The problem with consciousness could be the same problem as "Why does anything exist at all?" Even if you reduce problems to the concept of matter, atoms and space and time etc their basic existence seems to be a mystery. (Why does anything exist at all and have properties and dispositions)

I am not sure that emergent properties are explained. Evolution seems to be an attempt of trying to explain human biology and biology per se as a series of emergent events leading to ever sophisticated mechanisms and the idea seems to be that if you have millions of years of random events something like the human brain will eventually emerge.

A bit like The Infinite monkey theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

"The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare"

Whereas in reality all you will end up with a heap of feces-smeared and broken typewriters. (Although I do sometimes wonder if they're not harnessed elsewhere, entering content via social media.)

There's Apokrisis 'pansemeiosis' which puts meaning as fundamental, or near-fundamental, and then, by stages, as complex systems evolve, they gain more of the constituents of consciousness (attention, predictive ability, some other stuff (can't remember)) until eventually we have a creature that can be said to be fully conscious.

Personally I don't think that touches the hard problem, — bert1

The thing to remember is the hard problem is a problem about fundamental “stuff”. It is an argument about physical materials and their putative properties. Dualists are confounded by their inability to escape their mistake of thinking of “consciousness” as another kind unformed “ultimate simple”.

I am instead a structuralist so subscribe to a completely different ontology. Neither matter nor mind could be an ultimate simple. All things are structures and so irreducibly complex.

The hard problem is simply not an issue on that score. Indeed, structuralism says our models of reality must be “dualistic” in the Aristotelean system’s sense. Substantial being is irreducibly hylomorphic.

An apparent division of causality - such as between mind and matter - is the feature that the ontology predicts rather than the bug that bedevils the metaphysics. Nothing can exist except by being a system that marries Aristotle’s four causes in bottom-up “material” construction and top-down “immaterial” constraint fashion.

Believing there is a “hard problem” is thus a symptom of being locked into a reductionist metaphysics. It is built into the worldview. The only escape is a radical shift in worldview.

Nothing can exist except by being a system that marries Aristotle’s four causes in bottom-up “material” construction and top-down “immaterial” constraint fashion. — apokrisis

I wonder if those could be conceived as analogous to the fundamental existence-enabling constraints identified in cosmology (e.g. Martin Rees' 'six numbers')?

Nothing can exist except by being a system that marries Aristotle’s four causes in bottom-up “material” construction and top-down “immaterial” constraint fashion. — apokrisis

I think that since intention is personal, the immaterial final cause acts in a bottom-up freedom fashion.

I think that since intention is personal, the immaterial final cause acts in a bottom-up freedom fashion. — Metaphysician Undercover

Hence you aren’t a structuralist or systems thinker.

I wonder if those could be conceived as analogous to the fundamental existence-enabling constraints identified in cosmology (e.g. Martin Rees' 'six numbers')? — Wayfarer

The constants of nature are ratios or balances. So they are “fundamental numbers” that emerge from processes in opposition.

The fine-structure constant alpha, for example, is the effective balance of the electrostatic repulsion between two charged electrons and then the quantum vacuum contribution of all the virtual particles that the close proximity of two such classically-imagined particles creates.

So you have the two aspects of physical reality - the classical particle and the quantum vacuum descriptions - as the limit state constraint descriptions of the cosmological system. And then a local constant of nature - alpha, with its measured ratio of near enough 1/137 - popping out as the average of these two sources of action.

The constant is constant enough at low temperature or large scales. But then making things very hot or very small will turn up the sizzle of quantum fluctuations and so alpha reduces to something more like 1/128.

See https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/05/25/ask-ethan-what-is-the-fine-:grin: structure-constant-and-why-does-it-matter/?sh=3f6f77145671

So constants speak to the fact that the constraints of reality are emergent or effective balances that themselves can evolve.

Alpha tells us that science has to arrive at its fundamentals by framing its observations in terms of opposing limit state descriptions of the Cosmos.

We have two theories of nature - the classical and the quantum limits on this useful notion of “being”. We have formally reciprocal accounts of the top-down ultimate boundaries of nature. Everything is to be found “somewhere” between the dichotomy of “absolute counterfactual definiteness” and “the absolute lack of counterfactual definiteness”. :grin:

We can then get on with measuring where the balance point between the repulsion of two classically imagined electrons, and the matching attraction of a small and warm region of bubbling quantum charge, actually falls.

