KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA63 (Leslie / Rees)

Commentary 26 (to C25, Johnson)

CAUSE AND PURPOSE
by Herbert FJ Müller
12 January 2004, posted 7 February 2004

In his commentary, Joseph Johnson brings up some interesting points, of which I will in the following discuss a few.

{1}
NATURAL VERSUS MENTAL CREATIVITY

He raises the question whether there is an overall plan or design to the evolution into biological complexity <11>. Perhaps one should take a step back and ask why we would think there should be a design, and by whom. We have to start from our own experience, which includes goals that are determined by basic drives like hunger, and others that are more complex. These make us create techniques to deal with them, act with purposes (sometimes called final causes).

{2}
Secondly, we need the organizing principles of life to harness the energy resulting from sun-energy dissipation according to the second law of thermo-dynamics <10>, for what we see as constructive purposes, using temporary biochemical energy stores <11>. How is this related to our subjective purposes ?

{3}
Because individually and collectively <12ff> we act with purposes (if we want to succeed in life), humans have historically constructed human-like deities that think and act purposefully on a universal scale (actually more consistently and reliably so than we do ourselves in practice). This gives us mind-independent but human-like purposeful ad-hoc agencies acting in a way that is plausible (for humans at a particular time), and often also in our favor.

For instance, in order to understand the day-and-night cycles, the Egyptians of the New Kingdom appointed a sky-goddess (called Nut) whose task it was to eat the sun in the evening and give birth to it in the morning. Later theories - those of Ptolemaios, Copernicus, or Hubble, for instance – produced more complete and reliable ways of dealing with experience without assuming human-like divine action. Thus a path toward a purpose-free, mind-free, and god-free knowledge was gradually perceived within the more encompassing general subjective experience. The world is here treated as if it were mind-independent, and the mind as if did not exist. Darwin’s work had a similar effect on the divine creation of life and Noah’s arc.

{4}
We also like to see ourselves as the crown of divine creation, and our deities oblige by confirming our flattering self-evaluation. JJ’s question shows that after the advent of science we would still like to recognize a human-like purpose and design in evolution, to comfort us despite the disappearance of the dinosaurs and many other species. We wish for such a design, again chiefly with ourselves as desirable end-products <17, 21>, but now without divine support. Proposals like those of Leslie, Rees, and some others, to populate the galaxy with humans, also imply such an opinion about ourselves. And this despite the mutation-selection processes of evolution and Dawkins' selfish genes (and blind watchmaker), rather than a purposeful and intelligent design. This would presumably then have to be a metaphysical design-by-itself. That difference in causality (mutation plus selection versus cosmic design) is a problem for our self-esteem (accident plus success versus pinnacle of creation). But does it constitute a "cosmic conflict" <11>, or what else can it mean ?

The paradigm shift <12ff, 25> necessary for collective purposeful action is underway in form of international organizations, even if they are only partly successful; but similar mechanisms have been at work in the past <24>, for instance within religious frameworks. Belief in deities can help with this, for instance by furthering social cohesion.

{5}
A conceptual problem here is that the subjective, individual and collective <18>, and divine, purposefulness and design do not translate easily into a God- and mind-free agency like "nature". That one is also supposed to be mind-independently real (MIR), but it is seen as causal only, and this works well for a very large part of experience (although not for all of it, not for politics, for instance). The earlier views became untenable, largely because they could not be tested, and there was no need for purpose.

The mind is here reduced from structurer to being a passive observer of an already pre-structured reality (which is itself an unclear proposition, and gives rise to the metaphysics problem). The result is that in science the mind (or subject) is usually neglected, and sometimes said to be entirely non-existent; therefore objective science cannot offer solutions to the mind-brain problem and some other questions which require subjects. The switch to causes-only (MIR-events being consequences of earlier MIR-events) excludes purposes or designs, and teleology becomes a bad word.

