We need consciousness to think, therefore we need consciousness to make any inference about consciousness, that's the problem. — Skalidris

You haven't explained why this creates a logical impossibility. The limitations of the child in the lego example don't seem to amount to a logical impossibility either. You're applying physical constraints and the absence of means of gathering evidence to the situation to make it practically or empirically impossible for the child to do something. It's like saying the detective can't solve the crime if you set up a scenario where the clues are out of his reach. Sure. Nothing to do with logical impossibility though. A logical impossibilty should entail a contracition in the laws of logic, like require a square circle or 2 + 2 to equal 5. It's a very high threshold on the impossibility ladder. Maybe, you mean metaphysical impossibility, something that cannot obtain in any possible world (due to our understanding of the basic principles of reality) but may still not violate the laws of logic (e.g. ex nihilo (causeless) creation), or conceptual impossibility to do with semantic contradictions (e.g. "a colourless green cup") etc. But I think you are drawing unjustified conclusions concerning the nature of possibility from the problem of self-referentiality here.

In any case, it's seems to be either a conceptual issue (an essentially linguistic problem) or an empirical issue (one that we can pursue scientifically). To Chalmers, and most others, it's empirical. The hard problem is to explain how the property of consciousness / subjectivity arises from physical matter (presumed to be in the brain) and, not only have empirically testable theories been put forward to examine that, actual experiments have been done. Here's a link to one avenue being explored: Testing Penrose's Theory of Consciousness

Again, to me your thesis isn't clear enough and rests on a muddled presentation of logical impossibility that is too quickly inferred from the self-referentiality issue you bring up.

E. g.

We need consciousness to think, therefore we need consciousness to make any inference about consciousness, that's the problem. — Skalidris

What about: ''We need language to think, therefore we need language to make any inference about language, that's the problem. ''

Except it's not. Even though it's similarly self-referential. Self-referentiality does not necessarily entail logical contradiction.

Is this an impossible picture?

There is some ability to infer some obvious physiological correlations like pain or epilepsy from neuroscience, but you still fall back on the assumption that subjective experiences are still ultimately physical, without addressing the real crux of the issue — Wayfarer

I really don't feel that you and I are that different in our intention here. Its been a while, but I've noted before that I am very open to a non-physical explanation of consciousness if there is evidence that there is. You and I may have a very different approach to 'what knowledge means', which is no surprise because its not exactly settled philosophy.

To me, knowledge is a tool, not an element of truth. Its an attempt by people to demonstrate a logic and process that gives us more confidence that what we say we know is more than a belief and wish. When I say, "We know that consciousness is from the brain," that can be translated to, "Everything we currently understand logically leads to consciousness coming from the brain. Its not that it couldn't be true that consciousness is apart from the brain, but there is not any viable evidence that demonstrates that its not."

Yes, I fully agree that neuroscience has not filled in all the gaps yet. But those gaps grow smaller every day. Pharmacology and neuroscience give us the knowledge in countless real world results that consciousness is a physical expression of the brain. Physical of course being matter and energy.

While we can muse about those gaps, prod, question, and study in the hopes of finding something different from the physical (which I encourage!) hypotheses and questions alone do not elevate themselves to knowledge, or even likely outcomes. There is the risk of creating a 'god of the gaps' here and stating, "Because we don't understand this fully yet, it has a viable chance of not being physical.' No, the reality is that its probably physical, as we've never encountered anything in life that isn't physical.

Its not that philosophy should 'catch up' or that science not being able to currently capture objective personal experience doesn't matter. Its the question of, 'What is philosophy contributing from these conclusions?' Is philosophy contributing a question with a genuine wish for an answer, spurring scientific tests, approaches, and real change in society? Or is philosophy trying to find something that isn't there, disguising wishes and fantasy as word play to keep some hope alive of a mortal shell that isn't shackled to physical reality? The former is what propels civilizations, while the latter keeps us in the dark ages.

My point is that our current knowledge of consciousness as a physical expression of the brain is solving real problems in the world. It works. It makes sense logically, and has decades of data and results behind it. Until there is evidence that subjective experience is something that isn't physical, it is safest and most logical to assume it is, even when we have gaps.

