Nice! Pathologists have studied death in great detail. They know the exact sequence of events, biochemically, micro-anatomically, that occur when cellular death occurs. The first thing to go, if I recall correctly, is membrane integrity - the once pristine intracellular environment where the chemistry of life takes place is then destroyed by the now free, unregulated, movement of molecules into and out of the cell. Subsequently proteins denature and the structural and chemical integrity of the cell is lost, culminating in a nonfunctional cell (read dead cell). I think this is called necrosis. Beyond this point there’s no biology, only the pure chemistry of putrefaction/decomposition, of interest only to a forensic scientist.
Which is, probably not coincidentally, the first sign of an organism: the boundary between it and the environment. The origin of both ipseity and alterity.
You might find it interesting that there’s this nematode that biologists are in love with it because it’s got the simplest nervous system they can study, around 300 neurons, and it’s claimed that they know which neuron gives this worm a sense of self; it uses this neuron to distinguish ipseity and alterity.
The idea that teleology is “anthropocentric” is question begging if it simply assumes that purposefulness is a sui generis property unique to humans (or wholly illusory). Note that this division (man versus nature as discrete) maybe made some sense when it was grounded in theology, but as far as I can see it is more of a bare posit now.
Likewise, there is something of an equivocation going on when the term “evolution” is used to describe a whole bunch of disparate theses, some empirical, some metaphysical. Some of these, in popular contexts, essentially pack a mechanistic view of causality and reductionism into the term. The equivocation then shows up when empirical evidence for empirical questions about the fossil record, the emergence of traits, etc. is used as somehow providing evidence for the metaphysical theses about causality (and so teleology), with nominalism getting bundled in too.
This, however, is not necessary; it remains a matter of contingency. It may be that in some cases the same thing does not happen. And if that is the case, what do we say about teleology? Do we say that it did not have that teleology? That it did not fulfil it satisfactorily? We could say either one. Also We could say the same of a seed that may or may not grow into a plant. We know the process because it has happened before, and we always say, a posteriori, with hindsight, that it fulfilled its ‘duty’. That is why I have referred to the fact that, in reality, there is a retrospective observation given the repetition of phenomena. But repetition may not always occur, and for that reason teleology is something trivial that we cannot be certain of regarding phenomena.
You really should take the time to look for a video of a talk given at an AI conference, ‘How the Universe Thinks without a Brain’, by someone called Claire L. Evans (of whom I’ve never heard before or since but who seems brilliant.) I won’t post it again as I’ve already done so several times, but it’s right on point for this discussion.
I rather think that death is one of those absolutes that admits of no qualification.
Humans are purposeful, like all of life. I mentioned life to be reductively a self-sustaining chemical reaction. Theology is a theorem in our weltanschauung.
Evolution is not a fragmented/incoherent framework; it seems to fit right in with the rest of science. Even so it avoids teleological language and posits this strange concept - teleonomy - that they probably won’t be able to defend if put to the test.
Living systems produce normative patterns of interactions with their world. Human cognition introduces a new wrinkle to this normativity in the form of the abstractive construction of mathematical logic. Ongoing self-consistency is modified into iterative self-identity, which produces Wigner’s ‘miraculous’ result that the world appears to conform to our mathematical idealizations.
Of course it does, since it is being forced into these human-organized abstractions. So we can say that life knows normativity, not by representation but by self-directed action. And we can say that only humans know the normativity of mathematics, since it is only we who construct this radically restrictively idealizing way of using the world.
It’s more than just a wrinkle! Wigner won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 for his discovery of fundamental symmetry principles in nuclear physics, and specifically for his application of group theory — a branch of pure abstract mathematics developed with no physical application in mind — to the laws governing atomic nuclei and elementary particles.
In other words, Wigner’s own Nobel-winning work was a prime example of the very phenomenon he later found so mysterious. He took abstract mathematical structures — symmetry groups — that had been developed by mathematicians following purely formal aesthetic and logical concerns, and found that they described the deep structure of physical reality with extraordinary precision. It is a perfect illustration of what Kant described as the ‘synthetic a priori’.
Paul Dirac’s discovery of anti-matter is another example. He predicted it must exist on the basis of the mathematics, even if the apparatus didn’t exist to validate the prediction for some years to come —which it eventually did. Indeed much of the amazing success of physics since the 17th century has arisen because of the ability to harness mathematical logic to empirical science.
But it is not enactivism and it is not phenomenology. Neither approach would say that human knowledge ‘describes’ physical reality. Knowledge is not description or representation of an external reality. It is the production of normative schemes of pragmatic action. Knowing DOES things with the world. It doesn’t have to try to reach out and grab onto reality because its activities are already a piece of that reality. The question isn’t WHETHER we can touch the real in a miraculous conformity of thought to being, but WHAT we are doing with it. This ‘what’ is neither a fortunate latching onto an arbitrary truth or purpose nor a fabrication. It is the structured becoming of an organization. As Thomas Kuhn said:
A scientific theory is usually felt to be better than its predecessors not only in the sense that it is a better instrument for discovering and solving puzzles but also because it is somehow a better representation of what nature is really like. One often hears that successive theories grow ever closer to, or approximate more and more closely to, the truth. Apparently generalizations like that refer not to the puzzle-solutions and the concrete predictions derived from a theory but rather to its ontology, to the match, that is, between the entities with which the theory populates nature and what is “really there.”
