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Beyond Mechanism: Kant, Philosophy of Biology, and the
Phenomenon of Life Robert Hanna University of Colorado at Boulder,
USA
It is quite certain that we can never adequately come to know
the organized beings and their internal possibility in accordance
with merely mechanical principles of nature, let alone explain
them; and this is so certain that we can boldly say that it would
be absurd for humans to make an attempt or to hope that there could
ever arise a Newton who could make comprehensible even the
generation of a blade of grass according to natural laws that no
intention has ordered; rather we must absolutely deny this insight
to human beings.
--I. Kant (CPJ 5: 400)1
For a phenomenon such as life, the physical facts imply that
certain functions will be performed, and the performance of these
functions is all we need in order to explain life. A vitalist might
have claimed that it is logically possible that a physical replica
of me might not be alive, in order to establish that life cannot be
reductively explained. And a vitalist might have argued that life
is a further fact, not explained by any account of the physical
facts. But the vitalist would have been wrong Vitalism was mostly
driven by doubt about whether physical mechanisms could perform all
the complex functions associated with life: adaptive behavior,
reproduction, and the like. At the time, very little was known
about the enormous sophistication of biological mechanisms, so this
sort of doubt was quite natural. But implicit in these very doubts
is the conceptual point that when it comes to explaining life, it
is the performance of veraious functions that needs to be
explained. Indeed, it is notable that as physical explanations of
the relevant functions gradually appeared, vitalist doubts mostly
melted away. Presented with a full physical account showing how
physical processes perform the relevant functions, a reasonable
vitalist would concede that life has been explained. There is not
even conceptual room for the performance of these functions without
life.
--D. Chalmers2
If there is anything in the approach I adopt, it will follow
that concepts like life, life-form, etc., have something like the
status Kant assigned to pure or a priori concepts. [E]ven if our
concept life-form arises with experience, it need not be thought to
arise from it; its content is rather supplied by reflection on
certain possibilities of thought or predication.
--M. Thompson3 I. Introduction
What is the nature of biological life, and how do we represent
it? In this paper,
using Kants theory of mental representation and his philosophy
of biology as starting
points, I am going to argue that there is not only a non-trivial
explanatory gap but also
a correspondingly non-trivial ontological gap between reductive
materialist or
physicalistwhat I will call naturally mechanisticapproaches to
biology on the one
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hand, and the phenomenon of life on the other. If I am correct,
then just as the well-
known non-reductive arguments about consciousness that surfaced
in the late 20th century
forced us seriously to reconsider and rethink our basic
commitments and basic concepts
in the philosophy of mind, so now we must seriously reconsider
and rethink our basic
commitments and basic concepts in the philosophy of biology. Or
otherwise put: Having
taken the phenomenon of consciousness seriously, we must now
also take the
phenomenon of life equally seriously.
But at the same time, since my starting point is specifically
Kantian and
specifically not Cartesian, I am also going to argue for a
Kantian version of non-
reductionism about biology and life that does not involve any
epistemological or
metaphysical equivalent of Cartesian dualism. On this Kantian
picture, the phenomenon
of life is neither explanatorily nor ontologically reducible to
the causal natural
mechanisms bound up with fundamental physical properties and
facts, but at the same
time the phenomenon of life is also not essentially distinct
from physical causal
processes. The phenomenon of life is a non-reducible,
non-mechanical necessary a priori
immanent structure of certain complex thermodynamic physical
processes.
More precisely, if I am correct, then non-reducible life is
nothing more and
nothing less than a non-mechanical immanent structural property
of the causal behaviors,
functions, and operations bound up with fundamental physical
properties and facts in
thermodynamic systems of a suitable level of complexity,
corresponding to an a priori
formal representation of life, in just the way that, according
to Kant in the Transcendental
Aesthetic section of the Critique of Pure Reason, space and time
are nothing but
necessary a priori immanent structural properties of the
causally efficacious objects of
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human experience, corresponding to pure subjective forms of
sensible intuition. Hence
life is non-reducible because it is a transcendental
non-mechanical fact about the the
causal processes bound up with fundamental physical properties
and facts in certain
complex thermodynamic systems, not because it is an essentially
different further fact
that is something over and above the fundamental physical world,
and not because it is
nothing but a multiply realizable second-order physical fact
that is logically
supervenient4 on first-order, fundamental physical facts.
