form of equilibrium.
Quoting Wayfarer
I do not know Rosen very well at all, but I know that apokrisis argues to dissolve the distinction between living and non-living systems. From what I've read, Rosen argues to maintain a distinction between living systems (as anticipatory systems) and inanimate systems, by describing living systems according to function rather than by describing them as material activity. So although apokrisis may mention Rosen, I don't think that apokrisis has respect for Rosen's principles.
I am aware of Lonergan but he's another philosopher who would take a great deal of time to study. (And Lonergan and Maritain are both categorised under the same heading in Wikipedia.) But I visit the Lonergan.org site from time to time and read some of the posts. Again, I notice that Catholic philosophers distinguish between reality/being/existence which is central to my interests (e.g. here.)
Quoting Janus
I don't agree at all. I think 'the intuition of being' is understood as a genuine understanding or form of knowledge. (I discovered Maritain through a book I got at Adyar ages ago, God, Zen and the Intuition of Being, James Arraj, which compares the 'intuition of being' to satori in Zen Buddhism.) So, in the absence of having such an insight, it might be a matter of faith that there are such insights. But it certainly isn't fideistic.
Quoting Janus
Having dispensed with all the centuries of deep, complex philosophical thought that preceded us, it probably will - although, what with climate change and over-population, we're probably not going to have it.
Quoting Janus
So you keep saying, but you invariably take issue with every counter-materialist argument I try and come up with.
Yes, of course it is so understood by Maritain and possibly by Zen adherents, but the point is that the belief that what is experienced in such states yields actual knowledge about the metaphysical nature of reality must still, in the final analysis, be just that; a belief, a matter of faith. And i am not saying there is anything wrong with that, but it has no place in philosophy, since it is subjective or at best intersubjective as culturally mediated, and hence not truly universal in its scope.
I know very well those states, having experienced them myself, both during my 18 year period of daily meditation practice and through the use of hallucinogens. I have known that sense of direct knowing, but the question always remains as to what it means, what is its philosophical significance. Think of the differences between Gautama's and Jesus' insights into the nature of reality, of God, of the afterlife, and so on.
Quoting Wayfarer
Contrary to your viewpoint here, Lonergan embraced modernity, and saw the inadequacy in ancient philosophy, a fact to which this quote from the SEP entry on Lonergan attests:
Lonergan aimed to clarify what occurs in any discipline - science, math, historiography, art, literature, philosophy, theology, or ethics. The need for clarification about methods has been growing over the last few centuries as the world has turned from static mentalities and routines to the ongoing management of change. Modern languages, modern architecture, modern art, modern science, modern education, modern medicine, modern law, modern economics, the modern idea of history and the modern idea of philosophy all are based on the notion of ongoing creativity. Where older philosophies sought to understand unchanging essentials, logic and law were the rule. With the emergence of modernity, philosophies have turned to understanding the innate methods of mind by which scientists and scholars discover what they do not yet know and create what does not yet exist.
For Lonergan metaphysics must be based upon phenomenology and epistemology; whereas for Maritain phenomenology and epistemology shall be judged through the lens of a purely presumptive absolutist metaphysics. This is backward looking. All those "centuries of deep, complex philosophical thought that preceded us" were practised in the absence of modern scientific knowledge; so we are in a totally different position than the ancients were: we cannot afford to ignore science, even though it obviously cannot subsume philosophy and the humanities and supply all the answers.
Quoting Wayfarer
That's because I think your "counter materialist arguments" are mostly based on the very misconceptions and common-sense confusions I referred to earlier. And that, along with a deeply held preferential bias.
Life is managed instability. So homeostasis is central to that. The central problem is not about how to grow or how to fragment. It is about how to hold together in controlled fashion.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Of course I make the same semiotic distinction. And note how it is functionality that is then the basis of any deeper underlying continuity. The telos they have in common is entropy dissipation.
What is central to homeostasis is stability. So if life is instability, whether that instability is managed or not, this excludes homeostasis, as instability excludes stability. That's the problem with "homeostasis", it really doesn't describe life.
LOL. It is homeostasis that is the process "excluding" instability and thus creating - dynamical - stability.
Unfortunately, I’m not clear on what the “yes” answers when taken in context of the paragraph. “Yes” that trees cannot sense gravity and sunlight? From the paragraph in total it might be a “yes” that trees can sense these things.
Quoting tim wood
Despite teleology being deemed erroneous by the prevailing materialist metaphysics of the day, you’ll notice that in our mode of thinking teleology will be intrinsic to both aspects you address: something being done for the purpose of some given X; e.g. “using fuel” for the purpose of (i.e., because of the need of) “creating energy”, or “reproducing” for the purpose of (as one example) “preserving one’s own identity”. In both examples, the latter is the telos to the former activity.
This cannot be said of entropic givens governed by efficient causation; e.g. the billiard ball moved left when hit on the right by the cue for the purpose of [?] … It doesn’t work. Well, with the one single exception of “for the purpose of following paths of least resistance toward absolute entropy”—but this purpose would be universal to all entropic givens, and so can be easily ignored in favor of the efficient causation which is specific to givens (e.g., the billiard ball moved the way it did because it was hit by the cue).
Quoting tim wood
By sentience I merely mean “the capacity to sense things” or, as is stated in the first part of Wiktionary’s first definition, “experiencing sensations”. There is no other word for this property—and, although the word can be anthropocentrically addressed, we already hold the word “sapience” for humans … as it is indirectly used in “Homo Sapiens”.
Sensations, or the experience of things sensed, will hold a valence that is either positive, negative, or else is an ambivalence (as here used, neither positive nor negative but somewhere in-between; e.g., indifference or uncertainty). It is valence that propels actions and reactions in relation to stimuli. Roots, for example, hold a positive valence toward gravity—gravity being something that the tree senses (that stimulates it and is therefore a stimuli for the tree).
How much of this do we agree upon? While there can be more to say, if there is little agreement so far the rest will likely not be meaningful.