Perhaps there is some other way of salvaging the notion of ‘truth’ for application to whole theories, but this one will not do. There is, I think, no theory-independent way to reconstruct phrases like ‘really there’; the notion of a match between the ontology of a theory and its “real” counterpart in nature now seems to me illusive in principle. Besides, as a historian, I am impressed with the implausability of the view.
Did I say that it was? Isn’t the precision of mathematics such that it is where thinking and being are most clearly in concordance?
‘Husserl’s later philosophy contains an extensive critique of the modern sciences. This critique of what Husserl calls the ‘positive’, ‘naive’, or ‘objective’ sciences has been very influential in Continental philosophy and, in particular, in the retreat from holding up science and technology as models for philosophy. Philosophers such as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, Habermas, and Derrida, along with many others on the Continent, have been influenced by this part of Husserl’s thought. There is also in Husserl’s work, however, a very grand view of the value and possibilities of science, provided that science is understood appropriately and in a broad sense as a theory of the many forms of reason and evidence.’ Richard Tieszen Phenomenology, Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics.
Me, I think the real hallmark of phenomenology is something it has in common with Eastern non-dualism, that is, the understanding that the subject is not something apart from or outside of Being. That the problematical aspects of ‘scientism’ is precisely the attempt to view the observer or the mind as one amongst other objects of investigation, as if you could stand outside of it and measure or observe it, the way we do with objects generally.
Now that is not something that is disclosed by mathematics. But it’s also not occluded by it. It’s more that the qualitative aspects of the Western intellectual tradition became excluded as a consequence of the ‘Cartesian division’ that we’ve discussed many times. But seeing through that division doesn’t require rejection of the power of mathematical reasoning applied to empirical observation.
Mathematics is the big sledgehammer we’ve swung around at reality ever since Kepler and Galileo discovered that much could come of it.
“Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe” ~ Galileo Galilei
Lord Kelvin and others stated that the tree of knowledge had been plucked thoroughly, and all that remained was improving precision. 16 decimal places of precision is allegedly equivalent to measuring the distance between NY and Washington down to a hair’s breadth (?).
Why is math so effective? The applicability of abstract math (pure math) to concrete, physical reality (applied math) seems to have amazed Wigner. Is the universe mathematical? There’s Hartry Field’s science without math that might just break the spell.
There’s also black holes, where math breaks down, as it lacks any sound grasp of infinity. Turbulence is an unsolved problem in physics. McNamara effect, choosing a measure as an indicator means that measure is no longer an effective indicator, and more tend to undercut mathematical efficacy and utility.
Gödel’s incompleteness theorems destroyed any hope of axiomatizing math in a way that’s both consistent and complete.
Actually I believe the original reference didn’t mention God although it could reasonably inferred. It was from Il Saggiatore (The Assayer, 1623): “The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.”
It’s a straight line from there to Einstein: “We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God”. (God, he would add, as Spinoza understood it, not the ‘childish superstition of religious faith.’)
But then, mathematical knowledge (‘dianoia’) is not the highest level of knowledge in Plato’s epistemology. That is attributed to noesis.
We’re obviously well away from the OP now, but it’s an issue I’ve studied in depth. I see the resistance to Platonism (e.g. in Hartry) as being an inevitable consequence of an over-emphasis on empiricism.
It seems that despite claims to the contrary logical positivism is alive and well. I’m surprised you find this discussion to be off-topic. If the universe is mathematical then this impinges on a teleological understanding of our universe, points to a cosmic intelligence (Nous). Is God a mathematician? Does AI, in its present form, have a purpose? Yes. How is that purpose achieved?
Regarding Plato’s divided line analogy, I have yet to see a cogent account of its various modes of comprehension; not that none exist.
But they achieve this through the practice of meditation. The reason we cannot (on occasion) represent the future is because we cannot be certain of the results of change, the changes between the current state and the state that will be found in the future. We are programmed (evolved) to be actively involved in that change.
But what if there is no change? The future will be the same, so can be predicted. It is the same as the now. Through meditation the being arrests change, steps out of the flow, so to speak and inhabits the future. Well more specifically, the past, the present and the future. It cannot be said that the meditator is present in the now, or is somewhere in the past, or the future. Because they could be in either of the three times, or all three together. I remember a particular meditation session, which was precisely 3hours long. But I was surprised when it ended because I thought it was only just beginning, for me it felt like about minutes, although this is about the length of time it took for me to still the mind. The next two hours and forty minutes were in a very real sense outside time. I wasn’t asleep either, I was aware of every breath, but somehow that time seemed un-measurable.
It isn’t actually experienced as the same though. Change is not completely prevented, and that’s why I said the person is still aware of the difference between past and future, without predicting the future, or trying to represent it. We cannot arrest all of our internal activities, breathing, pulse, etc., so there is still an awareness of time without any attempt at representation.
I think it can be said that the meditator is in the now. That’s what gets one outside of time, as you describe, and why you lose track of the quantitative value of time. The person has excluded oneself from the quantitative evaluation of time (noticing how much time passes). But, I think that this removing oneself from the quantitative evaluation allows one to better grasp the qualitative value of time. The qualitative element is the difference between past and future, and the experience of change which occurs in the medium between the two, now.
This is what I was talking about, being aware of the passing of time, through the necessity of change, i.e. that it’s impossible for us to exclude change. And when we exclude the past and future, to focus specifically on the now of activity, then we can develop a perspective of the other two, which is different from the conventional. The conventional focuses on the quantitative value, which is a recognition of the repetitions of the past, and projects them toward the future as prediction. For the meditator this would be like how many breaths have I taken since I started, and how many more will I take before I am finished. But this is exactly the type of thing that the meditation is meant to avoid. That allows the meditator to experience the quality of now.
Dennett famously denied the reality of intrinsic intentionality, tried to reduce normativity to function, and was a self-described adherent of “Illusionism” with regard to phenomenal consciousness. While he didn’t go as far as someone like Churchland, he was pretty far along the spectrum.
That’s where the distinction between finality and purpose comes in. If purpose is the goal-directedness proper to animate beings, then finality can be understood analogically as the dynamic directedness of inanimate objects. Inanimate objects obviously don’t have goals, but they do have something analogous in the form of laws, tendencies and/or “attractor dynamics”.
But I agree, in the absence of mind I don’t think it makes any sense to talk about things having “purpose”, and anyone who wants to talk about “the purpose of the universe” probably needs to cash that out in some kind of theology.
How so? If I’m understanding you correctly, you are claiming that telos is always projected retrospectively onto the inanimate world by minded creatures. I’m challenging that claim. The example of inert gas was meant to illustrate that inanimate systems have telos in their own right. To deny this would be to deny that the inert gas is really dynamically directed toward thermodynamic equilibrium in the absence of human minds. Perhaps you could elaborate on how you think your original statement addresses this?
Jeremy Bentham, actually, but it’s an inspiring and important keystone for animal rights, thanks for citing it.
And this, from Richard J. Bernstein:
There is a danger that this preoccupation [with human discourse and concept formation] focuses exclusively on how humans operate with concepts in making and justifying judgments. If this becomes the paradigm of what is “genuinely” conceptual, then we are compelled to say that non-human animals do not, “strictly speaking,” have conceptual capacities because they do not have the ability to make and justify judgments; they do not have Kantian spontaneity. We are sapient, and they (non-human animals) are only sentient. But this obsession with the “logical space of reasons” tends to make us insensitive to the continuities between human and non-human animals. It closes us off from the possibility of learning more about our conceptual capacities by studying how they are anticipated in non-human animals. . .[Pragmatic Naturalism, 41]
I think our concern for the place of logic and reasons in our world picture is unavoidable, not obsessive, but otherwise I agree completely with Bernstein’s point.
Can you say more about what this immanent finality might entail? I like what you’ve said so far about immanent purposiveness in non-living processes. It’s close to my understanding of matter as inextricably enmeshed within gestalt fields of inter-causal loops. Elements of fields produce their own original tendencies, but these tendencies are relationally responsive to other elements of the field. This makes possible an equilibrated totality which simulates purpose without uniformity of tendency among the elements which compose it (as opposed to the uniformity of purpose implied by mechanistic lawfulness).
I myself would say that the functioning of our minds goes beyond what we consciously observed; e.g. it has been shown that people make decisions before they consciously are aware of them.
What is your view of the assertion that apparent telos is observed in the world by sentient minds? E.g. inert gas follows an a telos by abstraction of the laws on physics on particles of gas, but it requires a sentient mind to observe this fact (i.e. the gas particles have no consciousness to ascribe telos to themselves).
I think the confusion here is that some people are treating telos as an a priori property of things, while others (including myself) are treating telos as an observation sentient minds make about things. This is similar to my discussed example of mathematics, where the universe operates in terms of math but requires sentient minds or machines made by them to contemplate this fact.
By this I would give that apparent telos, just like math, is part of the world but sentient beings are needed to recognize this. Likewise, I would give that apparent telos existed before the first sentient being existed to observe it, just like the operation of the universe in terms of math was true before the first mathematician or physicist.
However, I would also say that telos is not an a priori quality of objects in the universe except when it can be directly linked to fundamental physical laws like gravitation (e.g. the telos of a rock to be pulled downwards by gravity) but rather is an emergent effect upon them. E.g. the telos of life is emergent upon the physical processes behind evolution which have selected for it rather than being a priori quality of life as posited by vitalism. By this the idea of teleonomy simply refers to emergent telos that is driven by underlying physical processes.
Consequently, the very concept of teleonomy as a distinct idea can be treated as one that is only needed to distinguish this emergent telos from a vital force or intelligent design. It is just a reminder that, at the end of the day, this telos is an emergent effect rather than a priori.
