'What exactly caused the explosion' was four-fold: — Wayfarer
That's your template, your explanation. What does the plant know of any of that? The plant (arguably) doesn't know anything; it just does. And what it does occurs at the place and moment of the doing. We can describe it, and depending on the presuppositions of our science, our explanations will differ. That is, our descriptions are true and accurate by our criteria - which has zero to do with the plant.And the reason is that goal-directed activity is clearly intrinsic to any kind of living organisms. — Wayfarer
Also, why can it not be both, "tree" and "firewood"? I see no reason for the claim that it cannot be both. — Metaphysician Undercover
In rough parallel, all plants generally speaking hold (non-self-) awareness of gravity and sunlight, as well as of the threshold between self and non-self. They all respond to obstacle standing in the way as parts of the non-self. And they all are driven by an un-thought of telos to reach that which they are unthinkingly striving for. I personally believe the same awareness of givens and striving toward something that is to be obtained is applicable to all life. — javra
I argue that telos is a human template, an overlay of plausible explanation under a set of presuppositions. - All good and orderly in its place, but not the goal here! — tim wood
Someone earlier referred to paths of least resistance. That's the best way I can think of to think about life in itself. Somehow - no doubt in its DNA - it follows a path of what is, for it, a kind of least resistance, or greater reward. No telos at all. Looking at Aristotle is worthwhile. Arguing Aristotle is just so much of how many angels fit on the point of a pin. — tim wood
For the claim, sure. But is that claims in your backyard, or trees? Do you burn claims in your fireplace, or firewood? The OP is about how it is ante claims, before thinking. We can approximate that by trying to follow the lead of real being. Imagine you have one beloved tree in your backyard and I come to chop it down. What of your claims then? It cannot be both firewood and tree. Don't you see that? — tim wood
If I’ve understood you properly given the context of your previous posts, you argue that there is no goal-striving to anything in nature, including to trees’ behaviors. — javra
Agreed! But that is just the failure of language to accommodate the tree's living. It - the tree - doesn't follow; it doesn't go. It just is, from moment to moment. We, being observant, might say that it changes from one particular moment to another. But the tree? Nope. It just is. Or, neologisms for fun and profit, the tree just ises, or beings, a state of ising, or beinging.To say that it follows the path of least resistance already presupposes telos, because it is going somewhere, and to be going somewhere presupposes telos. — Metaphysician Undercover
Let's go back.No, I will not allow you to invert our positions here. — Metaphysician Undercover
It makes a difference. If we decide what things are, then we can reasonably differ. If on the other hand we know what something is, then we cannot reasonably differ.
— tim wood
There is no fundamental difference between deciding what things are, and knowing what things are, because all we can do is decide what something is, and having made that decision constitutes knowing what that things is. — Metaphysician Undercover
Someone earlier referred to paths of least resistance. — tim wood
But that is just the failure of language to accommodate the tree's living. It - the tree - doesn't follow; it doesn't go. It just is, from moment to moment. — tim wood
the tree has no eyes. — tim wood
It has no mind. — tim wood
It has no space or time. — tim wood
'Reason and revelation' are defined and understood as different domains in philosophy of religion. — Wayfarer
The whole point about 'revealed truth' is that we learn something from it, which you can't learn by any other means including reasoning. — Wayfarer
That's a deep question, obviously. You could answer with Wittgenstein: 'that of which we cannot speak'. But the problem with that answer is that it indeed does leave a great deal to conjecture; — Wayfarer
I don't think so, they could just look at the things which we call "trees" as firewood. That's what we're talking about, calling the same thing by different words. I called it "tree", tim called it "firewood".
You are making them into two distinct things, but that's not what we were talking about. We were talking about knowing what a thing is. One person knows the thing as "firewood", another knows it as "tree", the same thing. — Metaphysician Undercover
Do you believe reason and revelation are independent domains just on the basis of religious authority? — Janus
Can you think of any example of knowledge derived from religious experience or revelation which is truly beyond reason? — Janus
Nothing I have read of Wittgenstein (and I have read quite a bit over the years) indicates to me that he thought that ethics, aesthetics and religion are beyond reason — Janus
If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.
It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed.
Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and æsthetics are one.)
6.432
How the world is, is completely indifferent for what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world.
The space of reason is the whole of life — Janus
I gave one already, from Buddhism. Another would surely be the myth of the Burning Bush and the dispensation of the Ten Commandments. — Wayfarer
Reason has limits and scope. — Wayfarer
Does anyone know? Soap bubbles and least surface - how does that work? Do you think the water and soap have some kind of telos? Or is it just some kind of mechanics that is obvious when well-explained.Yeah. So how does every particle, every event, know how to follow the path of least action? How do you accommodate this “weirdness” that infects even classical physics in your metaphysical picture? — apokrisis
It does; it should. No disagreement here. In passing, your definition of telos as encompassing what you have listed seems to broaden and stretch telos beyond the limits of any original significance. If telos is that broad, then it means merely that there's a cause - and that's already presupposed!Science can talk of grades of telos - physical tendencies or propensities, biological function, psychological purpose. So finality or anticipation can be treated as something that comes in obvious grades of complexity. — apokrisis
That is, part of the description. The finality being described is (presumably) a fact of some kind. The fact has no need of the science of physics or its descriptions to become or be that fact. The quote from the OP is, "Life will not answer to reason. And meaning is too young a thing to have much power over it." I am simply trying understand what "life" in this sentence means.But the point is that finality is profoundly part of physics. — apokrisis
"Life will not answer to reason. And meaning is too young a thing to have much power over it." I am simply trying understand what "life" in this sentence means. — tim wood
Or is it just some kind of mechanics that is obvious when well-explained. — tim wood
In passing, your definition of telos as encompassing what you have listed seems to broaden and stretch telos beyond the limits of any original significance. If telos is that broad, then it means merely that there's a cause - and that's already presupposed! — tim wood
There can indeed, in our judgments. Let's try this. Suppose there were something like anthropomorphism, call it arborism or dentroism, that would be attributing to people the qualities and abilities of trees, in the language and tropes appropriate to trees. Perhaps not possible to give form to in imagination but not thereby impossible. The point is that such an arborism would presuppose just those qualities and abilities that it might attribute. And the things, the qualities and abilities that arborism could attribute would be just exactly what trees are and do. Just as anthropomorphism attributes to (in this case) trees what people are and do in people-centric language. The question then becomes, is there any way to hear - discern in some way - what arborism might be saying, expressing it in tree terms?There can be anthropomorphism at play in any of our judgments concerning awareness and will. Our judgments of these can just as readily be clouded, if not utterly flawed, by an ego-driven anthropocentrism which states that “if it is not that precise form which only humans can experience, then it cannot exist in any other form in any non-human lifeform”. — javra
It has no mind.
