Then, how do rocks reproduce themselves? — Galuchat

They don't, clearly. There is no mechanism of heritability among populations of rocks. All I've argued is that evolution can be applicable to non-organic populations, not that all non-organic populations undergo evolution. — StreetlightX

I have no problem with the notion of overarching concepts, viewing "data", "communication" and "information" to be such, applying to all types of objects, to wit:

1) Physical (Phenomena)
a) Inorganic
i) Natural (Geosphere)
ii) Artificial (Artefacta)
b) Organic (Biosphere)
2) Mental (Noumena)

If evolution is claimed to be substrate independent, it needs a general description which can be applied to all types of objects, otherwise the notion is category error.

And if the terms used in such a description (notably "reproduction") can only be (or are usually) understood with reference to the life sciences, they require redefinition (which is equivocation). To avoid equivocation, they need to be replaced or supplemented with other terms/concepts.

Funnily enough, category error and equivocation are the same problems I (and many biosemioticians) have with attempts to extend semiosis to physiosemiosis and pansemiosis. To be honest, I'm not even sure that semiosis should be extended to certain levels of biosemiosis.

These are all just small examples from disparate fields, but I hope they begin to fill out a picture of how to understand evolution as not just an organic process, but an inorganic one as well. — StreetlightX

Biological evolution is obviously a partially inorganic process insofar as it involves interactions between the organic and the inorganic. Nonetheless, arguably, the organic aspect is predominant.

Language, architecture and technology should be considered predominately organic, too, because they are activities associated only with organic beings. Of course they, just like organic beings and evolution itself, involve inorganic materials and aspects of the environment, but that does not mean that they are not predominately organic processes.

None of this is to say that there cannot be wholly inorganic evolution. The evolution of the pre-organic cosmos, for example.

Why do we need to do that? What's at stake in thinking the nonliving in evolutionary terms? — Πετροκότσυφας

Keeping your elaboration of this question with fdrake in mind as well, evolutionary thinking can be useful in a few different ways: first, as fdrake says, its puts the living in continuity with the non-living (along a certain dimension anyway), and it's always useful and interesting to draw bridges across domains like that. As I mentioned in the OP, we now use evolutionary methods to design electronic circuits and other things, and it's more than likely the CPU which you're writing your posts with were designed, in part, by use of such methods. Without the import of evolutionary ideas from the biotic realm, you'd probably have a crappier processor. So were talking at the very least about a clear and practical reason to consider evolution in non-organic terms.

Another, more philosophically interesting reason (to me anyway) to think the abiotic in evolutionary terms is that evolutionary thinking implies thinking of things at the level of populations, rather than either individuals or types. There is, in other words, an (entirely positive, to my mind) anti-Platonic element to evolutionary thinking whose import is vital. Here's how Ernst Mayr, one of the grandddaddies of the modern synthesis, put it:

"For the typologist there] are a limited number of fixed, unchangeable ‘ideas’ underlying the observed variability [in nature], with the eidos (idea) being the only thing that is fixed and real, while the observed variability has no more reality than the shadows of an object on a cave wall... [In contrast], the populationist stresses the uniqueness of everything in the organic world... All organisms and organic phenomena are composed of unique features and can be described collectively only in statistical terms. Individuals, or any kind of organic entities, form populations of which we can determine the arithmetic mean and the statistics of variation. Averages are merely statistical abstractions, only the individuals of which the populations are composed have reality. The ultimate conclusions of the population thinker and the typologist are precisely the opposite. For the typologist the type (eidos) is real and the variation an illusion, while for the populationist, the type (the average) is an abstraction and only the variation is real. No two ways of looking at nature could be more different." (Mayr, quoted in Manuel Delanda, Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy).

This the implications of this last sentence are worth stressing too: only variation is real. There is a realism here not of Form, but of difference. This is, to put it mildly, a major shift away from a great deal of Western philosophical thought, which has often begun from the premise of Form and identity rather than difference, and which has rather scant intellectual resources for thinking in terms of populations. Another intimately related element that follows from thinking in evolutionary terms is the irreducibility of time or temporality. One cannot think in evolutionary terms without thinking in temporal terms: to speak of variation is to speak not only of variation in traits (modification), but variation in time (descent). So there are at least two, co-related realisms that 'fall out' of thinking in evolutionary terms: a realism of difference and a realism of time. The same too needs to be said of space: evolution also cannot be thought of without reference to spatial distributions, interactions of populations across distances, with isolation producing speciaton.