{6}
There is, however, an objective path available back from mind-free causation to encompassing experience and purpose. Living entities have evolved by chemical mechanisms <17>, i.e., molecular self-replication (this has probably started as an accidental but causal development under favorable circumstances). Self-replication drives self-preservation and self-propagation, for instance the selfishness of genes, as well as the one of living beings as organized by the genes, of societies, as organized by individuals, and of politics, as organized by societies (among other things). But this objective teleology does not result in subjective experience of purposes, nor can it explain subjectivity. That requires a further step, namely back to where we started {1}.

{7}
The as-if-subject-free objective view of naturalism <19> started out as, and remains, a compartment within the encompassing subject-and-object-inclusive view (although MIR-belief has in recent centuries gained ground at the expense of the latter). The inclusive view does not invalidate the as-if-subject-free objective method where it is appropriate, but it does include the subject and his purposes, and this fact may complicate understanding. The subject cannot be omitted, as it has become increasingly clear, including in physics since 1900, and despite some statements to the contrary. Subjective experience always remains as an envelope, bubble, or matrix, simply because it is the only available start point, and this cannot change. Reality automatically includes the subject, even if he is only an "observer", because reality would have no structures without his activity, whether the activity is deliberate or not.

{9}
But should we interfere, do something purposeful about the direction of evolution, and perhaps other aspects of the design-free universe ? Whether we should proceed with genetic modification of humans and of other organisms, or extend our propagation by colonizing the moon and the galaxy with copies of ourselves, and/or try to make contact with possible life elsewhere, depends on our judgment, and we cannot get away from that responsibility. Our construct of mind-independent nature is not going to tell us what to do. Whether to judge by various religious opinions is everyone’s choice - but for this type of question they have few relevant precedents in narratives to consult with.

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{10}
SOME OTHER POINTS

The problem with the definition of mind <2> is inevitable : mind (experience, consciousness, etc) is undefinable, because it is background, and encompassing (Anaximander's a-peiron - lack of peras, of border - means the unlimited, not a necessity <10>). This is also the reason why it cannot be discussed in objective studies : objects are defined (namely, inside mind), but mind (the background) cannot be its own object inside itself.

{11}
Metaphors <2> are mental structures, and structures of the whole must be incomplete, because the whole cannot be totally structured : structures exist inside the originally unstructured whole. (The term metaphor evokes the question of referents, which is better avoided in order to not fall back into MIR-thinking.) This is a problem of religion and of theories of everything, and it may coincide with a part of what JJ says in <4.5>. We are the ones who structure, but we structure ourselves (the self, the I) together with "the world", and also the subject-object split between them, and all of this inside our experience.

{12}
In the traditional MIR-view, objects and causality <3> are treated as mind-independent. The mind is in that case treated as if it did not exist <4>. This is the problem of naturalism. Concerning levels of complexity <4.4>, systems biology is now making great strides (see Science 302, 1646ff, 2003), and complexity per se is probably not the main difficulty. The remedy for MIR, on the other hand, is to see the world as fundamentally subject-inclusive (but not as only subjective <4.5> - it is a question of completing experience, not of going from one incomplete kind experience (objectivity) to another one (subjectivity)). The subject-inclusiveness changes unconditional MIR to a working as-if-MIR tool.

{13}
I am not sure what JJ means by saying <8> that nature's evolution expresses the structure of natural order as a whole. Natural order <9> always involves mind-and-nature (if we go to before Descartes' split between subjective and objective worlds; the split is only pragmatic, not basic or ontological). Natural order is a unity <9> : yes, and the source of the unity is that we have one unitary mind to understand the world. Does JJ want to claim that the MIR-world has a mind of its own - beside our individual and collective mind ? How so ?

{14}
Comparing JJ’s and my notions about the subject-object question : he seems to base himself on traditional MIR-objectivity, which he then wants to complement by subjectivity <22-23>, while I understand the objectivity as an incomplete as-if-subject-free position within a basic subject-and-object (mind-and-nature) inclusive view; to complete it, one only has to remember and reactivate this encompassing background.

