It's a judgement based on critical thought. The human notion of purpose presupposes agency. and agency presupposes perception/ experience. If the universe as a whole has no agency, no perception/ experience then how could it have a purpose? — Janus

The ‘universe as a whole’ is the subject of scientific cosmology. It’s what is examined through the astounding technology of the Hubble, James Webb and now Vera Rubin observatories. Of course you won’t see anything like purpose or agency in the data that these instruments collect - but as I said, this is red herring. As I said, scientific method itself brackets out or disregards those kinds of considerations. But to refer back to the OP ‘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 you continually pull on that to justify your claims that whatever can’t be known by way of science is not a legitimate subject for philosophy.

We think of human behavior as intentional. We also think of some animal behavior as intentional, but it seems a stretch to call the behavior of simple organism, or even plants or fungi, intentional. You agree that the inorganic universe is not intentional or purposeful, and if the vast bulk of existence is inorganic, then how do you reconcile that? — Janus

I’m interested in a perspective based on phenomenology - that the appearance of organisms IS the appearance of intentionality. It is how intentionality manifests. It’s not panpsychism, because I’m not saying that consciousness is somehow implicit in all matter. The fact that inorganic matter is not intentional in itself is not particularly relevant to that.

And yet, no doubt, this "being challenged by science" is an objective process. — 180 Proof

Perhaps - but, ironically, the whole question of the mind-independence of the fundamental aspects of nature has been thrown into question by this objective process. That’s what the Einstein-Bohr debates were about - Einstein the staunch realist, ‘the world is the way it is no matter what we think or see’ vs Bohr ‘no phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.’

- I was about to ask the same thing asked. What do you think about this?

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. — Wayfarer

Of course you won’t see anything like purpose or agency in the data that these instruments collect - but as I said, this is red herring. — Wayfarer

Why is it a "red herring"? We see purpose or agency in the data collected by observing animal behavior. Are you claiming there is purpose or agency there in the inorganic even though we cannot detect it? If you are claiming that, then on what grounds?

I’m interested in a perspective based on phenomenology - that the appearance of organisms IS the appearance of intentionality. It is how intentionality manifests. It’s not panpsychism, because I’m not saying that consciousness is somehow implicit in all matter. The fact that inorganic matter is not intentional in itself is not particularly relevant to that. — Wayfarer

That intentionality, at least in some "proto" sense comes into being with organisms (well at least with animal organisms) is hardly controversial. You are not saying that consciousness (and intentionality?) is somehow implicit in all matter, so that leaves me wondering what you are saying.

We see purpose or agency in the data collected by observing animal behavior. Are you claiming there is purpose or agency there in the inorganic even though we cannot detect it? If you are claiming that, then on what grounds? — Janus

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value. — TLP 641

We see purpose or agency in the data collected by observing animal behavior. Are you claiming there is purpose or agency there in the inorganic even though we cannot detect it? — Janus

There are a few arguments, but one of them is something like this:

1. Modern science long rejected teleology, even among plants and animals
2. This turned out to be false, and it was based on background assumptions rather than any rigorous reasoning
3. Given that this conclusion about plant and animal teleology turned out to be unsound, do we have any reason to believe that the conclusion about teleology more generally is sound?

The question is, "What is the rational basis for an anti-teleological view, given that the anti-teleological view as applied to plants and animals turned out to be baseless?"

You will probably say what you always say, "They have the burden of proof, not me." But the question is whether the anti-teleological side has any reasonable arguments. They certainly thought they had good arguments in the past, and the current state of science sees most of those arguments as faulty.

I was editing my previous post so there is more there for you to address now.

Why quote an ambiguous passage from Wittgenstein instead of answering directly and in good faith? Perhaps Wittgenstein just means that the human interpretations of human experience, replete with all the values and meanings inherent in those interpretations is not to be found in the physical world. Again, hardly controversial.

1. Modern science long rejected teleology, even among plants and animals — Leontiskos

Science has long since gone beyond such a mechanistic view of animality. It's obvious that (some) animals ( including humans) can respond to their environments in novel ways. Such a thing is not possible for simple mere mechanisms. It doesn't follow that there is any overarching purpose behind animal behavior.

3. Given that this conclusion about plant and animal teleology turned out to be unsound, do we have any reason to believe that the conclusion about teleology more generally is sound? — Leontiskos

It was the overwhelming evidence found in observational data and being unable in the face of it to cling on to entrenched prejudices that enabled biologists to see purpose, and even intelligence and reasoning, in animal behavior. What imaginable kind of data is going to provide the evidence to allow us to see universal teleology.

The question is, "What is the rational basis for an anti-teleological view, given that the anti-teleological view as applied to plants and animals turned out to be baseless?" — Leontiskos

The analogical reasoning from one case to the other is not valid. The argument against holding the veiw that there is an overarching purpose to the universe is simply that there is no evidence for such a thing. We don't have to outright deny the possibility, but without evidence that is what it remains; a mere possibility.

