Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he’s unwilling to be seen with her in public.
The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. (Mind and Cosmos, Pp35-36)
The physicist wants laws that are as universal as possible, true of all situations and therefore unable to tell us much about any particular situation — laws, in other words, that are true regardless of meaning and context... Such abstraction shows up in the strong urge toward the mathematization of physical laws.
In biology a changing context does not interfere with some causal truth we are trying to see; contextual transformation is itself the truth we are after... Every creature lives by virtue of the dynamic, pattern-shifting play of a governing context, which extends into an open-ended environment. The organism gives expression, at every level of its being, to the unbounded because of reason — the tapestry of meaning.
The question of whether life, the universe, and everything is in any sense meaningful or purposeful is one that entertains many minds in our day. — Wayfarer
The moment we ask whether something is meaningful, we’re already inhabiting a world structured by purposes. Furthermore, the belief that the Universe is purposeless is itself a judgement about meaning. — Wayfarer
Even the most rudimentary organisms behave as if directed toward ends: seeking nutrients, avoiding harm, maintaining internal equilibrium. — Wayfarer
This kind of directedness—what might be called biological intentionality—is not yet consciously purposeful, but it is not mechanical either. — Wayfarer
the living being is concern, and this concern is inseparable from its form and function. — Wayfarer
Much of the debate about purpose revolves around an ancient idea, telos. The ancient Greek term telos simply means end, goal, or purpose. For Aristotle, it was a foundational concept—not just in ethics and politics, where human purpose is self-evident, but in nature as well. "Nature," he writes in Politics, "does nothing in vain." He believed that things have intrinsic ends: the acorn strives to become the oak; the eye is for seeing; the human being is naturally oriented toward reason and society. — Wayfarer
This way of thinking made perfect sense in a world where observation and common experience guided inquiry. — Wayfarer
Throughout, they act as if they’re pursuing ends — Wayfarer
The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution....(Mind and Cosmos, Pp35-36) — Wayfarer
But this universality came at a price. To attain it, physics had to bracket out the world as we actually live it: a world rich with meaning, embedded in time, shaped by perception and concern. — Wayfarer
In this light, the familiar claim that the universe is meaningless begins to look suspicious. It isn’t so much a conclusion reached by science, but a background assumption—one built into the methodology from the outset. — Wayfarer
To speak of organisms is necessarily to speak in the language of function, adaptation, and goal-directedness. Biologists may insist that these are mere heuristics, that such language is shorthand for mechanisms with no actual purpose. — Wayfarer
physics was forced to reintroduce the very context it had so carefully excluded since Newton: the observational result was dependent on the experimental set-up. The result is the famously unresolved proliferation of “interpretations of quantum mechanics.” — Wayfarer
The blithe assurances of scientific positivism—that the universe is devoid of meaning and purpose—should therefore be recognized for what they are: a smokescreen, a refusal to face the deeper philosophical questions that science itself has inadvertently reopened. In a world that gives rise to observers, meaning may not be an add-on. It may have been that it is there all along, awaiting discovery. — Wayfarer
You ask us whether the universe has meaning and then when we say "no" you jump up and say "Ah ha! You recognize that meaning and purpose are important." Well, for most of us, the answer to the question is not "no," it's "I don't think about things that way. Life's purposes and goals are not things I think about unless someone like you brings them up." I don't ever remember thinking about life's purpose except in a philosophical context. I think most people are like me in that sense — T Clark
The blithe assurances of scientific positivism—that the universe is devoid of meaning and purpose—should therefore be recognized for what they are: a smokescreen, a refusal to face the deeper philosophical questions that science itself has inadvertently reopened. In a world that gives rise to observers, meaning may not be an add-on. It may have been that it is there all along, awaiting discovery.
— Wayfarer
This is pretty outrageous. You've lost track of the fact, if you ever recognized it, that you can't answer scientific questions with metaphysics and you can't answer metaphysical questions with science — T Clark
I don't think there is sufficient evidence to say that there are 'purposes' outside living beings. — boundless
But here's my main question: Let's grant that biological life is purposive in all the ways you say it is. Let's even grant, which I doubt, that all living creatures dimly sense such a purpose -- gotta eat, gotta multiply! The question remains, Is that the kind of purpose worth having for us humans? Is that what we mean by the "meaning of life"?
Indeed -- and I think Nagel goes into this as well -- it's precisely the pointlessness of the repetitive biological drives you cite, that causes many people to question the whole idea of purpose or meaning. It looks absurd, both existentially and in common parlance: "I'm alive so that I can . . . generate more life? That's it? Who cares?" Cue the Sisyphus analogy . . .
Any thoughts about this? — J
Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the non-teleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed.