It turns out to be a sliding scale, depending on the larger thing of how small/hot or cold/large the Universe happens to be at that point in its developing history.

The take home is that physics sounds reductionist to most ears, but it is actually structuralist in its metaphysics.

Reality is neither fundsmentally classical, nor even quantum. These are just the two matched limit state descriptions we need as our dichotomous metaphysical frame so as to actually be able to measure anything of any use, like the predicted charge between two particles at some size and temperature scale.

The constants of nature are ratios or balances. So they are “fundamental numbers” that emerge from processes in opposition.

The take home is that physics sounds reductionist to most ears, but it is actually structuralist in its metaphysics.

Reality is neither fundsmentally classical, nor even quantum. These are just the two matched limit state descriptions ... — apokrisis

:fire: :100:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/05/25/ask-ethan-what-is-the-fine-structure-constant-and-why-does-it-matter/?sh=3f6f77145671 — apokrisis

I do read Ethan Seigel's posts although I notice that he's been dropped from Forbes. He's a great explicator.

From that article:

Unlike [the] other constants, which have units associated with them, α is a truly dimensionless constant, which means it is simply a pure number, with no units associated with it at all. While the speed of light might be different if you measure it in meters per second, feet per year, miles per hour, or any other unit, α always has the same value. For this reason, it's considered to be one of the fundamental constants that describes our Universe.

Sounds awfully like 'an idea' to me.

(Apparently, 1/137 turns up in a wide range of contexts.)

Sounds awfully like 'an idea' to me. — Wayfarer

So your argument is an ad hom against a professional’s exposition so as to create pro hom support for your own amateur opinion?

Hmm. :cheer:

It's a philosophical point - that the value in question is invariant, doesn't change over time, has no units associated with it //and furthermore that it exists only as a measurement//. How is that an ad hominem? It doesn't detract from anything in the article.

:up:

It's a philosophical point - that the value in question is invariant, doesn't change over time, has no units associated with it //and furthermore that it exists only as a measurement//. — Wayfarer

Think of a mathematical constant like pi, e or phi. Are they values or are they ratios?

Do they represent some magic quantity - some measured amount of substantial being, that thus raises all sorts of counterfactual questions as why the Universe chose that particular number and not any other that would seem, prima facie, just as good? Or do they instead represent just the relation of two ideal limits that simply have to have the number that they do?

That is the philosophical point here.

A lot of people make a big deal about the physical constants for that reason. It seems the Universe could pick any value. But if you understand the deeper structure - the metaphysical dichotomies that represent the relations which can divide unformed potential so as to give it actual and real dimensionality - then the constants cease to be surprising. Your attention can turn instead to focusing on the possibilities of the relations which are Platonically fundamental, and so must characterise any actualised existence.

So what physicists call constants are not fundamental values but emergent ratios. And being ratios, they speak to the deeper dichotomies which are the structure - the Platonic-strength necessities or constraints - that are what force an organised and logical Cosmos into concrete being.

Things exist because there is nothing to prevent the anythingness of unformed potential interacting enough with itself to become restricted to its most basic dialectic possibilities.

Anaximander, Aristotle and Peirce laid all this out. This is the metaphysics worth knowing. Not all the tired old hard problem crap and other reductionist tropes.

Think of a mathematical constant like pi, e or phi. Are they values or are they ratios? — apokrisis

They're ratios. And what I said was responding to

Nothing can exist except by being a system that marries Aristotle’s four causes in bottom-up “material” construction and top-down “immaterial” constraint fashion. — apokrisis

So, my reasoning went, if matter (matter~energy) represents the 'hyle' of hylomorphic dualism, what represents the 'morphe'? You said it yourself - immaterial constraints. And the point about the 'fine structure constants' is not that they're 'spooky' but that they're irreducible - no reason can be given for why they are just as they are (which is precisely what is meant by 'the naturalness problem'.) They are, as it were, the terminus of explanation. And furthermore, they are not in themselves physical - I can't ask you to show me one of them, as the demonstration would consist solely of mathematical arguments and proofs (which I'm the first to acknowledge I wouldn't understand). They are, in that sense, perceptible only to an appropriately-trained intellect; they are, in classical terms, intelligible objects.