Something I've also mentioned before which I think philosophy should address is, "If consciousness is physical, what else can the physical do?" We are made up of matter, and yet this matter can get to a state in which it becomes aware, or functions in a way that we call 'life'. How much of a separation is there then from life and non-life? Is consciousness more ubiquitous than we believe?

If we can look at a brain and not see the picture that it envisions, what else are we looking at and not realizing what's going on internally? Does fire have a feeling? Could it be the old idea of 'the spirits of nature' was in some limited way, not that far off the mark? Are local ecosystems living in a way we don't see? After all, a brain is a bunch of interconnected neurons. Do the connections of the people in a city make a consciousness that we can never observe? What do these five brain cells experience, and will they ever be cognizant of their contribution to the consciousness that is 'me'?

The noting of the current limitations of science being able to objectively capture personal experience are just that, a limit. We should not be pulling the wrong conclusions from this limit. We should be asking ourselves if that means our conception of consciousness transcends to other forms of matter that we've discounted. But I find no good logic or arguments that lead us to question whether consciousness is physical. Again, anything is plausible, but we should not elevate the unlikely and non-evidenced suppositions as being in any reasonable competition with what we know today. Its been a good discussion Wayfarer!

It's like saying the detective can't solve the crime if you set up a scenario where the clues are out of his reach. Sure. Nothing to do with logical impossibility though — Baden

Of course, the analogy isn’t perfect, and here, it requires some elements to simply be “out of reach” for a human while it seems that other humans can reach it: after all, the plastic bricks are made by humans so naturally it’s not impossible to break down plastic… But it shows that a system has its limits based on how it’s made. Our mind is made out of neurons and the way the neurons communicate and the way the neural networks are built present limitations. Just like the child was limited to working with plastic bricks, our reasoning is limited by what it is made of.

If you want a more formal proof of this reasoning, it’s the same principle as Gödel’s incompleteness theorems: any consistent formal system capable of arithmetic contains true statements that are unprovable within that system. The self reference problem brings contradictions when you're trying to prove something by using that thing itself, just like with the liar paradox, just like the hard problem of consciousness.

But isn’t it intuitively obvious? We explain things by breaking them down, it’s either a bottom-up or a top down but every explanation implies breaking things down into elements and explaining how the elements interact together. We know that any reasoning implies consciousness and that we can’t break it down, this “subject experience” is always there as a whole… I think the problem might arise from the illusion that sciences can break down consciousness, because we’re making a lot of hypothesis about its parts, but we seem to forget that every single one of these hypothesis was made using consciousness as a whole…

Is this an impossible picture? — SophistiCat

Why would it be an impossible picture? It is possible to take a photograph of a painter and his art.

The hard problem of consciousness.
It might not really be that fundamental to philosophy.

Try starting with a more fundamental idea
Do physical and non-physical things exist.
I think if we assume physical things exist the next question is how non-physical things can exist.
They can't by definition.
Non-physical, to me, means non existent.
So a good approach is to identify non-physicals as physically contained non-physicals.
Brains holding mental content.

That gets closer to what consciousness is.
Not just any type of physical matter, but the special case of brains holding non-physical content.
And examining the context we see full input and output capabilities, connections with the biological organism, location in space and time, that is fully consistent with what consciousness is.

So what consciousness is, and other things like information, can be understood by using the idea of physically contained non-physical objects.
Not sure that's news, but maybe to some. In anything Chalmers related, consciousness refers to brains in a physical state.

And examining the context we see full input and output capabilities, connections with the biological organism, location in space and time, that is fully consistent with what consciousness is. — Mark Nyquist

But that does not explain consciousness. Why is the full input and output capabilities, connections with the biological organism, location in space and time, accompanied by subjective experience? Why does it not all take place 'in the dark'?

My main point is that the hard problem really is a secondary problem. The question of physically contained non-physicals is primary to understanding consciousness.

So it doesn't take place in the dark, in your sleep or when you are dead because all the biological functions need to be in place for consciousness to be fully developed.

Not sure what in the dark means? Unconscious?

