The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts

[Boydstun]

The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts (1992) by Harry Binswanger

~Part 1~

In this work, Harry Binswanger rejects the idea that the ends-attaining actions of living things are the result of a kind of sui generis cause appearing in nature in living things and not derivative from the causes in play in inanimate nature. That is, he sets aside the vitalist view of living action; there is no vital force inexplicable in terms of complexes of inanimate forces. 

Actions in which there are ends-behaviors are indeed peculiar to living things. But at this stage of science, we profitably seek to explain these behaviors by physical and chemical processes in certain structures. The patterns of behaviors in living things—from unicellular organisms to plants and animals—that appear to be aimed at goals or ends such as survival or reproduction are, in Binswanger’s argument, to be conceived as emergent from inanimate processes. His general position, which I think correct, is aptly called emergentist teleologist.

Binswanger affirms the reality of goal-directedness in living nature, even where no directing consciousness is in play. It is cognitively important, in Binswanger’s view, that vegetative teleological patterns of action be understood as causal, even though teleology in living nature (e.g. plant tropisms) is explicable in terms of inanimate forces of nature. “Explanation on the level of parts does not necessarily eliminate the need for explanation on the level of wholes, and vice versa” (23).

Our understanding of some things under the form ‘A because B’ is without the ‘because’ being causal (Lange 2017). Let A be the fact that the three angles of any triangle in the Euclidean plane sum to two right angles (2R), and let B be all the circumstances invoked directly or indirectly in Euclid’s proof of the 2R theorem. No causal powers are essential to that ‘because’ and understanding. Binswanger is not making out vegetative ends-directedness, or vegetative teleology, to be a non-causal ‘because’, but a causal one. I’ll show how he does that in Part 3 of this study. (Earlier remarks on Binswanger’s book include Mozes 1995, Enright 2023, and here.)

“Now the principles which cause motion in a natural way are two, of which one is not natural, as it has no principle of motion in itself. Of this kind is whatever causes movement, not being itself moved, such as that which is completely unchangeable, the primary reality, and the essence of a thing, i.e. the form; for this is the end or that for the sake of which. Hence since nature is for the sake of something, we must know this cause also. We must explain the ‘why’ in all the senses of the term, namely, that from this will necessarily result (‘from this’ either without qualification or for the most part); that this must be so if that is to be so (as the conclusion presupposes the premisses); that this was the essence of the thing; and because it is better thus (not without qualification, but with reference to the substance in each case).” (Aristotle, Ph. 198a36–198b9) (I’ll compare this translation to that of Joe Sachs when I receive the latter.)

Form is the cause-for-the-sake-of-which in unmoved movers. One such mover would be essences of things. Against this Aristotelian view, Rand and Binswanger and I have it that there are no such movers outside situations in which there is mortal life. If essences have causal powers, it can be only by their connection with living mind. Aristotle’s conception of what power is had by essences directly is flatly wrong.

On the Rand view, which I think correct, essential characteristic(s) of a thing explain other distinctive characteristics of a thing, and that explanation is sometimes causal. As we get to know the microstructure of a material it may deserve being taken as the essential characteristic of the material (and stand in the definition of the material for many contexts) in that that characteristic distinguishes the material from any other, but further, the microstructure, when well enough known, can provide a causal explanation of features of the material on its macroscopic scale. 

Such a profound dependence of essential characteristic on state of knowledge is not within Aristotle’s conception of an essence; anything added to an essence changes it to a different essence, and the essence of each thing is singular (Metaph. 1044a1, 1031b5). For him essences are substances without matter (Metaph. 1032b14). They are causes, and they are forms (Metaph. 983a27, 1032b2–14). We moderns by and large not only reject his notion of essence, but Aristotle’s distinctive notion of form as well and operation of final causality in an arena larger than the arena of concrete life (including human artifacts in the arena of concrete life).

Aristotle’s essences and forms aside, his conception is correct that there are final causes at work in unintelligent life forms, final causes that are independent of any directing mind whatever (Bolton 2015). Binswanger aims to show this is so as modern biological knowledge is brought to the issue. For Aristotle, such final causes are not simply fallout from efficient causes, so I’ll be looking for how Binswanger’s analysis lands on this specific character of vegetative and sensitive final causes.

Aristotle famously used ends and causes-for-the-sake-of-which (traditionally called final cause, but now often called teleological cause) in explanations for not only the survival and reproductive activities of plants and animals, but for the actions of simpler things, for the actions of elemental substances. Earthen things naturally move downward to the center of the cosmos, which center coincides with the center of the earth (Cael. 296b10–24). That is their deepest nature. The center is their natural place, and they fall so as to reach that place (Cael. 277a213–16; 295b16–96a22; 311a23–24). The natural motion of water is also downward (Cael. 269a17). This is a very thin sort of final causality in comparison to what Aristotle sees at work in complex things such as plants or animals which are composed of these elemental substances, and in Aristotle’s view, the final causes in living things are not due to this thin final causality in the elements composing living things (Gotthelf 2012, 65). Then too, the natural end of the falling rain is not success of the human project of growing grains (Ph. 198b18–20).

It quickly occurs to us moderns that final causality is not employed in our Newtonian mechanics: accelerations require a causal explanation, and those causes are efficient, not teleological. We make use of the circumstance that in classical mechanics, nature acts such that certain patterns in dynamical variables come about (e.g. Hamilton’s Principle), but no final causality drawing nature to those patterns is required or invoked. So it goes, also, for thermal physics and for quantum theory and relativity. The falling of a body near the surface of the earth is not on account of tending to its natural place. Its intrinsic nature is to follow time-like geodesics in spacetime, which in this situation happens to be a certain curved spacetime. The falling body is not doing so and doing so in the way it does for the sake of staying on that geodesic. Aristotle was wrong in taking any sort of final causation to be at work in this physical situation.                                              

Let me digress just a bit to observe that in our physics of nature today there are also no formal causes. For my handsaw in the shop, there is a teleological cause of its existence (the human aim of cutting wood) and there is a formal cause of it (the design plan for it, with its having teeth, having a handle, and limits of the size of the saw). As Aristotle observed, correctly, my saw has a material cause also: to the purpose of cutting wood, the teeth of the blade shall be harder than wood; the saw of Aristotle’s tradesman and my saw have iron as their material cause (Ph. 200a7–14). For us moderns, when it comes to nature, rather than a human artifact, a plan of the natural object might be discerned, yet the plan, which is to say, Aristotelian form in his form-matter composite, is not something we take as an end-directing power of nature.

In Aristotle’s final causality, which was identified with form in Aristotle’s matter-form amalgam, final causality had a priority in explanation over efficient and material causality. The latter were for implementing the ends in all material things. An artificial object such as a statue, a chair, a bed, or a saw have a form given them by their human makers. Such objects as such have no nature, in the view of Aristotle, only the natures of their natural materials. We moderns do not think that way, at least not after a certain childhood stage. We are as happy to go on about the nature of a tractor as of a working mule.  

