Dear Stan and others
It is important to notice that Aristotle's final course was thought into a
worldview where everything had its natural place and over a lifetime would
develop from potentiality to actuality and fulfill that place. The purpose
was to fulfill you place in this Cosmos, which had always been like this -
moved by the immovable mover who had also given his rationality to the
humans, so they by induction could recognize the order of things. Now Peirce
is able to take over this point of view in his evolutionary semiotic,
hylozoist view of the world. I a Peircean pan semiotics it is the pure
feeling that through evolutionary love manifests as life and mind at the
same time as the universe is moving towards a state of frozen structure. So,
here the drive towards heat death creates structures that carry life and
consciousness and therefore love - as I interpret him. As the energy is
converted to entropy, evolution and the universe will come to a hold.
What confuses me about Stan's answers is that he on one hand say and writes
that he is a pansemiotist and on the other hand speak of thermodynamics as
if he was a physicalist. From a physicalist's point of view it does not make
sense to speak of a final course outside living beings - for many of them
not even with animals. Some even do not believe in free will or that out
self-consciousness has any causal influence on the material world.
I cannot see, Stan, how you can say that the heat dead of the universe is it
purpose or final cause?
I am then disturbed by, that we come to humans you just say that there are
plenty of meanings of the meaning of life and the universe. But they are
subjective, cultural and often superstitious constructions and many of the
are contradictory? What kind of argument is that? I fail to see a consistent
view point in what you say. It confuses me, as we in many ways have the same
basic philosophies.
In the line of Peirce's work I see both science, philosophy and religion -
even politics - working on the understanding of reality and life - trying to
get them to make sense. It sure does not now - and the various symbolic
generalized medias (as Luhmann calls them) does not interact and corporate
very much. We have instead a growth in fundamentalistic views in both
religion, politics and science, which I agree threatens to bring the world
to horrible wars again.
But exactly the problem of if material growth is the answer to the problem
of survival and happiness has been discussed between the church and
politicians plus economists and lately be the environmentalists from the
idea of scarcity of resources and deeper purposes of human life. Also if the
meaning is just to be as many living humans here as possible or there is a
deep quality to human life - like enlightenment in some form. What would be
the broadest common good? It is one of the most important discussions going
on now.
My problem is if we can ever know from a common philosophy of science point
of view, which some of you now turn into an internalist philosophy. To me it
is just basic epistemology. It may indicate that final goals has to found in
the emotional and spiritual realm, not in the scientific and political.
Venlig hilsen / Best wishes
Søren Brier
Copenhagen Business School , Management, Politics and Philosophy,
Bl�g�rdsgade 23B, DK-K�benhavn 2200 N.
Office-phone +45 3815 2208 Cell 28564282
Old home page with full text documents
http://www.flec.kvl.dk/personalprofile.asp?id=sbr&p=engelsk
Ed. in Chief of Cybernetics & Human Knowing : home page:
http://www.imprint-academic.com/C&HK
-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es] P�
vegne af Stanley N. Salthe
Sendt: 9. maj 2005 23:25
Til: fis@listas.unizar.es
Emne: Re: [Fis] Economic Networks
As usua,l Aleks has presented us with a splendid analysis. I will comment
on a few points without really objecting to anything:
>Stanley N. Salthe wrote:
>> Aristotelian idea that a final cause is that FOR WHICH something
occurs.
>> Given that (because of its accelerated expansion) the Universe is
>> very far from thermodynamic equilibrium, all events tend to
>> contribute to Universal equilibration, and locally this goes by way
>> of entropy prduction. Nothing happens irreversibly without producing
>> entropy, and in usual cases more of available energy goes into
>> entropy than into exergy. Because of this generally poor energy
>> efficiency, it is legitimate to say that whatever occurs does so IN
ORDER
TO PRODUCE ENTROPY.
>
>I'd like to thank Stan for a very nice overview of different terms
>people use for the concept of the "final cause". I will go on a
tangent
>here, apologies to Bob and Igor.
>
>It's the chicken-and-egg problem of what was there earlier, entropy or
>the final cause. I tend to view things from the epistemological
>standpoint, and I perceive Aristotelian causality as a construct.
>Because we're habituated to think in terms of the
>subject/object/how/why, we seek to answer these questions. Entropy is
>an approach to explaining the "why"-aspect of a phenomenon in a
formal
>fashion.
>
>So while Stan sees entropy as an answer to "why", I see entropy
as a
>particular model of "why". Structural attractors are also models
of
>"why", for example.
SS: Yes, exactly so. Note that finalities can be ranked across realms
{physical finality {chemical finality {biological finality {sociopolitical
finality}}}}.
By the way, "why" is not as precise as the actual
>definition of the final cause.
SS: OK. Could we have this definition (I can't seem to recall it)?
>In all, I'm quite confident in the
>Aristotelian model, but I feel I can arbitrarily redefine what entropy is.
>
>All the four causes are equivalent. Trying to derive one of them
>(entropy) from another one (gravity), or vice versa (gravity from
>entropy) is a proven way of achieving splits between scientific and
>philosophical communities. Unless we transcend Aristotelian causality,
>let's not try to order the causes or eliminate them. It's been tried
>too many times, to no avail.
SS: I have argued only for using the negotiations between all four of
them to explain events (by the way I would be willing to send a small pdf
showing my views on the four causes to whoever would like to see it). I
have just been involved in a discussion where I have advanced finality
alongside formality, but it sees to have been taken that I was denying the
importance of formality.
>However, there are examples of imbalance among the causes. For example,
>if you have a lot of energy (growth), it will disperse into a lot of
>entropy. If you have a lot of entropy, there is a lot of likelihood
>that some local gradient will get amplified and possibly self-organize.
>It's not that the model would "force" this to happen, it's just
that
>our reality is such that all causes are needed.
OK, Well put. I guess I am guilty of stressing finality in the Second
Law case because so many seem to wish to avoid seeing this aspect of things.
I add a short reply to Igor:
I see that Igor tries to find a way to shield himself from the 'heat' of
univeral equilibration. Very adroit! BUT it has the consequence that he
joins the postmodern social construction of knowledge movement that most
scientists abhor. In this view, these constructions merely serve human
economic interests, and the amusement of philosophy.
STAN
>As for Soren's concern about the meaning: we're in-system, our models
>are intrinsically imperfect, but some models are more useful than no
>models at all, as the statistician Box used to say. You cannot liberate
>yourself from models, just as you cannot liberate your existence: give
>up reason and instinct, and you'll be ruled by your reflexes and
>sensations, give up reflexes and sensations, and if you've survived
>this far, you'll be consumed by those who haven't given up the reflexes
>and sensations, and your philosophy will perish along with you.
>
>--
>mag. Aleks Jakulin
>http://kt.ijs.si/aleks/
>Department of Knowledge Technologies,
>Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
>
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Received on Tue May 10 11:23:23 2005