They certainly thought they had good arguments in the past, and the current state of science sees most of those arguments as faulty. — Leontiskos

Those arguments were not so much arguments as prejudices, if you are referring to intentionality in animals. Some, perhaps much, of that prejudice came form religious views that propounded the idea that humans are not animals and that animals did not have souls. Luckily good observations of animal behavior exploded that myth.

The analogical reasoning from one case to the other is not valid. — Janus

Again, that's not the claim.

Where does our anti-teleological approach come from, if not from the broad anti-teleological prejudice of the modern period?

This is a simplified version of the modern argument:

1. Teleology does not exist
2. If teleology does not exist, then plant, animal, human, religious, and any other kind of teleology does not exist
3. Therefore, plant, animal, human, religious, and any other kind of teleology does not exist

This is the biological argument:

4. If teleology does not exist, then plant, animal, human, religious, and any other kind of teleology does not exist
5. Plant and animal teleology certainly exists
6. Therefore, it is false that teleology does not exist

Now someone like yourself will be prone to say, "Ah, but (5) has only to do with plant and animal teleology, and nothing else." But your error is to fail to understand that (1) was not specific to plants and animals. (1) was a thesis that entailed all sorts of things; some of those things turned out to be false; therefore (1) is false; therefore we have no grounds for any of the entailments qua (1).*

@Wayfarer is correctly pointing out that the anti-teleological prejudice seems to be nothing more than the bad fruits from a faulty and expired worldview. In a historical sense this looks to be accurate.

For example, suppose someone is a Mormon but they realize it is false and they abandon the religion. Yet they retain all sorts of Mormon practices without realizing it. When this is pointed out to them, they realize that those practices also have no validity given that the practices derive from Mormonism and Mormonism is false (or defunct). You are a bit like the Mormon who demands that the person prove that those other practices are false. Yet the point is not that they are false, but that they are unjustified. This is an important move in a society which is still beholden to the recently deceased worldview. Understanding that something is unjustified is an important prerequisite for reconsidering it.


* We have undercut R and therefore invalidated P.

1. Teleology does not exist — Leontiskos

This is a strawman. I'm not claiming teleology doesn't exist. A teleological explanation is an explanation in terms of purpose rather than causation, and teleological explanations are better fitted to understanding and explaining human and some animal behavior.

The idea that the universe as a whole has a purpose―that it was brought into existence on purpose rather than that it just came into existence either without cause, or from some unknown cause, is not supported by any evidence. It seems reasonable to think the universe could not have brought itself into existence on purpose. The other possibility is that it always existed.

Current scientific consensus seems to be that the universe did come into existence, but we cannot say anything about how it came about, because observational data cannot come to us from anywhere but within the already existent universe.

It seems to me you are clutching at straws attempting to confirm something you want to believe.

The point isn’t that purpose is a substance-like feature found in some things (like organisms) and absent in others (like rocks). That’s still thinking in terms of objective, observable properties, which is the default stance of positivism. But from a phenomenological stance, purpose isn’t an object in the world. It shows itself through meaningful activity. It’s not a ‘thing’ to be pointed to, but something intuited in the enactment of life itself. This is why Wittgenstein says, ‘the sense of the world must lie outside the world’ (Tractatus 6.41): the kind of sense we’re talking about here—teleological, existential—isn’t in the world as one more fact among others. It’s how the world shows up as meaningful to a being who acts (and being is always in action.)

How would you know about it other than by observing purposeful behavior? Of course it isn't substance like...although that said, neither purpose nor substance are observable.

I'm not about to trust your judgement as to why Wittgenstein said what he did.

Phenomenology has re-conceived intentionality as something much broader than conscious intention, instead identifying it as an aspect of the will to survive (re Hans Jonas The Phenomenon of Life) — Wayfarer

I think that this re-conception of intentionality is the key to understanding your position. Once we understand that conscious intention is just one form of intention, that opens up an entirely new range of possibility for how we understand and study the nature of "telos", teleology.

Restricting intention to human consciousness, such that only human actions can be understood as teleological, is a foundational, metaphysical mistake, which is common and prevalent in the modern western society.

When we understand the common defining term of "intention" as purpose, and see that all sorts living beings act with purpose, then we must accept the reality that restricting intention to conscious human action is a mistake. And, this mistake is very misleading metaphysically. Removing intention from those constraints (consciousness), and respecting it simply as a cause of action (final cause), which is inconsistent with the deterministic causes understood by physics, allows us to develop a much more productive, or constructive, conception of intention.

This allows us to better grasp the reality of intention in its spatial-temporal relations, and in relation to physical existence in general, rather than dismissing final cause, and free will as an illusion. This dismissal is inevitable if we cling to the deterministic causation of physics, and physicalism in general, rejecting the reality of teleological causation.

