Re: Teleology and vitalism

[John Kineman <***>]

Hi Judith & list

Its a very very tricky issue, but one we probably need to deal with in
some detail. My apologies if this post seems too long and pedantic. I
quote some dictionary stuff and then discuss some examples.

It is easy to fall into a fear of using words just because others, who
weren't thinking correctly to begin with, banned them from science on
one basis alone; which in fact is not germane to how we are attempting
to develop these ideas. I have put a lot of thought into this issue over
25 years I have learned that there has been a considerable deception and
usurpation in the portrayal of their meanings as a tool to kill off
non-traditional thought. I would encourage everyone not to react too
quickly to terms that have been made into social taboos by the very
theories we are attempting to modify.

For example, from Blackburn's Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy:
"Vitalism:  The doctrine that there is some feature of living bodies
that prevents their nature begin entirely explained in physical or
chemical terms. This feature may be the presence of a further "thing"
(such as a soul), but it may also be simply the emergence of special
relations or principles of organization arising from the complexity of
the biological organism. The former kind of doctrine envisages Life as a
kind of fiery fluid (animal electricity, life force), that needs pouring
into an inannimate body in order for it to become alive. Aristotle is
the principle source of a more sophisticated vitalism, holding that the
life of an animal consists in its psyche, which provides a principle of
explanation determining the morphological development of the organism,
by a principle of teleological or final causation. In the 19th Century
the two great exponents of vitalism were Bergson and the biologist Hans
Driesch.  Vitalism has been eclipsed by the advance in molecular
genetics, and consequent understanding of the development of organisms
in terms drawn from normal science, so the consensus amongst
philosophers and biologists is that it offers no explanatory principles
that the life sciences need. However, there do remain problems in
understanding how different levels of description and explanation of one
thing, such as those of psychology and those of biology, or those of
biology and those of chemistry, relate to each other."

Thus vitalism is not necessarily about God -- that's a weapon, not a
legitimate characterization. It is about a vital force in nature, a life
force.

And, again from Balckburn:
Teleology:  The study of the ends or purpose of things. The idea that
there is such a thing as the end or purpose of life is prominent in the
Aristotelian view of nature (and ethics), and then in the Christian
tradition. The theory of evolution through natural selection allows
speculation about the function for which particular things are adapted,
and so permits assertions about the purpose an adaptation serves,
without any commitment to the idea of a designer who put it there for a
purpose, and without the unscientific belief that the future utility of
a feature somehow brings about its existence by a kind of backwards
causation. Teleology free of these concerns is sometimes called
teleonomy. The teleology of a feature may have metaphysical
implications: thus one might (controversially) suggest that our spatial
vision is for success at coping with a spatial world, whereas color
vision may not be for success at coping with a coloured world, but
adapted to the skilful tracking of surfaces through changes of light,
and this would be a way of defending a primary/secondary quality
distinction.

And from Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary 1973:
Teleology: fr. Gk tele-,telos end, purpose _ -logia -logy

So, "telos" means "an ultimate end" or "purpose." "ology" means study.
Teleology is thus the study of ends or purposes in nature.

Continuing, the definition in this version of Webster is slightly
different than the one Judith quoted:
1 a: the study of evidences of design in nature b: a doctrine (as in
vitalism) that ends are immanent in nature c: a doctrine explaining
phenomena by final causes 2. : the fact or character attributed to
nature or natural processes of being directed toward an end or shaped by
a purpose 3: use of design or purpose as an explanation of natural
phenomena.

My comments in reference: 1 a: Is an internal model not "evidence of
design" in nature? b: What are causal loops if not ends immanently
affecting causes? 2: Are organisms not to be discussed as being "shaped
by a purpose?" The only version of teleology that needs to be excluded
is the third one, using the purpose as an explanation. We are instead
explaining the origin and operation of purpose in terms of internal models.

Term "final cause" itself has been the main ingredient of teleology and
is equally used to brand someone unscientific. If you claim any validity
to Aristotles's fourth cause in the theory, you are by definition
discussing teleology. Blackburn writes, for example: "...final cause is
that for the sake of which the result is produced, i.e., the end towards
which the production is directed."
Do plants prepare FOR winter?

To see what we are up against, even Blackburn editorialized more than he
should have as one representing all of philosophy:
"Aristotle's generally teleological approach to nature almost certainly
led him to see the categories as more widely applicable than we do." I
must take that to be the British "we" which includes "everyone
important" and excludes the rest (Oxford, you know).

Even Ernst Mayr, a mainstream biologist and mechanist, recognized
several acceptable forms of teleology (which he called "teleonomy") that
are essential in biology. He describes them in his book "Toward a new
philosophy of biology." One of them is execution of a program, but he
even quibbles about that. Being a traditionalist, he drew the line on
the conservative side and seemed to exclude many of the ideas we are
discussing with regard to Rosennean theory. He would likely preclude the
idea that life develops models of its environment and that such models
can be discussed as constituting a purpose or goal.