You said "life is managed instability". If homeostasis excludes instability, then it excludes life if life is managed instability. Either life is not managed instability, or it is not homeostatic. Which do you believe?
I love your difficulty with simple sentences.
It's blatant contradiction that I have difficulty with. You would too if you were a disciplined philosopher. Instead, you make contradictory statements, and then rather than trying to explain yourself you pretend to be bewildered at how it could be difficult for me to understand such contradictions.
I see that you have removed your comment that it might be possible that they see something I don't. Perhaps they may, perhaps they may not, but in any case if they do think they see something I do not, and they purport to be doing philosophy, then they should be able to say what that "something" is, otherwise if they were to claim that without backing it up, it is not philosophy they are practising, but pointless, and indeed empty, one-upmanship.
But you construct your own confusions.
Ever ridden a bike? Is there no homeostatic balance involved in managing its instability?
(Already wrote this darn thing. So I'll post it despite Apo having already answered.)
Hey, for my part, the philosophical problem with homeostasis you address is the same problem we hold for the continuity of an ever changing self. There is some organic structure which remains relatively stable over time—be it organism, somatic cell, or something else—by means of self-regulating an internal equilibrium of things (such as temperature in the case of mammals—but the list can be very long) despite in some ways always changing both internally and as an overall organic structure—and this in relation to an ever changing environment it is situated within and to which it acclimates. This philosophical topic of homeostasis can get into the metaphysics of identity given a world of change, can be addressed by top-down and bottom-up causal processes, and—considering the self-regulation involved—is an unique attribute of living things (to me, an inherent part of the thread's theme regarding reason and life).
We've been through this before in the "What is life?" thread.
Life: The condition extending from cell division to death, characterised by the ability to metabolise nutrients.
Artificial Life: The artificial condition extending from cell division to death, characterised by the ability to metabolise nutrients.
Natural Life: The natural condition extending from cell division to death, characterised by the ability to metabolise nutrients, respond to stimuli, mature, and adapt to the environment.
Human Life: The natural condition extending from fertilisation to death, characterised by the ability to metabolise nutrients, sense and respond to stimuli, be aware, mature physically and mentally, reproduce, and adapt to the environment.
If stability is the goal, and it is achieved, then instability has been removed. If it is a case of managing instability, then stability is never achieved, nor is stability intended, because instability is required for the desired movements.
In living systems, is it the case that instability is managed, and therefore utilized toward achieving various goals, or is it the case that stability is the goal? Teleologically there is big difference between describing life in terms of stability (homeostasis), and in terms of managed stability. Homeostasis assumes that stability is the goal, the end, whereas "managed instability" leaves the goal, or end, as undetermined. With "managed instability" we remove the implied goal of "stability", to describe life in a more realistic way. But then we leave unanswered the question of the goal "instability is managed toward what end?". To determine this intent we must ask, what is doing the managing, because this is how we proceed toward determining intent, by identifying and understanding the agent.
Adult male cow manure. It refers to a stable balance. The balance is the goal that the system recovers to after perturbations or excursions.
Right, that's what I said, in homeostasis stability is the goal. There's no adult male cow manure here. Now, let's proceed to discuss "managing instability". Stability is not the goal here, because instability is required as the thing to be managed. Do you agree? If stability is achieved then there is no more instability to be managed. Do you agree?
What I read in your post is a statement of your beliefs sans justification for them. It bares notice that the same argument for “chemical interactions via efficient causation devoid of something experiencing” can just as easily be applied to all life, humans included. It’s the basic stance of many physicalists, including Dennett, replete with an illusion of human consciousness. This is where the heavy-duty metaphysical arguments are needed, or so I’ve always thought. But that’s not what this thread is about.
Still, if it is as you believe, then there is nothing regarding life that is not thoroughly within the realm of a strictly efficient-causation-grounded reasoning.
OK. It turns out that your beliefs conform to a causally deterministic physicalism. My own do not—and, as with the physicalist, I find a dualistic metaphysical divide between the processes of human life and those of lesser lifeforms untenable. Yet since this is a difference of metaphysical views concerning causal mechanisms—one which you don’t appear interested in arguing for via justifications—I personally don’t find anything to further debate in this thread.
You must be right! Clearly once you have achieved a steady balance on your bike, you could never subsequently wobble or fall off. Genius.
The usual bottom-up view of causation presumes life needs stable material foundations. It builds itself up from concrete parts.
However the reason why the symbol part of the equation - the stuff like the genetic memory that can encode constraints - can actually work is that it acts to regulate the unstable. If the physics has rigid stability, how could information push it in any direction? But if the physics is balanced on an instability, a point of bifurcation, then it is like a switch that can be tipped by the barest nudge.
So that is how semiotic control can arise. That is how symbols can control states of matter. The matter has to be in a state that is inherently unstable and hence able to be nudged in a direction that is some higher level informational choice.
That is the trick of life. It is the combination of information and matter, a system able to be directed with a purpose because the matter is poised to be tipped and has the least amount of telos concerning its actual state as is possible.
Stable matter knows what it wants to be. It is deterministic. But instability is freedom just begging to be harnessed. It solves the mystery of how symbols could affect the actions of anything.
And how life goes is how mind goes. The same applies when it comes to closing the explanatory gap between matter and symbol there.
Without pattern no sign, without sign no pattern replication, without pattern replication no stability (regulated instability), without instability no change, without change no pattern.
A circle of inter-independent origination.
Do you think that plant life is representative of all forms of life, or that there might be attributes and characteristics that animals and humans that trees don't.
Quoting apokrisis
I generally agree with your analysis, but the issue that I have is with the idea that mind is the output or consequence of fundamentally physical processes.
The mainstream neo-darwinian view is that life began in the apocryphal 'warm pond' by some as-yet undetermined process involving some combination of heat, pressure, and complex chemistry. It somehow reaches the threshold of being self-sustaining (which, I believe, is the subject of books such as Life's Ratchet.)