I agree that C S Peirce may well have laid it out. And Peirce, as you well know, obtained to a form of scholastic realism.

The only end of science, as such, is to learn the lesson that the universe has to teach it. In Induction it simply surrenders itself to the force of facts. But it finds . . . that this is not enough. It is driven in desperation to call upon its inward sympathy with nature, its instinct for aid, just as we find Galileo at the dawn of modern science making his appeal toil lume naturale. . . . The value of Facts to it, lies only in this, that they belong to Nature; and nature is something great, and beautiful, and sacred, and eternal, and real – the object of its worship and its aspiration.

The soul's deeper parts can only be reached through its surface. In this way the eternal forms, that mathematics and philosophy and the other sciences make us acquainted with will by slow percolation gradually reach the very core of one's being, and will come to influence our lives; and this they will do, not because they involve truths of merely vital importance, but because they [are] ideal and eternal verities. — C S Peirce, Reasoning and the Logic of Things, HUP 1992

All I'm adding is that perhaps, even if only by analogy, such irreducible constraints may answer to that description.

Rhetorically speaking, as a simple matter of interest, Pierce may have laid it out….

“…. The only end of science, as such, is to learn the lesson that the universe has to teach it….”

….or, he may have merely polished someone else’s coin:

“…. Reason must approach nature with the view, indeed, of receiving information from it, not, however, in the character of a pupil, who listens to all that his master chooses to tell him, but in that of a judge, who compels the witnesses to reply to those questions which he himself thinks fit to propose. To this single idea must the revolution be ascribed, by which, after groping in the dark for so many centuries, natural science was at length conducted into the path of certain progress.…”

And the point about the 'fine structure constants' is not that they're 'spooky' but that they're irreducible - no reason can be given for why they are just as they are — Wayfarer

But my structuralist or systems metaphysics is saying that they are irreducibly complex. Thus not reducible to monistic simples. However capable of being reduced or explained as an inevitable relation, such as is represented by a ratio.

So you are thinking monistically. And reading my replies in that light. I am instead saying that things like a constant are the product of triadic complexity. They are that type of dichotomous relation where there is a separation into two that then produces the third thing of their mixing - their arrival at a self-stabilising balance.

This is the Siegel’s neat point about alpha. It speaks to the fact that the Cosmos evolves into a dichotomous story of atoms in a void. At one extreme, you wind up with “real electrons” that have a located charge and thus a spatiotemporal repulsion. But balanced against that is all the quantum fluctuations of the gap that is defined by having two exactly located classical particles. The sum of these virtual contributions then amounts to a small countercharge, a positive attraction.

So that is a good example of how - when you lift the veil - the material universe exists because there are processes in opposition that can arrive at a balance that is distinctive. The charge is distributed in asymmetric fashion so it’s value - its ratio - sits at some definite point between the contrasting extremes of a classical atom and a quantum void. It becomes something measurably inbetween and produces a world in which charge plays an interesting emergent role. The electrostatic force can be a thing.

Imagine if the charge of the quantum void was the same as the charge of the located particle. You would have no electromagnetism to speak of as it would all cancel out. And indeed, that is what happens down at the Planck scale before the relevant symmetries are broken. No charge or particles to speak of.

So when anything exists, it is already complex in this triadic systems sense. Monism is too simple a metaphysics to account for an interesting universe of any kind. That is why - per the OP - it is the structure of relations that is “fundamental”.

And Peirce, as you well know, obtained to a form of scholastic realism. — Wayfarer

How are these remarks about epistemology relevant to this discussion of ontology?

Yes, human discovery takes an abductive leap of imagination. We can see the outcomes and guess at the complex triadic relation that was their probable cause.

And yes, by analogy, we can say the Cosmos bootstrapped itself into existence as some kind of abductive leap - a retrospective justification for why its evolution could only pan out a certain way. In the face of radical quantum instability, only our observed Universe had the right balances of its component processes to become the definite something we inhabit.

