Leonid

Hi, Stephen Thank you for your response and for the link. I do have Morowitz and Smith's article. I quoted Binswanger's “Life-Based Teleology and Foundations of Ethics" (1992); Rosen's “Life Itself"; Hans Jonas' “The Phenomenon of Life", "The uniqueness of biological self-organization: challenging the Darwinian paradigm" by J. B. Edelmann Æ M. J. Denton published in Biol. Philos (2007) 22:579–601 DOI 10.1007/s10539-006-9055-5. I also highly recommend “Nano-intentionality: a defense of intrinsic intentionality" by W. Tecumseh Fitch1, Biology & Philosophy © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007 10.1007/s10539-007-9079-5 which I didn't quoted. I'd like to emphasize that my post is not an article but rather highlights of the article on which I'm currently working. My second language is Hebrew and this is the language we speak in Israel. In South Africa we have 11 official languages and about 20 un-official, so everybody can suit him/herself. I speak English at work and with my English-speaking friends. At home I speak Russian and Hebrew.

Thanks. That was helpful. I'll definitely use your advice in future.

I think, Porter quite clearly explained the ideas of the authors she quoted. And they are utter rubish. In any case what does it have to do with the subject-matter? Besides, whom I ever intimidated?

Grames: I wonder why did you post this piece of rubbish. If you imply that my work is similar to the articles which Porter qoutes,then you are as cynical and indefferent to ideas as authors of those articles. Hairnet "The most intuitive answer I can give is that the mind is an emergent property of the body," Your intuition (whatever it means) gives to you right answer. Mind is emergent property of the body. As such in cannot be reduced to body but also cannot be separated from it. Strictly speaking, one couldn't discuss mind and body as two different entities but only as mind-body unit. That also answers your question about relationship between mind and body.Mind is not just awareness, it is a tool of human self-initiated goal orientation action on conceptual level. Mind is a tool of man's survival qua man. Hairnet"Please try to format your stuff better." I try my best, but I'm alwyas happy to learn. Would you please tell me how should I do it?