Yet another import of evolutionary thinking is the impossibility of separating the individual from it's milieu, and from it's interactions with it's environment. Evolutionary thinking upends the simple distinction between 'inside' and 'outside' insofar as what is 'outside' - environment - can literally effect the very genotypes of a species: an individual's morphology is an expression of it's environment, an environmental invagination such that you can't neatly draw any border between where the individual begins and where the environment ends, and this on account, again, of the long-scale temporality that any approach to evolutionary thinking is obliged to have. The individual and the environment exist in a topological relation rather than geometric one (to be brief with an explanation, in topology, inside and outside are relative, not absolute). These are just some of the implications of thinking in evolutionary terms, and even then I've glossed over heaps and heaps of nuances. There are things to be said about refiguring the nature-culture distinction, about novelty, necessity and contingency, and more, but this will have to do for now.

I could go on about this for days. I don't think philosophers have paid nearly enough attention to exactly how much evolutionary thought can inform and enrich the discipline.

Going by the orthodox qualifications of evolution which you’ve stipulated, evolution necessarily in part consist of self-replication. — javra

I'll stop you there! It doesn't have to be self-replication just replication (or reproduction). That's the thing with cellphones: they don't self-replicate, but they do replicate (with the help of a whole industry). To play with your own words a bit, evolution can work just as well with hetropoiesis as autopoiesis. To say that it is substrate independent is also to say that it is, er, poietically indifferent. It's also important to remember that autopoiesis includes self-maintainence as part of it's definition, which again, is not entailed by any of the necessary ingredients of evolution (cellphones don't self-maintain, yet they can still be subject to evolution). Again, the larger point is that evolution is indifferent to the exact mechanics of replication: it requires some mechanism of replication, but exactly what and how it works is something it is largely indifferent to at a formal level.

(I say 'at a formal level' because the specificities of replication mechanisms in practice have huge effects on how evolution itself 'plays out', and a shit-ton of evolutionary biology is given over to studying exactly those mechanisms and their evolutionary effects. I simply mean to say that the fact of evolution is indifferent to the mechanics - it only requires that there be some/one; but once there is one, it's specificities will have, at it were, retroactive effects upon the actual workings of evolution. I hope that's clear).

Evolution is an inorganic process insofar as it involves interactions between the organic and the inorganic. Nonetheless, arguably, the organic aspect is predominant.

Language, architecture and technology should be considered predominately organic, too, because they are activities associated only with organic beings. Of course they, just like organic beings and evolution itself, involve inorganic materials and aspects of the environment, but that does not mean that they are not predominately organic processes.

None of this is to say that there cannot be wholly inorganic evolution. The evolution of the pre-organic cosmos, for example. — Janus

I tried to address this in my reply to Wayfarer earlier, but yes, it's important to think in terms of principles rather than fact here.

If evolution is claimed to be substrate independent, it needs a general description which can be applied to all types of objects, otherwise the notion is category error.

And if the terms used in such a description (notably "reproduction") can only be (or are usually) understood with reference to the life sciences, they require redefinition (which is equivocation). To avoid equivocation, they need to be replaced or supplemented with other terms/concepts. — Galuchat

I think the terms of evolution are robust enough to survive outside the incubator that was the biological sciences for them. In fact I don't just think this, I know this because those terms have been employed in non-biolgical ways as with the examples of circuit-design and architecture that I keep coming back to.

I simply mean to say that the fact of evolution is indifferent to the mechanics - it only requires that there be some/one; but once there is one, it's specificities will have, at it were, retroactive effects upon the actual workings of evolution. I hope that's clear). — StreetlightX

No, this is clear, and I agree with this. Nevertheless:

I was wanting to avoid directly addressing the issue of agency. Autopoeisis is a nice way of expressing a particular type of agency capable of causing effects in and of itself--top-down causation as its often enough termed. To use the example of cellphones, by what agency do they replicate? It's a rhetorical question to me (by human agency), but maybe you hold a different answer in mind.

To then rephrase my previous question: Can replication occur in the absence of agency? I hold the presumption that abiotic givens do not hold agency--instead, that they behave entropically by following paths of least resistance toward absolute entropy. Don't know the extent to which we might agree here or not. Then you get into the metaphysics of identity: What replicates if not the identity that is replicating itself (hence why I used self-replication to make this explicit).