But I don’t believe this is the Peircean argument you had in mind.

If light waves are information and patterns of neuronal activation are information, and we can describe both using the same information theoretic framework, it becomes easier to see how an event in the environment is tied to specific events in the brain.

There is a causal chain to follow. We can also see how the brain is subjecting information coming in from the sensory systems to computation. Most incoming sensory data is quickly scanned for change or relevance, then dropped. Many of the more interesting experiments on how human sensory systems work hinge on how sight is "constructed," in the brain, rather than essentially being a video feed from the eyes. The idea is that, if computational models can explain the "why" of profound aspects of first person experience, it may also be able to explain the why of experience existing itself.

This has been a useful model for understanding why sensory experience is the way it is and why we have persistent illusions that experimentation shows to be false.

That said, I actually don't think it tells us anything about "where does first person experience come from." What you get is a lot of good work on how what the brain does can be seen as computation, how agents can be modeled computationaly, and then an unsupported move to "and so a complex enough informational process that feeds into a global workspace creates first person perspective." That is, all the complexity kind of masks that the Hard Problem part is only vaguely addressed.

However, this is because we're still asking for information based explanations to turn back to the old physicalist frame work and explain consciousness in those terms. If you had a different ontology, one based on information, then maybe it gets easier? That's pure supposition though.

TBH, I think computational theory of mind is either a blind alley or requires a different model of the rest of nature to work.

Hence you aren’t a structuralist or systems thinker. — apokrisis

That's right. I see significant flaws in systems theory. The "system" when used as a theoretical tool, is an artificial structure, a human construction which is produced in an effort to model an aspect of reality. The theory utilizes a boundary to separate the internal, as property of the system, (part of the system), from the external, environment, as not a part of the system. No system can have a closed boundary in an absolute sense, as experimentation seems to demonstrate, and the second law of thermodynamics, and the concept of entropy stipulate.

The problem with systems theory is that it does not provide a second boundary to distinguish between what is not a part of the system by being on the other side of the boundary to the outside (external environment), from what is not a part of the system by being on the other side of the boundary to the inside of the system (what is inherent to the theory, stipulated as not part of the system). By assuming only one boundary which separates "being part of the system" from "being not part of the system", anything which changes its status must cross that one boundary. But this renders certain aspects of reality as unintelligible, such as the entropy demanded by the second law,. This concept dictates that there is something which is lost from the system, i.e. no longer a part of the system when it was a part of the system at an earlier time, yet it is not apprehended as moving through the boundary such that it can be detected as being on the outside of the system. So entropy refers to something which changes its status, but not by crossing the one boundary, but through stipulation as inherent to the theory.

But my structuralist or systems metaphysics is saying that they are irreducibly complex. Thus not reducible to monistic simples. However capable of being reduced or explained as an inevitable relation, such as is represented by a ratio. — apokrisis

This is how the problem I've described above manifests in your metaphysics. The idea of something "irreducibly complex", is an admission of the unintelligibility of that feature. But you are making a false claim, a misrepresentation, to say that this irreducibly complex thing can be "represented by a ratio". To produce that ratio requires that we impose a separation, and this requires a reduction an analysis. To say that something is "irreducibly complex" is to say that it cannot be represented by a ratio.

This end product, 'that which is irreducibly complex', is what systems theory provides us with, due to the failure outlined above. When something, energy for example, is lost to a system, i.e. is no longer a part of that system, and it has not been observed to have crossed the boundary of the system, there is no way to know whether the energy has passed to the outside of the system in some undetected way, due to the limitations of observational capacities, or it has been lost inside the system to what is called entropy. "Entropy" therefore, is irreducibly complex, because no separation between the energy not accounted for because of failure in observation (failure in practise), and the energy assumed to be lost to entropy by systems theory (failure of theory) can be produced. Therefore the content of this irreducibly complex concept, "entropy", cannot be expressed as a ratio between those two aspects which actually make up what is commonly known as entropy.

Yes, the properties of matter are not adequate to produce or explain subjective experience. — Eugen

This is entirely incorrect. Currently not understanding exactly how matter and energy interact to create a subjective experience does not negate the observed fact that matter and energy can interact to make a subjective experience.