Homo liber nulla de re minus quam de morte cogitat; et ejus sapientia non mortis sed vitae meditatio est. SPINOZA'S Ethics, Pt IV, Prop. 67 (There is nothing over which a free man ponders less than death; his wisdom is, to meditate not on death but on life.) Reductionism and its corollary, Determinism are deeply enrooted in the fabric of the modern mainstream philosophy. There are leftovers of the Cartesian mind-body dichotomy. Instead to reject this notion altogether Reductionists simply choose the other, bodily side of this loaded coin. Now they reached a blind alley in their attempts to explain life in terms of lifelessness. As Hans Jonas observed “Vitalistic monism is replaced by mechanistic monism, in whose rules of evidence the standard of life is exchanged for that of death.” (The Phenomenon of Life, pg 11). Since Mind and Free Will are biological phenomena which cannot be explained in terms of non-life, Reductionists are necessary Determinists. Hard Determinists reject the notion of Free Will (and therefore Mind) completely; soft Determinists and Compatibalists are still trying to find explanation of Free Will in the indeterminate realm of Quantum mechanics, in stochastic rules of Chaos theory or in the mystical realm of Tao. I maintain that Free Will is a manifestation on the conceptual level of the very essential property of life itself which is biological self causation. “Freedom must denote an objectively discernible mode of being, i.e., a manner of executing existence, distinctive of the organic per se” (Ibid pg 3). Law of Causality is law of Identity applied to action (Ayn Rand). Since biological action is self-generated goal orientated response (SIGOR) to environmental challenges, such an action cannot be predetermined by any antecedent cause. On the contrary, any antecedent or proximate action could be only detrimental to the healthy living process. As Rosen put it “it is perfectly respectable to talk about a category of final causation and to a component as the effect of its final cause…In this sense, then, a component is entailed by its function… a material system is an organism if and only if , it is closed to efficient causation.” (Life Itself, pg 135). In other words the process of biological causation is a process in which final cause (a goal), becomes its efficient cause. Many Reductionists and, as I have learned, many Objectivists would cry bloody mysticism as a jerk-knee reaction to such a statement. However, this is not a case of mysticism, far from it. Life emerged as result of self-organization of abiotic elements. How that happened we don’t know yet. However some researchers think that this is thermodynamically inevitable event.” Life is universally understood to require a source of free energy and mechanisms with which to harness it. Remarkably, the converse may also be true: the continuous generation of sources of free energy by abiotic processes may have forced life into existence as a means to alleviate the buildup of free energy stresses….” (Energy flow and the organization of life. Harold Morowitz and Eric Smith, 2006). But does it mean that life is determined process? I don’t think so. Life is emergent phenomenon and as such it possesses new properties which its precursors don’t have. In their book “Biological Self-organization” Camazine et al. (2001: define self-organization: ‘‘as a process in which pattern at the global level of a system emerges solely from numerous interactions among the lower level components of the system. The system has properties that are emergent, if they are not intrinsically found within any of the parts, and exist only at a higher level of description....’’ From this definition follows that 1. A process of self-organization doesn't have antecedent cause. 2. Emergent properties of such a system are different from the properties of its components and therefore cannot be explained by means of reductionism. In other words properties of such a system are not defined by antecedent cause. Life is self-organizing, self-regulated material structure which is able to produce self-generated goal orientated action when the goal is preservation and betterment of itself. This new emergent identity which applied to biotic action defines new type of causation-self causation. Harry Binswanger observed “All levels of living action, from a cell’s protein-synthesis to a scientist’s investigations, are goal-directed. In vegetative action, past instances of the “final cause” act as “efficient cause.”(1992). This is the mechanism of self-causation. Now is clear why any action imposed on the organism and driven by antecedent cause could be only detrimental-it inevitable would interfere with self-generated action of the organism. Each and every organism is its own primary mover. In the low organisms the degree of freedom of action is limited by their genetic set up. However even low organisms like fungi for example able to overcome this genetic determinism “During a critical period, variability is generated by the fact that, a system becomes conditioned by all the factors influencing the spontaneous emergence of symmetry-breaking event. In such a context variability does not reflect an environmental perturbation in expression of a pre-existing (genetic) program of development…It is expression of a process of individuation.” (Trewavas, 1999) SIGOR is limited by their perceptual ability and capacity to process the sensory input. The process of evolution is a process of development of these qualities, since organism’s survival depends on them. More freedom of action means better chances of survival. The end product of such a process is Free Will and self-awareness, that is-human mind. Free Will therefore is an expression of self-causation on conceptual level. As Rodrigues observed: “Cerebral representations result from self-emergence of networks of interactions between modules of neurons stimulated by sensorial perception.” (Rodriguez at al., 1999) The human abilities to choose goals consciously and to act rationally in order to achieve them turn biology to ethics .But the origin of these abilities lie in the very fundamental property of any living being. This property is self-generated goal orientated action driven by self causation. Any attempt to reduce this property to the set of biochemical reactions or to undetermined behavior of subatomic particles is doomed to fail. Ayn Rand profoundly summarized the meaning of life in “We, The Living”. “I know what I want, and to know HOW TO WANT-isn’t it life itself?”

When life becomes agony it ceases to be life. The application of life's standards to the process of dying is contradiction in terms. Dying has nothing to do with the question whether life has intrinsic value.

In certain circumstances the continuation of life is not a matter of choice. When life became an agony, that is-non life, one may choose not to prolong such a condition. This is not a choice of death over life but a choice to avoid prolonged agonizing dying. Such a choice is moral and just.