Aristotle argues an account of “what sensible substance is, and in what sense it exists; either as matter, or as form and actuality, or thirdly as the combination of the two” (Metaph. 1043a27–28, H. Tredennick, translator). Explanation of substance (which is most fundamental thing among beings), for Aristotle, requires both matter and form in his sense. Like most all moderns, Rand and Peikoff reject Aristotle’s fundamental form/matter composition of all beings (Rand 1990 Appendix, 286; Further, “Aristotle’s Theory of Form” in Bostock 2006; Chapter 3 of Koslicki 2018; Frerejohn 2013; and Lennox 2015.) Koslicki 2018 defends Aristotle’s fundamental matter/form combination as right in our modern science and therewith opposes reductive physical efficient causation in biology. Binswanger returns mind-free teleological causes to biology without retreat to Aristotle’s hylomorphism (matter/form).

Aristotle’s cluster of views on final causality (and formal causality) had flourished in the Scholastic era of the Latin West and earlier with Avicenna, Arab assimilator of Aristotle. I should note, however, that these theologically minded fellows actually failed to leave Aristotle’s notion of natural teleology in operation and replaced it with a regression to Plato, wherewith superintending intelligence directs the course of all things with ends in view; Aristotle’s notion of mind-free teleology was booted. Be all that as it may: today, the appearances of teleological behaviors in plants and low-level sensory behaviors of animals have been accounted for by the efficient-causal factors in biological evolution, originating with Darwin, and efficient-causal factors in molecular biology (Sarkar 2005).

In Part 2, I’ll look at Aristotle’s teleological causality in vegetative and sensitive life and in the heavens. I’ll convey the rejection of such natural causality in Descartes and Spinoza, as well as its resurrection by Leibniz. Part 3 will present Binswanger’s post-Darwin analysis of teleological causality in vegetative and sensitive life and set Binswanger’s scheme into the prior history of philosophy covered in the first two Parts of this study. This study is worthwhile in itself, but I undertook it for background for addressing computation and representation in cognitive science today in connection with David Kelley’s way with direct perceptual realism in The Evidence of the Senses in the course of completing my study “David Kelley’s Kant” here at Objectivism Online. In the present study, I’ll particularly want to assess the implications of Binswanger’s scheme for Ayn Rand’s theory of value. 

(To be continued.)

 

References

Aristotle  2016 [c. 348–322 B.C.E.]. Aristotle Metaphysics. C.D.C. Reeve, translator. Indianapolis: Hackett.

——. Physics. R.P. Hardie and R.K. Gaye, translators. In Barnes 1984.

——. On the Heavens. J.L. Stocks, translator. In Barnes 1984.

 

Barnes, J. editor, 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

 

Bolton, R. 2015. Aristotle’s Natural Teleology in Physics II. In Leunissen 2015.

 

Bostock, D. 2006. Space, Time, Matter, and Form – Essays on Aristotle’s Physics. New York: Oxford University Press.

 

Enright, M. 2023. Life is not a Machine or a Ghost: The Naturalistic Origin of Life’s Organization and Goal-Directedness, Consciousness, Free Will, and Meaning. The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies,  Vol. 23, Nos. 1–2, (2023), 218–79.

 

Frerejohn, M.T. 2013. Formal Causes: Definition, Explanation, and Primacy in Socratic and Aristotelian Thought. New York: Oxford University Press.å

 

Gotthelf, A. 2012. Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology. New York: Oxford University Press.

 

Kelley, D. 1986. The Evidence of the Senses – A Realist Theory of Perception. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.

 

Lange, M. 2017. Because without Cause – Non-Causal Explanations in Science and Mathematics. New York: Oxford University Press.

 

Lennox, J.G. 2015. Form as Cause and the Formal Cause. In Leunissen 2015.

 

Leunissen, M. editor, 2015. Aristotle’s Physics – A Critical Guide. New York: Cambridge University Press.

 

Mozes, E. 1995. The Reality of Mind. Objectivity 2(1):93–107.

 

Rand, A. 1990 [1966–67]. Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Expanded second edition. H. Binswanger and L. Peikoff, editors. New York: Meridian.

 

Sarkar, S. 2005. Molecular Models of Life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

[Boydstun]

10 hours ago, Boydstun said:

~Part 1~

. . .                                             

Let me digress just a bit to observe that in our physics of nature today there are also no formal causes. For my handsaw in the shop, there is a teleological cause of its existence (the human aim of cutting wood) and there is a formal cause of it (the design plan for it, with its having teeth, having a handle, and limits of the size of the saw). As Aristotle observed, correctly, my saw has a material cause also: to the purpose of cutting wood, the teeth of the blade shall be harder than wood; the saw of Aristotle’s tradesman and my saw have iron as their material cause (Ph. 200a7–14). For us moderns, when it comes to nature, rather than a human artifact, a plan of the natural object might be discerned, yet the plan, which is to say, Aristotelian form in his form-matter composite, is not something we take as an end-directing power in the physics of nature. 

. . .

 

Edited July 23, 2023 by Boydstun

[Boydstun]

On 7/22/2023 at 11:30 AM, Boydstun said:

. . .

“Now the principles which cause motion in a natural way are two, of which one is not natural, as it has no principle of motion in itself. Of this kind is whatever causes movement, not being itself moved, such as that which is completely unchangeable, the primary reality, and the essence of a thing, i.e. the form; for this is the end or that for the sake of which. Hence since nature is for the sake of something, we must know this cause also. We must explain the ‘why’ in all the senses of the term, namely, that from this will necessarily result (‘from this’ either without qualification or for the most part); that this must be so if that is to be so (as the conclusion presupposes the premisses); that this was the essence of the thing; and because it is better thus (not without qualification, but with reference to the substance in each case).” (Aristotle, Ph. 198a36–198b9) (I’ll compare this translation to that of Joe Sachs when I receive the latter.)

. . .

In Sach's 1995 translation, same passage:

“The sources which bring about motion naturally are twofold, of which one kind is not natural, for sources of that kind do not have in themselves a source of motion. And of this kind is whatever causes motion without being moved, as does not only what is completely motionless and the first of all beings, but also the what-it-is or form, for it is an end and that for the sake of which. So, since nature is for the sake of something, it is also necessary to know this, and one must supply the why completely: for example, that from this necessarily comes that (from this either simply or for the most part), and that if it is going to be, this will be (as from the premises, the conclusion), and this is what it is for it to be, and because it is better thus, not simply, but in relation to the thinghood of each thing.” 

 

In C.D.C. Reeve's 2018:

“The starting-points of natural movement, though, are twofold. One of these is not natural, since it does not have a starting-point of movement within itself. Anything is of this sort if it causes movement without being itself in movement, just as what is entirely immovable (that is, the first of all beings) does and also the what-it-is (that is, the shape) since it is the end and the for-sake-of-which. And so, since nature is for the sake of something, and this cause must be known, the why is given in all ways. For example,: [1] from this that will necessarily result (whether from it unconditionally or for the most part); [2] if this is going to be [then that must first be so] (as from the premises the conclusion results); [3] this is the essence; [4] because it is better this way—not unconditionally better, but better in relation to the substance of the given thing.”

