Here is the second half of John Kineman's excellent post, with my comments,
as follows:
John K. wrote: My comments in reference: 1 a: Is an internal model not
"evidence of
design" in nature?
An internal model is evidence that functional entailments exist, as far as
my father was concerned. But he would not say there is any "design" in
nature. What we perceive as "design" is really just the similarities in the
natural manifestations of complexity all around us and through us, mixed
with a certain amount of anthropomorphization. Organization isn't "design"
the way design is used in describing "Teleology".
J.K. wrote: b: What are causal loops if not ends immanently
affecting causes?
Causal loops are closed cycles of entailment where the situation "entails
itself" because a cause creates an effect that is, at the same time, also a
cause in the next moment: it is the cause of an effect in the counterpart
system that just caused IT.... Ooh, that makes PERFECT sense! Hmmm...This is
where I can really see why my father used mathematical notation; these
things work better on paper when you give them names or numbers! So, let's
give that a whirl: one cause(A) entails an effect(B) that is the cause
(still B) that entails an effect (A) which closes the loop in a never ending
cycle. A causes B, which causes A, which causes B....... It's the chicken
and egg again. A wouldn't exist at all without B, yet A CAUSES B. So, what
came first? Life. Life came first.
J.K. wrote: 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.
The "purpose" you are referring to is some internal function (or sets of
interacting functions, or interacting sets of interacting functions, etc...)
arising within the organization of the system itself and how the system is,
in turn, interacting with its external context (which includes environmental
conditions, ecosystem balance, competition from other organisms, the
functional needs of others of its own "kind" perhaps...). That's not a
purpose, but the aspect of functionality that is inherent in organisms.
Function can transform cause and effect back and forth into each other as we
saw in the discussion of closed loops of entailment. This is the efficiency
of nature, where the designation of cause or effect depends only on which
side of the transaction you're on. ("eye of the beholder", type of thing).
If you need A in order to produce B, it behooves you to have B causing A in
turn. This is why I am so attracted to the notion of redesigning car engines
to use water as fuel, use a solar battery to hydrolize the water into
hydrogen and oxygen as needed to run the car, and the only end product is???
WATER. If you crash with a tank full of water, what happens? If you
recondense the waste water and recycle it back through the engine, how far
can you go on one tank of water??? Pretty damn far. I asked my Dad why no
one was designing an engine like this and he said, "There's no money in it."
ARG.
J.K. wrote: 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.
Not unless you agree that you are. What you refer to as teleology, my father
referred to as complexity. What my father referred to as complexity has been
called a lot of things (!). What Thomas Aquinas referred to as teleology, I
might refer to as God's artistry. What Aristotle meant is open to
interpretation.
J.K. wrote: 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?
If you're asking me what the end result of the plant's behavior in autumn
is, I say "Yes, it prepares for winter". Is that what it is actually doing?
No, not in the same way that humans prepare for things. The plant is simply
doing what is necessary, as specified by its evolutionary/predictive model
in order to not be killed by winter. Anticipatory controls work by
preventing error. My father's explanation for what the plant is doing goes
something like this:
The plant is acting as its "internal model" directs it to act and its
internal model is directing it to act based on a combination of events in
both the internal and the external "context" (physiology and environment,
respectively) that trigger the activity. Consider the fact that time is part
of both the internal and external contexts.
As far as I have seen so far, my father never specified the origin of the
internal model in any practical way or any of the other specific details
about it. That's where further research is needed. He only specified what he
could prove to himself via logic and observation and the connections to
known facts.
JK wrote:
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).
Don't sweat it! We're not up against it; he is. And anyone who would choose
to include themselves in the "we". My father's example was this: If you do
the work (work you want to do) and you arrive at the truth (truth you wanted
to know), it doesn't matter what anyone else says.
J.K. wrote: 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.
Careful there; "constituting a purpose or goal"? Are the models a "goal"? Or
are they simply a part of the organization of the system such that the
purpose or goal is self-entailment (existence, survival).
J.K. wrote:
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.
You're missing it here, John. In the above paragraph, you're still caught in
the mechanistic view, which I'm kind of hoping you now can see. The next
sentence you wrote, below, brings up the very concept that is what my father
used to pull the temple down with:
J.K. wrote: Actually, to be more precise, there is one exceptional
purpose granted by the mechanistic view - "survival."
Any mechanist who agrees that living organisms have survival as a purpose
are hoist on their own petard. Can't you see it??? It's so obvious to me,
but as you've said elsewhere I never did develop the mechanistic point of
view-- I was raised in the Rosennean one. The mechanistic one looks alien
and flawed from outside of it.