Some interpretations of quantum mechanics bring the observer into the equation, others do not — T Clark
you can't answer scientific questions with metaphysics and you can't answer metaphysical questions with science. — T Clark
I think that is Wayfarer’s point. — Joshs
Which is why I argue that h.sapiens transcends purely biological determination. Hence, philosophy! — Wayfarer
"Does existence have a purpose?" -- "whether life, the universe, and everything is in any sense meaningful or purposeful." Were you trying to get to a purpose that is actually meaningful for humans? I don't think your OP addressed that — J
What do you think about, and why? Do you think about things because they are relevant and meaningful to you, in relation to your goals and purposes? If so, then maybe you are thinking about life’s purposes all the time. — Joshs
Because a scientific stance is itself a derivative or expression of a metaphysical stance, answering its questions is already to engage with the metaphysics that guides it. — Joshs
A scientific evolution is likely to also constitute a metaphysical revolution. — Joshs
life, and indeed human existence, is a product of "pure chance, absolutely free but blind." He saw genetic mutations, the ultimate source of evolutionary innovation, as random and unpredictable events at the molecular level. — Wayfarer
Intention requires a mind and a mind requires a nervous system. At that point, we've moved out of the realm of biology and into neurology, ethnology, and psychology. — T Clark
I think this (i.e. Jacques Monod) is clearly incorrect as a matter of science and not of philosophy. — T Clark
This doesn’t mean it has a mind in the conscious sense, but it strongly suggests that intentional-like behavior—orientation toward what matters to it —can appear even before anything like a nervous system arises. That’s part of what I meant by “intentionality in a broader sense than conscious intention.” It’s not about inner deliberation, but about the intrinsic organization of living systems around meaningful interaction with their environment. — Wayfarer
Regarding whether organisms really act purposefully, or only as if they do - this is central to the whole debate about teleology and teleonomy. — Wayfarer
This is why I think the boundary between biology and psychology isn’t as clean as the classical model would have it. — Wayfarer
A lot of the resistance to this idea, I think, comes from our folk understanding of intentionality: that it has to be something like what I am capable of thinking or intending. — Wayfarer
The problem is precisely that 'the equation' makes no provision for the act of observation. — Wayfarer
However the question of purpose, or its lack, doesn’t always require invoking some grand ‘cosmic meaning.’ Meaning and purpose are discovered first in the intelligibility of ordinary life—in the way we write, behave, build, and think. The moment we ask whether something is meaningful, we’re already inhabiting a world structured by purposes. Furthermore, the belief that the Universe is purposeless is itself a judgement about meaning. Asking what this purpose might be, in the abstract, is almost a red herring - it doesn’t really exist in the abstract, but it is inherent in the purposeful activities of beings of all kinds, human and other. It is, as it were, woven into the fabric. — Wayfarer
Nor I, but that’s why I said that the argument is kind of a red herring - if you were looking for purpose in the abstract, what would you be looking for? But I’m interested in the idea that the beginning of life is also the most basic form of intentional (or purposive) behaviour - not *consciously* intentional, of course, but different to what is found in the inorganic realm. (The gap between them being what Terrence Deacon attempts to straddle in Incomplete Nature.) — Wayfarer
A more convincing explanation might be that we know only in part our physical world and, therefore, the 'unlikeliness' is merely apparent, due to observation bias (like, say, that we are more likely to observe brighter galaxies and, therefore, we might understimate the number of less bright galaxies). So, maybe, if we study more in depth the 'arising of life' won't be as 'unlikely' as it seems. But this might imply that, indeed, a more deep study of our physical universe will eventually reveal that the reductionist/weakly emergentist paradigm is simply wrong. — boundless
You could say this is a “thin end of the wedge” strategy. — Wayfarer
the idea that human beings are, in some sense, the universe becoming conscious of itself . . . Now, that doesn’t amount to a fully formed metaphysics, but it at least opens a way of thinking that challenges the view of humanity as a cosmic fluke—an accidental intelligence adrift in a meaningless expanse. — Wayfarer
Yes. All living things have DNA. DNA and it's cohorts may not be aware of what they're doing, but there is a goal, which is achieved. Information is processed, and, in this case, the processing is identical with the action of achieving the goal. (Unlike when I read a book. Information is processed, but nothing need happen in regards to it. I can learn how to build a log cabin, yet never build one.). Life is information processing, even though not all information processing is life.But I’m interested in the idea that the beginning of life is also the most basic form of intentional (or purposive) behaviour - not *consciously* intentional, of course, but different to what is found in the inorganic realm. — Wayfarer
I think we ought to consider that what we know as the Universe, is a construction of human minds, and as such it was created with purpose. What modern physics demonstrates to us is that much of reality is far beyond our grasp, not even perceptible to us. What we take to be the Universe, the model we make, is formed and shaped by usefulness and purpose. — Metaphysician Undercover