The noting of the current limitations of science being able to objectively capture personal experience are just that, a limit. — Philosophim

They're not that. There are limitations to scientific method in this respect as a matter of principle, which you're not seeing. It requires a different kind of approach to what has been up until now understood as scientific method.

is philosophy trying to find something that isn't there, disguising wishes and fantasy as word play to keep some hope alive of a mortal shell that isn't shackled to physical reality? The former is what propels civilizations, while the latter keeps us in the dark ages. — Philosophim

:roll:

As a footnote to the above, what really is 'physical'? Is the brain physical? Living organisms? I question these assumptions, because living organisms generally display attributes and characteristics that can't be extracted from the laws of physics or chemistry alone. They don't violate physical laws, but adapt to them in ways that physical things like minerals or gases do not. As for the brain, it can be considered as a physical object, but in its context, embodied in a living organism, it is certainly much more than that.

What I think is meant by 'physical' simply means 'objective' - what can be sensed, measured, analysed by objective methods and instruments. Yet at the bottom of 'physical matter' we nowadays find abstractions, and indeed the whole model of particle physics is grounded in mathematical abstractions.

Even if we can study our brain and associate phenomena with consciousness, our understanding of it is made through consciousness, through this subjective notion in our mind. And breaking down consciousness is impossible: it's always there as a whole, at least if we consider the whole to be the experience of the subject (you could study altered states of consciousness to learn more about the missing elements in these experiences). — Skalidris

Phenomenology is grounded on that awareness. The phenomenological method is grounded in awareness of the nature of first-person experience, but not from an objective or 'outside' stance but by attention to the quality of experience in a moment-by-moment basis. It is related to ancient philosophical skepticism, which 'withholds judgement about that which is not evident'.

From a phenomenological perspective, in everyday life, we see the objects of our experience such as physical objects, other people, and even ideas as simply real and straightforwardly existent. In other words, they are “just there.” We don’t question their existence; we view them as facts.

When we leave our house in the morning, we take the objects we see around us as simply real, factual things—this tree, neighboring buildings, cars, etcetera. This attitude or perspective, which is usually unrecognized as a perspective, Edmund Husserl terms the “natural attitude” or the “natural theoretical attitude.”

When Husserl uses the word “natural” to describe this attitude, he doesn’t mean that it is “good” (or bad), he means simply that this way of seeing reflects an “everyday” or “ordinary” way of being-in-the-world. When I see the world within this natural attitude, I am solely aware of what is factually present to me. My surrounding world, viewed naturally, is the familiar world, the domain of my everyday life. Why is this a problem?

From a phenomenological perspective, this naturalizing attitude conceals a profound naïveté. Husserl claimed that “being” can never be collapsed entirely into being in the empirical world: any instance of actual being, he argued, is necessarily encountered upon a horizon that encompasses facticity but is larger than facticity. Indeed, the very sense of facts of consciousness as such, from a phenomenological perspective, depends on a wider horizon of consciousness that usually remains unexamined. — Key Ideas in Phenomenology

David Chalmers recognises that phenomenology must be 'absolutely central' to a properly-constituted science of conciousness.

living organisms generally display attributes and characteristics that can't be extracted from the laws of physics or chemistry alone. — Wayfarer

Obviously we cannot physically model what we think of as "subjective experience" or "being conscious" or any other conceptual generality or abstraction. It doesn't follow that such things are in any meaningful sense non-physical, that is not dependent in any way on any physical process, or that they are just what they intuitively seem to be.

As for the brain, it can be considered as a physical object, but in its context embodied a living organism it is certainly much more than that. — Wayfarer

All you seem to be saying here is that the brain is not merely an (inert) object. There are many things which are not mere objects in that sense.

That the

whole model of particle physics is grounded in mathematical abstractions or more accurately is a mathematical abstraction — Wayfarer

doesn't entail that what is being modeled are mathematical abstractions.

Non-physical, to me, means non existent. — Mark Nyquist

My main point is that the hard problem really is a secondary problem. The question of physically contained non-physicals is primary to understanding consciousness. — Mark Nyquist

I don't understand. Are non-physicals physically contained? Or are they non-existent?

Non-physical, to me, means non-physical. I wouldn't see how the fact that there are physical things rules out the possibility that there are non-physical things.

My version is:
Physical things exist.
Non-physical things do not exist.
Physically contained non-physicals do exist.
Or mental content....

For example the future doesn't physically exist.
But the idea of the future does exist as mental content.

It would be hard to build a model of consciousness without physically contained non-physicals.

