I’m a total philistine, half of the words you said just passed over my head, I just don’t see anything fundamentally different between amoebas and an electronic light sensor or a roomba or whatever. Certain inputs produce certain outputs, and things like whether it’s chemical or mechanical or anything else is immaterial. You may as well tell me that every massive object “wants” to move toward other massive objects in proportion to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them. The fact that one perpetuates an organism’s existence and the other isn’t is purely incidental and I think you’re effectively projecting a teleology onto it by saying that these reactions by means of which an organism maintains itself are, by that very fact, evidence of a “want.”
I’m a total philistine, half of the words you said just passed over my head
Dork gibberish, not important. Although you should look it up if you’re ever bored, it’s interesting stuff
I just don’t see anything fundamentally different between amoebas and an electronic light sensor or a roomba or whatever
The fact that one perpetuates an organism’s existence and the other isn’t is purely incidental
I think that’s kind of the central difference to me at least. It’s the self maintenance of the tension between the internal and external by reproduction of its component parts that do kinda be what distinguishes life and organisms from mechanistic objects. as you say, whether it’s chemical or mechanical or electrical doesn’t really matter.
I think you’re effectively projecting a teleology onto it by saying that these reactions by means of which an organism maintains itself are, by that very fact, evidence of a “want.”
Uhhhh well kinda yeah. (Not a cognitive “want” btw, but it is sublated into the cognitive want. Like the OP puts it, the directionality that forms the preawareness “want”, that is later identified with the experiential want post-awareness. But even further back before that, and even prior to the evolutionary process.) It’s the circle that presupposes its own end like Hegel talks about. It’s self-referential. Some authors say that’s not teleological and some do, I’d say it’s teleological, but that’s just me. On some level you can say that it’s just reactive processes but then at the level of operation of the whole system it does gain real significance beyond its appearance as such due to its autonomy and closure from the surrounding world. There’s a direct throughline between this “want” on the level of a single cell, as in the constant bringing forth of what it lacks for its own continuation, and things like the special process of reproduction, cognition, experience, self-awareness, and social processes. And even lower below the organism, dissipative structures. Systems constantly implementing themselves as their ends at every level of self-organization. It’s just… dialectics. I’m probably not giving a good account of this perspective because I’m not much of a writer or communicator, and I’ve probably misrepresented some things. You could say I’m just splitting hairs about semantics. I guess that’s true too.
I think that’s kind of the central difference to me at least. It’s the self maintenance of the tension between the internal and external by reproduction of its component parts that do kinda be what distinguishes life and organisms from mechanistic objects. as you say, whether it’s chemical or mechanical or electrical doesn’t really matter.
But that’s a statement about the ultimate consequences of what happens, which doesn’t tell us almost anything about the proximate nature of the actions. That’s what I mean by “projecting a teleology.” Consider a mutant amoeba that does something not conducive to self-maintenance, there is nothing inherently different about the nature of those actions as biological processes, it requires a zoomed-out view to explain normal amoebas as conforming to selection pressures and this mutated behavior as deviating from selection pressures. “But the amoeba dies!” Yes, but the event of the death later on is not useful for explaining the fundamental nature of the action itself, the death is a distant, emergent consequence of the action, an event distinct from the action (as is successful replication, and even more so with the “event” of surviving past that point in the future). You’re using teleological reasoning to make some sort of metaphysical claim about events and organisms that fundamentally don’t make sense from a materialist perspective.
There’s a direct throughline between . . . the constant bringing forth of what it lacks for its own continuation, and things like the special process of reproduction, cognition, experience, self-awareness, and social processes.
This, as I have abridged it, is completely true. The issue is that the “want” is just a metaphysical, teleological complication that doesn’t help us understand anything and just serves to mystify a mechanical/chemical/electrical process that is already entirely understandable.
It’s just… dialectics
Right, it is dialectics. The problem is that it’s Hegelian dialectics, which is highly teleological and idealist, and not material dialectics.
The problem is that it’s Hegelian dialectics, which is highly teleological and idealist, and not material dialectics.
it’s not Hegelian dialectics just because I quoted Hegel, but you keep misrepresenting what I have to say so I’m not going to keep effortposting on this, which I should have done when I said I would earlier. You can read authors on autopoietic theory and systems thinking like Varela or Friston if you want. It’s a completely material dialectical analysis and not “teleological” in the way you’re referring to. It’s just self-referential.
You’re conflating ultimate causes and proximate causes. It’s just an extremely elementary mistake in understanding behavior. I didn’t call it Hegelian on the basis that you mentioning Hegel was evidence (though that did help me make the connection), I called it Hegelian because it has the same ethos of the end existing inside each step of the process, drawing the process along intrinsically, which you cannot claim this theory of “want” is not.