— tim wood
This is contingent upon how mind is defined; Varela et al. (who uphold the concept of autopoiesis) would disagree. — javra
"Awareness, "goal-striving." It seems to me that awareness requires something able to be aware - in a tree what would that be? Goal-striving seems to require a capacity for anticipation. How, in a tree? My view is that the tree has a repertoire of chemical reactions to stimuli, and chemical messages it can send. To be sure, we can describe it in human;like terms, but while possibly poetic, it seems ultimately destructive of what might pass for knowledge of the tree.In terse overview of what I’m here upholding, trees are not humans, nor are they vertebrates—and so do not have attributes only applicable to humans and vertebrates. This, however, does not argue against trees holding awareness conjoined goal-strivings—to be clear, of a non-human, non-vertebrate kind. — javra
Not if the limit of your appreciation is "stuff just happens." In trying to approach some insight into what the life of a tree is, I am trying to jump out of my own systems, not least because, even if that is not possible, I can try to glimpse my subject as free from corrupting understandings as I can.So, basically, your view is that ‘stuff just happens’. So really there’s nothing to be gained by discussion. — Wayfarer
"Life will not answer to reason. And meaning is too young a thing to have much power over it." I am simply trying understand what "life" in this sentence means.
Life answers to reason only on the questions reasons asks, and only in the terms that reason asks in. This is just "putting nature to the question." Don't you think there might be more? Poetry finds it, sometimes; but poetry isn't from the tree, more it's about the aesthetic human reaction to the tree.In fact life does "answer to reason" insofar as it is intelligible at all. — Janus
That's a good way to look at it, imo. Now on to "formal" causes. I'm thinking that DNA is the current flavour of formal causes. Do you have a different candidate?Or else it deflates the rather inflated notion of telos that folk have in the first place. I prefer to look at it that way.
It avoids being a mind~world dualist, while accepting that mechanistic physics is only talking about half the cause in its stress on the material, rather than the formal, causes of physical being. — apokrisis
I lean toward regarding the "mystery" as an artifact of a certain kind of thinking. Think a different way and - no mystery! The trouble with metaphysical mysteries is that they have no bound. Can you solve for me the metaphysical mystery of how my glass of water got on my desk? Not how, but the metaphysical mystery of how. See how quickly it becomes nonsense? The question becomes, is it ever not nonsense?But that then is to ignore the metaphysical mystery of how nature arrives at its rather more exact solutions. — apokrisis
I'm thinking that DNA is the current flavour of formal causes. Do you have a different candidate? — tim wood
I lean toward regarding the "mystery" as an artifact of a certain kind of thinking. — tim wood
Here's the thing: the tree has no eyes. It has no mind. It cannot have any kind of conception of itself - I don't even know if "itself" is right. It has no space or time. It reacts to things according to its DNA and it also does things. I imagine that its reactions are a complete description of its experiences - experiences that are neither more nor less than signals in transit through the body of the tree. — tim wood
Agreed! But that is just the failure of language to accommodate the tree's living. It - the tree - doesn't follow; it doesn't go. It just is, from moment to moment. — tim wood
I point out to you that there is a difference, I think a fundamental difference, between a living, growing, possibly beautiful and inspirational, tree and the pile of firewood it could be. It cannot be both. You appear to deny that. Please make clear how I could come and take ax to your tree and reduce it to firewood, and it is still your growing, living tree. If you're playing word games, I'm not interested. — tim wood
Goal-striving seems to require a capacity for anticipation. How, in a tree? — tim wood
The problem with your argument is that a living tree is not merely firewood and in fact is not even suitable in its present green condition to serve as firewood. It is therefore highly implausible that anyone would have seen a tree to be nothing more than firewood. — Janus
Another would surely be the myth of the Burning Bush and the dispensation of the Ten Commandments. — Wayfarer
The question then becomes, is there any way to hear - discern in some way - what arborism might be saying, expressing it in tree terms? — tim wood
From your reference: "The term was introduced in 1972 by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela to define the self-maintaining chemistry of living cells." What has this to do with mind? — tim wood
Since it’s the capacity to sense—regardless of what and of means—which defines a sentient being as such, are you arguing that trees cannot sense either gravity or sunlight?
[…]
Addressed differently, what set of processes differentiates trees from rocks if not awareness conjoined with goal-striving being found in the former but not the latter? And if trees are to be indistinguishable from rocks in being solely governed by entropy, then on what grounds does one argue that trees are lifeforms rather than inanimate matter? — javra
I read a little bit of Maritain years ago, and I thought his grasp of modern philosophy was superficial at best. — Janus
One is goal oriented activity, the other is not — Metaphysician Undercover
All living systems display homeostasis, which non-living systems do not. — Wayfarer
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