II. Natural Mechanism, Computation, and the Varieties of
Vitalism
The thesis of reductive materialism or reductive physicalism
about life says that
biological life is either identical with or logically
supervenient on the causal behaviors,
functions, and operations bound up with fundamental physical
properties and facts.5 I will
call this the thesis of Natural Mechanism.
But what, more precisely, is the very idea of natural mechanism?
My claim is that
there is a deep and indeed essential connection between natural
mechanism, effectively
decidable procedures, recursive functions, and
Turing-computability. More precisely,
what I am proposing is that anythings causal behaviors,
functions, and operations are
naturally mechanistic in both their existence and specific
character if and only if they
strictly conform to the Church-Turing Thesis (a.k.a. Churchs
Thesis).
And what is the Church-Turing Thesis? To state it clearly, I
must briefly define
some terms. An effectively decidable procedure is a
rule-governed, step-by-step process
which yields a pre-established determinate result of a binary
kind (e.g., either 0 or 1) in a
finite or countably infinite number of steps. Otherwise put, an
effectively decidable
procedure is an algorithm. This appears to be the very same
notion as that of a recursive
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function,6 and it also appears to be necessarily equivalent with
the notion of a Turing
machine.7 Then the Church-Turing Thesis (a.k.a. Churchs Thesis)
says that every
effectively decidable procedure is a recursive function and also
a Turing-computable
function, which in turn restricts effectively decidable
procedures to digital machine
computation,8 on the two plausible assumptions that the causal
powers of any physical
realization of an abstract Turing machine are held fixed under
our general causal laws of
nature, and that the digits over which the Turing machine
computes constitute a
complete set of spatiotemporally discrete physical objects.
Therefore, according to my proposal:
Anything X is a natural automaton, or natural machine, if and
only if Xs causally-efficacious behaviors, functions, and
operations are all inherently effectively decidable, recursive, or
Turing-computable, on the two plausible assumptions (a) that the
causal powers of any physical realization of an abstract Turing
machine are held fixed under our general causal laws of nature, and
(b) that the digits over which the Turing machine computes
constitute a complete set of spatiotemporally discrete physical
objects. It is extremely important to recognize that although all
deterministic processes are
Turing-computable, not all Turing-computable processes are
deterministic. As Hilary
Putnam pointed out in the 1970s, during the heyday of
computational Functionalism in
the philosophy of mind, there can be indeterministic
Turing-machines.9 More generally,
however, if an indeterministic process implements a step-by-step
probabilistic or
statistical rulei.e., if the process is stochasticthen it is
Turing-computable. Therefore
although all and only naturally mechanistic processes are
Turing-computable,
nevertheless naturally mechanistic processes can be either
deterministic or
indeterministic. This, in turn, is the same as to say that each
and every one of the causal
behaviors, functions, and operations of naturally mechanistic
physical processes is
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entailed or necessitated by algorithmic causal laws of nature,
together with the set of
settled facts about the past.
In this connection, however, we need to recognize that there is
a fundamental
distinction between (i) mere consistency with natural laws and
(ii) strict entailment by
natural laws, or more precisely, that there is a fundamental
distinction between
(i) a natural events being merely consistent with, in the sense
of merely being true along with and not in any violation of, all
the general causal laws of nature together with all the settled
facts about the past,
and
(ii) a natural events being strictly entailed by, in the sense
of strictly being necessitated by, all the general causal laws of
nature together with all the settled facts about the past.
This crucial contrast, in turn, is a generalization of Kants
well-known distinction
between
(i) acting merely according to a moral principle or rule,
and (ii) acting strictly from a moral principle or rule (GMM 4:
397-398).10
When fully generalized beyond intentional action and
deontological (i.e., duty-sensitive,
choice-involving) contexts, however, to contexts involving
physical behaviors, functions,
and operations of any kind, and indeed to contexts involving
necessitation and rule-
following of any kindwhether deontological, causal,
mathematical, or logicalthis is
the same as the comprehensive fundamental distinction
between
(i) mere conformity to a law (or rule), and
(ii) strict governance by a law (or rule).