Currently not understanding exactly how matter and energy interact to create a subjective experience does not negate the observed fact that matter and energy can interact to make a subjective experience. — Philosophim

:100:

To say that something is "irreducibly complex" is to say that it cannot be represented by a ratio. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. It is to say that reduction is perfectly possible. Just not to the simplicity of a monism. Only as far as the complexity of a triadic or hierarchical relation.

By assuming only one boundary which separates "being part of the system" from "being not part of the system", anything which changes its status must cross that one boundary. But this renders certain aspects of reality as unintelligible, such as the entropy demanded by the second law,. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is why I would upgrade the Second Law – a reductionist story – with the holism of pansemiosis or dissipative structure theory.

The Universe is a good example. Does it actually increase its entropy if it is both cooling and expanding? Doesn't the loss of heat energy get made up for by the increase in gravitational potential?

The Universe can in fact only exist if it strikes this flat balance where all its entropy as local degrees of freedom – cooling particles – is matched by all its negentropy in terms of an ever increasing gravity debt. It is because the two sides of the equation – the dichotomy of atom and void – are tied together in this yo-yo fashion that the Universe can "emerge from nothing".

So in the most general sense, the Universe is a dissipative structure. It exist by tumbling into its own heat sink. It is closed within its own boundaries by the trick of always cooling because it is expanding, and also always expanding because it is cooling.

It indeed has two boundaries – the limits of this cooling and the limits of this expanding. But it approaches then asymptotically in infinite time, never actually needing to cross them so as to exist for infinite time.

That's right. I see significant flaws in systems theory. — Metaphysician Undercover

As you are an Aristotelean – albeit of the scholastic stripe – it is surprising you don't immediately get all this.

Aristotle is the inspiration for the systems science movement. He analysed the irreducible complexity of nature in logical detail with his four causes, hylomorphic substance, hierarchy theory, etc.

His hylomorphism spells out the basic Peircean triad of potentiality/actuality/necessity – the dichotomy of pure material potential and pure formal necessity which combine to create the third thing of actual or substantial material being. Prime matter plus Platonic constraints are the bottom-up and top-down that give you the hierarchy of manifest nature. A world of in-formed stuff.

The four causes expands this analysis to reveal the further dichotomies to the fundamental dichotomy.

The bottom-up constructive causes and top-down constraining causes are split by the dichotomy of the general and the particular.

You have material and efficient cause as the general and the particular. And you have formal and final cause as the particular and the general.

So Aristotle provided a rich analysis of how reality reduced to a system of relations rather than to some kind of monistic stuff. Reality is irreducibly triadic at base as it self-organises into concrete being via a self-contained causal logic.

The parts make the whole, and the whole makes the parts. This starts in the "less than nothing" that is Anaximander's apeiron, or Peirce's vagueness. Or what cosmology today likes to call a quantum potential.

As you are an Aristotelean – albeit of the scholastic stripe – it is surprising you don't immediately get all this.

Aristotle is the inspiration for the systems science movement. He analysed the irreducible complexity of nature in logical detail with his four causes, hylomorphic substance, hierarchy theory, etc. — apokrisis

I've seen your Aristotelian influence. you conflate formal cause with final cause. That's why you have no principles to separate the downward causation of formal cause from the upward causation of intention, and the individual's free will, final cause.

His hylomorphism spells out the basic Peircean triad of potentiality/actuality/necessity – the dichotomy of pure material potential and pure formal necessity which combine to create the third thing of actual or substantial material being. Prime matter plus Platonic constraints are the bottom-up and top-down that give you the hierarchy of manifest nature. A world of in-formed stuff.

The four causes expands this analysis to reveal the further dichotomies to the fundamental dichotomy.

The bottom-up constructive causes and top-down constraining causes are split by the dichotomy of the general and the particular. — apokrisis

The pure potential of matter cannot properly act as a cause, so you need to place intention, final cause at the base of the "bottom-up constructive cause'. But this is inconsistent with the common notion of "emergence", because it is teleological and emergence is not.

This is the Siegel’s neat point about alpha. It speaks to the fact that the Cosmos evolves into a dichotomous story of atoms in a void. — apokrisis

The issue is that the fine-structure constants are prior to anything evolving whatever. If they were different in some slight degree then there would be nothing to evolve.