Survival is about THE FUTURE. It's a concept that has the temporal quality
built in. Reproduction is about the future. The capacity to reproduce is a
temporal capacity. Repair is about the future, metabolism is about the
future-- all of these capabilities presuppose the existence of this "thing"
we call "a future". My father was not postulating that plants are
"prescient"-- he was postulating that their anticipatory behavior suggests
that TIME is different than our puny understanding/perceptions of it, and
that the relationship organisms have with time is multidimensional in some
sense. It has nothing to do with "psyche". It has to do with aspects of this
universe that we are only beginning to perceive but which have been part of
it, and of us, all along. Isn't that basically "the history of science" in a
nutshell?
J.K. wrote: 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.
That's what the mechanistic folks would say. However, As Buffy the Vampire
Slayer would put it, "They have BUT-face". A true believer in mechanism
would say, "It is part of our program to formulate ALL ultimate causes,
universal laws, and etc.... BUT-- only the ones that fit our little box for
the overhead compartment. If it's any bigger than that, you cannot take it
on board."
J.K. wrote: Purpose cannot be ultimately dispensed with,
which is what Aristotle realized,
Function is what cannot be dispensed with, and only when talking about
biological systems. Otherwise, my father would say that "entailment" is what
cannot be dispensed with. Complexity causes/is-entialed-by "closed loops of
entailment". Life is-caused-by/entails functional entailments.
J.K. wrote: 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'm hopeful that the above paragraph has already been dealt with in this
discussion. If not, let me know. See, what mechanists keep
ignoring/forgetting is that machines are part of OUR entailment process. We
needed them, we designed them, we built them. We have thus imbued them with
all kinds of aspects of ourSELVES. This muddies the water a lot. They squint
at machine behaviors, see similarities to ourselves and go, "Gee, that looks
a lot like human behavior to me..." No kidding! It's like the cowardly lion
in Wizard of Oz freaking out and saying, "Someone's pulling on my tail!" and
someone was.... He was holding on to his OWN tail because he was scared and
he was scared because he felt someone holding on to his tail.
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?
Just to reiterate (as opposed to "tautologize"!); the word "purpose" is
fraught with human connotation problems in science. If we ask; Why does an
organism change in its behavior with the seasons? And we answer it; Because
it wouldn't survive if it didn't... You might say that survival is the
purpose. But: Define survival. Doesn't "survival" mean "keep living"? An
organism is alive-- that much most mechanists will agree to. But if it has
the purpose of staying alive, then survival is about the future. In other
words, "continuing in time" is the purpose. Quick, get the smelling salts!
The mechanists have fainted.
J.K. wrote: 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.
These examples are all tainted with the cowardly-lion-effect so they don't
illustrate what we're trying to get at here. For example, my teleological
answer for example #1 would be: Because God made gravity. We need to choose
some phenomena that humans didn't create. Why does the sun rise every
morning in the east and set every evening in the west? The teleological
answer "Because God (Apollo)..." is essentially the same today as it was in
ancient Greece, even though we now have physics explaining the mechanics of
our solar system. The "purpose" or reason is still "Because God designed the
universe, including all the laws of physics." That's teleology.
So the answer isn't to try and defend the word "teleology", but to go in
another direction altogether, which is what my father did.
J.K.:Attractive as the mechanistic explanation may be at times, we call
it the cynical view because it reduces everything to meaninglessness.
I would disagree with that statement. I'm sure my father would as well. It
is the way the word "meaninglessness" is used that makes it incorrect. If
something is useful in solving real problems, it isn't reducing everything
to meaninglessness, even in biology. The way he would phrase it is more
like: "The mechanistic approach is attractive because it works a lot of the
time, to varying degrees of optimality. The trouble with it is that some
systems, namely complex ones, are not reducible and therefore the
information you get with that approach is often unreliable. At worst, the
mechanistic approach will yield mostly meaningless debris masquerading as
"data"."
J.K.: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.
This language can be misconstrued pretty badly. I think I know what you are
intending it to mean: That we have to ignore artificially created
limitations within science in order to get at the science behind living
systems-- And-- That the kind of science used in contemporary physics deals
with mostly non-complex systems so the artificial limitations are less
likely to get in the way of study in that realm. The big problem with the
way you phrased it is that it appears to deny one of my father's biggest
assertions: That complexity absolutely DOES pertain to physics (physical
systems). It is physics that is limited, not physical systems.
J.K.: 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.
Yes, that is all true. The only caution my father would offer is that it is
just as bad to wear a straitjacket as it is to shoot yourself in the foot.
As James Thurber put it in one of the stories from his book, "Fables For Our
Times": It is just as bad to bend over too far backward as it is to fall
flat on one's face." Balance is key. Balance, incidentally, doesn't imply
"moderation"-- about which he said, "We must use moderation in applying
moderation." Too much of anything is unbalancing.
Whew! That was a lot of writing. Time for coffee.
Judith