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This comprehensive fundamental distinction applies directly to
digital or Turing
machine computation. More specifically, there is a
correspondingly fundamental
distinction between
(i) what is merely correctly describable or can be simulated in
Turing-computable terms,
and
(ii) what strictly encodes or implements a Turing-computable
process.
As John Searle has correctly and emphatically pointed out, just
because some state of
affairs can be correctly described or simulated in digital
computational terms, it certainly
does not follow that it strictly encodes, implements, or really
incorporates digital
computation.11 Indeed, virtually anything in the actual physical
world can be correctly
described or simulated in Turing-computatable terms. But just
because a heap of empty
cans of Dales Pale Ale can indeed be correctly described or
simulated in Turing-
computable terms, it does not follow that this heap really
incorporates a Turing-
computable process. Similarly, but even more radically,
self-organizing complex
thermodynamic systems such as the roiling movements of boiling
water, traffic jams, and
weather systems, not to mention living organisms, can indeed be
correctly described or
simulated in digital computational terms, but they do not really
incorporate Turing-
computable processes, precisely because they are uncomputable
processes.
What is the essential difference, then, between a
Turing-computable process and
an uncomputable process? Non-technically put, one necessary
condition of a Turing-
computable process is the fact that, at any given stage in the
process, there is no sufficient
reason why the process should not halt or stop right there. This
is because every
effectively decidable procedure is inherently a terminating
process. By sharp contrast,
then, an uncomputable process is such that, at any stage of the
process, there is always a
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sufficient reason why the process should not stop right there.
Uncomputable processes
are therefore inherently non-terminating processes.12 That an
uncomputable process is
non-terminating does not mean that it is interminable, in the
sense that it will necessarily
always go on, but instead merely that it is a process which does
not have to stop, and
always really can go on. As we shall see later, uncomputable
processes include all
inherently goal-directed, purposive, or teleological processes,
which are internally and
irreversibly forward-directed in spacetime, and thereby
exemplify an important kind of
complex thermodynamic asymmetry.13
It is directly relevant to note in this connection that if we
dropped the plausible
assumption that the causal powers of any physical realization of
an abstract universal
Turing machine are held fixed under our general causal laws of
nature, and if Turing
machines could radically vary their causal powers, then it seems
that there would be no
fundamental mathematical or metaphysical difference between
Turing-computable and
Turing-uncomputable functions; and correspondingly it seems that
there would be no
fundamental mathematical or metaphysical difference between
machines and non-
machines, including living organisms.14 But this claim, I think,
is just equivalent to a
philosophically interesting but not at all exciting thesis to
the effect that if some physical
realizations of Turing machines, contrary to actual fact, and
perhaps even necessarily
contrary to actual fact, were self-organizing complex
thermodynamic systems, then there
would be no fundamental mathematical or metaphysical difference
between machines
and non-machines, and ultimately no deep difference between
Turing machines and
living organisms. Here is an analogy: Suppose it is true that if
apples were changed into
oranges by sending crates of apples into Malament-Hogarth
spacetime,15 then you could
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make orange juice out of apples. That is philosophically
interesting, but not at all
exciting, since we have no reason whatsoever to think that it is
actually true that apples
can be changed into oranges by sending them into
Malament-Hogarth spacetime. Indeed,
for all we know, it is logically or metaphysically impossible
that apples can be changed
into oranges; and since any statement whatsoever follows from a
necessary falsehood,
counterfactual statements with impossible antecedents are all
vacuously true.
It is also directly relevant to note in this connection that if
we dropped the
plausible assumption that the digits over which the Turing
machine computes are all
spatiotemporally discrete physical objects, and if some
effectively deciding or recursive
machines could compute over non-discrete (i.e., either
continuous or vaguely-bounded)
physical items, then it seems that the Church-Turing thesis
would be false, in the sense
that there would then be some effectively decidable procedures
or recursive functions in
real physical nature which are not classically
Turing-computable.16 But this claim, I
think, is just equivalent to another philosophically interesting
but not at all exciting
thesis, this time to the effect that that if some items over
which some effectively deciding
or recursive machine computes, contrary to actual fact, and
perhaps even necessarily
contrary to actual fact, were just like non-discrete neural
assemblies in the human brain,
then our brains would be real physical computing machines that
are not digital. Here is
another analogy: Suppose it is true that if apples were just
like non-discrete neural
assemblies in the human brain, then you could make orange juice
out of apples. Again,
that is philosophically interesting, but not at all exciting,
since we have no reason
whatsoever to think that it is actually true that apples are
just like non-discrete neural
assemblies in the human brain. Indeed, for all we know, it is
logically or metaphysically
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impossible that apples are just like non-discrete neural
assemblies in the human brain;
and, again, since any statement whatsoever follows from a
necessary falsehood, this
guarantees that counterfactuals with impossible antecedents are
vacuously true.
So Natural Mechanism says that all the causal behaviors,
functions, and
operations of everything whatsoever in the natural world are
ultimately reducible to what
can be digitally computed on a universal deterministic or
indeterministic Turing machine,
provided that the two plausible assumptions (a) that the causal
powers of any physical
realization of an abstract Turing machine are held fixed under
our general causal laws of
nature, and (b) that the digits over which the Turing machine
computes constitute a
complete set of spatiotemporally discrete physical objects, are
both satisfied. In direct
opposition to Natural Mechanism, the general thesis of Vitalism
in the philosophy of
biology, as I am understanding it, says that biological life
(and in particular, the living
organism) is neither identical with nor otherwise reducible
toand in particular, not
logically supervenient onthe Turing-computable causal behaviors,
functions, and
operations bound up with fundamental physical properties and
facts, whether these causal
behaviors, functions, and operations are governed by
deterministic laws or
probabilistic/statistical laws. So if the general thesis of
Vitalism true, then Natural
Mechanism is false.
Now Vitalism in its classical or mid-19th and early 20th century
guise (which in
turn has its original intellectual roots in Aristotles De Anima
and Physics, when
combined with late 18th and early 19th century Romantic
conceptions of nature) also has
two distinct versions, which in turn closely parallel the
internal structure of classical
Cartesian Dualism in the philosophy of mind:17
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(i) Substance Vitalism, which says that life is an essentially
different kind of dynamic stuff from naturally mechanistic matter
(e.g., ectoplasm, the lan vital, the Wille zum Leben, etc.),
and
(ii) Property Vitalism, which says that life is determined by
essentially different kinds of dynamic properties from those that
characterize natural mechanisms, even if life is not an essentially
distinct kind of dynamic stuff from naturally mechanistic
matter.
Many of the early 20th century British Emergentists, e.g., were
Property Vitalists but not
Substance Vitalists.18
In sharp contrast to classical Vitalism, however, Michael
Thompson has recently
argued for the two-part thesis that our everyday,
pre-theoretical representation of life
(a.k.a. folk biology) requires a distinctive Fregean logical
form of what he calls
natural-historical judgments, and that this distinctive logical
form entails the existence
of a non-empirical concept of life with irreducible semantic
content and structure, which
necessarily shapes our ordinary perceptual and practical
activities. This two-part thesis,
which I will call Representational Vitalism, has significant
anticipations and parallels in
Kants theory of the feeling of life, of the identity of mind and
life, and of teleological
judgment in the Critique of the Power of Judgment; in the later
Wittgensteins notions of
forms of life and seeing-as in Philosophical Investigations; and
in Hans Jonass
existential philosophy of biology in The Phenomenon of Life.
More precisely, however
and now generalizing over the several similar accounts provided
by Kant, Wittgenstein,
Jonas, and ThompsonRepresentational Vitalism, as I will
understand it, says
(I) that our everyday, pre-theoretical representations of life
in sense perception and other non-conceptual representations,
conceptual thought, and in biological or natural-historical
judgments and statements are neither identical with nor otherwise
reducible to naturally mechanistic theories of biology and
life,
and
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(II) that these representations of life entail the existence of
some a priori representations with irreducible semantic content and
structure, which necessarily shape our basic cognitive and
practical encounters with the natural world. Unlike either
classical Substance Vitalism or classical Property Vitalism,
Representational Vitalism is officially neutral or open-minded
with respect to the
question of the correct metaphysics of biological life. Indeed,
Representational Vitalism
is fully consistent with the denials of Substance Vitalism and
Property Vitalism alike. But
Representational Vitalism is not neutral with respect to the
question of whether vitalistic
explanation is reducible to reductive materalist, reductive
physicalist, or naturally
mechanistic explanation. If Representational Vitalism is true,
then there is no explanatory
reduction of the phenomenon of biological life to any possible
formal theory of the
Turing-computable deterministic or indeterministic causal
behaviors, functions, and
operations of fundamental physical properties and facts. This
crucial point closely
parallels Thomas Nagels famous explanatory gap argument for the
irreducibility of
mentalistic concepts to physicalistic concepts,19 and, rather
ironically, given his official
reductive materialism about the phenomenon of life, it also
closely parallels David
Chalmerss formulations of the Inverted Qualia, Zombie, and
Panprotopsychist
arguments in The Conscious Mind for both the explanatory
non-reduction and also the
ontological non-reduction of consciousness to the fundamental
physical world.