I've seen your Aristotelian influence. you conflate formal cause with final cause. — Metaphysician Undercover

I just did the exact opposite of distinguishing them as the general and the particular when it comes to the downwardly acting constraints of a system.

The desire is the generality as it only cares for the achievement of its end, and not the particularity of the form needed to achieve it.

The pure potential of matter cannot properly act as a cause, so you need to place intention, final cause at the base of the "bottom-up constructive cause'. — Metaphysician Undercover

More muddled blathering.

Of course chance and spontaneity – as the character of pure material potential - must be entrained by top-down finality to produce an in-formed stable state of actualisation.

So "cause" is always too strong a word – with its monistic modern overtones – when Aristotle was breaking causality down into its four constrasting "becauses".

But this is inconsistent with the common notion of "emergence", because it is teleological and emergence is not. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again you just waste my time by conflating monistic reductionism and triadic holism.

It is quite right that emergence – as understood within the reductionist causal paradigm – can't properly deal with teleology. It has to reduce global constraints in some fashion and so collapses into the familiar range of bad metaphysical choices, such as Cartesian dualism, epiphenomenalism, theism, panpsychicism, microcausal supervenience, and so on.

The failure of monistic reductionism produces a thriving marketplace of metaphysical blame-shifting. Trying to bandage the wound becomes its own considerable academic industry.

Instead of just insta-replying with babble, why not stop and think. Get to grips with the true Aristotle. :cool:

The issue is that the fine-structure constant are ontologically prior to anything evolving whatever. If they were different in some slight degree then there would be nothing to evolve. — Wayfarer

But the effective breaking of the electroweak symmetry was only going to produce some ratio, right? Given the input structures – the symmetries to be broken – some stabilising balance was going to emerge in post-hoc fashion.

So I don't see how it makes sense to claim α was prior. It was already implicit as a thing in the fact there was a symmetry, and thus in short order – the first billionth of a second of the Big Bang – the breaking and rapid thermal stabilisation of that symmetry.

Again, like pi or other mathematical constants, the ratios as values are already implicit in the symmetry breaking. They only "pre-exist" in the sense the input geometry can arrive at no other self-stable and scalefree balance.

Pi is 3.14159265358979..etc in a dimensional world constrained to exact flatness. Positively or negatively curved spaces would have ratios of radii to circumferences ranging from the pi = 2 of a sphere to the pi = infinity of a hyperbolic plane.

So if a universe can only persist, hence exist, if it is flat, then that is what selects for a flatness as near 3.14159265358979..etc as can be managed.

Our universe would have quickly collapsed it it had started with a hyperspherical geometry and hence a pi less than that "magic ratio". And it would just have quickly spread out to a contentless nothing if it had had a hyperbolic geometry.

Our actual universe turns out to be more geometrically complex than either of these two stories in that it may have had inflation to first stop it being too hyperspherical at the beginning, and then by about 10 billion years, it also had a tiny touch of hyperbolic tendency in the cosmological constant to do the opposite thing of ensuring it will keep on expanding to infinity forever.

So perfect pi is a flat balance ratio. But making real universes involves producing inevitable material clutter as further symmetry breakings with their own ratios become possible. Shit happens like the electroweak and electromagnetic symmetry breakings, disrupting the flat flow with their gravitating particles that screw with the local geometry of the universe.

The fine structure constant is an example of one of those extra ingredients that needed the "luck" of compensation constraints to keep the general evolution of spacetime at near enough a flat balance to go on "forever" in its familiar cooling~expanding way.

So the details of the cosmic metaphysics has a lot of explaining still to do. But you are very focused on issues which don't seem like the actual issues.

The fine structure constant might seem fine-tuned for a cosmos capable of life. A lot of popularisations like to stress that pseudo-theistic point. Yet it is also fine-tuned simply not to fuck up the Big Bang in general.

And gee, which was the major evolutionary bottleneck that a flatly thermalising universe had to survive, which is the special pleading on the part of us, its biofilm-sustained linguistic monkeys?

I just did the exact opposite of distinguishing them as the general and the particular when it comes to the downwardly acting constraints of a system.

