On Purpose

Wayfarer

A primer on enactivism and embodied cognition.

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. The mainstream view is probably that the Universe in itself is meaningless, and that whatever meaning we seek or see is projected or manufactured by us, as biological and social beings. The universe itself is kind of a blank slate, ‘atoms and the void’, in Democritus’ terms, constantly being re-arranged through energetic dynamics into a never-ending cascade of forms.

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.

We might further say that purpose does not only belong to the realm of human consciousness, but is implicit in life itself. 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. As Hans Jonas observed (in Phenomenology of Biology), the living being is concern, and this concern is inseparable from its form and function. To live is already to be oriented toward something beyond mere material presence—to act in terms of what matters so as to preserve itself against the second law of thermodynamics. That it does this, is the signal difference between living and non-living. Life is negentropic – swimming against the tendency towards ever-greater disorder that is shown everywhere else.

Telos, Teleology, and Teleonomy

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.

This way of thinking made perfect sense in a world where observation and common experience guided inquiry. But in his Physics, Aristotle extended teleology into cosmology, famously asserting that heavy bodies fall because their “natural place” is the center of the earth. This kind of explanation—while meaningful in its own context—was ultimately, and righfully, displaced by the rise of modern mechanics. Galileo showed that bodies do not fall because of their purpose, but due to forces and motions that could be described mathematically, without reference to final causes. Physics since then has largely dispensed with teleology (to the point where it was practically a taboo!)

But biology is another matter. Living things are not simply acted upon by forces —they grow, develop, repair, adapt and evolve. Throughout, they act as if they’re pursuing ends: survival, reproduction, flourishing. And biologists, even when steeped in the reductionist spirit, can’t help but speak in the language of purpose. In 20th c biology, this gave rise to a certain unease, memorably captured by J. B. S. Haldane:

Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he’s unwilling to be seen with her in public.

To ease this tension, the term teleonomy was introduced. It was meant to describe the appearance of goal-directedness in living organisms without invoking any spooky metaphysical purpose. In other words, creatures act as if they have ends, but these ends are entirely the result of blind evolutionary processes. The term was a rhetorical compromise: a way to acknowledge the structure and coherence of biological processes while maintaining ideological fidelity to non-purposive causality.

(But then, who’s to say what really distinguishes ‘apparent’ from ‘real’ purpose? I suspect that what many people mean by ‘real purpose’ is simply purpose of the kind they can entertain having—deliberate, self-conscious, human. But if you’re a lone villager being stalked by a rogue tiger while gathering firewood, that tiger’s intent is deadly real, and you’ll discover it soon enough if you don’t make haste.)

So, as the philosopher David Hull once noted, "calling something 'teleonomic' doesn’t explain teleology away—it just gives it a different name." The explanatory work is still being done by the as if. And when the entire vocabulary of biology—function, adaptation, selection, error-correction, information—is suffused with purpose-shaped terms, one has to wonder whether we’ve really done away with telos, or simply smuggled it back in through the servants' entrance.

The Great Abstraction

The rise of early modern physics was built on a profound methodological simplification: the exclusion of context. Galileo and Newton inaugurated a new style of reasoning by isolating variables—mass, motion, force—and expressing their relations mathematically. The result was a set of laws remarkable for their precision and generality. What made them so effective was precisely their invariance: they were true in all places and times, for all observers, regardless of the specificities of any actual situation. As Thomas Nagel put it in Mind and Cosmos, regarding the inevitable dualism that this entailed:

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)

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. Philosopher of biology Steve Talbott put it like this:

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 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. The exclusion of purpose was never, and in fact could never be, empirically demonstrated; it was simply excluded as a factor in the kind of explanations physics was intended to provide. Meaning was left behind for the sake of predictive accuracy and control in specific conditions.

That this bracketing was useful—indeed revolutionary—is not in doubt. But the further move, so often taken for granted in modern discourse, is the assertion that because physics finds no purpose, the universe therefore has none. This is not science speaking, but metaphysics ventriloquizing through the authority of science. It is a philosophical sleight of hand that confuses methodological silence for ontological negation.

And yet, the moment we turn to the biological realm, the limits of this framework become apparent. Organisms don’t merely obey laws—they respond, adapt, develop, pursue, express. They live. Their very being is bound up with shifting internal and external contexts, with dynamic self-organization and regulation. As Talbott further writes:

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.

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. And the plain fact is that life is not like that.

The Observer Returns

And neither, for that matter, is physics immune. One of the most unsettling discoveries of early 20th-century quantum mechanics was the so-called observer problem. Much ink has been spilled on its implications, but for our purposes, it suffices to note this: 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.”

As is well known, the predictive success of quantum theory is extraordinary—entire branches of modern technology rely on it. And yet, as one of its most prominent architects admitted, “nobody understands it.” If that can be said of physics, the most precise and mathematized of the sciences, how much more must it be true of evolutionary biology, of which we are both the authors and the product?

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.

Footnotes and References

Telos, Aristotle, Politics, IEP

Indeed, Arisotle distinguished between the intrinsic purposiveness of organisms versus the extrinsic (or imposed) purpose of mechanisms, a distinction which has been recognised anew by some current biologists.

Jonas, Hans. The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. Reprint, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001.

Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 35–36.

Stephen L. Talbott, “What Do Organisms Mean?” The New Atlantis, no. 30 (Winter 2011): 24–50.

“I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”
— Richard P. Feynman, The Character of Physical Law (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965), 129.

Also posted on Medium.

Mww

↪Wayfarer

Long live the observer.

Patterner

fantastic post! I wish I had anything useful to add.

boundless

↪Wayfarer

Good OP! I'll make some brief comments on your post.

I more or less agree with most of it. I would even say that 'purpose' is the hallmark of living beings. Also, I would add that living beings exhibit a 'holistic' character that isn't found elsewhere, i.e. they seem to be truly 'distinct entities' that aren't 'reducible' or even 'emergent' from their environment. So, other than 'having an end' they seem to be truly 'beings' in a fuller sense than inanimate objects are. And I don't believe that any of these things contradict the theory of evolution.
How can 'irreducible wholes' and 'purpose' arise from something purposeless is clearly a problem. In fact, as I said elsewhere, I think that this perhaps is an indication that the 'mental' is perhaps a fundamental aspect of reality in some way. Celarly, it is a problem for a reductionistic and mechanicist view of physical reality.

Regarding physics, I would not be so sure. I don't think there is sufficient evidence to say that there are 'purposes' outside living beings. And, in fact, even if one takes very seriously the 'observer' role - like epistemic interpretations of QM do - I believe that it at most poses a limit on 'what is knowable' rather than giving insights on how 'physical reality really is'. Perhaps one might argue that, along the lines of Anthropic principle, that the fact that physical constants have such values as to be consistent with life is something to be explained and taken seriously. I, for one, don't think that the 'multiverse' is a good response to this problem: I generally don't like explanations that assume the existence of a lot of 'unobservable worlds' in order to explain features of this world. Again, perhaps, life and 'consciousness' might be at least an essential latent potentiality in the inanimate. Certainly, even in this case the physical universe doesn't seem to be like a 'mechanism'.

↪Wayfarer

Excellent, thank you. I hope Nagel's take on this will be increasingly shared both within and without the scientific community.

I have some minor quibbles about teleonomy -- I think the distinction with teleology is more meaningful than you do -- but they're not worth going into.

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?

T Clark

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

I'll acknowledge from the start that this is an unresolvable issue. I won't convince you and you won't convince me. As usual, my view is that this is metaphysics. You're not wrong, I'm not right. We just have a difference of opinion about the most useful way of looking at this. Although I have no intention of convincing anyone, I would like to present an alternative way of looking at this.

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

You are begging the question here. 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.

Even the most rudimentary organisms behave as if directed toward ends: seeking nutrients, avoiding harm, maintaining internal equilibrium. — Wayfarer

Are you saying that "as if directed" is the same as "directed?" That would be about as circular as an argument can get.

This kind of directedness—what might be called biological intentionality—is not yet consciously purposeful, but it is not mechanical either. — Wayfarer

If you look up "intention" you find two kinds of definitions 1) a near-synonym for goal or purpose and 2) a mental state. If we apply the first type of definition, we're back in a circular argument. As for the second type, the idea that the simplest biological organisms, or that biology as an entity, has mental states is clearly unsupportable.

the living being is concern, and this concern is inseparable from its form and function. — Wayfarer

"Concern" here is just another word you're using for "goal" or "purpose." It doesn't add anything new to the discussion. In these discussions, it often seems that people use "function" as a synonym for "purpose." Do you see it that way? My heart clearly has a function in my body. Does that mean it has a goal? Of course, that's really the question on the table. We're headed back into a circular argument.

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

I'm certainly not a student of Aristotle but, as I understand it, he saw telos as the result of final design and final design as the result of intention, which we've already discussed. Saying "Nature does nothing in vain," is just another way of stating your premise.

This way of thinking made perfect sense in a world where observation and common experience guided inquiry. — Wayfarer

I live in a world where observation and common experience guide inquiry and I don't think that understanding is necessarily the most useful way of seeing things. It certainly isn't true in any absolute sense. Again, it's metaphysics.

Throughout, they act as if they’re pursuing ends — Wayfarer

Again - as if.

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

You quoted this from Nagle and then you commented:

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

You and I have been in enough discussions so you should know I am as skeptical of the idea of objective reality as you are. I even agree we live in "a world rich with meaning, embedded in time, shaped by perception and concern." And that's because we live in a human world. Those properties come from within us. If that were all you are saying, we would have no argument.

I think it is an important understanding for us to see that there is a difference between the world inside us and that outside us. I always imagine when I look at babies that that is what they are learning as I watch them wiggle, look at everything, touch their toes, and make noises. They're learning some things are them and some things are the world. I guess that's their first adventure in metaphysics.

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

Yes. Exactly. If you will acknowledge the way you describe things is also a "background assumption" then you and I will have no argument.

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

To start, function and adaptation and not the same as goal-directedness. If I were going to pick a point when it would make sense to talk about an organisms goals, it would be when they are capable of intention. 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.

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

In my understanding, this is not exactly accurate. Some interpretations of quantum mechanics bring the observer into the equation, others do not. It appears that all the different interpretations are equally consistent with the mathematics and empirical results of QM. Since there appears to be no empirical way of decide among those interpretations, the choice of one over the others is, again, metaphysics.

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.

As I said at the beginning, there is no resolution to this issue. You and I have had at it enough times to know that. Now I've had my say and we can leave it at that if you want.

Joshs

↪T Clark

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

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. That is, not some single overarching purpose, but a contextually-focused network of significance that you consult as motivator of your actions. I think that is Wayfarer’s point.

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

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. A scientific evolution is likely to also constitute a metaphysical revolution.

Wayfarer

I don't think there is sufficient evidence to say that there are 'purposes' outside living beings. — boundless

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.)

As for the anthropic principle - that general argument provides a meaningful counter to the kinds of ideas expressed in (for example) Jacques Monod ‘Chance and Necessity’. Monod, a Nobel laureate in biology, argued that 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. While natural selection then acts out of "necessity" (the necessary outcome of differential survival based on adaptation), the initial raw material for selection (mutation) is blind and without foresight or purpose. A central tenet of Monod's philosophy was the forceful rejection of any form of teleology (inherent purpose or design) in the universe, especially concerning the origin and evolution of life. He argued that science, particularly molecular biology, had revealed a mechanistic universe governed by objective laws, where the biosphere is a "particular occurrence, compatible indeed with first principles, but not deducible from those principles and, therefore, essentially unpredictable.

The strong anthropic principle (that the universe is such that life must appear) mitigates against the possibility of life being understandable as a sheer accident. It suggests that the universe is structured such that life (or observers) is either a necessary or at least a highly probable outcome. Some readings explicitly embrace a form of teleology, positing a "design" or "purpose" for the universe's life-permitting properties. In any case, it challenges the cardinal role of 'blind chance' typical of Monod's (and Dawkins') style of scientific materialism.

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

That's a fundamental question of philosophy. It's basically a 'what's it all about?' question. Nagel said

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.

It's taken for granted nowadays that evolutionary naturalism is a philosophy of existence, but it's not.. It is a scientific theory of the evolution of species. I should say, what prompted this OP was a Medium essay by Massimo Piggliuci The Question of Cosmic Meaning or Lack Thereof (may require account to read). He takes on Nagel but then draws on the basic Monod-style materialism I refer to above. The germ of this OP came from his response to a comment of mine, where he breezily dismisses any idea of purpose as being 'explained by teleonomy'. Perhaps I have too have been breezy, but really, the distinction between 'actual' and 'apparent purpose' is a slim reed on which to support such argument!

In any case, getting back to your question - are we really only defined in terms of the terminology of evolutionary biology (the 'four f's' of feeding, fighting, fleeing and reproduction)? I don't think evolutionary theory, as such, provides the basis for a great deal more than that. Which is why I argue that h.sapiens transcends purely biological determination. Hence, philosophy! (along with art, science, literature, and a great deal else.)

Some interpretations of quantum mechanics bring the observer into the equation, others do not — T Clark

They don't really 'bring the observer into the equation'. The problem is precisely that 'the equation' makes no provision for the act of observation. The famous wave-function equation provides predictive accuracy as to where a particle might be found, but the actual finding of it is not something given in the mathematics. That is where the observer problem originates. (The 'many worlds' interpretation attempts to solve this by saying that every possible measurement occurs in one of the possible worlds.)

Regarding whether organisms really act purposefully, or only as if they do - this is central to the whole debate about teleology and teleonomy. (The Wikipedia entry on teleonomy is worth the read.)

you can't answer scientific questions with metaphysics and you can't answer metaphysical questions with science. — T Clark

What I said.

I think that is Wayfarer’s point. — Joshs

Pretty much! I like that expression I've picked up from enactivism, 'the salience landscape'. Might do another OP on that.

Which is why I argue that h.sapiens transcends purely biological determination. Hence, philosophy! — Wayfarer

Well, I agree, but I didn't see you arguing for that. I thought you were contending that any sort of biological purposiveness was good enough to answer the question, "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, other than to say that merely asking the question must imply some framework in which "meaning" can figure -- "The moment we ask whether something is meaningful, we’re already inhabiting a world structured by purposes." And I share @T Clark's doubts about whether that follows.

Another way to say this: By focusing on the question of whether the universe has a purpose, you seem to be implying that an affirmative answer will mean something in terms of human purpose. Again, I may have missed it, but I don't see that discussed in the OP. Never too late, though!

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

You're right to note that I didn't try to answer the question of human purpose directly. My intention was more foundational: to challenge the premise that the universe is inherently meaningless by pointing to the ubiquity of purposive activity in life itself, starting at the cellular level.

You could say this is a “thin end of the wedge” strategy. If even the simplest organisms act in goal-directed ways, then purposefulness is not merely a projection of the human mind onto an otherwise purposeless background—it’s already there, intrinsic to the structure of life. My aim was to question the modern assumption (popular among positivists) that purposiveness is somehow unreal or merely heuristic.

I do think this ultimately has implications for human purpose—but I didn't try to develop that in this piece. What I wanted to show is that the universe, far from being “purposeless,” brings forth beings whose very mode of existence is purposive. That alone, I think, should shift the philosophical burden of proof.

T Clark

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

I never denied that I have purposes and goals for my own behavior. I work with the purpose of making money to pay for my house and food and car. I go to the liquor store with the goal of buying wine. As I said to @Wayfarer, if that’s all we were talking about, there would be no argument here.

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

You and I have a different understanding of the meaning of the words “science” and “metaphysics“ and of the relationship between the two.

A scientific evolution is likely to also constitute a metaphysical revolution. — Joshs

That’s a question I’ve thought about and I’m not really sure of the answer.

Wayfarer

↪J

I might add—and as you probably know—Nagel at least sketches a kind of naturalistic teleology in Mind and Cosmos: the idea that human beings are, in some sense, the universe becoming conscious of itself. That motif actually appears across many different schools of philosophy and even within science itself. Think of Niels Bohr’s remark: “a physicist is an atom’s way of looking at 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.

T Clark

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

I think this is clearly incorrect as a matter of science and not of philosophy. What we’ve learned about self organization, and abiogenesis since he made those statements shows there is structure and process intrinsic to the nature of the universe. Saying “structure” and “process” is not the same as same as saying “purpose” and “goal.”

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 watched an exceedingly interesting talk recently ('How the Universe Thinks without a Brian') on slime moulds and other very primitive organism, that utterly lack brains and nervous systems, but which nevertheless form memories in respect of their environment. For example, Physarum polycephalum can learn the patterns of periodic environmental changes and adjust its movement accordingly—despite being just a giant single cell.

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.

This is why I think the boundary between biology and psychology isn’t as clean as the classical model would have it. 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. But that’s a very anthropocentric benchmark. The broader point from fields like enactivism and biosemiotics is that purposeful behavior need not be consciously formulated to be real—it can be embodied, embedded, and evolutionary long before it’s verbalized.

So when I say that purpose is implicit in life, I’m not projecting human psychology downward. I’m pointing out that living systems are organized around the kind of concern that enables them to persist, adapt, and flourish. That’s not a metaphor; it’s what they do.

I think this (i.e. Jacques Monod) is clearly incorrect as a matter of science and not of philosophy. — T Clark

As do I!

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

Is intention without a mind and nervous system meaningful? I’m skeptical, but I don’t know enough about this particular example to make any intelligent judgment.

Regarding whether organisms really act purposefully, or only as if they do - this is central to the whole debate about teleology and teleonomy. — Wayfarer

I don’t think the idea of a teleological universe is very compelling, but that doesn’t mean I see any particular value in the idea of teleonomy.

This is why I think the boundary between biology and psychology isn’t as clean as the classical model would have it. — Wayfarer

I’m not sure what to say about this. I guess I would have thought a clear delineation between biology and psychology is at the heart of the hard problem of consciousness that we’ve discussed many times.

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

You call it the “folk understanding.” I call it the actual definition of the word. As I see it, you’re the one trying to change the meaning from how the word is normally used.

I just noticed I responded to your posts out of order. I’ll go back and respond to your first one now.

Wayfarer

↪T Clark

Take a look at the video I just posted into the reply above yours. it is *exceedingly* interesting.

T Clark

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

Take a look at the video I just posted into the reply above yours. it is *exceedingly* interesting. — Wayfarer

Thanks.

Metaphysician Undercover

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

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.

If we extend purpose, and intention to life in general, and assume that purpose is at work in the mechanisms of evolution, then we also need to assume that the way that the world appears to us through our sense organs and brains, is also a product of purpose. If we ask, why does the world appear to us through our senses, in the way that it does, when physics tells us that it is really not like the way it appears, the answer is that it proved purposeful through the process of evolution, to perceive things in this way.

If we want to get beyond this representation of the universe, which was created on purpose, to understand the true reality, the independent, objective world, the reality of which we like to posit, then we need to remove purpose from the representation. This is the purpose of the concept of "truth", to have a representation which is not influenced by purpose. Notice that it is impossible to actually remove purpose, as there is even a purpose for truth, which is to get beyond purpose. But this is about as close as we can get, to creating a representation of the universe which is not influenced by purpose, to have as our purpose, to remove purpose and its influence.

boundless

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

I agree. And the big question for a reductionist or emergentist model is how to explain the properties that are associated with life (and consciousness) in purely physical term.

'Weak' Emergence works very well, say, in explaining how a collection of particles can behave as a liquid or a solid. In a sense, you can say that 'liquidity' and 'solidity' are just conventional/provisional properties that are useful to us to explain things. After all, if they are completely understandable in terms of properties of the parts that constitute the solid and liquid objects, they can be rightly understood as useful abstractions that simplify the descriptions of what is going on. Even inanimate macroscopic objects themselves can be thought as 'weakly emergent' features from the microscopi world. I don't think it is particularly controversial to say that, ultimately, even the inanimate macroscopic objects themselves are useful abstractions.

The above is of course 'reductionism' and it works quite well outside life and consciousness.

The problem with life is, however, that even, say, an unicellular organism is difficult to understand as merely an emergent 'feature' of its constituents and its environment. Also, as you say, there seem to be a basic intentionality going on and yes intentionality is difficult to explain in weakly emergentist/reductionist terms. So, if physical reality is merely a 'mechanism', 'reductionistic' etc how can we explain life with all its properteis? Personally, I never encountered a satisfying explanation. So, perhaps, reductionism is false*.

Regarding the 'strong anthropic principle', I mentioned it because, after all, it's both a tautology and a profound insight IMO. Of course, physical laws must be compatible with life and consciousness - after all, living and conscious beings exist. But, again, this 'tautology' is, in fact, quite insightful. First of all, it inspires us to seek an explanation of how life and consciousness are possible in this physical universe. Secondly, it also highlights that, given what we know about physics, life is very unlikely.

Proponents of the 'multiverse' try to explain this by alluding that there might be a large (infinite?) number of (inaccessible) worlds and we happen to be in one that allows the existence of life (and consciousness BTW). There are, I admit, good scientific reasons to support that idea. But, philosophically, I find it very unpersuasive.
IIRC others also try to explain the problem by simply saying that even unlikely events 'just happen', which I guess is true. But, again, is the most satisfying explanation? I guess that if I roll 100 times a 6-sides dice and I obtain always '6' as a result, it is of course a possible result even if the dice is fair. But, perhaps, a more convincing explanation is that the dice is not fair and there is a, so to speak, 'hidden reason' to explain that very unlikely result.

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.

It is understandable why some try to explain away the intentionality, 'holism' etc which seem to be present in life as illusions (i.e. living beings behave 'as if' they have those properties...). It is perhaps the only consistent way to account for these properties. Some, instead, try to explain these things in a 'strong emergent' model, which seems to be unintelligible. So IMO these difficulties point to the possibility that, indeed, the reductionist/emergentist models are wrong and we need something else.

Metaphysician Undercover

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

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.

In this way we turn the strong anthropic principle on its head. All the things which are said to exist in the physical world, physical laws etc., which are required for the existence of life, are really creations of life. These are the products of our purpose driven perceptions. They are conceptions, produced from our perceptions which, rather than being designed through random chance evolution, have been designed purposefully. our perceptions support our endeavours in the world, meaning they are very useful to us, in a pragmatic sense, but they don't necessarily equate to any real truth.

You could say this is a “thin end of the wedge” strategy. — Wayfarer

I figured this was your method. No reason an OP has to cover the entire ground all at once. It's only worth pointing out that, when "purpose" or "meaning" are cast in specifically human terms, a whole new set of concerns emerge.

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

It probably is helpful to have some "sample metaphysics" that would suggest other ways of looking at this question, and I'm quite taken with the semi-Hegelian idea of a self-conscious universe. But I think the "cosmic fluke" view can be challenged without this, and on much simpler grounds. We're talking about degrees of likelihood based on ludicrously incomplete evidence. People who want to settle this one way or the other seem to assume that human inquiry, especially science, has reached an endpoint from which we can now pronounce on these questions. Why in the world would anyone think that? Is humanity a pointless fluke? Check back with us in a thousand years -- we may know more about it then! And if the retort is "But science can't talk about what has a 'point'," same answer: We'll see! At the moment our understanding of these questions is on the level of little children pottering around in the kindergarten.

Patterner

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

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.

T Clark

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

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.

boundless

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

What about the objection, though, that life and consciousness arose in the world many billions of time after the Big Bang?

I believe that in some important sense, the potency (I am using this term in more or less Aristotelian sense) to give rise to life is a fundamental aspect of the inanimate world.
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.

Gnomon

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

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.

Inspired by your essay, I briefly scannned a Quora Forum*2 thread on the question of "purpose or direction" to our universe. Modern science tells us that our world has progressed from a dimensionless mathematical Singularity, to a burgeoning Cosmos of Matter, Life & Mind. Yet the majority of responses answered emphatically "no!".

However, even some of the "no god, no purpose, no telos" answers qualified their position by admitting that Evolution gives the "appearance of purpose". Yet, they seem to put more weight on Darwin's random mutations, and fail to ask "who?" or "how?" or "why?" Nature selects (choose, pick-out) the few fittest (orderly) products from among a (complex) cacophony of unfit failures. Empirical Science can provide a mechanical "how", but deliberately ignores the philosophical question of Final Cause : aims & ends & motives.

