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." — tim wood

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." — tim wood

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. — javra

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. — 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.

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 — 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.

And meaning is too young of a thing to [hold an ability to comprehend] it.” — 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.

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). — Wayfarer

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. — apokrisis

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?

That's quite the assertion to start your line of thought with — Ilyosha

Assertion or psychophysics 101? It's just standard psychological science.

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. — javra

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, — javra

I share this speculation, and I enjoyed the way you expressed it.

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. — javra

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. — 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 psychophysics 101? It's just standard psychological science. — apokrisis

Assertion; or perhaps: Huge philosophical leap smuggled in the guise of "that's just the way things are, it's elementary..."?

I’m asserting its psychophysics 101 as well as a familiar epistemic point of Ancient Greek metaphysics. So start with that. ;j

But life as a phenomenon is a fruitful combination of material dynamics at its most unstable or volatile, — apokrisis

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. Particular life as a kind of "strange attractor" seems persistent.

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. — apokrisis

Deux et machina? If there's a hand, it must be the various physical laws and a lot of combining and recombining. If not that, then what is the hand?

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. — apokrisis

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.

Otherwise, reason is an indispensable faculty of the intelligence. — Wayfarer

Can there be reason without intelligence, without a brain? The ancient Greeks would have accepted the proposition - that seems alien to us. To be sure, brains are characteristic of much of the animal world, and none of the plant world. Yet plants exhibit behaviour - or they seem to act, and the actions seem purposive. Maybe mind, if not brain? The trouble is that plants actually do these things. The question as to how becomes significant. .

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. — tim wood

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.

Deux et machina? If there's a hand, it must be the various physical laws and a lot of combining and recombining. If not that, then what is the hand? — 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.

Trees - news to me - are apparently amazing, dynamic and engaging in behaviours often described in anthropomorphic terms. — 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.

Why is experience a matter of imposing intelligible structure on the world? Why isn't it, say, a matter of disclosing the world? — Ilyosha

Good questions. It seems to me that it's both. The world is disclosed or found always already with some structure.

Can there be reason without intelligence, without a brain? — tim wood

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. — apokrisis

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.

The primary datum of experience is that nature itself appears intelligible, or rationally structured. — apokrisis

I agree with this.

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. — 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.

I share this speculation, and I enjoyed the way you expressed it. — syntax

Rarely do I get compliments, so I'm relishing it. Thank you and cheers.

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. — Wayfarer

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”?

With me approaching the issue from this state of contemplation, can you better clarity the differences between “transrational” and “non-rational”? — javra

For sure - I was reacting, mainly, to the second of the two quotes in the OP:

"[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." — 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.)

But I want to differentiate between what surpasses reason, and what falls short of it. Hope that makes sense. — Wayfarer

It does. Thanks

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. — tim wood

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. — 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.

The quotes in the OP ask (me, at least) of life and reason: what they are and what they are with respect to each other. Trees are alive, a trivial truism. But that rests on a definition. Life, itself, is primordial to, and indifferent to, all definitions. "Life," then, does not capture life. One is left - I am left - to wonder at just what life is.

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.

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?

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.

Do you sense the indifference of life itself, here? Green (it seems to me, and opposed to "nature's" red) is simply not grasped. The author of the book observes that for nature to be red, it must rest on green.

I find in this a distinction between reasoning and reason. Reason abounds, in the sense that things often do one thing and not another (that reasoning calls laws). Reasoning is what a mind does in reflecting on those laws. Reasoning is something that some life does, but that is not itself life. Reasoning requires a reasoner. It appears that there are large aspects of being that neither language nor reason can reach.

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.

biological machines. — tim wood

:angry:

We can decide what things are, in some sense, but that doesn't mean reality has to care about the decision. — fdrake

Reality leads to all kinds of disagreement - what it is, how anyone knows anything about it, and so forth, questions many bytes on which have been wasted on PF. That is, reality as other to perception, seems problematic.

Life on the other hand seems more a challenge than merely problematic. Reality seems right cooperative, compared with life. Life is a fact; reality just a conjecture, thereby pliant and compliant. Absent understanding what life is, no moral/ethical code, no set of rules, laws, or constraints can be appropriate to or for life. Appropriate for science, reason, thought, desire, and all that they govern, but not for life.

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?

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. — tim wood

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.

----------

looks like my timing isn't half bad :razz:

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. — 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.

Do you sense the indifference of life itself, here? — 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.

So again, the same semiotic story of self organising constraints. — 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.

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? — tim wood

'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 — tim wood

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". — 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.