The desire is the generality as it only cares for the achievement of its end, and not the particularity of the form needed to achieve it. — apokrisis

Talk about muddled blathering. Intention, will, is proper to the individual, the particular, while "form" as the formula is general.

Of course chance and spontaneity – as the character of pure material potential - must be entrained by top-down finality to produce an in-formed stable state of actualisation. — apokrisis

But finality is known to be a bottom-up cause, as the will, the cause of motion of the individual. So this bottom-up cause, which is inherently free, as the free will, enabled in its freedom by the potential of matter, is constrained in its bottom-up causation by top-down formal constraints.

Get to grips with the true Aristotle — apokrisis

There is no such thing as "the true Aristotle". It's a matter of interpretation, as is the case with any good philosopher.

But you need to get a grip on the true reality. Final causation is very clearly bottom-up. It is basic and fundamental to every action of organic matter, as purpose driven activities. You know that. So why do you claim final causation to be top-down, when you know that the purposefulness of living activities stems from the very existential base of the material organism?

But you need to get a grip on the true reality. Final causation is very clearly bottom-up. It is basic and fundamental to every action of organic matter, as purpose driven activities. You know that. So why do you claim final causation to be top-down, when you know that the purposefulness of living activities stems from the very existential base of the material organism? — Metaphysician Undercover

I would imagine an example of this would be something like language generation creating exponentially greater cultural learning which then favors a trajectory away from fixed innate instinctual mechanisms for purely learning mechanisms. In this way, the higher level language creation influences lower level instinctual mechanisms (in this case reducing its efficacy).

Talk about muddled blathering. Intention, will, is proper to the individual — Metaphysician Undercover

Sure. Will and purpose can arise in biosemiosis as the local particular in contradistinction to the global generality that is the Universe entrained to its "law" of thermodynamcs.

So what is particular at the globally general level of the Comos – its will to entropify – becomes the context that makes sharp sense of its own "other" – the possibility of tiny critters forming their own local wishes and ambitions within what remains still possible in a small, but personally valued, way.

We can't of course defy entropy. But we can apply ourselves to the task of accelerating it. We can buy local negentropic freedom of choice by burning stuff faster than the Cosmos has been able to consume it on its own.

But finality is known to be a bottom-up cause, as the will, the cause of motion of the individual. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is just your special pleading for a theistic metaphysics. You haven't dealt with my naturalistic argument.

This is just your special pleading for a theistic metaphysics. You haven't dealt with my naturalistic argument. — apokrisis

If the wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum is of the red frequency, and this hits rods and cones, and this goes down the optic nerve and the cortical layers, and the neural networks, and the peripheral environmental things of time and space.. how does any of this account for the actual sensation of "red"? No matter how much computation you add to one side of the bifurcation doesn't cross that line to the other side. Other than already placing the consequent in the premise I'm not sure how you can say that it can or does.

Another way of putting the ratio issue is the existence of angles. To have 45 degrees, or a difference between 45, 45.55, or 46 degrees, etc, you have to have an embedding space in which the symmetry is "as broken as possible". You have to have the orthogonality of an x and y axis. A geometric dichotomy, in other words, in which x-ness is completely at right angles to y-ness. Rotate past 90 degrees and you start coming back into y's world again.

So orthogonality is the natural or dichotomy-based measure of a dimension. X is the other of y and y is the other of x, in mutually defining fashion.

Having broken the symmetry in this extremal fashion – taken its "thisness" to two limits so opposed they are no longer even in sight of each other – you then set up the third thing of all the angles of lines which express some cos~sine trigonometric ratio. You have the universe of lines that are some blend of x-ness and y-ness.

That a constant like phi might have a weirdly specific value – 1.61803.... – may seem fundamentally inexplicable. But step back and realise it is just the number marking the point where a broken symmetry achieves its self-similar balance point – a unity under the constraint of growth operations – and this golden ratio is not mysterious at all.

It is the stable attractor that must emerge as the new feature of an orthogonal symmetry-breaking under the further constraint of its own self-compounding growth. It is a Platonic inevitability. But that is hard to see until you get used to how Platonism organises dynamical systems and not just a realm of static entities.