After this point, the Darwinian algorithm kicks in, and evolution proper begins. Over vast aeons of time, living forms evolve to the point of self-awareness and language use.
However, this still does seem a generally physicalist account, in that it seems to assume that the biochemical gives rise to, or is prior to, the symbolic - that the ability to speak and abstract is itself the product of biochemistry. So I don't see how here the distinction between information and matter is really maintained - the former is simply an outcome of the latter.
What have I got wrong here?
Breath-taking equivocation. Makes for good fiction.
Yep.
But aren’t I saying the process is fundamentally informational, as well? And that the source of the stably persisting identity of a mindful, purposeful, organism is to be found nowhere in the matter of which it is composed?
So this is a dualism without the causal problems. This is a dualism where the complementary nature of stabilising ideas and labile hardware gets rid of the usual “dead matter” descriptions of life and mind.
Quoting Wayfarer
That is old hat now. The other really good new popularisation is Nick Lane’s The Vital Question which shows how life must have started around some active chemical flow. Luke warm alkaline ocean vents are a good candidate.
So the problem with a warm pond is that it stabilises - goes to equilibrium - very quickly. But a sea vent is a themal/chemical flow. It is an active instability. And Lane makes the argument for how life first arose as a managing force in that kind of scenario.
Quoting Wayfarer
Well it ain’t a generally material account if it says that symbols or information are nature’s other aspect. So it may be generally physicalist, but it is a semiotic physicalism. It is a full four causes physicalism. And that is hardly a regular notion of physicalism - for the guy in the street anyway. Actual physics has already jumped on the information theoretic/dissipative structure bandwagon and so is cool with this paradigm.
In the list you’ve provided, the need for justification would apply to (4). You state as fact that telos is “simply abstract fiction” when applied to trees. If this proposition is true, what is its justification? Can you justify it by any other means than the supposition of a causally deterministic physicalism fully composed of infinite chains of efficient causation?
One should keep in mind that awareness of other and its processes is not located within something physical, like in a pineal gland when it comes to vertebrates. Awareness is a gestalt form that is—I’ll say “fully correlated” to keep the causal process as ambiguous as possible—fully correlated with its substrata of physical information. This applies to living humans—at least when not addressing eliminativism. On what rational grounds would it not also apply to living dogs, insects, nematodes, sponges, fungi, plants, and prokaryotes?
I’ve done my best to try to introduce arguments for telos to you—this in a longwinded post that someone hereabouts bothered to write and to post to you. Its introductory arguments have been wholly ignored as though never posted, and I don’t like repeating arguments that then go unaddressed.
I’ve also warned against anthropocentric mindsets when it comes to awareness and goal-seeking. But your arguments keep coming back around to anthropocentric concepts of each, and this without bothering to enquire into what non-anthropocentric aspects of these would be. Awareness of other is not necessarily something visual, nor something contingent on the presence of a skull, nor something one must be capable of thinking about. Goal-searching does not need to be about consciously formulating a plan and then setting out to achieve it; it is often enacted instinctively even in us self-aware humans. We ourselves are aware of gravity via our vestibular ducts that facilitate balance—and most often are not conscious of it. And this only one example. We ourselves do things essential to the purpose/goal of sustaining life—from our breathing and blinking to our drive to eliminate wastes when present—without a prevailing conscious apprehension of purpose in so doing. Nevertheless, we are aware of gravity and we do breath so as to facilitate the cellular respiration required for the metabolism of our bodies’ individual cells.
I’m not looking for bickering. From the sum of our previous posts, however, it appears to me that we’ve been talking past each other. It happens sometimes, but there's not much point to further debate when it does. I’m more than OK with currently letting things be as they are.
Right, that's why homeostasis, and its assumed goal of "stability" is an inappropriate description of living systems. The systems do not have stability as a goal at all, because stability would rob them of the capacity to do things. As you say "the matter has to be in a state that is inherently unstable". Why do you find it so difficult to agree with me, even when you are saying the same thing anyway?
Theories of homeostasis dictate that living systems have the goal of setting up stable equilibriums, that's how the living system is described, as a stable equilibrium. But what you have just said is completely opposed to this idea, the living systems are setting up unstable material conditions, not stable conditions.
Again, you have to be generally able to centre if you want to be able to go off-centre for particular reasons.
To ride a bike, you need to be able to balance upright so that you can also maintain your balance by leaning over on corners.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You know why. You take whatever I say and say it backwards.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What don't you get about the difference between the general and the particular?
An organism must be able to both persist and to adapt. In the long run, it must be stably centred or balanced - hence homeostasis. In the short run, it must be able to adjust that general balance in locally useful ways.
The child first learns to stay upright on a bike. Then it learns to lean into corners.
Actually this is more an issue with novice motorcyclists or pillion passengers. It takes some persuading for newbies to let their bodies "fall over" with the bike rather than keep nicely upright on a sharp bend.
So what you miss here is that the "contradiction" is the point. As usual, we are talking about the symmetry-breaking logic of a dichotomy. You need contrasting limits to allow for the further thing of hierarchical organisation.
An organism has autonomy because it can make an active distinction between its long-term central balance and its moment-to-moment fine adjustments.
It is not my problem if your understand of biological terminology insists on a more inflexible reading - one that is either/or rather than and/both.
There is no "long run" for an organism. They are born, eat, get active, reproduce, and die. This idea that homeostasis is necessary for an organism to persist and adapt is a falsity. Individual organisms do not persist, and adaptation is the result of change, brought about through reproduction. This describes instability.
Quoting apokrisis
We are discussing particulars. If each particular displays itself as an instance of instability, then it is extremely faulty inductive reasoning to draw the conclusion that in general, these instances of instability are an example of stability.
Quoting apokrisis
To stay upright on a bike requires forward motion, pedaling, and this is a form of instability, not stability. The hardest part of learning to ride a bike is giving up the fear of leaving the stability of the solid ground, to propel oneself forward into a realm of instability.