This is the point I take, above. The existence of a physical world requires intentional being. This is because, as a physical world, is how things are perceived through a purpose based apparatus. Therefore it makes no sense to say that it is unlikely for intention to exist in this particular physical world, because intention is necessary for any physical world. — Metaphysician Undercover
Kudos for clearly & concisely summarizing a vexing question of modern philosophy. Ancient people, with their worldview limited by the range of human senses, unaided by technology, seemed to assume that their observable Cosmos*1 behaves as-if purposeful, in a sense comparable to human motives. "As-If" is a metaphorical interpretation, not an empirical observation.Even the most rudimentary organisms behave as if directed toward ends: seeking nutrients, avoiding harm, maintaining internal equilibrium. Nothing in the inorganic realm displays these (or any!) behaviours. This kind of directedness—what might be called biological intentionality—is not yet consciously purposeful, but it is not mechanical either. It reflects the organism’s orientation toward a world that matters to it in some way. — Wayfarer
This seems to me a genetic fallacy, sir. Given the preponderance of evidence that "observers" (e.g. subjectivities) are chance emergents, it's doubtful that "meaning" (purpose) is anything other than a (semantic) property, or artifact, of "observers" and not, as you suggest, inherent in nature. After all, (e.g. entropy, evolution, autopoiesis) direction =/= purpose, intention, or goal. However, even if the universe does have a "meaning" (purpose), then, like the universe as a whole, such a "meaning" (purpose) is humanly unknowable (Nietzsche, Camus) – merelogical necessity: part(ipant)s in a whole cannot encompass (completely know à la Gödel(?)) that whole.In a world that gives rise to observers, meaning [may or]may not be an add-on. It may[or may not] have been that it is there all along, awaiting discovery. — Wayfarer
:up: :up:The problem is precisely that 'the equation' makes no provision for the act of observation.
— Wayfarer
In my understanding, interpretations of quantum mechanics, which do not make a provision for the act of observation are just as consistent with the mathematics and observations of behavior as those that do. — T Clark
Once again, this claim is false.Modernscience[illiteracy] tells us that our world has progressed from a dimensionless mathematical Singularity — Gnomon
Yes, from a perspective from inside the whole, it is entirely inaccessible.However, even if the universe does have a "meaning" (purpose), then, like the universe as a whole, such a "meaning" (purpose) is humanly unknowable (Nietzsche, Camus) – merelogical necessity: part(ipant)s in a whole cannot encompass (completely know à la Gödel(?)) that whole.
Kudos for clearly & concisely summarizing a vexing question of modern philosophy. Ancient people, with their worldview limited by the range of human senses, unaided by technology, seemed to assume that their observable Cosmos*1 behaves as-if purposeful, in a sense comparable to human motives. "As-If" is a metaphorical interpretation, not an empirical observation. — Gnomon
That death, not life, calls for an explanation in the first place, reflects a theoretical situation which lasted long in the history of the race. Before there was wonder at the miracle of life, there was wonder about death and what it might mean. If life is the natural and comprehensible thing, death-its apparent negation-is a thing unnatural and cannot be truly real. The explanation it called for had to be in terms of life as the only understandable thing: death had somehow to be assimilated to life. ...
... Modem thought which began with the Renaissance is placed in exactly the opposite theoretic situation. Death is the natural thing, life the problem. From the physical sciences there spread over the conception of all existence an ontology whose model entity is pure matter, stripped of all features of life. What at the animistic stage was not even discovered has in the meantime conquered the vision of reality, entirely ousting its counterpart. The tremendously enlarged universe of modern cosmology is conceived as a field of inanimate masses and forces which operate according to the laws of inertia and of quantitative distribution in space. This denuded substratum of all reality could only be arrived at through a progressive expurgation of vital features from the physical record and through strict abstention from projecting into its image our own felt aliveness. — The Phenomenon of Life, Essay One, Pp 9-10
As you implied, the nay-sayers seem to be looking through the wrong end of the telescope. — Gnomon
it's doubtful that "meaning" (purpose) is anything other than a (semantic) property, or artifact, of "observers" and not, as you suggest, inherent in nature. — 180 Proof
I really like your post. I guess it helps that I agree with you on just about everything, but I don’t know that I could have expressed it as clearly as you have. — T Clark
What about the objection, though, that life and consciousness arose in the world many billions of time after the Big Bang? — boundless
I don't think that strictly speaking this means that the actual arising of life was necessary for the very existence of the inanimate. But, rather, as a potency life is an essential aspect of the world. I don't think that this 'potency' can be captured in a mathematical model, which is essential for physics. This to me suggests that life can't be explained in physical terms, precisely because the method that physics uses isn't adequate to explain the properties associated with life. So, the 'unlikeliness' might be explained by the fact that the models neglect some fundamental property of the physical world. — boundless
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