OK, a ton of questions ... yet to me they still point to a universal evolution that encapsulates biological evolution needing to be more general in manners that don't include replication.

Can replication occur in the absence of agency? — javra

I guess at this point I remain somewhat agnostic on the issue, or at least open to convincing one way or another. As it stands though, I see no intrinsic or 'analytic' connection between replication and agency. To hone our concepts a bit though, it's important to specify - in a way I didn't do in the original 'list of ingredients' - that any evolutionary relevant replication needs to have a component of heritability. Hurricanes, sand dunes, and rivers, for example, are 'replicated' all the time given the right atmospheric/geological/hydrologic conditions but because they have no mechanism of heredity, strictly speaking, there can be no evolution of hurricanes/sand dunes etc. A hurricane is always created anew; it is not 'path dependant' on the phylogenesis of other, previous hurricanes. If we take these natural processes as our models of replication, then I see no necessary reason to think that agency plays any part in their replication.

On the other hand, the uniqueness of life lies in it's precisely having what is more or less a universal mechanism of heritability - DNA expression. Furthermore, DNA functions as a resource in the equally universal life process of self-maintainence (which is another thing not shared by other self-organizing systems like hurricanes). So at the very least what distinguishes life from other, natural, self-organizing systems is a mechanism of heritability and an ability to self-maintain - the two key components of autopoietic theory. Of these two components, I'm fairly convinced that the universality of DNA as a replication mechanism is, despite it's universality, a contingency due to shared ancestry, rather than an intrinsic component of life itself. As I quoted Jablonka and Lamb saying, one can imagine, in principle at a least, forms of life which might dispense with DNA altogether in favour of other kinds of mechanisms of heritability (other kinds which exist today - epigenetic, behavioural, and symbolic mechanics, to name the three they do).

So going back to the question of agency, the question is: where can we locate it? There are - on the outline above - three possible places (at minimum). (1) At the level of sheer reproduction (hurricanes, etc); (2) At the level of the mechanism of heritability (DNA expression, epigenetic processes of methylation, etc), and; (3) At the level of self-maintainence processes. I don't think any agency is required for either (1) or (2), but I do think one can begin to speak of agency operating at the level of (3). Complications arise when it becomes clear that one can't cleanly and analytically separate (2) and (3): in order to heal a cut, they body draws upon DNA in order to grow new skin to do so. So the question is: it is analytically necessary that processes of self-repair draw upon mechanisms of heritability? What is the modality of the connection between (2) and (3)?

If the connection is not a necessary one, then the answer to your question is yes: evolutionarily relevant replication can occur in the absence of agency. Repair can occur (in principle) without any need to draw on the resources of replication mechanisms. If the connection is a necessary, then agency cannot be separated from evolutionariliy relevant replication, and the answer to you question is no. So alot rides on the sense in which we understand replication, as well as where exactly it 'fits' in the conceptual and empirical constellation in which agency begins to matter. Anyway, I hope this also makes sense!

With respect to the Jablonka and Lamb quote, it's made in the context of their book in which they try and show that (1) Genes are not the only mechanism of heritability (evolutionarily relevant traits can be passed down in ways other than DNA) and more importantly that, (2) those other mechanisms (which they call epigenetic, behavioural, and symbolic) can and do function/exert effects entirely independently of changes in the DNA code. That is, as a mechanism of heritability, DNA is, in principle dispensable. As it stands, all life on Earth has DNA as a replication mechanism, but there is no reason that it is necessarily so. Or at least that's the argument, which I find persuasive.

Notice though that this is different somewhat from the analogy with AI intelligence. The other heritability mechanisms that J+L speak of are real - they exist, here and now. The question is not - as with AI intelligence - whether new mechanisms will eventually emerge. There is no question of taking on faith or confidence that they will. It's already the case that they have. The question is rather whether or not their current existence may portend the dispensibility of DNA altogether as a mechanism of evolution, or at least whether or not that would be possible in principle. So I think this is definitely more than just a linguistic issue insofar as those other mechanisms - in living organisms all across the planet today - cause evolutionarily relevant effects independently of changes to the DNA code as it stands.