Even more importantly, however, if we also assume the truth of a
highly plausible
thesis I will call Minimal Representational Realism, which
says
that for each semantically distinct mental representional
content there is a corresponding distinct rough-grained or
fine-grained property in the world, whether that property is
instantiated in the actual world or not, and no matter what
properties turn out really to be, provided that the representation
of X also satisfies the the Minimal Logical Meta-Principle of
Non-Contradiction:
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accept as truths in any language or logical system only those
statements which do not entail that it and all other statements in
that language or logical system are both true and false,
then it automatically follows that explanatory non-reduction
also entails ontological non-
reduction. So if Minimal Representational Realism is true, and
if Representational
Vitalism is also true, then Natural Mechanism is false. I will
explicitly work out three
versions of that argument in section V.
Before moving on, however, I want to make three further points
about Minimal
Representational Realism.
First, I want to re-emphasize that Minimal Representational
Realism is saying
only that for each semantically distinct mental representation
there is a corresponding
distinct instantiated or uninstantiated property in the world,
no matter what properties
turn out really to be. So in other words, Minimal
Representational Realism is perfectly
consistent with all substantive theories about the nature of
properties, including platonic
realism about properties, idealism about properties, nominalism
about properties, and
even pleonasm about properties, i.e., the linguistic theory of
properties. Hence even if a
property is nothing more than a faon de parler, nevertheless
there is a faon such that
one can parler according to it. Otherwise put, all that Minimal
Representational Realism
is committed to are the following three corollaries:
(1) Minimal Representational Realism for Perception and
Non-Conceptual Content: If I perceive X, or if I otherwise
non-conceptually represent X, then in some objective sense there is
the property of X-ness. (2) Minimal Representational Realism for
Thought and Conceptual Content: If I think about anythings being F,
or if I conceive of anythings being F, then in some objective sense
there is the property of F-ness.
and
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(3) Minimal Representational Realism for Perceiving-As,
Judgment, and Talk: If I perceive X as G, or judge that that X is
G, or state that X is G, then in some objective sense there is the
property of G-ness.
In these ways, Minimal Representational Realism is truly a
minimalist realism about
properties. The only theory of properties which is inconsistent
with Minimal
Representational Realism is an outright eliminativism or an
error-theory about properties,
according to which properties simply do not exist and are mere
metaphysical myths. Still,
according to Minimal Representational Realism, to borrow Bishop
Butlers lovely words
again, it remains true that a property is what it is, and not
another thing. It is objective in
some sense for which there is a substantive theory of its
nature. So Minimal
Representational Realism is also truly a realism about
properties.
Second, because Minimal Representational Realism is only a
minimalist realism,
it will not follow that any non-identity or difference in
properties which can be proved by
using it as an assumption, is an essential difference in
properties. Therefore Minimalist
Representational Realism cannot be used to ground any form of
substance dualism or
property dualism. Otherwise put, Minimal Representational
Realism can be used to
establish property non-identities and property differences, but
not essential property non-
identities and not essential property differences. It does not
entail, e.g., that whatever
instantiates that property is something simple, in that it is
not composed of other things.20
Even so, a non-identity or a difference between properties is
what it is, and not
another thing. Hence the establishment of a non-identity or a
difference between
properties by means of Minimal Representational Realism is
sufficient to establish
explanatory and ontological non-reduction, even if it does not
establish any form of
dualism. But that is all to the good, because as I mentioned in
section I, I want to reject
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all forms of vitalistic dualism and yet also defend a
specifically Kantian version of both
explanatory and ontological non-reduction about biology and
life.