Material in square brackets is from the translator.

 

The variations in these translations would not lead me revise anything I wrote in Part 1 concerning the nonexistence, contra Aristotle, of causation absent intelligence by Aristotle’s form or essence.

I’d like to add for general background information Sach’s remarks on Aristotle’s notion of form in his hylomorphism. Sach’s use of the concept being-at-work in these remarks is Sach’s rendering of energeia, which is usually translated as activity and which Aristotle takes to be required for any being to remain in being. That is false metaphysics of Aristotle, whichever of these two English translations for it we use. The somewhat nearby true thing I’d note is the proposition of Rand’s in the paragraph dealing with the not-utterly-inertness of any existent, on page 39 of ITOE. 

Sach’s helpful remarks (the standard view) on Aristotle’s form (morphē or eidos) in his metaphysics:

“It is often said that Aristotle imports the form/material distinction from the realm of art and imposes it upon nature. In fact it is deduced in Physics I.7, as the necessary condition of any change or becoming. In a compressed way in Physics II.1, and more fully in Metaphysics VIII.2, it is argued that arrangement is insufficient to account for form, which is evident only in the being-at-work of a thing. Morphē never means mere shape, but shapeliness, which implies the act of shaping, and eidos, after Plato molded its use, is never the mere look of a thing, but its invisible look, seen only in speech (193a31).”* 

Study and composition of Part 2 has taken a lot of work, but I should be able to post the result in about three days more. Then, in Part 3, on to Binswanger’s post-Darwinian treatment of natural teleology in organisms, set in the longer intellectual history.

[Boydstun]

On 7/22/2023 at 11:30 AM, Boydstun said:

. . .

Lennox, J.G. 2015. Form as Cause and the Formal Cause. In Leunissen 2015.

 

I got the collection wrong. That paper of Prof. Lennox is NOT in

Leunissen, M. editor, 2015. Aristotle’s Physics – A Critical Guide. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Rather, it is in

Jansen, L. and P. Sandstad., editors, 2021. Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation. New York: Routledge.

 

[Boydstun]

I said 22 days ago that it should be only about 3 days more until I could deliver Part 2 of the paper I'm composing for this thread. Again more study than I estimated has been required. Looks now that I can deliver tomorrow. Meanwhile, I've come across and would like to register a contemporary defense of evolutionary biology that claims to be accessible to the educated public:

Why Evolution Is True 

(Repelling junk) (Intelligent conversation)

Edited August 26, 2023 by Boydstun

[Boydstun]

Continuing the preceding post,

Help at SEP: 

Evolution 

Evolution and Development

[Boydstun]

~Part 2~

I’ll divide Part 2 into two sections. This first section examines further Aristotle’s conception of teleology in natural phenomena, also his method for natural science.

By early 5th c. BCE, Parmenides had figured out that the moon gets its light from the sun, that the earth and moon are spherical, and the morning star is identical to the evening star. Anaxagoras, from those insights, went on, by mid-5th c. BCE, to reason the moon was closer to earth than the sun and to correctly explain eclipses. Meteorites, such as the large one crashing in Greece about 466 BCE, added weight to the thinking of Anaxagoras that the moon was stone. These conclusions were argued by observable phenomena. They were famous and persuasive in Athens and across the ages to us. Empedocles (mid-5th c. BCE) adopted them. Greek astronomy was advancing, and gods were losing their jobs (Graham 2013, 228–41).

Sophism resisted such winnings of the natural philosophers, and the piety police were on the ready. Plato (late 5th to mid-4th c. BCE) formulated a compromise by subordinating natural philosophy to “questions of how things are arranged for the best,” therewith bounding natural philosophy with humanistic and idealist frames.[1]  

Aristotle (384–322 BCE) looks at regular, dependable natural phenomena and poses some observed character of such phenomena as (i) the answer to what makes the observed thing the kind of thing it is and as (ii) a fundamental and irreducible natural power of that kind of thing, upon which science of the kind should be founded. Regular, dependable motion characters are the natural characters for that sort of moving thing, in his conception of them, and contrary motions of such things are forced. Aristotle anoints those natural distinguishing characters purported to be fundamental with a sort of perfection.

Aristotle joins thinkers before him in trying, by reasoning, to determine what are the elementary material substances from which, by combination, all others are made. Before Aristotle in this endeavor, notably, had been Empedocles, with earth, water, fire, and air as the elements (Metaph. 985a31–33). Today the school children can tell us that those elementary kinds of which everything is made are the particle/waves known as quarks, leptons, and the  force-carrier particle/waves. Those are what a line of ancient Greek thinkers had been after: simplest kinds of matter composing all matter and which themselves are not composed of other kinds of matter which are still more elementary (Metaph. 1014a26–27). Our school children can tell us—at a more useful level than particle physics—that the elementary material kinds are the chemical elements. One of the Greeks’ favorite materials to take for elementary was water, and the children now can laugh and reveal that water is H₂O, not a single element.

As I mentioned in Part 1, Aristotle takes it that the elements water and earth move downward towards the center of the cosmos. Of themselves they move thusly along a straight line. Two other elements, air and fire, naturally move upward, and in their simplicity, they move along a straight line. All motion “is either straight or circular or a combination of these two which are the only simple movements” (Cael. 268b17–18). A simple body, an element, moves of its own nature in a uniquely simple way: straight line or circle (269a1–2).

I should say that simple elements moving in their uniquely simple way receives no explanation by saying it so moves on account of its nature. Such saying is no explanation, although, it may serve to give notice that one is at a most basic level of fact, where explanations should stop.

There must be, Aristotle argues, simple bodies moving naturally of themselves in circular paths. Unlike straight lines, circles are complete. “The complete is naturally prior to the incomplete” (269a19). “It is clear that there is in nature some bodily substance other than the formations we know [earth, wind, air, fire], prior to them all and more divine than they” (Cael. 269a29–31). “The superior glory of its nature is proportionate to its distance from this world of ours” (269b15–16).

The four earthly elements are observable or roughly so; mainly it is their elemental standing that needs argumentation.[2] Aristotle’s celestial element, whose natural motion is circular, is an element whose existence must be argued for by Aristotle. The outermost sphere (shell) of the heavens, the one carrying what we would call the fixed stars plainly moves them in a circular way over the earth, though the conveying sphere itself is invisible.[3] What has been called ether is the element making up that invisible rotating sphere (Cael. 270b20–24).[4] Aristotle reasons, with flailing contrariety-based dynamics, that the circular motion of that sphere is eternal.

Moreover: “Everything that has a function exists for its function. The activity of God is immortality, i.e., eternal life. Therefore the movement of God must be eternal. But such is the heaven, viz., a divine body, and for that reason to it is given the circular body whose inherent nature it is to move always in a circle” (Cael. 286a8–11). Aristotle conceives of the sphere of the fixed stars well as those stars as being weightless. No effort of the sphere or upon the sphere is required for it to stay aloft. Though living, it requires no efforts nor a striving soul to keep it moving, unlike living things on earth (284a11–33). In Metaphysics Aristotle maintains the living nature of the primary sphere and its stars, but has that assembly not itself divine. Rather, in Metaphysics, he has a divine unmoved mover towards which elements are drawn by their natural motions, as towards goodness. That would seem to confer some (other) kind of teleology on all the natural motions.