My hunch is that this is mostly because we're talking about simulation, if I'm not mistaken, which, in a way, gets rid of time and space, since they are simulated too. I mean, the architectural designs that got extinct by our algorithms, haven't existed the way extinct species existed in spacetime. It's a different milieu to use one of your expressions. So, I'm thinking that this evolutionary talk in design is mostly a metaphor for something that we were doing either way (selecting designs based on preferences), just not as efficiently or systematically as the new algorithms allow us to do? — Πετροκότσυφας

One other thing to note is that I am treating evolution here in entirely formal terms (in fdrake's terms, evolution is simply a 'generalized action of selection in a space of reproductive constraints'). Formal to the extent that it describes a certain process that may or may not be 'instantiated' by specific systems - be they living populations, a bunch of circuit-designs, or languages. It could be the case that all of these latter things cease to exist (if the Earth blew up tomorrow, say), and one could still speak of evolution as a formal process to which nothing, in fact, corresponds. One corollary of this is that the 'kind' of process(es) which may or may not correspond to it doesn't matter: it could be virtual, real, simulated - in fact, it doesn't even matter how we want to qualify these terms (as in, the question 'what is real?' or 'what is virtual?'), all we need to see is whether or not 'there is' evolution occurring.

Also, check out the article which I linked to in the OP regarding using genetic algorithms to come up with architecture. It describes how it's done in a way that I think is pretty helpful, and is a shortish read as well.

Evolution gave rise to life's precursors, the living emerged from the nonliving at some point. — fdrake

What do you think is the difference between "evolution" and "emergence"? Are they just two different words which refer to one and the same thing? Is evolution a special type of emergence?

Hurricanes, sand dunes, and rivers, for example, are 'replicated' all the time given the right atmospheric/geological/hydrologic conditions [...] — StreetlightX

When thinking about this my preferred subject has been fire (I forget where I first read of the parallel): it can be “birthed” of heat or sparks, for example; can have an “old age” and “die”; it needs to consume energy from outside itself in order to persist/be (i.e., for self-preservation); and, here most relevantly, it can reproduce itself via buddings that travel to new locations. The question here pondered by me being, “what then makes fire a non-living entity (doing away with the limitations of organic compounds as a necessity for life)?” Thought I’d mention this since it might be relevant to future discussions. (So it’s mentioned, my best current answer is that it is entropic rather than negentropic and, hence, autopoietic—I find that the latter two mutually entail each other.)

So at the very least what distinguishes life from other, natural, self-organizing systems is a mechanism of heritability and an ability to self-maintain - the two key components of autopoietic theory. Of these two components, I'm fairly convinced that the universality of DNA as a replication mechanism is, despite it's universality, a contingency due to shared ancestry, rather than an intrinsic component of life itself. — StreetlightX

I am very much in agreement that we shouldn’t prejudice ourselves to life necessarily consisting of the organic chemicals we know it to consist of on Earth—at least when engaged in abstract reasoning concerning the denotations of life and of evolution.

So going back to the question of agency, the question is: where can we locate it? There are - on the outline above - three possible places (at minimum). (1) At the level of sheer reproduction (hurricanes, etc); (2) At the level of the mechanism of heritability (DNA expression, epigenetic processes of methylation, etc), and; (3) At the level of self-maintainence processes. — StreetlightX

I’m of the mindset that (3) is both necessary and sufficient for agency. And again, other planets in other (edit:) universes galaxies might hold self-maintaining agencies/agents that make use of something that is neither nucleic acid based nor protein based. I’m not asserting this as a fact but merely as a possibility I currently find no reason to conclude invalid.

Complications arise when it becomes clear that one can't cleanly and analytically separate (2) and (3): in order to heal a cut, they body draws upon DNA in order to grow new skin to do so. So the question is: it is analytically necessary that processes of self-repair draw upon mechanisms of heritability? What is the modality of the connection between (2) and (3)? — StreetlightX

But when it comes to the question you’ve posed, boldfaced by me, I’ll argue that it is necessary, given the following modification to the question: “that process of heritability draw upon processes of self-repair” (thereby making self-repair and self-maintenance primary and heritability an outgrowth of this primary aspect).