Further, releasing intention from the constraints of consciousness allows us a much less confusing approach to the principles of panpsychism. "Consciousness" is generally understood as a property of higher level living beings, dependent on a brain. When panpsychism proposes consciousness as fundamental to the universe, this is commonly apprehended as incoherent, due to the fact that "consciousness" as we generally conceive it, is dependent on a brain. So when we release intention from the constraints of consciousness, and understand how intention relates to temporality in a way not at all understood by human knowledge, because temporality is not at all understood by human knowledge, this allows intention as a "consciousness-like" aspect of reality, to be pervasive in its causal role.

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. — Wayfarer

Yes, meaning was intentionally left out from the development of physics, and this formed the division between physics and biology. Physics was specifically designed to deal with the mechanical motions of bodies. The early physicists who pioneered the way, did not exclude the reality of the spiritual, or immaterial, they recognized the division, and knew that physics was being designed exclusively to understand that one aspect of reality, the bodily.

Modern biology, on the other hand, had a highly ambiguous start in this respect. As the material and immaterial were understood to be united within the living being, a division between material causes and immaterial causes could not be apprehended, therefore could not be upheld. As a result, there was a clear separation between the causal propositions of Lamarckian evolution, and the causal propositions of Darwinian evolution. Lamarck proposed habit as a fundamental cause, then Darwin replaced habit with chance, perceiving "habit" as unscientific. To this day, this causal question has not been resolved, and modern understanding of genotypes and epigenetics is pointing back toward Lamarckian principles.

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. — Wayfarer

This ought to be restated. It is not the case that "physics finds no purpose". It is intentionally designed, and employed, so as to avoid purpose. This is what I was talking about earlier in the thread. We can adopt as our purpose, to avoid purpose as much as possible, and this is supposed to be our way toward "objective truth". But purpose is pervasive, and you can easily see how having as your purpose to avoid purpose, does not actually avoid purpose. Furthermore, it becomes evident that all of those determinists who cling to the causation described by "physics" and insist that free will is an illusion, actually have things backward. In reality, the idea that physics can avoid purpose, and provide us with objective truth is what is an illusion.

….that because physics finds no purpose, the universe therefore has none. This is not science speaking, but metaphysics ventriloquizing through the authority of science. — Wayfarer

….and doing it badly, first, in that the impossible is not analytically contained in the merely insufficient, and second, effect is always analytically conjoined with cause, but purpose, and by categorical subsummation a priori, intent, is not necessarily conjoined with effect.

Just tickled by the catchy phrase, I was. Nothing particularly noteworthy in what I said. Common knowledge sorta thing, I hope.

You're making the idea that properties manifest as the number of elements approach infinity seem more exotic than it is. The term is just shorthand for the number of elements necessary so that it makes sense to talk about specific macroscopic properties. For example - it doesn't really make sense to talk about the pressure of one molecule bouncing around inside a container. In a container full of air at atmospheric pressure, however, there are trillions of molecules bouncing around and off each other and talking about pressure is reasonable. Somewhere between one and trillions of molecules it starts to make sense to talk about pressure. — T Clark

You're right, here, I was a bit overstating the case. But I would say that pressure is weakly emergent. It's perfectly understandable in terms of the properties of the particles. Same goes for temperature.

So, honestly, I am not sure that I understood how is defined the concept of strong emergence. If the emergent features can be understood in terms of the lower levels, it would be 'weak' emergence. In fact, pressure and temperature would be quite good examples for me to explain weak emergence.

This is true, but a bit misleading. At normal human scale velocities, say 100 mph, length contraction will be less than 1/(1x10^14). Calling a value less than 1/(1/10^14) from the actual value an approximation or imprecise is a bit of a stretch. — T Clark

Yes, but note that when the differences between newtonian mechanics and relativity become noticeable, the evidence favors the latter. But anyway the point I was making is moot.

I'm not sure he would agree with that. Then again, I'm not sure he wouldn't. — T Clark

Ok!

Newton's law of universal gravitation is specifically developed to address the gravitational attraction between massive objects. The physical properties considered - mass, distance, and time - are measured directly on those objects. There is no reduction. — T Clark

Yes, but it is assumed that the mass of, say, the Earth is the sum of the masses of its components. The distance between, say, Earth and the Sun is approximated as a distance between the distances of their centers, because being almost spherical, their gravitational effects are approximately like the one of a point particle of their mass. And so on. Also, it is assumed that the gravitational force of the Earth or the Sun is the combined effect of the forces that each of their constituents cause.

I don't understand this. How can the law of conservation of energy be more fundamental than the idea of energy? Conservation of energy is a phenomenon that is understood by observing energetic interactions among physical objects. How can it be more fundamental? How do you observe conservation of energy? By making measurements of time, mass, and distance in various combinations. — T Clark

Try to see it this way. You can define energy as a property of both an individual object or a system of objects. If you consider the energy of a closed system you find that it's conserved. And this constrains the behavior of energy of the single parts of the system.

So it's not that the law is more fundamental than the property. Rather, the law seems to show that the energy of the total isolated system is more fundamental than the energy of each part.