Quoting apokrisis
There is no such thing as an organism's "long term central balance", that's a fiction. And to think that an organism could recognize such a thing within itself, and distinguish this from its moment to moment activities is simply nonsense. Even the most rational of living beings, the human being, with the power of self-reflection, cannot distinguish a long term central balance within oneself.
Quoting apokrisis
My training in logic has taught me that "both", when it comes to contradictory attributes for the same subject at the same time, is unacceptable. If you want to do your biology in this contradictory way, then I think that is your problem.
Here we go....
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What a horrendous self-contradiction. You claim that to be moving forward steadily is unstable? Next thing you will be claiming Newton was wrong about inertia!
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
...and on we trundle....
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Great. As ever, I am happy to be in contradiction to your arse-backwards thinking.
The forward motion is dependent on the pedalling. Where does this "steadily" that you've fictitiously inserted come from?
You seem to have said more than once in this thread that 'the tree' is emblematic of 'living things generally' and that, as 'trees' seem to be something that might be understood in terms of molecular interactions, then so too might the doings of intentional beings such as humans. That seems to be the tendency of your thinking, anyway.
Furthermore, although Apokrisis does indeed say that his interpretation of telos
Quoting apokrisis
he also acknowledges that 'semiotic physicalism' is
Quoting apokrisis
where two of those four causes are the 'formal' and 'final' causes that were found in Aristotelian philosophy, but had been missing presumed dead in the early modern biological sciences. And I, for one, am still skeptical that they can be restored to science, within the confines of an entirely physicalist understanding of biology.
You’re wanting to further engage on the issue. There’s a lot in your last post that I disagree with. I’ll take one issue at a time. We so far seem to agree that a tree can respond to stimuli. So I’ll start with this.
1) We have stimuli (which stimulate actions) on the one hand and something which is responding to it (via actions and reactions) on the other. The two—the stimulus and that which responds to it—cannot logically be identical.
Do we agree?
2) You presume that what is responding are specific parts of the tree’s DNA (which cause immediate actions on their own, to use your terminology) rather than the tree as the total metabolizing process of a multicellular organisms—a total self-regulating process that results from the set of its individual molecular subcomponents (including nucleic acids) found within its many individual cells.
Is this correct?
If (1) and (2) are deemed correct by you, please explain how DNA can respond to anything when addressed as a physical molecule operating in isolation—explaining this in manners either accordant to the empirical sciences of biology or to metaphysical logic.
Why I disagree with this just mentioned hypothesis: A living cell is negentropic, metabolizing, and homeostatic. These attributes apply to a total gestalt process that results from all molecular subcomponents interacting with each other. In rough parallel to a brain that is removed from the rest of a body being dead, a cell’s nucleus removed from the rest of the cell is non-negentropic, non-metabolizing, and non-homeostatic; i.e. non-living, and hence dead. This same attribute of nonliving is even more applicable to portions of DNA isolated from the nucleus. A tree is a multicellular organism, meaning that what is negentropic, metabolizing, and homeostatic is the gestalt process resulting from the collection of all individual tree cells simultaneously interacting with each other. Therefore, when a tree responds to stimuli, it cannot be due to some portions of its physical DNA holding immediate mechanical effects upon both the tree’s behavior and physiology. Rather it is due to the negentropic, metabolizing, homeostatic process of the tree in total—itself a gestalt, or at least collective, manifestation of the negentropic, metabolizing, homeostatic process of its individual cells (of which nucleic acids serve as only one molecular constituent of). This, in turn, entails that that which responds to stimuli is not individual portions of DNA but the negentropic, metabolizing, homeostatic process of the tree as a living multicellular organism.
If you find errors to this argument I’ve provided, either due to a disparity with the data obtained from the empirical sciences of biology or due to erroneous metaphysical logic, please inform me of what these errors are. But please ensure that these disagreements you might hold are based on facts or on logic, and not on imaginative hypotheticals.
Why the scientific finding that trees “sleep” at night is beautiful
Please provide a one or two sentence definition for each of the following terms as used in your post:
1) Matter
2) Symbol
3) Encode
4) Genetic Memory
5) Information
6) Purpose
7) Stable
8) Instability
Not likely. That would defeat the purpose of ambiguity.
Thanks for proving my point.
No of course not. How many times do have to say it? It starts with the pedaling, and may stop with the brakes at any moment, and the direction changes with the steering. There is nothing "constant and long-run" here. It's a fiction which you've made up to support homeostasis. And I really don't know why you're so bent on supporting homeostasis when you clearly prefer to describe life's systems in the more realistic terms of instability. It's as if you cannot let go of the old, outdated, demonstrably false descriptions.
Quoting tim wood
Doesn't "acting per DNA" demonstrate purpose, telos?
Quoting tim wood
How can you say that reactions are not purposeful? Just because they are high speed, and occur immediately after, in response to, an external action, does not suffice as an argument to exclude purpose or telos. If someone says to me "there is a bear behind you", and I react by turning around, that it is a reaction does not mean that the turning around is not purposeful.
Quoting tim wood
The fact that we cannot draw a direct causal chain, in terms of efficient causation, from the thing which occurs, to the reaction, indicates that there is mediation, allowing for intent, telos, final cause . Some living actions and reactions are quite rapid, so we tend to think that the external occurrence "causes" the internal response, without mediation, but I don't think that this is the case. Javra argues this quite well.
Quoting tim wood
Neither of your definitions of teleology call for "awareness". You should consider that being aware is just one type of teleological (purposeful) activity.
Quoting tim wood
I don't see how this is the case, but apokrisis is commonly guilty over-generalizing in a fallacious way. As I said much earlier in the thread, in regard to "reason", we need to distinguish between an agent acting for a reason (purpose), having the reason or purpose for action within itself, and the reason (purpose) which we project onto a thing from outside, saying that the thing did this for this reason, or that it is good for this purpose, to us. Apokrisis continually conflates these two, and refuses to recognize a distinction between them.