“Everything that has a function exists for its function” is in need of an argument (I think it is an overgeneralization). That sentence implies that if something does not exist for some function, it does not have that function. To deny, then, for example, that the eye comes to exist for the sake of vision would be to deny that the eye serves the function of vision. The patent falsehood of the consequence is then taken for proof of the antecedent “exists for some function”. This argument, based on the false premise that “everything that has a function exists for its function,” is a showing on the cheap of Aristotle’s non-conscious-life teleology. That a component of a living thing truly serves a function does not entail immediately that the component exists for that function.[5]

I should stress in the preceding passage from Aristotle that the immortal god is taken as a living thing, for mortality is pertinent only to living things.[6] I say, contrary the conception of an immortal life: You cannot have it both ways. If a thing lives, then it is mortal; if a thing exists forever, then it is not a living thing.

Aristotle reasoned that the fixed stars, which are embedded in the farthest celestial sphere, have a spherical shape. A mass of such shape has no features for action, such as limbs or wings. We should nonetheless “conceive them as enjoying life and action” (Cael. 292a20–21).[7] They perpetually attain their good without having to themselves take action. They are carried in the way that is their good by that outermost heavenly sphere, whereas lowly life here on the earth requires effort to accomplish its good and completeness.[8]

That is all backwards, of course. I say in tune with Rand that struggle is essential to the thing that is life, that value enters the cosmos right here, and the stars in their effortless cycles are not the tops of existence, but are badged with any worth only by needs and desires in earthly, animal life, namely, by the human being. Our school children will want to point out also that the stars do not make a diurnal circuit around the earth (at some faster-than-light speed); rather, the earth is spinning (cf. Cael. 296a24–297a8).

The superiority of circle to straight line by the former’s completeness, as we have seen, suits divinity of the outermost celestial sphere and its motion, in Aristotle’s view. “Human affairs go in a circle, as do the other things that have a natural movement [as distinct from chance movements or from interventions against natural movement] and coming to be and passing away” (Phys. 223b24–26). Humans and other life are not among the basic elements of the earthly domain, but they have natural movements all the same, whose teleology, perfection, and completeness are signified by their circular quality. 

As for the earthly basic elements, some teleological causality might be awarded raindrops by their nature of heading toward the center of the cosmos. A tad more teleological causality in their falling might be awarded by noting their fall is part of a larger whole: the repetitive cycle of evaporation and condensation. Aristotle displayed some coarse knowledge of that cycle (e.g. Mete. 346b16–31), bearing a sort of completeness.[9] I notice that in claiming these motions are in some sense teleological is to import something not manifest in the phenomena themselves. That is a requirement for causal explanation: For A to be the cause of B, one requirement is that A be something not exactly B. Alan Gotthelf, we should notice, takes on the challenge of refuting the traditional interpretation of Aristotle as holding that final causality is at work in inanimate earthly things such as the falling rain (2012, Part I).

Joe Sachs writes: “Aristotle’s ‘teleology’ does not impose the human idea of purpose onto non-human nature, but recognizes that all natural beings are whole and act so as to preserve that wholeness and fulfill its potencies. Final causality governs the action of formal causes, and thus characterizes the whole realm of nature.” (2011, 58) Aristotle’s idea that non-living natural things act so as to preserve their unity or self-continuation, I say, is out of bounds, the bounds of the living and artifacts of the intelligent living. Additionally, Aristotle’s picture in which, in all domains, potencies have a striving for actuality is a foul.

In Aristotle’s understanding, falling raindrops are in their intrinsic motion to their own natural end. Under evaporation and condensation, they are part of a cycle, a completeness composed of two elements: water and air. The elements also make up the complex cyclic formations that are life. Living things have their own overall ends, which are not the “ends” of the earthly elements composing an organism. The overall ends of living things are to live and reproduce. The living parts of a living thing have functions supporting those overarching ends. We can concur with Aristotle in those propositions and in this one as well: without the ends of continued life and reproduction, functional parts of the organism would not exist (GA 742a28–36).

Where I should part company with Aristotle is in going on to infer that the overarching ends cause the enabling parts to exist; not every because is a causal because. A pure potential, such as a potential organism, does not bring forth enablers to its actuality. The evolution-absent and biochemistry-absent context of Aristotle’s knowledge requires his over-rating the power of pure potentials to support his notion of vegetative teleological causes.[10]

We might stress in defense of Aristotle that the parents giving rise to an offspring-organism are actual, not purely potential, and that indeed there will be no offspring without actual parents. That is confusion of Aristotle’s position, a blurring over of his way of having final causes of the particular individual organism enable the bringing about of its own functioning parts. “The soul is the first actualization of a natural body which possesses life potentially” (de An. 412a28). That is a thesis from Aristotle’s report of the “common account” of the soul. He does not dispute that account; he bolsters it. Soul is the essence of bodies that possess “a principle of movement and standing still within itself,” which is to say, the essence of living bodies is soul (412b17).

“The soul is the cause and principle [archē, starting-point, source] of the living body. But cause and principle are spoken of in many ways, and the soul is, accordingly, a cause in the three senses that have been distinguished [efficient, final, formal]: it is the cause as the source of the movement, as that for the sake of which, and as the substance of animate bodies. It is clear then that the soul is a cause in the sense of substance. For substance is the cause of the existence of all things, and for the living things to exist is to live, and the soul is their cause and principle.” (de An. 415b8–14)

In no body whatever is its matter its essence (Metaph. 1029a27). Then in no living body is its matter its essence. Matter is what form and essence come to be in. The essence of the compound of matter and form, an enformed matter, is form, not matter. The substance of a thing is its form [11]. The substance of a living thing is its form, that is, its soul. “The soul . . . is the form in its role as final cause” (Lennox 2021a, 230).

I do not see that postulation of soul in anything living and taking it thrice over as cause of distinctively living actions—thrice over cause of each: nutrition-pursuit, perception, and reproduction—is explanatory at all unless soul has some meaning independent of being that form of a living thing which is its final cause. To define soul as formal causal explanation or any explanation at all of the distinctive dynamic characteristics of the living is merely to conceive those characteristics of the phenomenon that is life in a wider metaphysical framework of formal causation. Without a preexisting meaning of soul—say, a clipped edition of human psyche in animals and an additionally clipped edition in plants[12]—and an argument for identification of that with form in living things, the posit of soul explains vegetative teleology no more than form of the living, which is to say, not at all. Aristotle should be commended for recognizing a phenomena: all living things naturally engage in pursuit of ends, even though they do not possess intelligence under which the pursuit of ends is directed. His attempt at explanation of the phenomenon is a failure, and he shows no inkling of the scientific progress, in any area of science, that could be made beyond his era.