I believe that linear momentum is an easier example to understand my point. In a bottom-up picture of my original example, you need to justify why all forces follow the laws of dynamics. It seems an happy accident. Instead, if you take the total linear momentum as more fundamental than the linear momentum of each particle, you need only to assume that the total momentum is conserved to find that all interactions between the parts must behave in a certain way in order that the variation of the momentum of each particle is exactly the opposite of the other.

In my original response to this post, I wrote there are trillions of molecules in a container of air. That’s not right. When we deal with thermodynamic properties, we generally talk in terms of moles - 6x10^23 molecules. That’s almost a trillion trillion. Close enough to infinity for me. — T Clark

Yeah.

The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. — Thomas Nagel

how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all. — Thomas Nagel

since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood — Thomas Nagel

So there is something intangible, or non-physical, about the contents of conscious experience, and it is within this intangible something, that purpose exists. Does that jibe?

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. — Wayfarer

I don’t quite follow how meaning was left behind for the sake of predictive accuracy. Are you saying, scientists saw no need to wonder what the bat (for instance) is subjectively experiencing when they could make predictive models about bat behaviors that need not include any such considerations?

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. — Wayfarer

Although I like the metaphor bolded above, to be sure I follow, could it be restated as: the finding of no purpose in the universe is not something a physical scientist can say, but only something a metaphysician can say, despite the fact that many physicists play metaphysician and say it as if it is physics. Is that the dryer meaning of the bolded?

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

It will as long as there are new minds that come to be. Give a mind long enough time (in the modern academy) and maybe purpose can be weeded out of the conversation (straining incredulity). But there is no therapy for questions of meaning, for the mind’s ability to consider itself. There are only answers, or opiates/lies/distractions - like a ventriloquist distracts.

Assuming the conventional "this world" is begging the question, because a time with no life is implicit within that concept. So once you assume "the world", the conclusion is inevitable. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ok, I see.

To me, philosophy demonstrates that "this world" is a pragmatic concept which serves our mundane purposes, but it is far from reality. The evidence that "this world" is a false concept s demonstrated at the limits of the conception. Where accepted science fails us, it comes to a dead end. The dead ends are not simply a case of needing to go further with more application of the existing theories, they are an inability to go further due to limitations of the theory. This is evidence that much of realty escapes the theories altogether, and cannot be grasped by them, indicating that "the world" s not what it pretends to be. This implies that the theories are wrong, right from the base. Examples are dark matter, dark energy in physics, and the reliance on random chance in evolutionary biology, leading to the acceptance of abiogenesis. — Metaphysician Undercover

But this seems too convoluted for me. It would be much easier to say that the universe is simply fine-tuned in a way that it either necessitates or allows the emergence of life. In such a case, life isn't an unintelligible accident that 'just happened' for no reason.

Why physical laws allow life? I don't know and I find it a fascinating mystery which isn't solved by the 'multiverse' either. Just saying that there are other worlds with different physical constants or even physical laws and our world just happens to be one that allows life isn't a good explanation to why life was even possible in the first place. Of course, one might say that there is no 'why' but it is undeniable that life is allowed by physical laws. This is of course a tautology of sorts. But it makes you wonder if there is some reason of this allowance. I don't think the existence of such a 'reason' can be discovered by science.

Regardless of the existence of the 'deeper reason', since life are allowed, in no way reductionism is implied. That is if the 'laws of nature' allow life and are a sufficient explanation of it, it would seem to me that properties of the entire world ('laws of nature') explain the arising of life. Hence, life would be explained in terms of the properties of the whole, in the same way as we can understand the behavior of the momenta of single particles as a consequence of the behavior of a whole isolated system, as I explained before:

I guess that I think that I should point out that IMO even something like 'Newtonian mechanics' isn't necessarily reductionistic. Consider a very simple, isolated system of two particles interacting via a force. You can 'derive' the conservation law of the linear momentum by considering the second and the third laws of newtonian dynamics. Generally, the proof assumed those laws and derive the conservation law, after all. But, I think that, with equal reason, one can, instead, point out that one might regard the conservation law as fundamental. If one does that, the result is that the time variation of the linear momenta of the particles is of equal magnitude and opposite in verse. So, the laws of dynamics can be derived by the conservation laws. But conservation laws refer to global properties of a (closed) physical system. if they are fundamental, then, they 'influence' the behavior of the 'parts'. So, really, even Newtonian mechanics doesn't have to be understood in a mechanicistic way. — boundless

There are some very good arguments n Christian theology which indicate that human beings are incapable of apprehending the ultimate truth. In general, this is the difference between human beings and God, and why we can never consider ourselves to be in any way equal to God. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, but I don't think that there are Christian theologians that say that the blessed can fall away from the communion of God. Since God is the Good, whoever finds communion with the Good stops seeking fulfillment outside that state. This doesn't entail a total cessation of activity or that God is totally known by the blessed but that they do not fall from such a state because they find their fulfillment.

I agree, but the thing is that once we rule out the possibility of a deterministic physical cause, tthen we seem to be left with two choices. Either its random chance, or some other type of cause. We know that final cause, or intentionality, is another type of cause. Also, we know very little about how final cause actually works as a cause in the physical world, only that it does, from the evidence. Since we cannot actually see final cause in action, only the effects of it, and since our judgements as to which specific types of things are the effects of final cause, are completely subjective, why not consider the possibility that final cause is far more extensive than what is commonly believed? Once we allow that final cause exists not only in human actions, but also in the actions of other living things, then why not consider that the actions of the heavenly bodies, as well as atoms and subatomic particles, which are "ordered", or "orderly", are not also the effects of final cause? — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, it's a possibility. As I wrote before, there is a possible a 'deeper reason' why physical laws allow life. I don't think that it is something that science can determine. It's not also something that it can exclude.

I don't think I agree with this. Knowledge is always being gained, but philosophy never ceases because there is always more to learn. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are probably right. I should have added an 'if'. If doubt ceases, philosophy ceases.

Interestingly, I think that the tautology that physical laws allow the arising of life in this world is perhaps more relevant than it seems. Assuming that the world really has an intelligible order it this can mean:

i) there is a 'deeper reason' for that allowance that is transcendent
ii) there is no such a 'deeper reason' but the 'laws of nature', properties of the world, allow the arising of life

In both cases, life isn't a random accident. In fact, even if the second option is right, it still means that the allowance of life is a property of the 'fabric of the universe'.

This is a strawman. I'm not claiming teleology doesn't exist. — Janus

The OP is not about you. You asked about the rationale of the OP and then immediately objected because of something you're not claiming. Do you think the OP was written against Janus in particular? And that if something in the OP does not apply to you then the OP lacks rationale?

But I would say that pressure is weakly emergent. It's perfectly understandable in terms of the properties of the particles. — boundless

Yes, this is correct.

I am not sure that I understood how is defined the concept of strong emergence. — boundless

It’s exactly the same. This is not a scientific way of speaking, it’s statistics. This is how statisticians talk about distributions of data points. As the number of points of a property that is normally distributed increases to infinity, the graph of the data points approaches a normal curve. If there’s only one or two data points, it’s impossible to tell whether the data is normally distributed or not. Typically, it doesn’t take a vast number of points to estimate the distribution. For example polls, intended to measure the opinions of all Americans typically include the data of only a few thousand.

Yes, but it is assumed that the mass of, say, the Earth is the sum of the masses of its components. The distance between, say, Earth and the Sun is approximated as a distance between the distances of their centers, because being almost spherical, their gravitational effects are approximately like the one of a point particle of their mass. And so on. Also, it is assumed that the gravitational force of the Earth or the Sun is the combined effect of the forces that each of their constituents cause. — boundless

I don’t see how this is relevant.

Try to see it this way. You can define energy as a property of both an individual object or a system of objects. If you consider the energy of a closed system you find that it's conserved. And this constrains the behavior of energy of the single parts of the system. — boundless

You and I have a different understanding of what the words “reductionism” and “emergence” mean and how the processes they designate work. I’m not going to change my understanding and I don’t think you are either. There’s probably no reason for us to continue this part of the discussion.

Restricting intention to human consciousness, such that only human actions can be understood as teleological, is a foundational, metaphysical mistake, which is common and prevalent in the modern western society. — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly. Following Descartes, Enlightenment philosophy generally valorized the ego — the self-aware, reflective individual mind — as the seat of certainty and meaning. Husserl’s term egological is relevant here, because it names the modern presumption that consciousness means the kind of consciousness I am aware ot, usually understood introspectively. But this neglects more the more fundamenal forms of intentionality in life — what Jonas or Merleau-Ponty would recognize as the intentionality disclosed in embodied being. In other words, the mistake is not just empirical, but metaphysical: it misplaces the source of purposiveness by identifying it too narrowly with discursive, self-aware cognition (the ego). And an awful lot revolves around this mistake.

You're coming at it from a slightly different perspective, but I'm overall in agreement. (I'm exploring this topic through phenomology, which I've only begun reading the last couple of years. My current reading list is The Phenomenon of LIfe, Hans Jonas; The Embodied Mind, Varela, Thompson and Rosch; Mind in Life, Evan Thompson, Incomplete Nature, Terrence Deacon; and Dynamics in Action, Alice Juarrero all of which I hope to finish this year.)

It is not the case that "physics finds no purpose". It is intentionally designed, and employed, so as to avoid purpose. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's what the original post says!

So there is something intangible, or non-physical, about the contents of conscious experience, and it is within this intangible something, that purpose exists. Does that jibe? — Fire Ologist

:100: But a crucial fact is, the intangible and non-physical is not Descartes 'res cogitans', a thinking thing, which leads to the fallacious Cartesian dualism. I'll offer a passage here from a recent (but unsung) cognitive science book that I found very useful.

For the scientist, the universe consists of matter and incandescent plasma. These, however, are images invented by the human mind. Behind these images, and evoking them, are the constraints of nature that channel the scientist’s thinking and determine the outcomes of experiments. In fact, what we regard as the physical world is “physical” to us precisely in the sense that it acts in opposition to our will and constrains our actions. The aspect of the universe that resists our push and demands muscular effort on our part is what we consider to be “physical”. On the other hand, since sensation and thought don’t require overcoming any physical resistance, we consider them to be outside of material reality. — Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order: How the Mind Creates the Features & Structure of All Things, and Why this Insight Transforms Physics (p. 6). Kindle Edition.

This beautifully illustrates that even the concept of ‘physical reality’ is not independent of subjective orientation — it's already intentional, already laden with the phenomenological structure of purpose and resistance (and this, even though Pinter's not writing from an explictly phenomenological perspective). This embodiedness is precisely what the "egological" framework doesn't see, as it has already reduced objects to abstractions.

I don’t quite follow how meaning was left behind for the sake of predictive accuracy. Are you saying, scientists saw no need to wonder what the bat (for instance) is subjectively experiencing when they could make predictive models about bat behaviors that need not include any such considerations? — Fire Ologist

The "great abstraction" referred to in the original post isn’t about biology, but about physics — specifically, the revolution in natural philosophy during the 17th century that led to a mechanistic, mathematically formalised view of nature. This model prioritized predictive accuracy over interpretive meaning, redefining what counted as knowledge by bracketing off subjective or qualitative aspects of experience altogether.

Interestingly, Immanuel Kant himself expressed doubts about whether biology, in this mechanistic framework, could ever qualify as a true science:

Since only external forces can cause bodies to change, and since no ‘external forces’ are involved in the self-organization of organisms, Kant reasoned that the self-organization of nature ‘has nothing analogous to any causality known to us.’ — Alicia Juarrero, Dynamics in Action

In other words, because the physical sciences were built around time-reversible laws (like Newtonian mechanics), they couldn’t easily account for the purposive, self-organizing activity of living systems — which unfold over time and exhibit goal-directed behavior.

And indeed, biology didn’t fully establish itself as a predictive science until Darwin’s Origin of Species and later the discovery of genetic mechanisms. Before that, it was largely classificatory — a science of kinds, not causes. But even today, there remains a live tension between the mechanistic framework inherited from physics and the teleological character of life. Hence the argument that purposiveness, which was deliberately set aside in the development of modern science, must now be acknowledged — not as epiphemonenal but as central.

But this seems too convoluted for me. It would be much easier to say that the universe is simply fine-tuned in a way that it either necessitates or allows the emergence of life. In such a case, life isn't an unintelligible accident that 'just happened' for no reason. — boundless

It might be easier for you to say this, but that is a matter of avoiding the point. Instead of acknowledging that the concept which we know as "the universe" is a false concept, you are accepting it as true, and proceeding from that premise. Of course it's easier that way, because you have your starting point already laid out for you. However the falsity of it misleads you.

Why physical laws allow life? I don't know and I find it a fascinating mystery which isn't solved by the 'multiverse' either. Just saying that there are other worlds with different physical constants or even physical laws and our world just happens to be one that allows life isn't a good explanation to why life was even possible in the first place. Of course, one might say that there is no 'why' but it is undeniable that life is allowed by physical laws. This is of course a tautology of sorts. But it makes you wonder if there is some reason of this allowance. I don't think the existence of such a 'reason' can be discovered by science. — boundless

Actually, these "laws" you refer to are the product of human knowledge. Human beings have created these laws in their efforts to describe activities observed.

Regardless of the existence of the 'deeper reason', since life are allowed, in no way reductionism is implied. That is if the 'laws of nature' allow life and are a sufficient explanation of it, it would seem to me that properties of the entire world ('laws of nature') explain the arising of life. Hence, life would be explained in terms of the properties of the whole, in the same way as we can understand the behavior of the momenta of single particles as a consequence of the behavior of a whole isolated system, as I explained before: — boundless

If 'laws of nature' are proposed as what the laws of physics are meant to describe, or represent, then we must ask how is it the case that physical bodies can obey the laws of nature. Would you propose that material bodies have access to some set of laws, which they read, or learn in some way, and then conduct themselves in a way so as to obey these laws? If not, then what would you propose as the process by which material things would interpret and obey a set of 'natural laws'?

Since God is the Good, whoever finds communion with the Good stops seeking fulfillment outside that state. — boundless

Why would you conclude this, it makes no sense to me. To begin with, "God" is not defined as "the good". The good is what a human beings seeks, and we do not necessarily seek God. Further, if one does seek God, it is impossible for a human being to know God in an absolute way, so that person would always be seeking to be closer to God, never reaching the fulfillment you refer to.

Yes, but it is assumed that the mass of, say, the Earth is the sum of the masses of its components. — boundless

But this method only works to an extent. If you divide a hadron into quarks and gluons, the hadron has a lot more mass than the sum of its parts. This is a feature described by the energy mass equivalence. The mass is a product of force, the strong force.

(I'm exploring this topic through phenomology, which I've only begun reading the last couple of years. My current reading list is The Phenomenon of LIfe, Hans Jonas; The Embodied Mind, Varela, Thompson and Rosch; Mind in Life, Evan Thompson, Incomplete Nature, Terrence Deacon; and Dynamics in Action, Alice Juarrero all of which I hope to finish this year.) — Wayfarer

Wow, you do a lot of reading.

I read a lot of snippets, excerpts, and reviews, but of those books, I’ve only read parts. So I thought it a worthwhile aim, now I’m pretty well retired, to commit to reading these books in entirety. I’m working on the theme of ‘mental causation’.

I’m working on the theme of ‘mental causation’. — Wayfarer

A very interesting and important theme I will say. And, when you get to the part about the criteria by which we judge whether specific instances of mental causation are good or bad, that is probably the most important theme there is.

Back to the Euthyphro dilemma. Is it good because it is loved by the gods, or is it loved by the gods because it is good?

Once we understand that conscious intention is just one form of intention, that opens up an entirely new range of possibility for how we understand and study the nature of "telos", teleology.

Restricting intention to human consciousness, such that only human actions can be understood as teleological, is a foundational, metaphysical mistake, which is common and prevalent in the modern western society. — Metaphysician Undercover

Maybe I’m a bit confused. Are you saying that it makes sense to think of non-sentient objects as capable of having intention? I think that is at the heart of the argument being made in the OP. I agree that some animals at least are capable of having intention.

When we understand the common defining term of "intention" as purpose, — Metaphysician Undercover

If you define “intention” as a synonym for “purpose,” then you’re just restating the position of the OP - a circular argument. If you define it as a mental state, which is one of the primary meanings of the word, then clearly only an entity with a mind can have intention.

Further, releasing intention from the constraints of consciousness allows us a much less confusing approach to the principles of panpsychism. "Consciousness" is generally understood as a property of higher level living beings, dependent on a brain. When panpsychism proposes consciousness as fundamental to the universe, this is commonly apprehended as incoherent, due to the fact that "consciousness" as we generally conceive it, is dependent on a brain. So when we release intention from the constraints of consciousness, and understand how intention relates to temporality in a way not at all understood by human knowledge, because temporality is not at all understood by human knowledge, this allows intention as a "consciousness-like" aspect of reality, to be pervasive in its causal role. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you’ve restated the argument in the OP, as I understand it, very clearly. Do you find that way of looking at things compelling?

Physics was specifically designed to deal with the mechanical motions of bodies. The early physicists who pioneered the way, did not exclude the reality of the spiritual, or immaterial, they recognized the division, and knew that physics was being designed exclusively to understand that one aspect of reality, the bodily. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think this is right. @Wayfarer and I are both fans of Burtt’s “The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science,” which makes this case strongly. What those early physicists did was metaphysics, not science.

That is true, in a way, but it was because the thinkers of those times were schooled in, and trying to improve on (or supersede) the metaphysics and philosophy of their day.

Galileo, in particular, overthrew the antiquated system of Ptolemaic cosmology and Aristotelian physics - but then, he also leaned heavily on Plato, from whom he inherited the idea of ‘dianoia’ as the centrality of mathematical and geometrical knowledge. So these themes and ideas intermingle.

The cardinal difference between Galileo and his forbears was first the exclusion of the final cause - that for which something exists. That is what teleonomy or teleology are concerned with, and which the ‘new physics’ eliminated altogether. And second, the exclusive emphasis on what can be measured and quantified, which was absolutely crucial.

On the one hand, that opened the door to very much of what was to become modern science; but on the other, it tended to suggest the picture of the Universe and mankind as the product of blind physical causation, which became stock-in-trade for later scientific materialism.

Which is why Edmund Husserl said that Galileo’s genius ‘both reveals and conceals’. Reveals, because objectivity and quantitative methods yielded huge results; but conceals the "Lifeworld" (Lebenswelt). The core of Husserl's critique of modern philosophy is that Galileo's mathematical idealization conceals the pre-scientific, lived world of immediate experience (the "lifeworld") from which all scientific concepts ultimately arise. The lifeworld is the world as it is experienced by us in our everyday lives – with its qualitative perceptions, practical concerns, and subjective meanings. And modern science gave rise to this split (or ‘bifurcation’) between lived experience and scientific abstraction, which is very much what this thread is concerned with.

Maybe I’m a bit confused. Are you saying that it makes sense to think of non-sentient objects as capable of having intention? — T Clark

I am not saying that explicitly. There are a number of different ways in which intention can be the cause of the movements of things, without intention being within the thing that is moving. Since we observe the activities of things, and notice that many are moved by intention, while the intention which moves them is external to them, (including chains of causation), it makes sense that non-sentient objects could be moving in intentionally designed trajectories without us being aware of the intention which sets them on their way.

If you define “intention” as a synonym for “purpose,” then you’re just restating the position of the OP - — T Clark

Yes, I am in agreement with the op. But intention really shouldn't be synonymous with purpose. Purpose is the defining word for intention. Generally, the defining word is the broader category. So for example, human beings is defined by mammal, which is defined by animal which is defined by living. In this case, conscious is defined by intention which is defined by purpose.

Often though, there is an inclination to make intention synonymous with purpose. This would mean that all cases of purpose are intentional. However, I think it is probably more productive in the long run to maintain a conceptual separation. This would mean that not all instances of intention are conscious, and also that not all instances of purpose are intentional. This allows versatility to the concept of "purpose", providing freedom from the restrictions of an end, or goal, which "intention" imposes. Purposeful acts could be carried out without being directed toward any specific end, such as in the case of some forms of trial and error perhaps.

I think you’ve restated the argument in the OP, as I understand it, very clearly. Do you find that way of looking at things compelling? — T Clark

Yes, I think it is the only reasonable way of looking at things. What we notice through sensation is specific ways in which things are, and this allows us to generalize. But in order for things to exist in specific ways, rather than absolute randomness, these ways must be designed, and the things somehow ordered to exist in these ways. So, as is the case with human artifacts and all artificial things, the design is prior in time to the thing, and the thing is brought into existence in accordance with the design.

However, like I mentioned above, I think we ought to allow that "purpose" extends beyond the limits of design, which is the restriction that the concept "intention" tends to impose. The need for this is evidenced by accidentals, which are not a part of the design, but are still purposefully caused. Simply put, an accident is not part of the intent, yet it is part of the purposeful act. It is the part which is not consistent with the designed end. And, since accidents still have purpose, as we learn from accidents and they can be very educational, they are in some way purposeful yet not intentional.

Accidents appear to be a significant part of the evolutionary process, in features like mutations for example, and people tend to think of them as chance though they are purposeful. Accidentals are what account for the uniqueness, peculiarities, and idiosyncrasies of the individual. I believe that we must allow that all the vast array of difference which we observe in life, and which I think manifests as the beauty of life, (the number of different colours found in flowers for example), are just as purposeful as all the sameness which we observe.

in order for things to exist in specific ways, rather than absolute randomness, these ways must be designed, and the things somehow ordered to exist in these ways. — Metaphysician Undercover

I wouldn’t want it to be thought that the OP is advocating any form of intelligent design. That wasn’t the intention. The word 'design' almost always implies a designing agency, which is not what I mean by ‘purpose’. Rather, I’m pointing to the deeper philosophical issue of how order emerges from apparent chaos — a question that has animated metaphysics since the Presocratics.

I accept the basic, naturalistic account of evolutionary biology. Where I differ is in how it’s interpreted, and what meaning (if any) can be drawn from it. On one side are the ultra-Darwinists — figures like Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Jacques Monod — who argue that life is a kind of biochemical fluke, a cascade of chance mutations filtered by the blind algorithm of natural selection (as outlined in Dennett's 'Darwin’s Dangerous Idea' and Monod's 'Chance and Necessity'). On the other side are proponents of intelligent design such as Michael Behe and Stephen Meyer ('Signature in the Cell').

I don’t subscribe to the Biblical creation narrative, though I respect its symbolic depth. Nor do I advocate a cosmic designer in the ID sense — though I also don’t think the ID theorists are entirely wrong in their intuition that something more is driving the process than blind mechanism.

I don’t want to wade too far into that controversy, which has produced a vast and contentious literature. But I am drawn to the idea of a naturalistic teleology, as Thomas Nagel very tentatively sketches in Mind and Cosmos — namely, that sentient beings are in some sense the cosmos become self-aware.

Accordingly, the one teleological principle I’m willing to defend — even if it’s heresy in mainstream biology — is orthogenesis: the idea that there has been, over evolutionary time, a real tendency toward greater awareness, self-consciousness, and intelligence. I don’t claim this as a comprehensive cosmology, but as a metaphysical intuition that can help accommodate diverse perspectives of the evolution of consciousness.

See also The Third Way.

orthogenesis

I often think while observing the insect world, that there seems to be an excess of awareness. A vibrant interactivity going on. A kind of bursting with life, which seems to outstrip the basic necessities of finding food and procreating, in their specific evolutionary niche.

The same thing bugs me :rofl:

It’s exactly the same. This is not a scientific way of speaking, it’s statistics. This is how statisticians talk about distributions of data points. — T Clark

Ok, but then I question if there is a meaningful distinction between strong and weak emergence.

You and I have a different understanding of what the words “reductionism” and “emergence” mean and how the processes they designate work. I’m not going to change my understanding and I don’t think you are either. There’s probably no reason for us to continue this part of the discussion. — T Clark

Probably. I would say that we have a similar understanding, however. But certainly this part of the discussion can go too much off topic. In brief, I would say that I believe that perhaps a better reading of physical theories is that what is fundamental is actually the whole universe, i.e. it is an ontological precedence over its parts.

Another point is that, perhaps, in order to have an acceptable explanation of life and consciousness, physicalism needs at least to be 'expanded' or corrected in some ways.