So all this stopping, starting and changing. Doesn’t it seem contradictory of you to assert that the forward motion represents the instability here when that instability is what you are imposing on its ... stability.
What would be the story if you weren’t so constantly busy stopping, starting and changing?
Internal entails a threshold between that which is within some given and outside of this same given. Where this very given whose internal aspects are solely address is an autopoietic system resulting from the simultaneous interaction of all subcomponents, the autopoietic processes of this system is the self that is being addressed. For clarity, because autopoiesis is negentropic, metabolizing, and homeostatic, it is that which we consider to be life. In the case of a tree, the living tree as opposed to a dead structure of wood protruding out of the ground.
What do you have in mind by the term “self” that serves as metaphysical impediment to its use in the context just outlined?
So its known, the term “self” is common to biology in addressing that which pertains to a living organism (to the “self” in relation to the "non-self"); see for example Wiktionary definition of “self” #4, including its example.
Quoting tim wood
I would like for you to better spell out this distinction via causal processes. What I currently understand by it is that, from your belief system, “immediate” entails effects fully caused by efficient causation—something like billiard balls hitting each other at molecular and sub-molecular levels of reality. If my current interpretation is accurate, I as of yet do not understand what alternative causal process your belief system ascribes to “mediated” actions and reaction. Are they also fully composed of efficient causation, only that there just happens to be a medium in-between the stimuli and the outcome (with this something in-between also being a product of efficient causation)? If not, what causal mechanism other than that of efficient causation is at play in mediated reactions?
Quoting tim wood
So its known, electro-chemical signals solely define neurons and, hence, the processes of nervous systems. To the best of my knowledge they are not applicable to any known plant cell(s), which is one of the reasons that plants are such alien lifeforms to us nervous system endowed lifeforms.
Quoting tim wood
????
From Wiktionary: gestalt:
Where on earth do you find even a smidgen of reification in what I’ve said (here keeping things simple by only addressing gestalts)? Here; again summed up just for this purpose:
Life is a gestalt process. Any portion of the physical substrata which serves as a constituent of the gestalt process of life will be dead or dying when isolated from its interactions with all other material subcomponents from which life emerges as a gestalt process.
Quoting tim wood
Yes, this is one of the attributes which gestalts hold (see definition above).
Since the issue of final causes, i.e. teleology, won’t go anywhere prior to resolving the basic issue of what is doing the responding to stimuli, I won’t currently address these portions of your last post.
This difficulty with "cause" is why we're better off looking for the reason for an occurrence, why it occurred, rather than its cause. The distinction I was trying to make is the difference between the reason which is internal, inherent within the thing which is acting, and the reason which is assigned to the thing from an external source.
So for example, a person works at a job, as a member of a team, working on a project. The person's reason for working, the reason inherent within the person, might be to make money, and earn a living. The reason assigned to the person from the external source, the team manager, is the function which the person plays in the project. This is an example of how very different the internal and external reason for the activity might be. From the person working's point of view the work is carried out for the purpose of earning a living, that is the reason for the activity, and from the external point of view the work is carried out for the purpose of completing the project, that is the reason for the activity. Two very different reasons for the very same activity.
The function of a thing is the reason for a thing's activity in the external sense, a purpose which is assigned to it, in relation to a larger whole. So all the components of my computer have a function, a purpose, a reason for their activities in relation to the computer itself. However, the components do not have an internal reason, like a human being does, they do not have their own reason for being there. Their reason for being there has been assigned to them. However, despite the fact that inanimate things do not display their own internal reasons, we can infer that living beings other than human beings have their own internal reasons for behaving as they do. Clearly other mammals which have brains and think have their own reasons for their actions as well. Don't you think that trees and other plants have their own reasons for their actions as well?
Quoting tim wood
If a thing has its own reasons, internal to it, for behaving like it does, what else can we attribute these reasons to, other than motive, purpose, or telos? Don't you recognize that not all things are physical things, capable of being cut with a scalpel, or stored in a jar? This is a fundamental principle of philosophy, to learn the distinction between material and immaterial things, as Plato said, sensible objects and intelligible objects. You can deny the reality of immaterial things, but then how do you account for your own motives, intention, and purpose, and other ideas? And once you see the need to allow for the reality of the immaterial, you'll come to realize that there's no reason to limit the existence of the immaterial to strictly within your own mind.
Quoting tim wood
This is irrational nonsense. The plants display every action necessary to demonstrate that they want water, yet for some undisclosed, and most likely irrational reason, you deny that they want water. Must they say "I want water" in order for you to know that they want water? Sorry, plants can't speak English. If a person was dying from thirst, and making noises in some foreign language, would you say that the person acts like it wants water, but it doesn't really "want" water? What kind of a nonsense argument is this? When something carries out the actions required to call it by a certain name, we call it by that name. We don't say that the thing is not "really" acting in the way determined by this name, it's just making the appropriate actions which correspond to what that name signifies, but for some unknown reason it's not "really" acting in the way signified by the name.
Starting with a definition of human life, I would find it difficult to extrapolate a definition of plant life and natural life using the term "awareness". Because I define human awareness in terms of human anatomy, physiology, and mental capacity (i.e., sensory stimulation/perception, interoception/sensation, and cognition). Also because my knowledge of plant (and other) biology is inadequate to the task.
A possible solution is to use the term "awareness" defined differently for each species, and avoid equivocation by stipulating types of awareness (e.g., plant awareness, animal awareness, bacteria awareness, etc.). Then use "awareness" in a definition of natural life without stipulating type.
Starting with a definition of human mind, I would find it easier to extrapolate a definition of plant life and natural life using the term "mind" instead of "awareness".
For example, abstracting "human mind" (the set of conditions experienced, and functions exercised, by a human being which produce its behaviour) to "mind" (the set of conditions experienced, and functions exercised, by an organism which produce its behaviour).
Is your mind a thing, or immaterial, or both, or neither?
Yet this does not address my question of which causal mechanisms are at work. But be this as it may.
So now we’re at the apparent impasse of what life is in general. I presented this summation:
Quoting javra
And instead of having this proposition regarding the existential reality at hand—that of life—replied to, you provide examples regarding human thoughts so as to evidence that gestalts are strictly products of human cognition and imagination.
I’m not, for example, addressing the concept of a table as something which is other than the sum of its conceptual parts. I’m addressing the ontic reality of life as being something that is other than the sum of its ontic parts. This too is in keeping with the definition of gestalts, which are forms (the second definition on Wiktionary) And no, to me this is not axiomatic; it is, as you say, a conclusion obtained from discernments of what is.
(BTW, other terms and positions could be used to address this same conclusion, such as holons and the position of holism; but by now I presume so doing would only needlessly complicate matters.)
You maintain that a human’s life (this being a very applicable example of a life) is not an ontically gestalt process—is not a process which is other than the sum of its parts. These following four questions might help me to better understand your worldview:
1) Is a human’s life then nothing but a product of human cognition and imagination, holding no ontic reality of its own (other than as an abstract human thought)?
2) If no, is a human’s life in your opinion then present strictly within parts of the human body—such as, for example, strictly in the body’s individual cells?
3) If no, is there an ontic distinction between a humans’ life and the same human’s total but dead corpse—this even when many of the given body’s individual cells are yet living?
4) If yes, what is the ontic distinction in your opinion between a human’s life and the same human’s life-devoid body—if not that of the human’s life being a gestalt process which vanishes when the processes of its physical substratum no longer interact in a certain way (decomposition too is a process of the physical organic substratum)?
I don’t know how these questions will come across, but our worldviews now appear too far apart for me to presume what your answers to any of these questions might be. I’d usually take it that we could agree that a human’s life cannot be dissected with a scalpel nor placed into a jar—but I’m no longer certain of even this.
As above.
I don't like "awareness", or "mind" as defining terms for life. What's wrong with "self"? Living things seem to have an inherent selfishness, whereby they separate themselves from what is other than themselves with some sort of boundary.
Yes, that's what I'm suggesting. Don't you think that a plant has reasons for producing seeds?
Quoting tim wood
Well the word "dumb" doesn't say much. If a plant does something through instruction from its own DNA, then isn't this its own reason? Why is this reason a dumb reason?
Quoting tim wood
Again this doesn't make sense. You say that plants need water. And, when they are dry, they show by their actions, that they need water. But you say that they do not want water. Do you know what "want" means? Let's say, for the sake of argument, it's like desire, can you agree to that? Do you not think that the dry plants are desiring water? What about animals, other than human beings? Do they desire food, water, and sex? Why do plants not desire as well? Just because you cannot imagine what it would be like for a plant to desire doesn't mean that the plant doesn't desire; especially since the plant acts like it desires.
Quoting tim wood
Actually, it is you who is trying to enforce odd, arbitrary restrictions on the use of terms. You suggest that human beings, and some other animals "want", while other life forms do not "want". Unless you can produce some principles for this division it is completely arbitrary, and is nothing but a display of the quirkiness of your own personality.
Quoting tim wood
I'm not speaking in metaphor, I'm speaking literally. When a plant is dry, it literally wants water. It demonstrates this by its actions of extending its roots, in search of water. There is no metaphor here, it's a simple fact of life. Plants grow their roots to follow where the water is because they want water. How else can we describe this activity?
You, on the other hand want to restrict the use of "want", to some colloquialism that you are more familiar with, and any usage outside your customary vernacular, you insist is metaphor.
Wikipedia: In philosophy, ontic (from the Greek ??, genitive ?????: "of that which is") is physical, real, or factual existence.
Example: Unicorns are not ontic—and, hence, not ontically real—despite being real as human concepts of the imagination, i.e. despite being real concepts of what could be ontic in some fictional, alternative world.
You can either like or dislike my use of the adjective “ontic” to emphasize the difference between 1) that which is in ways independent of thought and theory (that which is ontic) and 2) that which is strictly a product of the human mind's theorizing.
Yet something is to me extremely amiss with the overall replies you’ve provided to my questions.
Whatever it might be—an ongoing lack of attention to what I write, an ongoing lack of charitability, I don’t know—I’ve encountered it too often on this thread between us. We have been and continue talking past each other … And, for better or worse, I no longer hold any interest in this discussion. Goodbye for now.
I'm certainly open to the possibility of defining life in terms of self. Perhaps you could elaborate somewhat on your conception of self and/or provide an example of its use in a definition of life. I haven't given the notion of self much consideration outwith a sociological context, and as it pertains to experience, so I would be interested in your take on it to see if it is something I can work with. PM me if you like. Cheers.
Otherwise, I'm outta here (too much of a reality disconnect from the OP for my taste). Perhaps the apparent intransigence is down to an attempt to see the world through Heideggerian-tinted glasses. Whatever it is; good luck with it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting apokrisis
Quoting tim wood
The above are mostly intended to be representative quotes. I think the trouble in this discussion comes from trying to fit the square peg of purpose into the round hole of benefit.
But why wouldn't there be a direct connection between purpose and benefit? What would a benefit-less purpose even be? What would a benefit be except that it served some purpose?
I want to start by saying I love the description of yours I quoted above:
Quoting apokrisis
I think that really captures something nicely: I picture the difference between a boulder rolling down a hill at a fallen tree and a deer running down a hill at a fallen tree: the boulder just plows into it, but the deer leaps gracefully over it.
Think of the different ways of drinking water:
1. A towel placed on a spill will "drink" the water, but this is a purely mechanical effect. The towel has no agency here; it's not "doing" anything. Absorbing spills is the function of the towel, the reason for which it exists, the use to which it is put, and that's one sense in which the word "purpose" is used. But the towel absorbing water is not intentional or purposeful on the part of the towel. And the water is not of benefit to the towel.
2. A deer seeks out water periodically because water is of benefit to the deer. Is this intentional, purposeful behavior? Well, the actions the deer takes to get water might be, might not -- I don't know much about the inner life of deer. Trees send roots into the soil because water is of benefit to trees, and I have no reason to think trees have inner lives. The mechanical process by which roots take up water is probably not much different from the towel's.
3. We drink water much as deer and trees and towels, but we can also choose not to, for any number of reasons. When we do so, we have agency, our action is intentional and purposeful, but it is not our purposefulness that makes water have benefit for us.
One of the things I learned from our last conversation about purpose is that an action can be construed as serving any number of purposes, and that the goals actions serve can also in turn be construed as means for reaching other goals. Purpose is a never-ending hall of mirrors.
What I want to do here with "benefit" is cut that off: water is of benefit to the tree as a tree, for it to persist, as you said, as a tree, doing whatever it is trees do, whatever it would make sense for trees to think and talk about if they thought and talked. The towel is a particular, but it is not an individual, and so nothing can be of benefit to the towel. Purpose in the sense of function, you can find all over the place; purpose in the other sense, I think only makes sense for us and whatever critters have inner lives enough like ours.
To your specific questions:
Quoting apokrisis
Obviously for critters like us there often is, but it's optional.
Quoting apokrisis
It should be clear by now that I mostly mean benefit as benefit-to-the-organism whose behavior we're looking at. So I'm happy allowing humans, for instance, to have purposes that do not benefit them. Guy saves a guy at the cost of his own life -- I don't need to concoct some benefit to him to "explain" that. It's just what he chose to do.
Quoting apokrisis
See that's where I think there's just too much slippage between the senses of "purpose". Water benefits trees, it has a use within a tree, serves a purpose -- but we're just talking functionally here. There's nothing like intentional behavior in the water or in the tree, so I don't see any purpose in that sense.
So finality is the nested hierarchy of {propensities {functions {purposes}}}. Or to use the jargon, {teleomaty {teleonomy {teleology}}}.
And that reflects broadly physics with its information-constrained tendencies, biology with its genetically-constrained functionalities, and humans with their culturally or linguistically constrained purposes.
The notion of physical telos is the most alien to the usual reductionist way of view causality. But as I say, physics has to smuggle in the notion of generalised tendencies. The second law of thermodynamics especially stands for a universal and irreversible direction for change. Everything must entropify.
And then an informational view of physics - one where holographic event horizons are the "living" context that shape local events - is spelling that out in terms of spatiotemporal structure. You are getting thermal models of time and holographic models of gravity from applying this kind of constraints-based thinking.
Now back to your examples.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Alarm bells should go off any time your philosophy starts to employ human-made objects as putative examples of natural systems. Chairs, doors, towels and all those kinds of things are artificial and unnatural in exactly the way that a reductionist and mechanical metaphysics describes. They are material objects denuded of any purpose or self-organising form.
And that is because it is us, their users, who want to be in complete control of any form or function that is involved in their existence. They are our instruments and the best instruments are the ones with no minds, no degrees of freedom, of their own. A machine is a system so mechanically constrained that it has no possible choice about what to do. And so does nothing until we inject it with our purposes - like using a towel to mop up a spill.
So yes. The towel acts completely mechanically. That is how we designed it and how we employ it. It is useful to us to the degree it has no use to itself. It is a passive tool of our desires. We get complete choice. The towel could be twisted into a hat or used to flick an arse. And it can't protest that that is outside its proper job description.
So you have picked a good example of an inanimate and unnatural object - one that lacks even the ordinary tendencies of normal physical objects. A river or any other natural feature is doing a job - entropifying. Give a towel a thousand years in a cupboard and it may not even have decayed appreciably. Same with a chair or door. These are machines in that they lack inherent purpose, thus allowing us to supply any purpose they could possibly have.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Of course. The deer has to feel thirsty, remember where the water might be, make decisions about how safe the water hole is.
At a biological function level, there is a reason for systems for maintaining a state of hydration. Then at a mental level, the deer is modelling the world in terms of its physical propensities (the tendency for a waterhole to be in some place) and its organismic purposes (the desires of the hungry wolves that might lurk in the bushes). The full range of telos - from the physical likelihood of boulders rumbling down slopes to out-guessing other minds - is part of the way the deer sees its world.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Except trees grow roots in the direction of the moisture they seek. It is mindful or purposeful behaviour in that they can detect and follow gradients of what they need.
And why do we make towels from cotton? Why is the best insulation wool or duck down? Is there some functionality in the form of the materials that you are overlooking? Do they work "mechanically" because evolution found some kind of optimal solution to a purpose it had?
So a bit of googling finds....
So biology has in fact designed a material with just the right qualities we have in mind. And then we turn it into a "spill mopping device" that now exists completely outside the world of nature - the world of evolution and entropification.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yet water has benefit to us - to the degree we might be dehydrated. Too much water is not a benefit, but lethal.
So a very elaborate hierarchy of mindfulness has evolved to keep us suitably hydrated. It starts way down at the cellular level as the same problem had to be cracked by single cell life. And the hierarchy of increasingly high level semiotic control has developed to the point that deer can worry about lurking wolves, or we humans can say no - we are thirsty, but for some reason or other (could be fasting or politeness or who knows), we decide not to. There is some other purpose we can think of that delivers some more contextual benefit (whatever that was).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Well I would say that if a tree has chemoreceptor mechanisms to direct its root growth, then that is pretty purposeful - a lowest state of mind. You could call it functional if you like. But having roots would seem the more general functional imperative. How the roots grow then becomes an expression of that intention. A choice has to be made to serve the purpose and provide an actual benefit to have those roots.
So look close enough at nature and we can see that it does have this general hierarchical story - the very one in which long-term stability becomes the basis for short-run adaptations. A general set of habits must be established that freeze an intentionality in, so that more particular states of intentionality can be formed to achieve more localised benefits.
I think that this is exactly the opposite of reality. The language of intention, with words such as "want" are appropriate for this subject. It is the designating of this as metaphor, which is driving a wedge of separation between the activities of various life forms, plants and animals, that is misleading, and given to misunderstanding. There is no scientific evidence to support such a wedge of separation, which is driven by bias and superstition, while science and evidence demonstrate a close relationship rather than a division of separation.
Quoting tim wood
But this is obviously false. Evolutionary theory proves that plants and animals are descendent of the same ancestry. DNA and genetics demonstrate that plants and animals are actually very closely related. To say that the lives of trees is alien to the lives of animals is simply false, unless you mean it in a sense like you would say that your life is alien to my life.
Quoting tim wood
I am not arguing, that when we discuss the lives of trees, we must of necessity, use the terms of telos or intention. It is possible to discuss many aspects of living beings without using such terminology. However, if we are discussing the reasons why a particular living being, plant are whatever, acts in one way rather than in another way, then we cannot exclude the terminology of telos or intention, or even designate it as metaphorical, without justification for this exclusion.
You seem to want to make this exclusion without justification, implying that such talk is unscientific. In reality, the exclusion which you request is what is unscientific, because it is supported by nothing other than bias, while the science demonstrates that such an exclusion is uncalled for.
Is there any reason to think that a plant in need of water might refuse it?
Possibly because this is a 'philosophy forum', mainly concerned with the nature of reason and life in a philosophical sense; not a biological sciences forum, which is probably where that particular question might belong.
No - not ‘plant life’. The other question in the (rather complicated) OP was a much broader one about the relationship of language and meaning, life and reason. That's what I responded to. But because you seem to want to steer the debate towards naturalism, then any attempt at analysis in anything other than those terms was dismissed. I think, perhaps, the introduction of 'the life of trees' was to enable you to then deal with the rather more obscure questions about the relationship of life, meaning and reason, in a rather positivist fashion:
Quoting tim wood
The quote from the original post, that ‘meaning is too young a thing to have much power over [life]’ reflects the perspective which understands the human mind as something which has appeared at the very end of evolutionary time. The quote about reason, likewise, followed by your question about language, and whether life is ‘an abstract noun’. All of which brings to mind the following:
[quote=Max Horkheimer, The Eclipse of Reason ]In traditional metaphysics, ‘the natural’ was largely conceived as the evil, and ‘the spiritual’ as the good. In popular Darwinism, the good is the well-adapted, and the value of that to which the organism adapts itself is unquestioned, or is measured only in terms of further adaptation. However, being well adapted to one’s surroundings is tantamount to being capable of coping successfully with them, of mastering the forces that beset one. Thus the theoretical denial of the spirit’s antagonism to nature – even as implied in the doctrine of interrelation between the various forms of organic life, including man – frequently amounts, in practice, to subscribing to the principle of man’s continuous and thoroughgoing domination of nature.
Regarding reason as a natural organ does not divest it of the trend to domination, or invest it with greater potentialities for reconciliation. On the contrary, the abdication of the spirit in popular Darwinism entails the rejection of any elements of the mind that transcend the function of adaptation and consequently are not instruments of self-preservation. Reason disavows its own primacy and professes to be a mere servant of natural selection. On the surface, this new empirical reason seems more humble toward nature than the reason of the metaphysical tradition. Actually, however, it is arrogant, practical mind riding roughshod over the ‘useless spiritual,’ and dismissing any view of nature in which it is taken to be anything more than a stimulus to human activity. The effects of this view are not confined to modern philosophy.[/quote]
Quoting tim wood
Agree. But there's been a deep change in the conception of the nature of reason - which is that reason has been instrumentalised, understood in terms of its adaptive or utilitarian power, as per the above. Reason no longer stands on its own two feet - and it can't, because the 'furniture of reason' has a kind of reality which today's empiricism can't admit or even comprehend. Hence, my reference to Aristotelianism. I know it’s ancient, but it’s philosophy.
No, but I don't see how that's relevant to the issue of whether a plant wants water. Learning how to refuse one's wants and desires is morality, and I would not expect plants to be moral beings. I expect that plants have a reason for wanting water, but I do not expect the plant to judge a particular water as to whether it is good or bad water, prior to taking it up. Even animals must smell or taste something before they decide whether to eat it.
Quoting Wayfarer
That quote from Horkheimer provides a good description of why I don't like "homeostasis" as a description of what living systems are doing. Through its principal descriptive term, "stability", the same principle of "adaptation" is implied. it's implied that the living system adapts toward a stable existence. But this completely neglects the evidence which we observe all around us, in the vast array of living creatures, that the living systems are actually seeking "mastery" over their environment, not equilibrium. This becomes very clear in human reasoning.
The problem I see is that people like tim want to reverse the relationship between the desire for mastery, and human reasoning, such that the desire for mastery is derived from human reason instead of vise versa. A quick glance around the animal kingdom will show this desire for mastery as prevalent, demonstrating that this reversal is wrong. Human reasoning comes from the desire for mastery. This attitude of reversal is drawn from a faulty understanding of evolution which models evolutionary changes as based in chance and adaptation, with the chance changes providing for adaptation. That completely neglects the living creature's innate desire to have mastery over its environment, which is so obvious, and well expressed by the human capacity of reasoning. Once we separate human reasoning from the desire for mastery, it becomes very evident that all the living creatures, trees included, express this desire.
If you read Wohlleben's "The Hidden Life of Trees", you will find that he describes all of the various activities of trees (and there's very many of them, it's a relatively long book), in terms of intention. He is clearly not using the words metaphorically. It takes a bit to get used to this way of writing, where he describes the activities very technically and scientifically, with intention thrown in on top. We don't commonly get "intention" mixed in with scientific jargon, so it takes a few chapters to get used to. However, it is very logical, very interesting, and makes very good sense to write in this way. And the amazing thing is that the critics, as much as they may reproach him, they have no argument against him because they are science minded individuals, and Wohlleben cites all the science, as supporting what he is saying.