First, can you demonstrate the circularity? Second, life qua life is not creation of physics/chemistry parameters. Life is self-organization of physical and chemical elements into emergent structure. Such a structure possesses emergent properties which its parts don't possess-namely the ability to take self-generated goal-goal orientation action in order to sustain itself. This action could be driven only by self-causation when the cause is the goal projected into the future. Life, therefore, is irreducible phenomenon; reductionism doesn't apply to life-process. The basic irreducible unit of life is a cell. Molecules aren't alive. As a matter of fact, the term "molecular biology is an oxymoron". Mind is not the end in itself; it is a tool of human survival. When you proclaim "It is good" you mean it is good for your life. As Ayn Rand put it "All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil."(GS) In fact, the process of dying is a process of reduction of life to its physical-chemical elements and such a process don’t require any self-generated action. If one is not in particular hurry to die, he could simply stop to act and Nature will take its course.

itsjames:" Do you at least agree that there is a necessary distinction to make between a concept like "life" and the concepts of "existence", "consciousness", and "identity"? The difference between these latter concepts and a concept like "life" is that the latter concepts are implicitly grasped much earlier on because they require an integration of fewer unitsThe concept "life" on the other hand requires much more. " That could be. Nevertheless, every 3 year old child knows the difference between the living puppy and the toy dog.

It is nothing wrong with the Ayn Rand's concept of reduction, but it is irrelevant to our subject matter. I do discuss reductionism exactly because the acceptance of this notion creates contradiction of free will with the Objectivist theory of causation. The concept of life cannot be denied because denial is a mental act which pertains to mind which by itself pertains to life. Dead people don't refute anything. Therefore life is axiomatic concept.

I described properties of existence as a whole. This is obvious that different existents have different properties. Axiomatic property of existence is epistemic, in the sense that existence doesn't require a proof, all proves depend on it. Identity of existence defines its bondaries which means that existence is not infinite and cannot be created like your keyboard. Existence is a widest concept which includes keyboards, curly hair, men, stars and whatever you want. If all these things have properties and identities, then by induction existence also has them. If existence has no identity, then it exists as nothing in particular, in other words it doesn't exists. That would be worse then contradiction in terms.

Reductionism in modern philosophy is a notion that complex systems could be explained by analysis of their parts. While such an approach works for physics, it's inapplicable to the self-organized systems with new emergent properties, like life or mind. All attempts to explain mind by description of electro-chemical activity of the brain or life by means of biochemistry inevitably failed. So modern philosophers of mind now wonder about explanatory gap because they cannot accept the idea that new emergent properties render to the existent new identity with new causation. Life can be reduced to perceptual level by observation of the living entities. However it cannot be reduced to the perceptual level by observation of the biochemical reactions or observation of behavior of subatomic particles. But that what reductionism proposes to do. Consciousness which is axiomatic also could be directly observed by introspection. Life is axiomatic because, as philosophical concept, life qua life (LQL) can be explained only in terms of life, that is-self organized system which is capable to develop self-initiated goal-orientated action in order to sustain itself. Such a process by definition excludes effective causation. It is impossible to reduce these properties of life to the level of unanimated matter or to explain them on this level.

Life originated from non-life but cannot be reduced to it. This process would eliminate the emergent properties which constitute life. That would be contradiction in terms. The mere aggregation of chemicals doesn't possess life's properties. Life is antithetic to non-life. Consciousness cannot be reduced to non-consciousness but can be reduced to life since it is a property of the living organism, that is-man. Human consciousness is a tool to sustain human life, "mind is a tool of survival". The function of consciousness is to facilitate self-initiated goal orientated action on conceptual level. But such a function is an essence of life on any level. Since life is irreducible phenomenon, one can safely define it as an axiom.

Life cannot be explained in the terms of non-life. That would be contradiction in terms. The metaphysical essence of life is not the chemical composition of the living entity. The dead plant is made out from exactly the same chemicals as the living one. The life's essence is the structural self-organization of the matter with emergent properties which allows self-generated action aimed to sustain this stucture. For the obvious reason such an action cannot be determined by antecedent cause originated outside of the organism. In man the tool of such an action is mind and free will.

A is A and living entities have an identity which is ontologically different from that of the unanimated matter. They are capable to produce the self-initiated action. Therefore they have different type of causation, self-causation. Free will is an ability to initiate an action without proximate cause on conceptual level. Even our genetic make-up is a result of natural selection which is driven by self-initiated action in order to survive and flourish. The organism is driven not by predestination but by anticipation, that is- by the ability to act in order to achieve self-generated goals, projected into the future.

Sure. 1. Existence exists independently from consciousness. It's objective reality. 2. Existence is axiomatic, that is-it doesn't require proof, but all proofs depend on it. 3. Existence has identity which defines its boundaries. It's not infinite or unlimited. 4. Existence cannot be created or transcended. Nothing exists beyond existence, nothing is supernatural. 5. Existence acts in accordance to its identity. For example it cannot suddenly disappear, become non-existence 6. Existence is not a property of everything else. On the contrary, everything else possesses some properties of existence (not all of them) which I listed above.

This is not equivocation. We are talking here about two opposite processes-living and dying. They have different ontology, identity and causation but pertain to one object. Only living organism can live or die.

In certain situations the continuance of life for man qua man becomes impossible, life becomes its antithesis, a process of dying. In such a case man can rationally decide not to prolong his agony. This is rational and moral choice.

Life which is agony, that is-process of dying, has no value. In spite that organism during such a process still alive, all its actions are opposite to the process of living. By definition such an organism cannot successfully pursuit any values and eventually ceases to exist. But obviously, if one ignores this essential difference, one run into contradictions. Life is life, but life which is agony is not. They are two different concepts.

Choice to live is not choice not to die. Strictly speaking one cannot choose to live since he is already alive. However, man can choose to live qua man or qua rosebush (read as parasite, secondhander). But this is already different topic.

I think that to be exact the quote should read " If he chooses to continue to live", or as you said "to engage in life-furthering." In other words " If he chooses not to die" . But one cannot choose to live since he is already alive.

“Existence is the widest of all concepts .It subsumes everything-every entity, action, attribute, relationship (including every state of consciousness)-every thing which is, was, or will be. The concept does not specify that a physical word exist.”(Peikoff .Objectivism pb5) Basically this concept comes to describe fundamental fact that something exists as opposed to nothing. By “universe” we usually mean the physical world, the total sum of entities. Existence is the subject-matter of metaphysics. Universe is the subject-matter of cosmology and physics. The Crab Nebula is part of the universe (and existence) but it would be awkward and not very appropriate to describe philosophy or individual rights as part of the universe. A definition of the universe as a collective designation of all entities has another corollary – this concept describes only known entities. Existence, however, describes any entity, already discovered or waiting to be discovered .Existence, therefore, is a much broader concept than the universe. The implication of this conclusion is that one cannot always ascribe properties of existence to the universe. Existence exists and this is an axiom. But the existence of the universe as a collection of known entities is not axiomatic. (To talk about the universe as a collection of unknown entities would be contradictory-one cannot discuss an unknown universe). We have no knowledge of the whole universe, not even a significant part of it. For example, we have only recently discovered that 95% of the universe’s mass is made up of the dark matter. So in actual fact we only know about 5% of what constitutes the universe. To know the universe means to know what entities constitute it and by which laws they interact. This is the realm of physics which studies known describable universe. Existence however includes everything which is exists including unknown. Therefore universal laws which describe interaction of entities in the universe are not always applicable to existence. For example it would be inappropriate to say that existence is expanding (like universe). The only thing one can say about the laws of existence is that they should fulfill the criteria of non-contradictory identification.

There is no such a thing as choice to live. To make any choices one has to be alive in the first place. Choice is corollary of life. One only can choose to die and even for that he has to be alive.

No, I refer to the situation in which life cannot sustain itself. Properly speaking, this is not life but an agony. Process of dying cannot be qualified as life. In fact such a process is exact antithesis of life. The argument stays.