My reason for this is as follows: For evolution consisting of replication to occur (the orthodox current understanding of evolution), there necessarily needs to be inheritable variations among the givens considered. Otherwise, regardless of quantity of qualitatively identical givens which replicate, with a sufficient change in context (here loosely used to specify both external and internal conditions relative to each given) all givens will perish and none will survive (such as to further reproduce). And I take it as a given that changes in context always occur. The process of self-maintenance then, will also need to be to some extent capable of creating relatively random changes in that which is self-maintaining—i.e., capable of creating mutations (some of these will be beneficial, some deleterious, and some inconsequential, at least at the time of mutation). It is the self-maintenance processes that mutate, these encompassing the maintained process of replication. That stated in summarized form, for the non-deleterious mutations to be inheritable—thereby producing naturally occurring variations within the populace—they will need to be bound to the same process utilized in self-repair/self-maintenance (homeostasis, for example, is most commonly not self-repair though it is self-maintenance). Hence, as conclusion the just argued, the processes of self-maintenance and heritability will then need to be interrelated somehow.

In short, my own conclusion is that agency is required for reproduction as an aspect of evolution--something to which fire, I currently find, is for example not subject to (fire does not change its constituency over time).

To be clear about this, I do not desire to stifle interests in evolutionary processes extending beyond the realms of the biological; I’d rather encourage these interests. But I will again uphold that such abiotic evolution will need to reinterpret evolution in manners in which it is not partially contingent upon givens replicating themselves—such that biological evolution becomes a particular variant of a more general, if not universal, process. To this effect, for example: Evolution of language (a very interesting topic), to the extent it holds replicating givens (such as concepts and their expressions) a) is yet driven by (biotic) agency and b) yet holds naturally occurring variations in the givens addressed (again, concepts, their expressions, and the like).

A hurricane is always created anew; it is not 'path dependant' on the phylogenesis of other, previous hurricanes. — StreetlightX

That's the difference between biological and non-biological evolution; there is no self-organization involved in the formation of hurricanes, rivers and sand dunes.

An individual hurricane, river or sand dune evolves over its life just as organisms do. The idea of evolution you seemingly want to address, though, is the idea of the evolution of successive forms in the history of a population and not the evolution of individuals.

It is possible that there could be an evolution of successive forms of hurricanes, rivers or sand dunes; but this would be entirely due to 'external' environmental and climatic changes, not to 'internal' heritable changes in their constitution.

The question then becomes whether in the example of say, AI, programming could become a heritable self-organizing substitute for DNA.

Might be helpful to use a word like "development" for changes an individual undergoes during its lifespan, and reserve "evolution" for populations.

Might be helpful to use a word like "development" for changes an individual undergoes during its lifespan, and reserve "evolution" for populations. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't personally find the distinction between individual and collective evolution confusing, but for those who do, your suggestion might indeed be helpful.

Might be helpful to use a word like "development" for changes an individual undergoes during its lifespan, and reserve "evolution" for populations. — Srap Tasmaner

In biology, an individual’s conformity to environment is specified as acclimatization whereas a populace’s conformity to environment (to that which is ontic) over generations is specified by adaptation.

Fitness—which to my mind could, as previously alluded to, be more metaphysically addressed as conformity to the ontic over time (how well something fits into that which is ontic; more concretely, one’s environment)—could then be hypothetically addressed in terms of acclimatization of individuals or cohorts within a specific generation or, else, in terms of adaptation that occurs via numerous generations within a populace (species). I suggest this while strongly emphasizing that “fitness” in current practice within fields of biology is tmk strictly shorthand for “evolutionary fitness”--hence not (always?) encompassing acclimatization (haven't read up on this in a while). Still, to me widening the scope of fitness to include fitness of acclimatizations is in keeping with a lot of our common usages of the term (e.g., that there person is quite fit (in mind as well as body), kind of thing). But, then, there is no such thing as being “more evolved” in biological fields either; all co-existent species are technically always equally evolved--equally selected upon given their ancestral time span. [edit: this not to say that all species are equally fit] Though we all understand what we mean when we say that we are more evolved than bacteria, for example.

Anyway, if any of this is of use ...

That's the difference between biological and non-biological evolution; there is no self-organization involved in the formation of hurricanes, rivers and sand dunes.

An individual hurricane, river or sand dune evolves over its life just as organisms do. The idea of evolution you seemingly want to address, though, is the idea of the evolution of successive forms in the history of a population and not the evolution of individuals.

It is possible that there could be an evolution of successive forms of hurricanes, rivers or sand dunes; but this would be entirely due to 'external' environmental and climatic changes, not to 'internal' heritable changes in their constitution.