Life explained in terms, specific terms, of the organization of earth, air, fire, and water, where the material organizing structure is also explained by those earthly elements, would be a right form of “A is explained by B,” where B is not simply a posit or a mere restatement of the phenomena to be explained. Explanation for living action along that line could not have any success until humans conceived and accomplished such things as modern chemistry and biochemistry.[13] We cannot fault Aristotle for not having those things in hand, but we can and should fault him for his wrong metaphysical views (e.g. hylomorphism, dynamism of being and potency per se, and inalterability of the species) and their poisonous intermingling with science of nature. He should be blamed at the same time for his wrong model of how natural science should proceed.

James Lennox points out that for Aristotle, the form of a living thing is “that complete action or way of life for the sake of which the living body is organized as it is” (2021a, 234). It is no reinstatement of Aristotle’s conception of formal causality in living things to call nucleotide sequence and its role in producing proteins a formal cause.[14] Whether the perspective of Binswanger 1990 amounts to a modern cashing of Aristotelian formal, ends-directed causal explanation of living action or amounts to a replacement for such explanation remains to be seen.

Work of James Lennox has persuaded me that it is incorrect to interpret Aristotle as holding that essences, stated in definitions of natural things, always, as essences, act directly as causes. Rather, capture of essence in a definition gives an inquirer the spot for investigating causes that can yield causal essences, for definitions that can be used in syllogistic causal demonstrations, the makes of science (Lennox 2021b, 1–64).

Definitions remained important in modern science. The definition of force in Newton’s second law of mechanics, as it is learned by the physics student today, is crucial. Force is therein general cause of acceleration, stated in mathematical relations between magnitudes of the two. Into the slot of that general force, must be placed a specific mathematically expressed force, say, Hooke’s law for suspended weights pulling within the elastic zone of a spring. Particular solutions satisfying the specific force-acceleration equation will then be the specific and particular time course of locations of the accelerating body in its situation of being subject to the specific constraining force against free fall in the earth’s gravity.

But before all that, human beings had to get to Newton’s first law, attained thanks to Newton and (before his specific conception of force, less exactly by Galileo, improved by Descartes), which law enshrines the circumstance that not all sorts of motion of a body across space need a cause of their continuing motion, and exactly which kind does not. Aristotle did not know that.

Additionally, contrary Aristotle’s general method of scientific inquiry: embedding definitions and causal relations in a premise in a demonstrative syllogism accomplishes nothing in the domain of what we call classical mechanics. What matters to those inquiries and understanding of nature are only the relations—come to mind by induction and by abduction—among physical parameters and the passing of empirical tests of implications, mathematically expressed, from such relations. The probative value of formality in mechanics is not from wielding syllogisms and refining essences in the definitions of things, but from mathematical proofs among relations of mathematical elements standing for natural, physical characteristics.[15]

To be continued: The next section of Part 2 will trace the fate of Aristotle’s final and formal causes and his picture of teleology in natural vegetative life in pre-Darwinian lights: Suarez, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Part 3 will take all this home in tracing and evaluating Binswanger’s post-Darwinian theory in The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts.

 

Notes

[1] Cf. Kant’s move here.

[2] In Aristotle’s understanding, the element fire is a warm and dry thing, a fine particle, very fast in rising, and flame is more like the element fire than burning coals are like the element fire.

[3] Like Aristotle, Eudoxus before him had taken the heavens to be a series of nested spheres (shells) conveying by their motions the motions of stars, planets, the sun and the moon. Many of the Presocratics had taken the heavenly bodies to be simply freely moving without such carriages.

[4] See further, de Groot 2014, 290n474.

[5] See for examples, Garson 2013.

[6] I’m pretty sure the translator’s capitalization of god is inappropriate under our present style conventions, since, when capitalized the term god is a proper noun, the name of the Judeo-Christian deity, to which Aristotle could not be referring.

[7] Lennox 2021b remarks that Aristotle mentioned a number of times in De Caelo that the heavenly spheres are ensouled (176). I have not been able to find any statement of that in the only translation of that book of Aristotle’s I possess. I had hoped to find such a thing, a literal statement, for the text might then give some notion of soul independent of the notion in its connections with living things on earth. I’m getting the impression that ensoulment of the heavenly spheres by Aristotle is an inference readers have made from his verdict that they are alive, and it is only what he says about soul in life down here that can give us his account of what soul is. 

[8] Aristotle knew that stones fall from the sky, such as the storied, huge one at Aegos Potami in about 466 BCE, eighteen years before his birth.*

[9] See further, Johnson 2005, 150–58.

[10] Cf. Gotthelf 2012, 367–69.

[11] See Cohen and Reeve 2020, §§5–11.

[12] Bremer 1983, 125–31. 

[13] Water serves “as the solvent for essentially all cellular chemical reactions. It also serves as a thermal buffer and, to a lesser extent, as a pH buffer” (Fox 1988, 80). Entropy changes in water have an explanatory role to play in molecules recognizing each other and aggregating into complexes and even into membranes. Such character of water and the cellular unit of life were of course unknown to Aristotle. Molecular morphogenesis and molecular control mechanisms beget the life of the cell. “Once the subunits are synthesized, their thermal motions bring them together, whereupon they spontaneously link by means of multiple specific weak bonds. The structures they form and the unexpected properties of those structures are examples of emergent properties, which are observed to attend all transitions in a structural hierarchy. A key emergent property is the capacity for control, or regulation” (ibid. 83–84). On mechanism in contemporary biological explanations more generally, see Bechtel 2011.

[14] Contra Terzis and Arp 2011, xxiv, xxvi; Moreno and Ruiz-Mirazo 2011, 162–64, 172n9. Formal causation is able to bear some non-zero explanatory load in our contemporary informational accounting of organisms (Moratalla and Cerezo 2011, 192–93). This formal cause, however, does not coincide with Aristotle’s formal cause for living action, namely, the organism’s way of life (for the sake of which the living body is organized). A sweeping role of formal causality in contemporary biology is attempted in Austin 2021. This relies on features of a dynamical-systems representation of the ontogeny of (whole) organisms. But to maintain that structure in likelihoods of the various states in a state space of organismal development is a formal cause is to say such structure in an abstract space is a cause. We might as well say that the ellipse of the dynamical states of a pendulum in its abstract phase space is the cause of the time course of that pendulum’s positions in concrete physical space, which is absurd. And even were such a formal cause as Austin envisions operative in ontogenesis, the form is not Aristotle’s formal cause for a living thing’s alterations: the organism’s way of life (in maturity). Furthermore, state space structure of states in ontogenesis (like the phase space of a pendulum) is not even an explanation of phenomena, only a redescription.

[15] That is not to say that physical phenomena are explained by only mathematics. Mathematics of electromagnetism could help establish that light waves are electromagnetic waves, and mathematics of gravity could help establish that a previously unknown planet exists and perturbs the orbit of some known planet. But identity of light and electromagnetic waves and the existence of Neptune beyond Uranus are physical facts merely uncovered, importantly, by employment of mathematics. Consider further, Kuorikoski 2021. On continuing pursuit of causal relations in contemporary physics, see Frisch 2014. On usefulness of mathematics in measuring causal specificity, see Griffiths et al. 2015. More comprehensively, on uses of mathematics in modern science, see Pincock 2012.

References

Aristotle [c. 348–322 B.C.E.] Physics. R.P. Hardie and R.K. Gaye, translators. In Barnes 1984.

——. On the Heavens. J.L. Stocks, translator. In Barnes 1984.

——. Meteorology. E.W. Webster, translator. In Barnes 1984.

——. On the Soul. F.D. Miller Jr., translator. 2018. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

——. Generation of Animals. A. Platt, translator. In Barnes 1984.

——. Aristotle Metaphysics. C.D.C. Reeve, translator. 2016. Indianapolis: Hackett.

Austin, C.J. 2021. Formal Causation and Biology. In Jansen and Sandstad 2021.

Barnes, J. editor, 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Bechtel, W. 2011. Mechanism and Biological Explanation. Philosophy of Science 78(4):533–57.

Binswanger, H. 1990 [1976]. The Biological Basis of Teleological Concepts. Marina del Rey: Ayn Rand Institute Press.

Bremer, J. 1983. The Early Greek Concept of the Soul. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Cohen, M.S. and C.D.C. Reeve 2020. Aristotle’s Metaphysics. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 

De Groot, J. 2014. Aristotle’s Empiricism – Experience and Mechanics in the 4th Century BC. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing.

Fox, R.E. 1988. Energy and the Evolution of Life. New York: Freeman.

Frisch, M. 2014. Causal Reasoning in Physics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Garson, J. 2013. The Functional Sense of Mechanism. Philosophy of Science 80(3):317–33.

Gotthelf, A. 2012. Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Graham, D.W. 2013. Science before Socrates– Parmenides, Anaxagoras, and the New Astronomy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Griffiths, P.E., A. Pocheville, B. Calcott, K. Stoltz, H. Kim, and R. Knight 2015. Measuring Causal Specificity. Philosophy of Science 82(4):529–55.

Jansen, L. and P. Sandstad, editors, 2021. Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation. New York: Routledge.

Johnson, M.R. 2005. Aristotle on Teleology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kuorikoski, J. 2021. There Are No Mathematical Explanations. Philosophy of Science 88(2):189–212.

Lennox, J.G. 2021a. Form as Cause and the Formal Cause. In Jansen and Sandstad 2021.

——. 2021b. Aristotle on Inquiry – Erotetic Frameworks and Domain-Specific Norms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

López-Moratalla, N. and M. Cerezo 2011. The Self-Construction of a Living Organism. In Terzis and Arp 2011.

Moreno, A. and K. Ruiz-Mirazo 2011. The Informational Nature of Biological Causality. In Terzis and Arp 2011.

Pincock, C. 2012. Mathematics and Scientific Representation. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sachs, J. 1995. Aristotle’s Physics: A Guided Study. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Terzis, G. and R. Arp, editors, 2011. Information and Living Systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

 

 

Edited August 28, 2023 by Boydstun

[Eiuol]

On 8/4/2023 at 8:56 PM, Boydstun said:

I’d like to add for general background information Sach’s remarks on Aristotle’s notion of form in his hylomorphism. Sach’s use of the concept being-at-work in these remarks is Sach’s rendering of energeia, which is usually translated as activity and which Aristotle takes to be required for any being to remain in being. That is false metaphysics of Aristotle, whichever of these two English translations for it we use. The somewhat nearby true thing I’d note is the proposition of Rand’s in the paragraph dealing with the not-utterly-inertness of any existent, on page 39 of ITOE. 

Do you mean a false interpretation of Aristotle's metaphysics, or that this rendering of his metaphysics is a false account of reality?

[Boydstun]

7 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Do you mean a false interpretation of Aristotle's metaphysics, or that this rendering of his metaphysics is a false account of reality?

I just mean that Aristotle's metaphysics is false in this respect. Contra Aristotle, existence per se is not an activity or a being-at-work. Existing per se is inactive. I mentioned (cited) a nearby correct conception of Rand's that the existence of anything entails that it have some external relations. Many times those relations include causal relations. I add now, from my own metaphysics that 'existence is passage' (one strand in 'existence is identity'), but this passage is sometimes only succession in time (not, additionally causal), and most fundamentally, my category passage is succession through time. That error of Aristotle is one in his wider pattern of endowing some of his metaphysics with dynamics, which should be left purely at the level of natural science.

[Eiuol]

8 hours ago, Boydstun said:

I just mean that Aristotle's metaphysics is false in this respect. Contra Aristotle, existence per se is not an activity or a being-at-work. Existing per se is inactive. I mentioned (cited) a nearby correct conception of Rand's that the existence of anything entails that it have some external relations. Many times those relations include causal relations. I add now, from my own metaphysics that 'existence is passage' (one strand in 'existence is identity'), but this passage is sometimes only succession in time (not, additionally causal), and most fundamentally, my category passage is succession through time. That error of Aristotle is one in his wider pattern of endowing some of his metaphysics with dynamics, which should be left purely at the level of natural science.

I read the book that the thread is about, so this won't just be a tangent about Aristotle. Rather, I'm suggesting a biological basis of teleology from an Objectivist perspective is completely rooted in Aristotle, except some additions thanks to the theory of evolution. Especially the notion of "being at work". 

Existing is completely active, that is, what anything is in the most complete way is active. To be sure, existence includes relations which are not themselves active, but all entities act by virtue of existing. An entity that exists is always acting, and if it is not, well, it doesn't even exist. More than that, the relation that is not active is dependent on something already active; the primary thing is the entity, in the same way that under Objectivism causality is between entities. There is no divergence here between Aristotle and Rand. The phrase "being at work" adds precision because it adds clarity about entities, eliminating the ambiguity between abstractions that exist, and entities that exist. So, I don't think Aristotle is wrong here.

The way the entities are at work all the time is how biology can be rooted in teleology. Living things are active in a specific way, moving in a direction, not simply as a reaction pushed forward by a stimulus. You seem to agree on that point based on what I read here, my thought is that "being at work" is a crucial idea. We just can't render the same phrase in English as a concept, which makes it tricky to work with.

[Boydstun]

Thank you, Eiuol, for that layout. I won’t be ready to address Binswanger’s account in relation to Aristotle’s account until Part 3, but at this time, I want to register my own disagreement with the layout you gave insofar as its correctness for general metaphysics.

Rand’s relevant remark in ITOE, 39, is a handy place to start: “If anything were actually ‘Immeasurable’, it would bear no relationship of any kind to the rest of the universe, it would not affect nor be affected by anything else in any manner whatever, it would enact no causes and bear no consequences—in short it would not exist.”

I’d say in perhaps a little friction with Rand, the truth is: “If anything were actually ‘immeasurable’, it would bear no relationship of any kind to the rest of the universe—in short it would not exist.” Period. Then I’d be off to construct a proof or two of that proposition being necessarily true.