Third, because Minimal Representational Realism is constrained
by the Minimal
Logical Meta-Principle of Non-Contradiction, it follows that the
representability of
properties is broad enough to allow in every logically and
semantically possible kind of
property except those that lead to the logical phenomenon of
Explosion, which is that
every statement whatsoever follows from a contradiction. That
would be logico-semantic
anarchy and chaos. So the Minimal Logical Meta-Principle of
Non-Contradiction is the
paraconsistency parameter21 in Minimal Representational Realism.
Either covert or overt
contradictions in representation are therefore minimally
permissible, provided that
Explosion is ruled out. But at the same time, this constraint is
maximally liberal, short of
logico-semantic anarchy and chaos: all kinds of analogical
cognizing, imaginability,
mental modelling, and pattern recognition are ruled in, provided
that they are not
Explosive. This liberates the rational creativity of the
Representational Mind and gives it
full scope, while also preserving basic coherence in its
representational acts and
operations.
III. On the Representation of Life
I think that Thompson is correct that there is a defensible
argument for the two-
part thesis (i) that our everyday, pre-theoretical
representation of life requires a
distinctive logical form of biological or natural-historical
judgments and statements, and
(ii) that this distinctive logical form entails the existence of
a non-empirical concept of
life with irreducible semantic content and structure, which
necessarily shapes our
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ordinary perceptual and practical activities. But I also want to
hold generalized versions
of Thompsons theses:
(I) Our everyday, pre-theoretical representations of life in
sense perception and other non-conceptual representations,
conceptual thought, and in biological or natural-historical
judgments and statements are neither identical with nor otherwise
reducible to naturally mechanistic theories of biology and life.
(II) These representations of life entail the existence of some a
priori representations with irreducible semantic content and
structure, which necessarily shape our basic cognitive and
practical encounters with the natural world.
As I mentioned above, theses (I) and (II) jointly comprise
Representational Vitalism.
Representational Vitalism is well-supported by Wittgensteins
remarks on forms of
life, and on seeing the difference between living things and
dead things, in
Philosophical Investigations; by recent empirical work in
cognitive psychology by
Deborah Keleman on the phenomenon of promiscuous teleology22; by
recent
philosophical work by Tamar Szab Gendler on the distinction
between alief and
belief23; and by Kants theory of the feeling of life, of the
identity of mind and life,
and of teleological judgment in the Critique of the Power of
Judgment.
Here is what Wittgenstein says: Look at a stone and imagine it
having sensations. One says to oneself: How could one get so much
as the idea of ascribing a sensation to a thing? One might as well
ascribe it to a number! And now look at the wriggling fly and at
once these difficulties vanish and pain seems to get a foothold
there, where before eveything was, so to speak, too smooth for it.
And so, too, a corpse seems to us quite inaccessible to pain. Our
attitude to the living is not the same as to the dead. All our
reactions are different. If anyone says: That cannot simply consist
in the fact that the living behave in such-and-such a way and the
dead do not, then I want to intimate to him that this is a case of
the transition from quantity to quality.24
If one sees the behaviour of a living thing, one sees its
soul.25
To me it is an animal pierced by an arrow. That is what I treat
it as; this is my attitude to the figure. This is one meaning in
calling it a case of seeing.26
Imight say: a picture does not always live for me while I am
seeing it. Her picture smiles down on me from the wall. It need not
always do so, whenever my glance lights on it.27
What has to be accepted, the given, isso one could sayforms of
life.28
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Here is what Keleman says:
In summary, British and American children have a promiscuous
tendency to teleologically explain the properties of both living
and non-living things in terms of a purpose. One proposal is that
this bias occurs because, during development, across cultures,
children primarily develop an artifact model when reasoning about
the natural world. There are several implications if this turns out
to hold truth: from a theoretical standpoint, it suggests that
while teleological thought may play a crucial role in childrens
early reasoning about living things, its presence is not
necessarily indicative of a truly biological [i.e., physically
mechanistic] mode of construal. From an educational standpoint, it
helps to explain why people consistently misinterpret natural
selection as a quasi-intentional, designing force rather than as a
blind physical mechanism.29
Here is what Szab Gendler says:
[Consider the following example, borrowed from an essay by
Kendall Walton:] Charles is watching a horror movie about a
terrible green slime. He cringes in his seat as the slime oozes
slowly but relentlessly over the earth destroying everything in its
path. Soon a greasy head emerges from the undulating mass, nd two
beady eyes roll around, finally fixing on the camera. The slime
picking up speed, oozes on a new course straight towards the
viewers. Charles emits a shirek and clutches desperately at his
chair. How should we describe Charless cognitive state? Surely he
does not believe that he is in physical peril; as Kendall Walton
writes Charles knows perfectly well that the slime is not real and
that he is in no danger. But alongside that belief there is
something else going on. Although Charles believes that he is
sitting safely in a chair in a theater in front of a move screen,
he also alieves something very different. The alief has roughly the
following content: Dangerous two-eyed [living] creature heading
towards me! H-e-l-p! Activate fight or flight adrenaline now! I
argue for the importance of recognizing the existence of alief. As
a class, aliefs are states that we share with non-human animals;
they are developmentally and conceptually antecedent to other
cognitive attitudes that the creature may go on to develop. And
they are typically affect-laden and action-generating. I offer the
following tentative characterization of a paradigmatic alief:
A paradigmatic alief is a mental state with associatively linked
content that is representational, affective, and behavioral, and
that is activatedconsciously or nonconsciouslyby features of the
subjects internal or ambient environment. Aliefs may be either
occurrent or dispositional.30
Most importantly, however, here is what Kant says:
To grasp a regular, purposive structure with ones faculty of
cognition (whether the manner of representation be distinct or
confused) is something entirely different from being conscious of
this representation with the sensation of satisfaction. Here the
representation is related entirely to the subject, indeed to its
feeling of life (Lebensgefhl), under the name of pleasure or
displeasure, which grounds an entirely special faculty for
discriminating and judging that contributes nothing to cognition,
but only holds up the given representation in the subject to the
entire faculty of representation, of which the mind becomes
conscious in the feeling of its state. (CPJ 5: 204) It cannot be
denied that all representations in us, whether they are objectively
merely sensible or else entirely intellectual, can nevertheless
subjectively be associated with gratification or pain, however
unnoticeable either might be (because they all affect the feeling
of life, and none of them, insofar as it is a modification of the
subject, can be indifferent). (CPJ 5: 277)
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17
Life without the feeling of the corporeal organ is merely
consciousness of ones existence, but not a feeling of well- or
ill-being, i.e., the promotion or inhibition of the powers of life;
because the mind for itself is entirely life (the principle of life
itself), and hindrances and promotions must be sought outside it,
though in the human being himself, hence in combination with his
body. (CPJ 5: 278) For a body to be judged as a natural purpose in
itself and in accordance with its internal possibility, it is
required that its parts reciprocally produce each other, as far as
both their form and their combination is concerned, and thus
produce a whole out of their own causality, the concept of which,
conversely is in turn the cause (in a being that would possess the
causality according to concepts appropriate for such a product) of
it in accordance with a principle; consequently the connection of
efficient causes could at the same time be judged as an effect
though final causes. In such a product of nature each part is
conceived as if it exists only through all the others, thus as if
existing for the sake of the others and on account of the whole,
i.e., as an instrument (organ), which is, however, not sufficient
(for it could also be an instrument of art, and thus represented as
possible at all only as a purpose); rather it must be thought of as
an organ that produces the other parts (consequently each produces
the others reciprocally), which cannot be the case in any
instrument of art, but only of nature, which provides all the
matter for instruments (even those of art): only then and on that
account can such a product, as an organized and self-organizing
being, be called a natural purpose. (CPJ 5: 373-374) Strictly
speaking, the organization of nature is not analogous with any
causality that we know. (CPJ 5: 375)
It might always be possible that in, e.g., an animal body, many
parts could be conceived as consequences of merely mechanical laws.