As you implied, the nay-sayers seem to be looking through the wrong end of the telescope. :smile:

*1. The cosmos is an alternative name for the universe or its nature or order. Usage of the word cosmos implies viewing the universe as a complex and orderly system or entity. ___Wikipedia

*2. The whole point of modern evolutionary theory is that it explains the appearance of purpose (or telos, if you prefer) emerging from a purposeless process. There is nothing within evolution that indicates the existence of telos. . . . .
The key is whether purpose requires intent. If purpose requires a pursuit of a goal or telos, then intent would be required. This form of intent is subjective and presumes a host, such as an intelligent agent. Hence, evolution can have no purpose, scientifically speaking.
https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-purpose-or-direction-to-evolution

180 Proof

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

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.

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

:up: :up:

~~Modern~~ science[illiteracy] tells us that our world has progressed from a dimensionless mathematical Singularity — Gnomon

Once again, this claim is false.

Punshhh

↪180 Proof

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.

Yes, from a perspective from inside the whole, it is entirely inaccessible.

It doesn’t follow from this though, that there isn’t a purpose. Or that that purpose may be reflected in some way within the whole. The purpose might be, for example, to demonstrate the innate patterns entailed in extension.

180 Proof

It doesn’t follow from this though, that there isn’t a purpose. — Punshhh

Agreed, and I stipulated it's a possibility.

Wayfarer

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

Thanks for that. Maybe this is because pre-moderns did not have the sense of separateness or otherness to the Cosmos that the modern individual has. In a sense - this is something John Vervaeke discusses in his lectures - theirs was a participatory universe.

I've been reading an interesting book, a milestone book in 20th c philosophy, The Phenomenon of Life, Hans Jonas (1966). A brief précis - 'Hans Jonas's The Phenomenon of Life offers a philosophical biology that bridges existentialism and phenomenology, arguing that life's fundamental characteristics are discernible in the very structure of living beings, not just in human consciousness. Jonas proposes a continuity between the organic and the mental, suggesting that the capacity for perception and freedom of action, culminating in human thought and morality, are prefigured in simpler forms of life.' That is very much the theme of the OP. It is expanded considerably in Evan Thompson's 'Mind in Life', a much more recent book (2010) which frequently refers to Jonas' book.

Another point that Jonas makes in the first essay in the book is that for the ancients, life was the norm, and death an anomaly that has to be accounted for - hence the 'religions of immortality' and belief in the immortality of the soul:

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

More the case that they forget that they're the ones who made the telescope.

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

You're seeing it from an anthropocentric sense of what meaning and purpose are. The point of the OP is that meaning, purpose and intentionality manifest at the most rudimentary stages of organic life. As soon as living processes begin to form, the fundamental requirement is for them to maintain separateness from the environment, otherwise they're simply subsumed into the thermodynamically-driven processes going on around them. That is the broader sense of intentionality that the OP is arguing from, not the projected meaning and purpose usually associated with theism and denied by atheism.

Again, this recent presentation, How the Universe Thinks Without a Brain, Claire L. Evans, is definitely worth watching in this context. 'To be, is to compute'.

Metaphysician Undercover

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

Thank you T Clark, compliments are meaningful.

What about the objection, though, that life and consciousness arose in the world many billions of time after the Big Bang? — boundless

The Bing Bang is just the conventional theory. It's just an aspect of the current model, or conception, which represents a universe. But this conception is just a product of purpose. Further, as I explained, we often make the goal of truth, or objectivity, our purpose, so such a representation could have been produced from the goal of truth. In this case, when our goal is truth, our purpose is to remove purpose from our conceptions. Notice that it really can't be completely successful, because truth itself is a goal, a purpose.. And, as much as we may attempt to remove purpose, striving for truth, we are merely human beings, and usefulness toward other ends such as prediction, tend to overwhelm us distracting us from the goal of removing purpose.

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

If the universe is prior in time to life, then potency must also be prior in time to life. It is a feature of time which would be necessary for the creation of life.

On Purpose

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Categories

More Discussions