If this is the case, then how do we show how a conscious goal "acts" as a final cause to produce a chain of efficient causes (habitual action)? — Metaphysician Undercover

Attending releases the appropriate habits, while suppresing the inappropriate ones.

so the bridge between final cause and efficient cause would be found in the relationship between anticipation and habit. — Metaphysician Undercover

In broad way that is so. But habit is also final cause/constraint that has got baked in over a long period of learning. So the contrast is in an efficient division of labour in a time-pressured world. Habits represent finality that has been learnt to the point it is baked-in intentionality. Attention is then the finality we have to construct specifically to deal with the current moment in time.

It is confusing, I agree. But in terms of forming intentions, attention is much slower than habit because habit has already accumulated intentionality over a lifetime of learning. And attention is also much slower at executing in terms of efficient cause actions as again it is dealing with novelty and must spend time deliberating on the sequence of steps that might make some plan.

If I have to go to the bank and the shops, I can decide which to do first. But it might take a few seconds to work that out. Or if instead it is a learnt routine, I find my feet just making that choice for me. I am turning left rather than right before I've even had time to think at the road junction.

So both attention and habit are separable systems. And being systems, each requires the same structure - finality and efficient cause in interaction. Or constraints vs degrees of freedom.

Yet then in a broader sense, they are an integrated in themselves - each a specialisation of brain function in the two directions of economical habit vs effortful attention. One then seems to be all about the component actions, the other about the broad plan.

Anticipation of the shot, which produces preparedness, is just as important as habit, if not more so. — Metaphysician Undercover

I thought I said that. Sprinters must really concentrate their attention so that nothing stands in the way of responding as fast as possible to the gun. They must suppress all possible distractions and maintain a vivid impression of the event that is expected. And it can be so vivid that you get false starts.

So attention creates states of focused sensory anticipation/motor intention. Everything that can be got ready is got ready - to lower the informational barrier and make the processing as fast as biologically possible.

I've been in more than one car accident, driving, where the scene unfolds very quickly, but I've always maintained conscious control over how I operated the controls of the vehicle until the end. — Metaphysician Undercover

Alternatively time slows. The fact that attentional level processing doesn't have time to make sense of what is going on leaves us with the feeling of the moment being stretched out and lasting an eternity.

And then you say you were in conscious control. Yet sports science will say the best that could be the case was that you were in the usual zone of responding out of trained habit, then afterwards there was a reportable working memory as attention fixed a record of the blur of events.

So it is your belief against the scientific evidence here.

Since attention is actually a habit, the better dichotomy would habit/anticipation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Sure, relabel the same things anyway you like. It makes no difference. I just go with the standard labelling that has emerged in psychology and neuroscience.

My only quibble is that "anticipation" is useful for signalling another paradigm difference - the switch from "consciousness" as the output of a representation, to seeing it as about predictive modelling. It is anticipation that comes first. And then that acts as a selective filter on awareness which allows us to in fact ignore as much of the world as possible.

So yes, if habit is then understood in this light as what we can manage to ignore (because it is already predicted), then it is just the relabelling of the same functional dichotomy.

So attention really only gives to our minds what has occurred, the past. Now we need a principle, such as anticipation, whereby the fact that something is about to occur, is present to the mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, I already said that "consciousness" involves both the half second before and the half second after. So the fact that attentional level processing is slow means that it is there in advance of the moment, and there afterwards mopping up. First it generates the prediction that allows most things to be ignored. Then it deals with what in turn couldn't be ignored. After that, we have a tidied up impression of the world that can be filed as reportable memory.

No that's not true some words can be used in place of another, so they have one sense which is similar to a sense of another word, but no two words have the same meaning. So I refuse to argue whether two words have the same meaning, as I think that is a pointless exercise — Metaphysician Undercover

Actually, it is a pointless exercise to argue with someone who thinks that they are right and Merriam Webster is wrong.

The word "synonym" means two words that mean the same thing. So, we have a word for the thing that you say doesn't exist (words that mean the same thing).

In broad way that is so. But habit is also final cause/constraint that has got baked in over a long period of learning. So the contrast is in an efficient division of labour in a time-pressured world. Habits represent finality that has been learnt to the point it is baked-in intentionality. Attention is then the finality we have to construct specifically to deal with the current moment in time. — apokrisis

I think that this is a misrepresentation of habits. Habits do not represent finality, or final cause because a habit develops as a means to an end, whereas final cause is the end itself. As the means, the habit may prove to be useful toward many different ends. if looked at in any particular instance of activity, the habit may be used toward an end which is quite unrelated to the end which it was originally developed toward. So a habit, being a formal constraint, is not a final cause, nor is it properly representative of a final cause, it is better referred to as a formal cause.

It would be difficult to identify final cause as constraint, because an agent is free to produce one's own goals. We cannot say that an agent is constrained by one's goals, when an agent is free to choose one's goals. What constrains the agent, thereby restricting one's goals, is existing forms, and so we should associate constraint with formal cause rather than with final cause. Habit, as well as the forms of physical reality which constrain a person are the two types of formal cause. Habit may sometimes be overcome by intention and final cause, when we break a habit.

So both attention and habit are separable systems. And being systems, each requires the same structure - finality and efficient cause in interaction. Or constraints vs degrees of freedom. — apokrisis

You are not properly distinguishing between existing forms, which constitute formal cause, and desired forms , goals, which are constitutive of final cause. Formal causes may be understood as existing constraints on the thinking being, whereas the being is free to determine goals. Therefore final cause which is derived from future possibilities is inherently free, and only constrained when formal cause is brought to bear upon the goal in judgement.

Alternatively time slows. The fact that attentional level processing doesn't have time to make sense of what is going on leaves us with the feeling of the moment being stretched out and lasting an eternity.

And then you say you were in conscious control. Yet sports science will say the best that could be the case was that you were in the usual zone of responding out of trained habit, then afterwards there was a reportable working memory as attention fixed a record of the blur of events.

So it is your belief against the scientific evidence here.

Sure, relabel the same things anyway you like. It makes no difference. I just go with the standard labelling that has emerged in psychology and neuroscience. — apokrisis

There is a large gap, a division opening wider and wider between neuroscience and modern phenomenology. Phenomenology starts with the premise of being, which is existing at the present. From here it proceeds to recognize the present as a division between past and future, and tries to understand living, in terms of this division, which is the most significant thing in our lives. Neuroscience, on the other hand, relies heavily on principles derive from the Special Relativity theory which renders this distinction between past and future as unreal, or extremely vague if it's given a charitable interpretation.

The result is that neuroscience has no real principles for distinguishing between how the thinking mind is differentiating between things of the past and things of the future. The closest thing you have put forward is the concept of "attention", but you have no real way to distinguish between paying attention through your senses to things which have just happened, and paying attention through anticipation to things which are impending. Instead, you offer the blanket term "attention", which loses all such distinction in a vague "present".

The gap between phenomenology and neuroscience continues to widen, due to these failings of neuroscience.

My only quibble is that "anticipation" is useful for signalling another paradigm difference - the switch from "consciousness" as the output of a representation, to seeing it as about predictive modelling. It is anticipation that comes first. And then that acts as a selective filter on awareness which allows us to in fact ignore as much of the world as possible. — apokrisis

It is not a case of switching from consciousness as "the output of a representation", to consciousness as "predictive modelling", it is a matter of understanding consciousness as both. This requires distinguishing the two, and providing the proper dichotomy between these two. Because if the human mind mixes up, and confuses actual things of the past (oh shit I shouldn't have done that, I'm going to try to make it so that I didn't do it) with future possibilities (X is inevitable and there's nothing I can do about it), then that human mind has a real problem. Your concept of "attention" combines these two together, in this confused way.

Again, I already said that "consciousness" involves both the half second before and the half second after. So the fact that attentional level processing is slow means that it is there in advance of the moment, and there afterwards mopping up. First it generates the prediction that allows most things to be ignored. Then it deals with what in turn couldn't be ignored. After that, we have a tidied up impression of the world that can be filed as reportable memory. — apokrisis

This is exactly what I mean. You say "attentional level processing" "involves both the half second before and the half second after", as if there is no fundamental difference between these two. They are both grouped together under "attentional" as if the mind, at the most fundamental level does not differentiate between the before and after. But if the mind, at the most fundamental level really does distinguish between the before and the after (which it must in order to avoid having a real problem), then why group these two together as "attentional"? The only reason would be that you are overlooking this most fundamental distinction asan unimportant distinction.

It would be difficult to identify final cause as constraint, because an agent is free to produce one's own goals — Metaphysician Undercover

Ah. Again the return of the agent, the mysterious witnessing and deciding self who is conscious. We are back to the ghost in the machine. Who needs neuroscience.

The word "synonym" means two words that mean the same thing. So, we have a word for the thing that you say doesn't exist (words that mean the same thing). — Harry Hindu

Of course we have words for things which do not exist, words like "nothing". We also have words like "impossible", and despite something being designated as impossible, some will say it's possible. What does this mean to you?

If that's how you support your principles and defend neuroscience, it's a pathetic defense.

I'm not a fan of dualism or homuncular regress. So sue me.

So now you're arguing that synonyms don't exist. I don't see any point in continuing this or any other conversation with you. You are impossible.

I'm not a fan of dualism or homuncular regress. — apokrisis

Thjs is surprising coming from someone who supports the idea of "final causes". What do you think final cause is, if not a dualist principle?

In any activity, there is always an "agent". This is the thing which is acting, the agent produces an effect. The agent (thing which is acting) may be motivated (moved to act) through efficient causes or final causes. Inanimate agents we observe to be motivated by efficient causes, while we observe human agents to be motivated by final causes.

You claim to support the idea of final causes but then you describe human activities in your neuroscientific way, as if they are all efficient causes. Unless you can describe an interaction between efficient causes and final causes within one model, there is no basis to your claim that you both support the idea of final causes, and deny dualism.

Thjs is surprising coming from someone who supports the idea of "final causes". What do you think final cause is, if not a dualist principle? — Metaphysician Undercover

I thought I've explained ad nauseum? It is a dialectical or dichotomistic principle. Final and formal cause are wrapped up in the systems notion of top-down acting constraints. They are matched in complimentary fashion by bottom-up acting degrees of freedom - a notion wrapping together material and efficient cause.

So Aristotle was the great systems thinker. This is what modern systems thinking looks like.

In any activity, there is always an "agent". — Metaphysician Undercover

Quotemarks are good. The agent should vanish if the systems account is working. We end up with a system that has the property of agency exhibited hierarchically over all scales of its being.

This is the thing which is acting, the agent produces an effect. — Metaphysician Undercover

But in the systems view, both the global constraints and the local degrees of freedom produce effects. Both the general context and the particular events are causal.

You claim to support the idea of final causes but then you describe human activities in your neuroscientific way, as if they are all efficient causes. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. That is just how you insist on understanding everything, no matter how regularly I correct you on that.

Unless you can describe an interaction between efficient causes and final causes within one model, there is no basis to your claim that you both support the idea of final causes, and deny dualism. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yep. You really do never listen.

Final and formal cause are wrapped up in the systems notion of top-down acting constraints. — apokrisis

As I explained, "top-down constraint" is formal cause, but this is inconsistent with "final cause" which gives the thing acting (the agent) freedom to choose a goal.

They are matched in complimentary fashion by bottom-up acting degrees of freedom - a notion wrapping together material and efficient cause. — apokrisis

If you assign "freedom" to bottom-up actions, then to maintain consistency you must assign "final-cause" to bottom-up actions. The acorn becoming a tree, is a bottom-up action. The tree, which will come to be, from the acorn does not constrain the acorn, because it does not even exist when the acorn is acting.

Otherwise the human agent has no freedom to choose one's own goals, and this is inconsistent with observations of human behaviour. We freely choose our goals, they are not enforced through top-down constraint. Goals are freely chosen by the human mind, and goal-directed actions are bottom-up, starting from within the neurological system.

The agent should vanish if the systems account is working. We end up with a system that has the property of agency exhibited hierarchically over all scales of its being. — apokrisis

Agency cannot vanish unless there is nothing which is active. If nothing is active then there is no activity.

But in the systems view, both the global constraints and the local degrees of freedom produce effects. Both the general context and the particular events are causal. — apokrisis

Then what is the thing which is active? Global constraints and local degrees of freedom produce effects on what? Unless you have an agent, you have a system of constraints and freedoms without anything actually being affected by that system, and your claim that these constraints and freedoms produce effects is just smoke and mirrors because there is nothing there which is being affected.

As I explained, "top-down constraint" is formal cause, but this is inconsistent with "final cause" which gives the thing acting (the agent) freedom to choose a goal. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, no. Top-down constraint is formal and final cause bound up. Although - following the logic of dichotomies - we would also follow Aristotle in dividing constraint into its generality and particularity. So goals are general imperatives. And forms are particular states of constraint that would serve those imperatives.

Take the Platonic solids. You can place the general constraint on geometric possibility of limiting volumes to regular-sided polygons. So the goal is maximised regularity. And then you have the five forms that meet the requirement. These forms in turn can be used as actual limits which shape lumps of matter that have efficient causes, like the property of whether they stack nicely, or not.

The acorn becoming a tree, is a bottom-up action. — Metaphysician Undercover

Hardly. The acorn packs a genome - the product of millennia of evolved intentionality. You couldn't pick a worse example. The acorn - as a small package of carbohydrate and basic metabolic machinery - has to grow. It must construct an oak by constraining material flows for 100 years. But the fact it will be an oak is already written into its destiny.

Otherwise the human agent has no freedom to choose one's own goals, and this is inconsistent with observations of human behaviour. We freely choose our goals, they are not enforced through top-down constraint. — Metaphysician Undercover

And so you again ignore all the science that has shown that this kind of "ghost in the machine" freedom is a dualistic illusion.

That doesn't mean there is no "freedom of choice". It means that we are constrained by our biology and sociology to act intelligently and creatively. We have the capacity to negotiate the balance between our individual wants and our social demands. And we can do that well, or do that badly. Selection will weed out what works and what doesn't.

Then what is the thing which is active? Global constraints and local degrees of freedom produce effects on what? — Metaphysician Undercover

You are locked into cause and effect thinking. A doer and a done-to. That is the mental habit you need to break. Aristotle ought to be a good start for any systems thinker. His four causes approach was the basis for self-organising entelechy. Material potential becomes actualised as it expresses its functionality.

Top-down constraint is formal and final cause bound up. — apokrisis

This is where the temporal problem lies. Formal cause relates to what exists, and final cause relates to a goal for the future. By binding up these two, you negate the division between past and future, also negating the need for dualism. But you no longer have a true "final cause".

Hardly. The acorn packs a genome - the product of millennia of evolved intentionality. You couldn't pick a worse example. The acorn - as a small package of carbohydrate and basic metabolic machinery - has to grow. It must construct an oak by constraining material flows for 100 years. But the fact it will be an oak is already written into its destiny. — apokrisis

I didn't pick the example, it's Aristotle's. If it appears to you like a bad example, it's because you misunderstand final cause. And in your explanation you conflate the particular and the general. If the acorn grows, it will construct an oak tree (in general), but not any particular oak tree, the intent is something general. Furthermore, there is no necessity for it to grow, it may not grow, and this is due to the nature of the material cause. So the acorn consists of material cause, potential, it consists of formal cause. what it is, or how that potential exists, and it consists of final cause which is the intent to become something. But the "something" in the intent is something more general than the specific "something" which is the acorn. And so there is a necessary separation between formal cause and final cause.

That doesn't mean there is no "freedom of choice". It means that we are constrained by our biology and sociology to act intelligently and creatively. — apokrisis

This claim is just as hollow as your claim that the acorn "must grow".

You are locked into cause and effect thinking. A doer and a done-to. That is the mental habit you need to break. Aristotle ought to be a good start for any systems thinker. His four causes approach was the basis for self-organising entelechy. Material potential becomes actualised as it expresses its functionality. — apokrisis

You still haven't explained how you have activity without something which is active. It's easy to say "let's just talk about the activity, and forget about the thing which is active", but it doesn't make a metaphysics because you have an ontology without any being. You think I should break the good mental habit of insisting that if there is activity, there is something which is active, to opt for the bad mental habit of describing the activity with total neglect for the thing which is active.

Your mode of thinking is to just combine formal and final cause, and forget about the material which separates these two. Matter is the potential for change. Formal cause relates to the form which the matter has, and final cause relates to an intended form. If you remove the relationship between form and matter then you no longer have this distinction between what is (necessitated as "the past"), and what may be (in the future).

. If the acorn grows, it will construct an oak tree (in general), but not any particular oak tree, the intent is something general. — Metaphysician Undercover

Perhaps get someone to explain genes to you sometime.

Perhaps get someone to explain genes to you sometime. — apokrisis

What kind of reply is that? Genes play a part in determining the characteristics of the individual, but that's only a part. This is where we find final cause active, within the local aspect. Final cause acts from within and there is an inherent element of freedom as is evident from genetic mutations and evolution. But there is also the environment, global constraints. You seem to somehow twist these around.

@apokrisis @Metaphysician Undercover

As stated- survival, boredom, dissatisfaction.

That human life must be a kind of mistake is sufficiently clear from the fact that man is a compound of needs, which are difficult to satisfy; moreover, if they are satisfied, all he is granted is a state of painlessness, in which he can only give himself up to boredom. This is a precise proof that existence in itself has no value, since boredom is merely the feeling of the emptiness of life. If, for instance, life, the longing for which constitutes our very being, had in itself any positive and real value, boredom could not exist; mere existence in itself would supply us with everything, and therefore satisfy us. But our existence would not be a joyous thing unless we were striving after something; distance and obstacles to be overcome then represent our aim as something that would satisfy us — an illusion which vanishes when our aim has been attained; or when we are engaged in something that is of a purely intellectual nature, when, in reality, we have retired from the world, so that we may observe it from the outside, like spectators at a theatre. Even sensual pleasure itself is nothing but a continual striving, which ceases directly its aim is attained. As soon as we are not engaged in one of these two ways, but thrown back on existence itself, we are convinced of the emptiness and worthlessness of it; and this it is we call boredom. That innate and ineradicable craving for what is out of the common proves how glad we are to have the natural and tedious course of things interrupted. Even the pomp and splendour of the rich in their stately castles is at bottom nothing but a futile attempt to escape the very essence of existence, misery. — Schopenhauer

I already made the point this is a one-eyed view - https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/100361

You always stress the escape from negativity and ignore the approach to positivity. But it takes two to tango.

So what we really have here is an inherent direction that points the way to progress. For things to be even meaningfully understood as bad, the logically corollary is that they could be good. Thus your pessimism collapses due to its own first premise.

Genes play a part in determining the characteristics of the individual, but that's only a part. — Metaphysician Undercover

In biology, they are the determining part. What happens during growth or development is then that this finality gets mixed with a lot of particular accidents.

So the acorn is a one-off genetic template - a particular form that can only deliver that one adult tree. Sexual reproduction ensures a shuffling of the genetic cards to create a unique hand.

But then the tree grows. The acorn happens to have fallen on a stony hillside. One year as a sapling there is a big drought, another year it is hit by a pest invasion, eventually it gets hit by lightning.

So the mighty oak ends up a bit mangled in ways that the acorn's genome couldn't envision. Constraints may be top-down determining, but also the development of actuality is subject to irreducible contingency. There are many particular accidents of fate that get woven into the final form of the genetic intention.

So roughly the original envisioned oak emerges. And if not too beaten up, it can produce its crop of new acorns. Its biological goal has been achieved on the whole, to the extent it matters.

Again, you have brought the discussion back to a reductionist way of thinking where constraints must be absolutely determining. But organically, constraints only have to regulate contingency to the degree it really matters. Doing more than that is pointless over-kill.

Once you get that naturalistic systems principle, it is pretty easy to apply that to the discussion of brains and habits we were having.

If you needed something in the first place, something was missing.

Yeah. And so already you are pointed in the direction of seeking that missing thing as a satisfaction.

If satisfaction is actually impossible, then it can't really be said to be missing. Motivation remains the direction you want to take because it is "leaving something definitely behind by definitely heading in the exact other direction".

If satisfaction is actually impossible, then it can't really be said to be missing. Motivation remains the direction you want to take because it is "leaving something definitely behind by definitely heading in the exact other direction". — apokrisis

Agreed.

In biology, they are the determining part. What happens during growth or development is then that this finality gets mixed with a lot of particular accidents.

So the acorn is a one-off genetic template - a particular form that can only deliver that one adult tree. Sexual reproduction ensures a shuffling of the genetic cards to create a unique hand. — apokrisis

It is not true that biologists generally conceive of genetics in this way. There are many "accidents" which can occur right within the genetic system, different types of mutations which are responsible for variations, and they are necessary to evolutionary theory. If the genetics of the seed determined the particular plant which would grow, there would be no such thing as evolution. And not all genetic mutations are due to environmental factors. You are just stipulating this in an effort to support your metaphysical position instead of accepting that this position is untenable.

Furthermore, your own system of metaphysics claims local degrees of freedom. So you are producing inconsistency within your own system with this form of determinism, unless the activity explained by genetics is global rather than local. But if you look for an even smaller, microscopic level of activity, you will find final cause active even at this smaller level. No matter how microscopic you go, you will never separate the local degrees of freedom from the final cause.

Your move is to remove final cause from the local freedom, describing it as a global constraint, and this is all just an effort to remove the "ghost in the machine". Why? Do you have some deep seated fear of dualism? When all the evidence, and many rational arguments throughout history point in that direction, why are you insisting on inconsistent principles just to avoid a name, "dualism"? By pulling the ghost out of the machine, you are just left with a machine. But you now have an even bigger problem. Machines are artificial, created with intention. To maintain consistency with this evidence, that machines which act with purpose are created, you need to assume a creator of that machine. So either we follow the evidence, that final cause is immanent within the living being to the most fundamental particles of matter, or we look for an external creator, of which we can't find any evidence.

Again, you have brought the discussion back to a reductionist way of thinking where constraints must be absolutely determining. But organically, constraints only have to regulate contingency to the degree it really matters. Doing more than that is pointless over-kill. — apokrisis

OK, so if the genes, operating under the principle of final cause, within the acorn, cannot produce one specific oak tree, because there are degrees of contingency involved. Then we cannot say that the intent within the acorn is to produce that one particular tree. We have to say that the intent within those genes is vague and general. The genes will not produce this certain tree, they will produce an oak tree in general. So if we speak of final cause as a constraining or determining factor it is so in this general way, it is not a particular constraint, as formal cause is. And this makes an important difference between formal cause and final cause, one is a particular constraint and the other is a general constraint

Yep, machines need a creator. That is why organisms need explanation in terms of a logic of self organisation.

That human life must be a kind of mistake is sufficiently clear from the fact that man is a compound of needs, which are difficult to satisfy; moreover, if they are satisfied, all he is granted is a state of painlessness, in which he can only give himself up to boredom. — Schopenhauer

The need is never satisfied to the point of perfection so your conclusion of boredom is inappropriate. Whenever we anticipate a point of satisfaction, and that point comes, there are always elements of dissatisfaction remaining, even if related to a different need. Our needs are many and varied so boredom is unnecessary.

Yep, machines need a creator. That is why organisms need explanation in terms of a logic of self organisation. — apokrisis

So how does "self organisation", in which a "self" is implied, differ from "ghost in the machine" or avoid a homuncular regress?

It is an assertion of immanence and a rejection of transcendence.

The self is the system as a whole. And it is a whole in that all four causes evolve via mutual interaction. They arise within the system itself. Top-down constraints shape the bottom-up degrees of freedom. And those bottom-up degrees of freedom in turn construct - or rather reconstruct - those prevailing global states of constraint.

Holism is pretty simple once you get your head around the fact it is not the usual unholy mx of reductionism and transcendentalism that folk try to apply to metaphysical questions. The machine and its ghost.

The self is the system as a whole. And it is a whole in that all four causes evolve via mutual interaction. They arise within the system itself. Top-down constraints shape the bottom-up degrees of freedom. And those bottom-up degrees of freedom in turn construct - or rather reconstruct - those prevailing global states of constraint. — apokrisis

So the question, what creates the system, as a whole? A system cannot create itself, it requires an author.

[Delete] @Baden

I think this is the wrong place to ask that question. You have to direct it at the right people.

Everybody already knows what motivation is, and they merely deploy different words to identify it, who cares, all that matters is that it should be considered from and beyond the point of being just adequate. Social philosophy, to be of any use at all directs, as with the philosophy which directs science, so single liner sentiments, the format which works, which apply equally specie wide, and direct come encourage in the direction of greater motivation is all that is of value here.