So, if we accept these limitations, we can no longer discuss organismic
models as representing a purpose, goal, or anticipation. They are then
purely reactive models that specify present behavior without any
reference to the future. While they may add up to some interesting or
inevitable ends (as in increasing entropy), they can have no
representation of the future in them. If they did, it would constitute a
concept, which then introduces the idea of psyche and all that implies.
The model is thus a representation of the past alone, employed
automatically in determining present behavior for no purpose or meaning
whatsoever. Actually, to be more precise, there is one exceptional
purpose granted by the mechanistic view - "survival." My question is, if
a mechanist, as a rather constrained biological organism, can allow the
purpose called "survival," why can't we, as biological complexity
theorists, allow a few more? Are we second class citizens? You see, it
is part of the mechanistic program to formulate all ultimate causes,
universal laws, as prior prior conditions to the origin and subsequent
running of the universe. Purpose cannot be ultimately dispensed with,
which is what Aristotle realized, but if all Laws of Nature are external
to the mechanical system, then purpose must also be externalized. It
then defaults to a singular purpose that is commensurate with that
ontology (which is a singularity in the mechanistic view). That ultimate
purpose is simply to exist. All else then becomes meaningless. Hence,
the wise words of Shakespere "To be or not to be, that is the [only
remaining mechanistic] question" that we are now allowed to ask about "why."

I think the valid point is that science must be about explaining things
in a way where some useful knowledge is gained. The taboo is  merely
because you can't usefully explain something in terms of its result - it
becomes a tautology. What is the answer to a "Why" question, which RR
emphasized as central in his thinking, if not a purpose? Some examples:

Example #1: Why did the fork fall?
Teological answer: to be at the floor.
Scientific Answer: it fell as a consequence of being pushed off the
counter by the force of the dish striking it, and it fell to the floor
as a result of gravitatioinal attraction to the Earth. This is actually
"how" not "why."

Example #2: Why did I post this email?
Teleological answer: To communicate an idea to the group.
Mechanistic answer: Constrained by past habits of behavior and reacting
to various stimuli, certain programmed and purposeless responses were
generated resulting in an email message.
Rosennean answer: Compelled by an internal model of function and
relationship to the external world, including certain self-defined
goals, and stimulated by a question, I anticipated a future need by
posting a response.

Attractive as the mechanistic explanation may be at times, we call it
the cynical view because it reduces everything to meaninglessness. In
the case of organisms it doesn't get at our primary interest and
phenomena we experience ourselves. If we are to do the science of life,
we have to allow ourselves the epistemological freedom necessary to
investingate its most obvioius and interesting phenomena, which simply
doesn't pertain to physical systems and therefore could be excluded from
their study but not ours.

Is the second law of thermo a telos? It says all physical systems
progress to a pre-determined end result, heat death and infinite
entropy. Why is that acceptable? It is acceptable because its operation
is specified in real time. There is an explanation of how it happens
from moment to moment, and thus the end result is a consequence not a cause.

If purpose is represented in an "internal model" it is a direct analogy
to the case above. There is a reason why the result looks purposive, and
that reason is represented formally in the immediate operation of a
system. But that does not preclude there being a future contingency,
i.e., an end result, in the model and that one can identify and talk
about. There is no reason for us to be in a streightjacket that another
discipline created for biology, and that they do not even wear
themselves. If we say biological systems are self-organizing,
self-directing, self-generating, self-defining, and perhaps
self-evolving - there is nothing more vital than that and yet it is not
the pre-scientific vitalism these definitions are referring to. Science
can create new ideas that may not conform to the old definitions.

Judith Rosen wrote:

> The Webster's Dictionary defines Teleology  (from the Greek: telos or
> teleos; "an end" and ology; "study of") as 1. The study of final
> causes. 2. The fact or quality of being directed toward a definite end
> or of having an ultimate purpose, especially as attributed to natural
> systems. 3. A belief, as in that of vitalism, that natural phenomena
> are determined not only by mechanical causes but by an overall design
> or purpose in nature.
>
> Vitalism is the dirty word here. That's the connotation that is the
> kiss of death in science. It basically says that only God can make a
> tree or even know how one really works-- that living systems are
> outside the purview of science. So my father was extremely thorough in
> disproving any hint of telos in Anticipatory Systems and in presenting
> all his ideas via accepted channels (mathematics, physics, systems
> theory, category theory, etc) even as he was proving those channels
> were currently inadequate to do the job. What he was trying to show is
> that one simply has to widen what is allowed in science and then all
> things are possible. The prohibitions that have strangled physics'
> ability to deal with biology are all artificial and unnecessary, anyway.
>
> Judith