The question then becomes whether in the example of say, AI, programming could become a heritable self-organizing substitute for DNA. — Janus

A quick response to this, as I'll be out all day: self-organization is most definitely a property of non-living things. Hurricanes are textbook examples of self-organising systems driven by entropic gradients. And as Srap rightly mentions, I'm concerned here with evolution in its strict sense - heritable variation in populations - rather than development over a lifetime. Finally, with respect to mechanisms of heritability, there is nothing about the principles of evolution that require those mechanisms to be 'internal' and not 'external', as it were. In fact, as I mentioned to Jarva, 'external' mechanisms are currently acknowledged to function in an evolutionary capacity independently of 'internal' mechnisms like DNA. That is, whether or not such a mechanism is 'internal' or 'external' to the subject population is a matter of indifference to the evolutionary process (cellphone blueprints and their factories are not contained in cellphones!).

Anything that can be described in the abstract, without essentially incorporating references to specific instances, would be substrate-independent. Anything that is usually referred to as a principle, mechanism, etc. would belong to this class. With a rich enough choice of available substrates, there's a chance that such a mechanism would have more than one instantiation.

There is nothing particularly unique about evolution in this regard. If you can describe evolution in such abstract terms, then it is ipso facto substrate-independent. But so is, say, the inverse-square law of attraction.

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Languages, like organic species, go extinct and die; — StreetlightX

But languages are not non-organic. At the level of neurology they have to same use it or loose it evolution. Memetics applies to neural structures, though it appears as ideals.

You might want to look at Gerald Edleman on the Neural Evolution.

Languages do not speciate. If you accept that species are defined by their mutual lack or reproductivity. There seem to be no human languages which cannot borrow words and grammar from another.

This is something that I've talked about many times here. What seems to be missing in this thread is "Natural Selection". Evolution is the effect of natural selection. Natural selection acts on everything, including the inorganic, hence everything evolves or changes through time. Planets and stars evolve as a result of natural selection. These objects accumulate mass over time and gravity forces these objects into spherical shapes. They can have gravitational influence on each other, and are the result of the accumulation of unique elements that make them up, which leads to different conditions on their surfaces. Natural selection is an environmental feedback mechanism where objects are influenced by the forces and processes in their environment and being part of that environment means that the object influences it's environment as well.

This is no different from how animals are influenced by their environment and how they - as part of their environment have an impact on it as well. Predators can be an influence on how their prey evolve, and prey can have an impact on how those predators evolve. Each organism is a unique subset of the gene pool that arrived at this condition through the pressures of the environment, which can include it's own body.

self-organization is most definitely a property of non-living things. Hurricanes are textbook examples of self-organising systems driven by entropic gradients. — StreetlightX

True, but biological self-organization is of a different order than the kinds of self-organization manifested by hurricanes. The latter are the result of transitory 'internal' environments, for example vortices, which in turn result from local intensifications of atmospheric conditions. The former is an evolved, more or less stabilised, vastly complex and interrelated, inheritable and thus further evolveable, set of information.

I'm concerned here with evolution in its strict sense - heritable variation in populations - rather than development over a lifetime.

True again, and I had already noted that myself. However what, from one perspective would be considered development over the lifetime of an individual biological organism, may alternatively be thought as a process of evolution of a population (of the constituting cells of the organism) which would also incorporate heritable variation. So, it is a matter of perspective.

Finally, with respect to mechanisms of heritability, there is nothing about the principles of evolution that require those mechanisms to be 'internal' and not 'external', as it were. In fact, as I mentioned to Jarva, 'external' mechanisms are currently acknowledged to function in an evolutionary capacity independently of 'internal' mechnisms like DNA. That is, whether or not such a mechanism is 'internal' or 'external' to the subject population is a matter of indifference to the evolutionary process (cellphone blueprints and their factories are not contained in cellphones!).

I think there is a valid distinction to be made and maintained between internal and external in this connection to any example that we might want to characterize as 'evolutionary'. In regard to your example of cellphones, I would say their 'evolution' is a function of the evolution of human ideas, desires and needs, which are, on different levels or contexts, internal to human individuals (as subjective) and internal to human societies (as intersubjective). So, again I think it reduces to being a matter of perspective and the consequent ranges and domains of linguistic usage. A reduction to wholistic pluralism! :grin: