Why conscious purpose in nature is a bad hypothesis.
First, vital forces directing the natural process implies a final cause. Finalism dosnt allow for the possibility of newness. Secondly, belief in a conscious purpose to the natural process seems to hinder deeper research into the mechanisms involved in nature. Its unscientific. You must observe a phenomena and describe a mechanism.
Just for starters.
Anyone?
spyder
I posit. We see nature and consciousness as two separate things.
But actually Existence is an “informational convergence” of a sort.
The uncollapsed wave, and energy - which is matter times the speed of light squared, and quantum mechanics are information. This information presents trees, kittens, eagles, mountains, humans, out of the “void”. Then to me this information is consciousness.
One theory is that the wave collapses when it is observed. But then the observer is also a collapsed wave, So what then collapses or converges the information to manifest that observer. Consciousness is then the basis of everything. It is , As if the universe is both mental and physical not one or the other.
It is not so much if nature has conscious but that nature is consciousness.
sup capstockf9
Do you assume a conscious will responsible for the orientation of the temporal process?
Funny enough Daniel Dennett who you’d assume would be very against any sort of teleology in nature often points out that for our understanding its often useful to speak of evolution as a sort of agent (nature in her wisdom does x…) - but obviously this doesn’t imply a conscious direction as such …This is also known as Teleomentalism
For sure evolution seems to explore a sort of phaze space of possible available future forms to it though not in a conscious way.
I’d definitely be against any sort of idea that us, the old “ascent of man” was some sort of end goal
- even more so as we seem a right failure!! The growing possibility that we could destroy everything would surely have been a bad move for any sort of evolutionary process with a sense of purpose
)
kp
from the stanford
plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleology-biology/
(from the wiki)
What is choosing.
How does the information “know” to congeal. Out of the infinitismal probabilities our world happens and I think it does not happen arbitarily. The human organism is itself an object of congealed information. If, we say we are the observers and/or the choosers we then create the following loop - The matter we call human congeals first then it observes which then makes the universe jump out.
Ibn Rushd suggested the existence of “one mind”. And Carl Sagan said “We are the universe’s way of seeing itself.” Hinduism postulates a consciousness that is dreaming all of this. My mom would say the only thing here is a spirit. Not a spirit as a ghost in a huanting or footbal game spirit but like the great spirit that is in everything and is everything. It seems that without a conscious will acting on the randomness, then emptyiness would be the mode of the day.
Littendrigh was the first to use the word teleonomy to replace teleology, knowing perfectly well that there was no difference in the literal meaning of the words; he was proposing a new word to stress the difference between an end seeking process and a purposeful one. Of course the “good” finality was suppose to be an end seeking process while the “bad” finality was a purposeful one. Conscious finality is something that we have no experience with and is therefore an ad hoc hypothesis and dose not add very much understanding to the system.If we assume a conscious purpose at work in the organization of living systems, then the determination of the end appears akin to the determination of the future in a conscious planning. This is what implies the impossibility of newness and in the end the negation of time, because the future is determined by a conscious plan, which itself is nothing more than the a projection of the past. Therefore time cannot bring with it some radically new or unforeseeable thing. The future is unconscious the future is unknown. What is known must only be associated with the past
spyder
Finality in physics is one thing . For example, whenever we have a physical law expressed by an extremum principle, such as a law of minimumization of free energy, or maximumization of entrophy, or whenever we have a physical phenomenon whose evolution in time is expressed iby a mathematical law; then yes we are dealing with some sort of finalistic explanation but, they do not have to presume a conscious will, just precise mathematical formalism.
spyder
I think Dennett’s only point was that it’s easy to describe certain processes in anture by talking about them as if they had agency - but he wouldn’t actually ascribe it to them - you’re probably right about the dodge with the new word! I note the “intellegent design” types use it a lot so worrying already for me!
kp
Well I recon plain observation of living systems impose the idea of finalism of some sort; we know in advance what will happen to an egg, and everything seems to happen as if the development of the egg toward the adult form is determined by the final state as much as, or even more than, by the previous state. Its the classical debate between the vitalist and the mechanists. Something that seems to get debated a lot to this day.
I kinda like the idea of self organization ( Von Foerster) but, not in the absolute sense. Purely self organizing systems cannot exist; something that changes the rules must come from outside . This something would be called random perturbations. Random perturbations that not only disorganize but, also produce a change in the organization of the system so the system not only continues to function but, does so in a different way. Order from noise? Maybe.
spyder
Hi Spider J!
Was thinking about this a bit this morning while “working” (ha!) and scraping together my bits of biological knowledge.
If we are to look at evolution from a sort of Stephen J Gould perspective – creatures evolve along certain paths and develop certain body plans (arthropod, crustacean, mammal what ever.) These lead to major constraints as to what they can immediately do down any particular lineage. Many drastic mutations will get no further then the embryo. That and the fact that that down lineages certain amounts of inbreeding occur – your stock of variation in the genes is also cut.
So that pathways that can be explored remain within a limited sphere.
That far I agree with you – final shape is something inherent in the genes in that general way.
So in this way – evolution (at least in the sense of limited “stabilising” day to day adoption) could be said to explore certain narrow paths (maybe like the roots of a plant going through a delimited patch of soil) So possibly day to day evolution could be said to have quite a clear direction though entirely without any conscious purpose.
Direction without purpose?
As far as self organizing goes - with ants for example it seems once you go over a certain critical number “higher level” group self organization occurs. But even in a simple computer model like the “game of life” - you can quickly see higher level aggregation of your pixels that looks surprisingly life like. In both these situations there is nothing added from without and teh transition seems to depend lietrally on from what perspective (lower of “higher” level) you are observing.