“No relationship of any kind” suffices for not being in existence. The relationships do not have to be causal. They do not have to be the relationships of action, even taking the category ACTION very broadly so as to include not only dynamics, but kinematics and statics. They do not even have to be dependency relationships at all. That something bears no relationship of any kind to things not itself suffices to show it does not exist.

(Existence taken as a whole is the exception in the sense that it bears no relationship to anything entirely outside itself. It yet has the relationship of a whole to its parts.)

I endorse Rand’s thesis “Existence is Identity.” I go a fraction of an inch beyond that in saying that the existence of an existent is nothing more or less than the existence of its complete identity. My thesis contracted from Rand’s statement quoted above then says that some of the complete identity of an existent must be relationships to things not itself, relationships of some kind, whatever kind.

(One relationship in which my left-hand glove stands is that upon spatial inversion it would fit my right hand. I mention this for an example of a standing in an external relationship that is not at root causal or action, but by morphism-character of space.)

I take the sense of the concept existence to be univocal across its category divisions. That is, the term is not applied analogically across the categories. In Rand’s system, those categories are ENTITY, ACTION, ATTRIBUTE, and RELATIONSHIP. Instances of each of those can exist and in the same sense of exists throughout. ACTION, ATTRIBUTE, and RELATIONSHIP are so intertwined and not exclusive of each other in Rand’s metaphysics (though worth calling out distinctively nevertheless in tracing taxonomies up in highest reaches) it would not be plausible that the sense of exists could be not univocal across them all three. Then too, whatever ontological primacy we discern of ENTITY over its actions, attributes, and relationships: since existence is identity, it is not plausible that the existence of an entity should be not univocal with the existence of the other categories composing its identity, such as the existence of its external relationships, relationships of any sort.

Existence per se, spanning all four categories, should not be cast as fundamentally characterized by any one of them, such as action.

I think Aristotle errs in planting energeia in being (insofar as energeia means anything more than actuality as distinct from potential). In Rand’s system, or mine, we are of course dealing with only qualified being, which we term existence, and we acknowledge no more comprehensive being than that. So I should say as well, to be exact, that Aristotle errs in planting energeia in existence per se.

[Eiuol]

21 hours ago, Boydstun said:

since existence is identity, it is not plausible that the existence of an entity should be not univocal with the existence of the other

Certainly actions, relationships, and entities all exist. But this says nothing of the manner of their existence, in the same way that saying a tree lives and a dog lives doesn't say anything about the manner of their living. The way I understand it, "being at work" specifies the way that concretes exist, and the fact that actions, relationships, etc. are only exist because of concretes behaving and acting. I don't recall Aristotle using "being at work" in any context except referring to concretes or particulars. Especially important is how this applies to living things, where the activity of these things is what makes them alive. They aren't just active, but living out their full nature, fully enacting what makes them what they are. At least, even if you disagree that I interpreted "being at work" correctly, applying it to the domain of biology is valuable and quite illuminating.

[tadmjones]

I see “being at work” as describing the sense that an existent is exhibiting the quality of “being” , is a part of the sum of the totality of existence, ie situated ‘in’ the universe.

I can see abstractions of being , as well as abstraction of categories of existence connoting static ‘states’ that pertain to actual existents  or entities , but the actual enjoyment of ‘being-ness’ by an existent feels more active than passive. 
 

 

[Boydstun]

Tad, I think I get your conception.

I think it is incorrect to ascribe active or passive to existence per se. We can reflect on existence as such, and that is what Rand called metaphysics. Our reflection of course is an activity, a living one goal-directed.

Existence, as I think it, has states of actuality and potentiality for any existent. (For only concrete existents really, in my vocabulary; in speaking of the susceptibility of a line segment in the Euclidian plane to bisection, we should shift from potentiality to possibility.) But the existence common to those states, actuality and potentiality, should not be thought of as having those states as traits nor as those states being equivalent to existence per se. Existence simply is and is singly that is across both those states, actuality and potentiality.

Then too, the facets of identity such as specific passage and activities and standing in specific relations to other things should not be ascribed to existence most generally. Any existent has exactly the identity it has. The having of its specific identity and its being equivalent to its full complement of identities are not activities, I’d say, and are not any being-at-work in that having or in that being equivalent.

[Boydstun]

11 hours ago, Eiuol said:

Certainly actions, relationships, and entities all exist. But this says nothing of the manner of their existence, in the same way that saying a tree lives and a dog lives doesn't say anything about the manner of their living. The way I understand it, "being at work" specifies the way that concretes exist, and the fact that actions, relationships, etc. are only exist because of concretes behaving and acting. I don't recall Aristotle using "being at work" in any context except referring to concretes or particulars. Especially important is how this applies to living things, where the activity of these things is what makes them alive. They aren't just active, but living out their full nature, fully enacting what makes them what they are. At least, even if you disagree that I interpreted "being at work" correctly, applying it to the domain of biology is valuable and quite illuminating.

“Being-at-work” is indeed an apt description of living existence, I should say. Even when an animal, such as a tree squirrel, appears to be playing, it’s a working system. It is perhaps also an apt description of the chemical self-regulative processes that emerge in biochemical reactions, emergent self-regulation such as in allostery, in phosphorylation-dephosphorylation, and in end-product inhibition. However, being at work is not an apt description of oxygen in the air tout court. We might say the oxygen put to work in an animal is an occasion of being at work in an externally induced sort of way.

Existence per se is not something being put to work in an external sort of way or a being at work of itself, say by being concrete with the manners of concretes such as them enduring through some time or having certain causal interactions or having some random activities.The ways of existence per se are its identities of category; its state of actuality-potentiality; its being (in my system) possibly a concrete or a belonging-formality of a concrete; and its (in my system) perchance being an existent that is also a living of-existence. Among the ways of existing, speaking most fundamentally, there should be no ascribing existence per se any more specific elements taken from among its fundamental manners of existence, such as the more particular manner: being at work.

Aristotle is getting no real explanatory traction, I’d say, by taking a more particular manner of being (being-at-work), planting it in general existence, then using its presence in existence per se to explain its presence in living existence.

[tadmjones]

On 9/6/2023 at 12:08 AM, Boydstun said:

 

 

... (For only concrete existents really, in my vocabulary; in speaking of the susceptibility of a line segment in the Euclidian plane to bisection, we should shift from potentiality to possibility.) ..

 

In your system is this a recognition akin to Cartisian dualism , res cogitans/ res extensa?

As far as I understand Rand , a line segment would be a mental entity and not 'really real'. So for your system likewise, potentiality (or actuality) is not a state(s) that would apply to mental entities  , but that such an action as describing , or imagining , a bisection ( a conceptual or computational act) performed on a mental entity is really only "possible" within 'the maths'  ?

Edited September 7, 2023 by tadmjones

[Boydstun]

5 hours ago, tadmjones said:

In your system is this a recognition akin to Cartisian dualism , res cogitans/ res extensa?

As far as I understand Rand , a line segment would be a mental entity and not 'really real'. So for your system likewise, potentiality (or actuality) is not a state(s) that would apply to mental entities  , but that such an action as describing , or imagining , a bisection ( a conceptual or computational act) performed on a mental entity is really only "possible" within 'the maths'  ?

I know that these issues are a far drift from the topics in Binswanger 1990, the topic of this thread, and in particular the nature of teleology in organisms that are without consciousness or are under some direction by their consciousness, which is much less autonomous and discerning than human consciousness. But that is all right with me if we chat a bit on these interesting byways, because the intervals required for me to produce the substantial segments of the essay view of that book, including putting it into historical perspective, is long, at least weeks. I'll peg what is here so far, for convenience: 

Part 1, Part 2 – Aristotle I am working now on the remainder of Part 2, which is Suárez, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. Part 3 will return to the layout in the subject book, which is cast in our contemporary biology.

Tad, on your two questions: No. No.

Neither Rand nor I would concur with the dualism of Descartes in his sense that thought (he means anything mental) and spatial extension are two fundamental substances, the only two we have, each depending on nothing else, aside from God who brought them into existence. Clipping it down, neither Rand nor I would concur with the dualism of Descartes in the sense of thought and extension being two fundamental substances, each depending on nothing else.

Rand stressed the distinction and fundamentality of existence and consciousness. "Whatever the degree of your knowledge, these two—existence and consciousness—are axioms you cannot escape, these two are the irreducible primaries implied in any action you undertake, in any part of your knowledge and in its sum, . . . " (AS 1015–16). Both are present for one's discernment of them from day of birth to now, although, one would be on towards an age of being able to understand Rand's 1957 writing about it to get explicitly in mind those two things, existence and consciousness.

What Rand says there is fine by me and important, but I go ahead and incorporate what we know about the biological character of consciousness by modern science and make a somewhat more general distinction in place of that one of Rand's. She had the division: existents and existents that have consciousness. I wrote instead (in EW) the division: existents and existents that are of-existents. The latter includes the living activities that are consciousness (awareness of existence) but as well any living action whatever.

So in my terms, here is how I think about your second question. Potentials are featured only in concrete existents and only pertaining to them in their aspect of being not also of-existence. Possibilities are in existents that are of-existents, such as when we sort out the potentials of things for possibilities of our control and possibilities of our inventions and possibilities of our behaviors, or when we grasp the belonging-formalities of concretes and grow vast tooling-formalities upon them for use in our inventions and actions and for our satisfactions of mind, or possibilities are in our story-making entertainments, our fictions. So it's worth making this distinction I've labeled potentials and possibilities.

I don't think Rand would have thought of a line segment as not really real. I guess she could get into that sort of trouble with talk of only concretes being real and then denying that spatial relations are concretes (if she did). However, I should say also for Rand that she recognized that there are relationships in the world independently of our mental grasps of the world. Perceptual similarities are in the world, in her understanding. So are quantities, which we get under our scaled rulers.

I am with Descartes and with Newton on the reality of lines in physical space. Our procedure for bisecting a line segment using compass and straightedge reflects formalities of physical space around us and what it is possible to do with them. Hero of Alexandria said that a straight line is a line stretched to the utmost, and like him when I want to approach getting stones laid in a line, I stretch a string. The things we do in the mind in synthetic geometry, as in Euclid, are not without connections to the world, even though our method in geometry is quite different than our method in chemistry or geology.

Edited September 8, 2023 by Boydstun

[Boydstun]

Previously:  Part 2 – Aristotle

PS – In Parts of Animals Aristotle develops explanatory resources he thinks required for a successful study of animals and animal life. He argues for the explanatory priority of final/formal causes over efficient/material causes. In the natural science of animals, in Aristotle’s view, the starting point of the science should be that entity which is to be, by the activities: the mature healthy animal. That end is the governing cause in animal life, and it is the source of the necessity in the sequential formation and the operation of the parts of the animal, unlike necessity in geometry or in mathematical astronomy (PA 639b12–640a6; Meta. 996a29–31; Phys. 200a15–23). Further: Gotthelf 2012, 155-58; Lennox 2021, 83–85, 88, 138, 162–68, 273; and Leunissen 2010, 81–89, 155–75.

Aristotle c.348–322 B.C.E. Parts of Animals. W. Ogle, translator. In Barnes 1984. 

——. Aristotle Metaphysics. C.D.C. Reeve, translator. 2016. Indianapolis: Hackett.

——. Aristotle Physics. C.D.C. Reeve, translator. 2018. Indianapolis: Hackett.

Barnes, J. 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Gotthelf, A. 2012. Teleology, First Principles, and Scientific Method in Aristotle’s Biology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Lennox, J.G. 2021. Aristotle on Inquiry – Erotetic Frameworks and Domain-Specific Norms. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Leunissen, M. 2010. Explanation and Teleology in Aristotle’s Science of Nature. New York: Cambridge University Press.

[Boydstun]

On 8/27/2023 at 8:27 PM, Boydstun said:

~Part 2~

I’ll divide Part 2 into two sections. This first section examines further Aristotle’s conception of teleology in natural phenomena, also his method for natural science.

 

. . .

I'd like to add a note to that Part. Aristotle's four causes and his teleology, good and bad in application, is treated by Leonard Peikoff in Lecture 5 of his 1972 lectures on the history of philosophy. Transcription of this portion is available in Founders of Western Philosophy – Thales to Hume (2023) on pages 187–91.

[Boydstun]

Part 1

Part 2

I expect to complete this study later this year. The result I expect at this point is that evolutionary biology with vegetative teleological causation exhibited as Harry Binswanger does, in physical terms and with that teleological causal cycle framing[1] the efficient causes within the organism, yields for the first time in the history of philosophy, a sound physical basis for Aristotle's final causation in the case of the vegetative actions of living things. This accomplishment renders lost-in-the-woods the persistent criticisms of modern molecular, evolutionary biology as being an eliminative reductionism of quintessential living activity to physical (biochemical) reactions. Those criticisms need to loosen their concept of the physical. Concerning the ramifications for Rand's theory of value, which will come at the end of this paper, I'll have to wait until I've completed the study herein of the full complement of causal mechanisms of life. ([1] "Scaffold" – PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE [2023], 90[5]:1224–33.) This study is of importance to Rand's biocentric theory of value, although I had originally undertaken this work for the sake of getting a good grip on brain computational explanation addressed in Milkowski's EXPLAINING THE COMPUTATIONAL MIND, which had become important to completing my up-to-date assessment of David Kelley's realist theory of perception in THE EVIDENCE OF THE SENSES (1986).*

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INTERLUDE

“The seeker comes to the great guru in his mountain fastness and pleads ‘What is Life?’ The sage answers, ‘Life is a fountain’. The supplicant, not surprisingly, is annoyed: ‘I have traveled halfway around the world, spent a fortune, risked my life, and all you can tell me is that life is a fountain?’ ‘All right, my son’, says the guru, ‘for you, Life is not a fountain’.” –The Way of the Cell by F.M. Harold (2001)

 

 

 

Edited March 13 by Boydstun