For you the question is in what form do non-physical things exist? If physical matter isn't involved there is no physical form.
But as a concept a non-physical always is mental content so is physically contained.
It seems relevant...and a starting point...for understanding consciousness.

So you are saying that non-physicals are only real insofar as they are physically instantiated?

Yes. Pretty sure. Without exception.

Addition: Instantiated is a better word and is what I meant.

Seems agreeable. :up: I would go further to say that their non-physicality is not real but is merely a seeming.

Not sure.
It's real in the sense that a brain must physically configure and process specific content.
But other than that the content has no physical form.

Yes but is it real in the sense that it seems to be. Is its non-physicality real in other words?

It might be human nature to think our own mental world is more real than it really is. So I think reminding...us...ourselves, gives a good perspective. But a lot of it is real so brains keep us safe too....

:up: Sounds about right.

the question is in what form do non-physical things exist? If physical matter isn't involved there is no physical form. — Mark Nyquist

Forms are not just the shapes of physical things; they are the essential principles that particular things must conform to in order to exist. For instance, the concept of 'wings'—a structure for flight—has emerged independently across insects, birds, reptiles, and mammals. The form of a wing is determined by the function of flight. This form, understood as an abstract principle, pre-exists physical wings. It represents the necessary conditions that must be realized for flight, rather than being derived from physical matter.

a concept a non-physical always is mental content so is physically contained. — Mark Nyquist

While concepts such as wings or circles are grasped by the mind, they are not merely products of the mind. They exist as forms independently of their physical manifestations. The mind may indeed correlate with brain activity, but the claim that the mind 'is the product of' the brain is precisely what the hard problem of consciousness calls into question. The relationship between brain and mind remains a mystery, and it is worth considering that the brain might enable conscious acts might actually drive evolutionary processes. Greater intelligence provides greater possibilities for the organism, suggesting that the brain is a product of the mind’s ability to conceptualize and act within the world, as much as a cause.

This does not posit 'non-material' things or forces, but constraints, which are top-down rather than simply bottom-up. Living things, generally, are shaped by both of those factors, not simply by physical (bottom up) causation. Most of what you and @Philosophim are saying, is a consequence of the 'Cartesian duality', with it's artificial model of matter and 'non-material substance', as explained in this earlier post. It seems natural to you, because it is deeply embedded in our way of seeing things.

I don't think I follow any conventional dualism.
It's just forced on us that non-physicals need to be paired with physical brains.
If we can't use non-physicals we don't have normal time perception or understanding of distant events. It would only be here and now.

I can't see anyway concepts could predate brains.
How? There isn't a physical mechanism.

I don't think I follow any conventional dualism. — Mark Nyquist

Sure you do. It's implied in everthing you write. Whatever is being forced on you, is doing so by virtue of your prior commitment to the sole reality of the physical.

We can map the brain to your behaviors, and even note what you are thinking before you are aware of it. But we cannot know what it is like to BE you. To BE your consciousness. — Philosophim

What if there is not only individualized what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods but also a one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood both universal and constant?

With this supposition, we can say that what-it's-like-to-be a bat living in a cave is the same as what-it's-like-to-be a human living in a college dorm.

Speculating about this possibility doesn't necessarily imply the sense of a world populated by individual what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods is illusory. No. It's a point-of-view that allows us to ask what's the relationship between the one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood and the individual what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods.

In our speculation about the possible existence of a one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood, we can ask ourselves what's going on when we sympathize with the suffering of another person. Morals are about doing no harm to other innocent beings. How can we value this principle governing our behavior if we don't have some semblance of a one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood that we access and utilize to support the sympathy that fuels our moral thinking and behavior?

How is it that many humans easily shuttle between an individualized selfhood and the one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood that enables the bonding of friendship and love so important in their lives?

The edifice of the arts (literature, drama, music, dance, painting, sculpture) depends upon the interpersonal identification of artist, art work and audience. Is this not, to some observable degree, a communal experience wherein the one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood exerts a very useful and desirable power?

When we think about knowing what it's like to walk a mile in another man's shoes, we must acknowledge that, obviously, we're really experiencing what it's like to be ourselves being aware of what it's like to be another, separate self.

From this realization we see that, as already said here, our consciousness is, for each of us, insuperable. Well, what if the insuperability of individualized what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods can merge with all other insuperable what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods to form a universal and constant one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood also insuperable?

So, after all, maybe we really do know all what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods. Isn't this access to all what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods the underlying assumption that supports the edifice of morality?

Doesn't morality lose it's existential imperative within our justice-governed lives without it?

Another, possibly important speculation, goes as follows: the foundation of consciousness is memory. Memory consists of feedback loops traversing neuronal brain circuits that empower awareness of things and events via the initial perception of things and events in themselves repeated for comparison and re-presentation so that the thing in itself becomes a perceived thing in itself and, after another, vertically stacked feedback loop creating a higher-order feedback loop tower per unit of time, we arrive at the self knowing it's perceiving a re-presentation of a thing-in-itself, as based on an original thing-in-itself.

This higher-order feedback loop tower per unit of time is the necessary circularity of consciousness examining itself. So, the circularity of consciousness examining itself is the friend of our understanding of consciousness, not its enemy.

The friendliness of the circularity of consciousness examining itself resides in the conjectured phenomenon of consciousness itself being a possibly irreducible circularity making the selfhood of consciousness possible.

If this is the case, then, of course, examination of the nature of consciousness entails circularity.

Here’s the takeaways: a) let’s not assume that individualized what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods have impenetrable membranes. Maybe the membrane of selfhood is semi-permeable, as evidenced by human sympathy; b) let’s assume that the innate circularity of the self is part of a multi-tiered tower of levels of consciousness that can merge and divide such that the individualized what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods and the one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood are not mutually exclusive.

There aren't a lot of options.

Physical matter exists or not.
Non-physicals exist or not.
Physically instantiated non-physicals exist or not.

Do you have alternatives?

For instance, the concept of 'wings'—a structure for flight—has emerged independently across insects, birds, reptiles, and mammals. The form of a wing is determined by the function of flight. This form, understood as an abstract principle, pre-exists physical wings. It represents the necessary conditions that must be realized for flight, rather than being derived from physical matter. — Wayfarer

This seems like nonsense to me. It is the physical conditions for example the density of the air and the intensity of gravity that determine what forms will work as wings.

It is not "the concept of 'wings'" that has emerged independently across species. It is the different viable forms of wing that have emerged independently constrained by actual physical conditions.

The noting of the current limitations of science being able to objectively capture personal experience are just that, a limit.
— Philosophim

They're not that. There are limitations to scientific method in this respect as a matter of principle, which you're not seeing. It requires a different kind of approach to what has been up until now understood as scientific method. — Wayfarer

If I don't see it, try to show me. What is the different kind of approach you wish to propose? Otherwise this is retreating into your own mind, and I cannot follow.

As a footnote to the above, what really is 'physical'? Is the brain physical? Living organisms? I question these assumptions, because living organisms generally display attributes and characteristics that can't be extracted from the laws of physics or chemistry alone. — Wayfarer

I have nothing against questioning these assumptions. The physical world is matter and energy. To have something non-physical, you would need something that does not fit in the category of matter and energy. But questions and gaps alone are not an argument. We can doubt anything we want, including the fact we are ourselves. Maybe we're really possessed by some other being and only have the illusion of control. But such doubts are only plausibilities, and plausibilities are only limited by the imagination.

To have something more than a plausibility, there needs to be some viable angle beyond 'a doubt'. I've gone over a few with you before. Can we detect energy from thoughts? When we die is there some measurable essence that leaves the body? Are there things missing from the behavioral mode of consciousness that cannot be generally explained as, "You are your brain?" As far as I can tell, no. Get brain damaged, you become a different person. Get drunk? Your consciousness changes. Surgeons and psychiatric doctors have decades of real results from viewing consciousness as from the brain. So what specifically is missing that "You are your brain" cannot explain in terms of behavior?

When you say living organisms display attributes and characteristics that cannot be extracted from the laws of chemistry and physics alone, could you give some examples? Can you show that these examples invalidate the idea that, 'You are your brain?"

What if there is not only individualized what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods but also a one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood both universal and constant?

With this supposition, we can say that what-it's-like-to-be a bat living in a cave is the same as what-it's-like-to-be a human living in a college dorm. — ucarr

But its not. A bat can't speak for one thing. Its brain is also of a different type and size from a human being. It cannot have the same experience.

Morals are about doing no harm to other innocent beings. How can we value this principle governing our behavior if we don't have some semblance of a one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood that we access and utilize to support the sympathy that fuels our moral thinking and behavior? — ucarr

Because whether we do harm to things or not should be more than feelings. Just because I feel disgust at something doesn't mean I should kill it. Just because something makes me happy doesn't mean I should embrace it. For me, it is a respect for its agency, the fact that despite all the odds that get thrown at every life, it has survived until now. Why should I harm or end it over something as trivial as just an emotion?

How is it that many humans easily shuttle between an individualized selfhood and the one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood that enables the bonding of friendship and love so important in their lives? — ucarr

There are plenty of people in life I don't understand. And I'm sure there are plenty of people in life who don't understand me. Bonding often comes from like goals. Survival, or accomplishing a task together require a closeness and understanding of another person up to a point to get this done. It does not require me to understand exactly what another person is experiencing in life.

The edifice of the arts (literature, drama, music, dance, painting, sculpture) depends upon the interpersonal identification of artist, art work and audience. Is this not, to some observable degree, a communal experience wherein the one-size-fits-all what-it's-like-to-be selfhood exerts a very useful and desirable power? — ucarr

Art is highly interpretive. I think Starry Night from Van Gogh is overrated. Some underappreciated art I find immensely powerful. Many times we interpret art differently from what the artist intended. I have a friend who writes, and he frequently tells me his audience has feeling and expectations he never expected.

So, after all, maybe we really do know all what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods. Isn't this access to all what-it's-like-to-be selfhoods the underlying assumption that supports the edifice of morality?

Doesn't morality lose it's existential imperative within our justice-governed lives without it? — ucarr

No, I don't think so Ucarr. Being moral because you're alike is just sympathy for an extension of yourself. Being moral towards beings and people who are nothing like you is real as a logical set of guidelines for treatment of them.

Another, possibly important speculation, goes as follows: the foundation of consciousness is memory. — ucarr

Its an interesting idea. I think we definitely need memory to form thoughts and analysis. But is memory doing the thinking and analysis, or is that something else?

I posted a response yesterday:

There is no soul, or other essence as neuroscience has shown repeatedly. — Philosophim

To say that mind is not reducible to physical constituents, is not to posit some ethereal substance or 'ghost in the machine' (if that is what 'soul' means to you). That view is grounded in Cartesian dualism, which posited body as extended but mindless substance and mind (res cogitans) as non-extended pure intelligence. Cartesian dualism is written deeply into the fabric of modern philosophy and science. In general terms, in the following centuries, science tended to regard res cogitans as an incoherent idea, and to concentrate on material causes, res extensa, as the ground of explanation in natural science. And I think that is in the back of your mind whenever we get into this topic. That is why for you it is axiomatic that the mind has to be understood in terms of physical (or neurological) causation. It's because the alternative seems to be a 'thinking substance', which to you makes no sense. When physicalism is questioned, this is what you think is being proposed. I think your approach is very much influenced by that.

The physical world is matter and energy. To have something non-physical, you would need something that does not fit in the category of matter and energy. — Philosophim

Information would be a good candidate in our scientific age. 'Information is information, not matter or energy', said one of founders of computer science. 'No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day.' And information is clearly separate from matter. Why? Because the same information can be encoded in completely different material forms, and yet still retain its meaning.

When you say living organisms display attributes and characteristics that cannot be extracted from the laws of chemistry and physics alone, could you give some examples? — Philosophim

When I say that living organisms display attributes and characteristics that cannot be extracted from the laws of chemistry and physics alone, I'm pointing to the fact that organisms are fundamentally different from machines. Unlike machines, which serve purposes imposed on them from the outside, living organisms exhibit intrinsic agency and functional autonomy. They actively maintain themselves through processes like homeostasis which enables them to differentiate themselves from their surroundings, unlike minerals or other non-organic materials. This self-maintenance and self-regulation give organisms an internal purpose—a drive to persist, adapt, and flourish—that is entirely absent in the purely extrinsic purposes of machines. This fundamental distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic purpose is key to understanding why organisms cannot be reduced to mere physical or chemical mechanisms. The whole system and its environment are deeply intertwined, making living systems more than just the sum of their parts.