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{15}
NOTE ON ABSTRACTION

Abstraction <10> means taking something away (abs-trahere). Who takes what from where ? Let us say we count some objects, like cows, using numbers, that is concrete action. The handling, or finding rules for handling, of numbers per se - without objects to be counted - is more abstract, since the numbers are taken away from the concrete act of counting. But the concept of abstraction can also be confusing. In my view, we are faced with an experience which we have to structure, first for instance with visual Gestalt-formation, and then, as humans, also with a word. This is not an abstraction, quite the contrary; it is visual and verbal construction.

{16}
The following is quoted, by an anonymous commentator, from S I Hayakawa (Language in Thought and Action). "Introduction : Hayakawa's version starts with a real live animal, Bessie the cow. Bessie lives at a farm, together with a lot of other cows and animals. End of introduction." ... "The previous section is already filled with abstractions. Concentrating on the subject, it starts with "Bessie". In fact, being a real live animal, Bessie is made up from numerous components, that are still in constant interaction through an even greater number of processes, leading to ever changing behaviour of the entirety. All this diversity is called Bessie, and by doing this, we have in fact dropped almost all details of these components and processes. What we mean by "Bessie" is a limited number of visible, audible, and behavioural traits, that are fairly constant, and will lead us to remember Bessie between intervals we are not in contact with her."

<http://www.physics.leidenuniv.nl/userwebs/ruud/english/backgrounds/abstraction_ladder.htm>

{17}
I agree that the image and the word "cow" help to maintain awareness of an entity when we don't see it; that is a function of word-concepts. But aside from that, and with all respect due the semanticists, I find this reasoning can turn things upside down. In my opinion, what we mean by Bessie is a cow, which we posit as a useful (viable) mind-and-nature entity; it is not an abstraction from an assembly of cow-traits. The commentator apparently thinks these traits are more real than the cow (perhaps he chiefly wants to avoid the difficult notion of a metaphysical cow-in-herself). If we want to dissect the cow into traits (each of which also needs construction, by the way), that is a secondary proposition.

{18}
(If you use this semantic procedure on yourself, on your "I", you will promptly dissolve, just as the cow did, and as the subject disappears in naïve MIR-objective studies : into behavioral traits, the activity of a neuronal network, of synapses, the activity of micro-tubules, or even into the latest version of quantum events.)

{19}
The "ladder of abstraction" <10> seems to refer to the generality of concepts. "Cow" is more general than "Bessie", "animal" still more general, "entity" most general, all within experience. The cow-traits, on the other hand, are products of a possible secondary analysis of the primary experience-structuring - for instance of perception and actions while dealing with the cow - and so are cow-skins, cow-muscles, cow-udders, and cow-quanta.

{20}
He also has a section entitled "mind versus reality", in which he seems to claim that "the mind = emotions" distorts reality which he says is "external". But although he appears to feel very sure he knows what reality is, and deplores "opposition to reality", he does not specify it further. Semantics tends to imply MIR-belief, but one can also speak of language games without reality, as Wittgenstein did. A purely formal scientific thinking is quite compatible with as-if ontology, where the constructed fixation points (working-ontological entities) are viewed and used as tools, not as onta.

{21}
This seems to be easier said than done, however; the famous 20^th century physicists had ontological ambitions, and some of them wrote extensively about reality. These discussions still go on because the issues are not resolved. Nevertheless, the working-ontology notion might simplify things in the long term, because it allows you to simultaneously use a helpful working ontology and discard its naïve version (it involves a relatively minor change in the meaning of "ontology"). This might also help to answer Paternina's question in TA65 R1 about what could be wrong with mind-independent reality - he finds he needs it for his work (cf. also TA45[8c]).

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Herbert FJ Müller