It’s no different than saying massive bodies want to be near each other (prioritized in terms of mass1 x mass2 / distance) because they keep exerting force that trends toward that outcome. It’s no different than saying that liquids “want” to hold together, they just don’t want it very strongly, or that rivers “want” to erode shorelines. With base organisms, it’s just input -> output, and the function processing them was created by selection pressures, but there is nothing distinguishing the actual actions on a proximate level from ones that are ultimately self-destructive, because the self-destruction only happens later and on that basis, with no further information being required, cannot be used for establishing what was going on inside the base organism at a proximate level to cause the output.
I’m a total philistine, half of the words you said just passed over my head, I just don’t see anything fundamentally different between amoebas and an electronic light sensor or a roomba or whatever. Certain inputs produce certain outputs, and things like whether it’s chemical or mechanical or anything else is immaterial. You may as well tell me that every massive object “wants” to move toward other massive objects in proportion to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them. The fact that one perpetuates an organism’s existence and the other isn’t is purely incidental and I think you’re effectively projecting a teleology onto it by saying that these reactions by means of which an organism maintains itself are, by that very fact, evidence of a “want.”
spoiler
Dork gibberish, not important. Although you should look it up if you’re ever bored, it’s interesting stuff
I think that’s kind of the central difference to me at least. It’s the self maintenance of the tension between the internal and external by reproduction of its component parts that do kinda be what distinguishes life and organisms from mechanistic objects. as you say, whether it’s chemical or mechanical or electrical doesn’t really matter.
Uhhhh well kinda yeah. (Not a cognitive “want” btw, but it is sublated into the cognitive want. Like the OP puts it, the directionality that forms the preawareness “want”, that is later identified with the experiential want post-awareness. But even further back before that, and even prior to the evolutionary process.) It’s the circle that presupposes its own end like Hegel talks about. It’s self-referential. Some authors say that’s not teleological and some do, I’d say it’s teleological, but that’s just me. On some level you can say that it’s just reactive processes but then at the level of operation of the whole system it does gain real significance beyond its appearance as such due to its autonomy and closure from the surrounding world. There’s a direct throughline between this “want” on the level of a single cell, as in the constant bringing forth of what it lacks for its own continuation, and things like the special process of reproduction, cognition, experience, self-awareness, and social processes. And even lower below the organism, dissipative structures. Systems constantly implementing themselves as their ends at every level of self-organization. It’s just… dialectics. I’m probably not giving a good account of this perspective because I’m not much of a writer or communicator, and I’ve probably misrepresented some things. You could say I’m just splitting hairs about semantics. I guess that’s true too.
But that’s a statement about the ultimate consequences of what happens, which doesn’t tell us almost anything about the proximate nature of the actions. That’s what I mean by “projecting a teleology.” Consider a mutant amoeba that does something not conducive to self-maintenance, there is nothing inherently different about the nature of those actions as biological processes, it requires a zoomed-out view to explain normal amoebas as conforming to selection pressures and this mutated behavior as deviating from selection pressures. “But the amoeba dies!” Yes, but the event of the death later on is not useful for explaining the fundamental nature of the action itself, the death is a distant, emergent consequence of the action, an event distinct from the action (as is successful replication, and even more so with the “event” of surviving past that point in the future). You’re using teleological reasoning to make some sort of metaphysical claim about events and organisms that fundamentally don’t make sense from a materialist perspective.
This, as I have abridged it, is completely true. The issue is that the “want” is just a metaphysical, teleological complication that doesn’t help us understand anything and just serves to mystify a mechanical/chemical/electrical process that is already entirely understandable.
Right, it is dialectics. The problem is that it’s Hegelian dialectics, which is highly teleological and idealist, and not material dialectics.
spoiler
it’s not Hegelian dialectics just because I quoted Hegel, but you keep misrepresenting what I have to say so I’m not going to keep effortposting on this, which I should have done when I said I would earlier. You can read authors on autopoietic theory and systems thinking like Varela or Friston if you want. It’s a completely material dialectical analysis and not “teleological” in the way you’re referring to. It’s just self-referential.
You’re conflating ultimate causes and proximate causes. It’s just an extremely elementary mistake in understanding behavior. I didn’t call it Hegelian on the basis that you mentioning Hegel was evidence (though that did help me make the connection), I called it Hegelian because it has the same ethos of the end existing inside each step of the process, drawing the process along intrinsically, which you cannot claim this theory of “want” is not.
It’s no different than saying massive bodies want to be near each other (prioritized in terms of mass1 x mass2 / distance) because they keep exerting force that trends toward that outcome. It’s no different than saying that liquids “want” to hold together, they just don’t want it very strongly, or that rivers “want” to erode shorelines. With base organisms, it’s just input -> output, and the function processing them was created by selection pressures, but there is nothing distinguishing the actual actions on a proximate level from ones that are ultimately self-destructive, because the self-destruction only happens later and on that basis, with no further information being required, cannot be used for establishing what was going on inside the base organism at a proximate level to cause the output.