(Caveat 1– Gould’s scheme (he was Hegel fan and a Marxist by the by!) now accepted by most evolutionary biologists points out the massive role of catastrophe – where entire families maybe even kingdoms have been wiped out of life and there are rapid massive changes as whole other groups get to fill entirely new niches – so our “direction” may be thrown rapidly off course or go in new and very unexpected directions.
(Could dinosaurs have become smaller, faster – more mammal like – maybe even intelligent if they hadn’t of been wiped out relatively suddenly and rapidly!)
Caveat 2 – The arrow of evolution radiates out in many directions but doesn’t proceed directly from simple to complex. In fact many lines “strip back” from complex to simple as they specialise in various directions.
Over billions of years and from simple beginnings, of course, the only way was up in a very general sense complexity has arisen in many lineages but evolution has no single, inevitable “arrow”)
I love Gould! I wish he was still with us.
Say you had a mobile wind chime on your porch. What type of sound it makes is based on its design but it still takes something from out side, the wind.
spyder
Yupe - its a combination of already existing genes, genetic mutation (which is held within strict limits in us eukaryotes
(we have amazing DNA repair mechanisms plus many drastic mutations just won’t survive past embryo(unlike bacteria))
and having a certain body plan.
Complex organisms have only limited evolutionary options so it could be said that evolution here along any one line had a fairly limited deck of cards and certain final forms would be very predictable…
I’m a big fan too - wish he was still with us!
kp
Im not sure we can treat living systems as a deck of cards or a genetic program when it comes to understanding how the system came into being without being mislead by giving the idea that life essentially works like a real computer program. Its a metaphor that has been taken too literally. The reason for this is that the metaphor of the program leads you to ask the question of the origin of finality, which amount to asking: what is the programmer? And the classical answer: the programmer is natural selection. Of coarse we dont have the slightest idea of how natural selection can write a computer program. If we knew all the mechanisms of genetic regulation and genetic expression for a phenotype in a given environment we would maybe have some insight into the language of the genetic program. For this reason I think Natural Selection has been used as some type of magical invocation, a magical word to be used whenever one has to explain a given adapted and finalized state.
It seems we need students of ancient life, since thats when all the strategies that made more intricate life forms possible were invented…
Gould also told us: restart life over and something quite different would arise.
spyder
I wouldn’t entirely disagree with you spyder - for example we could have life based on sulfur rather than Oxygen (and there are many of these in these deep sulfurous springs they’ve discovered in the ocean)
Evolution does tend to be used as a sort of universal acid - a catch all explanation by Dennett and Dawkins - Dawkins especially. Its very good as a sort of regulator and developer of life. It may also, as I tried to outline above, be a mechanism that explores certain possible goals or end points.
It certainly is not (in my view) necessarily the answer to questions like where did this (or any other universe) arise from? or the origins of life
(some folks claim it can’t explain the big transitions eg from plants to animals - I’d say it actually deals with that stuff more then adequately)
As to origins - I personally don’t believe in a creator perfect or imperfect (though 2. has some attraction as per gnosticism - interesting as religions go!) and I have to say I honestly don’t think answers have been provided by science either!
One very bad assumption (as pointed out by Nietzsche in a his genealogical approach to history and Gould in a great article on the organs of baseball) as that there is an origin - unitary.
Baseball for example seems to have been invented and re-invented all over the states from European “stick and ball” games that came over and then there were many rival camps until it was very consciously all bought together under one set of rules (and I’m not sure but Cuban and Nicaraguan baseball may be different from the US still in minor ways?)
Similarly in life things like wings and legs have arisen time and time again - but although some animals can roll there’s never been wheels! (bad engineering or too difficult to control/maintain???)
So if it’s basic features can arise again and again - perhaps life arose again and again - but how or when I dunno - also its hard to study outside of simulations as ancient life didn’t usually leave fossils or much traces - only the effects (oil etc!) of its passing
kp
I may be off on a tangent but the conscious that exists is not an experience emergent from matter.
Uncertainty principle discribes the problem of determining where anything is. At the minutest level everything becomes wave-like. And a wave is in no particular point but spread out. These waves spread out three dimensions. The material that composes the brain is ultimately waves.
And this is the loop _ a wave or waves are not matter but yet the brain supposedly materializes first so that then other material will appear. And I’m back to my question ?What made the material that creates the brain appear or congeal firstly so that in order that other matter can be observed?
Sorry I asking more question then answering.
I say that it is not - One matte manifests first. All matter explodes into existence simultaneously. And further the past comes into existence simultaneously as well.
So if everything is a wave and not yet a brain exists; then, what mind pressed the enter button to bring everything forth.
Interesting that Aristotlean philosophers referred to the purpose or end of a thing as it’s “final cause”, yet you use the same term as something being the exact opposite. So what do you mean by it here?
Isn’t this doing the same thing that people hate about teleological views, namely, that we apply human superimpositions on existence that does not work so cleanly as the concept we construct? We take the endless and infinitely divisible stream of cause and effect in nature, extract a piece to make sense out of it, then call the end of that extraction final and therefore not leading to new causes? I don’t think nature is so clean. Give me a cause and effect relationship that absolutely begins at point A with no precedent and stops a point B with absolutely no successor.
Why, pray tell?
I have seen no human invention or process that couldn’t stand for, and hasn’t stood with, some improvement. Can we really say that our scientific method is complete and perfect and has no room for change? Can we say that there couldn’t possibly be a science of purpose at some point? Studying theoretical physics really opens your mind to the fact that there is plenty of room for what can be called “science” than what is traditionally proposed.