Yet the cause that provides the appropriate material, modifies it,
forms it, and deposits it in the appropriate place must always be
judged teleologically, so that everything in it must be considered
as organized, and everything is also, in relation to the thing
itself, an organ also. (CPJ 5: 377)
And here are the basic take-away points. (1) The representation
of life is the
representation of natural things as living organismsi.e., as
dynamic physical systems
that engage in goal-directed, purposive, or teleological, and
causally spontaneous
activities. (2) The capacity to represent things as alive
appears to be innate, in that it
manifests itself in children and also more mature human
cognizers under poverty of the
stimulus conditions. (3) The representation of life can be
overextended to things other
than actual living organisms, but in every case it changes our
practical attitudes towards
the things that are perceived as alive or taken to be alive. (4)
The representation of life is
generated by a cognitive capacity that is encapsulated or
insensitive to beliefs, and at
the same time its representational outputs are presupposed by
both ordinary and scientific
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18
beliefs, judgments, and thoughts about life. (5) As a
consequence of points (1) to (4), the
representation of life is arguably non-empirical or a priori in
that its content and structure
are both strictly underdetermined by the actual contingent facts
of conscious human
sensory experience.
Here are two further comments on Kants theory in particular,
before moving on.
First, for Kant, the representation of biological life not only
has semantic content
but also phenomenal character, which he calls the feeling of
life. This is the same as
the pre-reflectively conscious pleasure or pain we experience in
the actual operations of
our cognitive faculties insofar as they track purposive (i.e.,
goal-directed or teleological)
structure in objects. Kants idea seems clearly to be that the
semantic content of the
representation of biological life and the phenomenal character
of the feeling of life are
necessarily mutually bound up with one another, which directly
implies what is known in
contemporary philosophy of mind as the Phenomenology of
Intentionality and
Intentionality of Phenomenology theses, or Anti-Separatism.31
Acording to this
Kantian picture, consciousness and intentionality are mutually
inseparable via the
neurobiological life of embodied animal minds.
Second, Kant explicitly identifies biological life with mind.
This, I think, is best
understood not as either literal identity, i.e., panpsychism
with respect to biological life,
or downwards identity, i.e., the reduction of mind to life, but
rather as what Peter
Godfrey-Smith calls the strong continuity view:
Life and mind have a common abstract pattern or set of basic
organizational properties. The properties characteristic of mind
are an enriched version of the properties that are fundamental to
life in general. Mind is literally life-like.32
This is also what Evan Thompson calls the mind-in-life
thesis:
Where there is life there is mind, and mind in its most complex
forms belongs to life. Life and mind share a core set of formal or
organizational properties, and the formal and organizational
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19
properties distinctive of mind are an enriched version of those
fundamental to life. More precisely, the self-organizing features
of mind are an enriched version of the self-organizing features of
life.33
In other words, mind is explanatorily and ontologically
continuous with life, in the sense
that whatever is metaphysically required for mind is also
present in biological life, but
not necessarily as organized in the right way and with
appropriate dynamic complexity.
Therefore not necessarily every living thing is conscious, but
necessarily every mind is
also biologically alive.
If the Kantian mind-in-life thesis is correct, then the way is
open for thinking
about conscious, intentional, caring, desiring animal minds as
nothing more and nothing
less than appropriately dynamically complex forms of life, which
grow naturally in
organisms like us, and correspondingly for thinking about
phenomenology, the science of
consciousness and intentionality, as nothing more and nothing
less than a special branch
of macrobiologybiophenomenology.
What, more precisely, is the semantic content of the
non-empirical representation
of life, i.e., the non-empirical representation of living
organisms? Using the
Transcendental Aesthetic and the Critique of the Power of
Judgment as philosophical
sources, together with complex systems dynamics and contemporary
biology (which I
will discuss in the next section) I want to say that it includes
three basic elements.
(i) Teleological dynamics in organisms: their self-organizing
natural purposiveness, including reproduction, growth, motility,
death, and evolution.
(ii) Causal spontaneity in organisms: their efficacious
metabolism (as a matter of empirical fact, involving DNA) by means
of epigenesis.
(Here is a relevant side-comment about this second basic
element. The thesis of
Epigenesis in biology says that biological material is initially
unformed and that form
gradually emerges through the non-predetermined or relatively
spontaneous operations of
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20
an innate endogenous organizational or processing device in
interaction with its
environment.34 Kant explicitly defends the theory that
biological life is epigenetic, and
also extends this theory analogically to his theory of cognitive
innateness (CPJ 5: 424)
(CPR B167).)
(iii) Essential indexicality in organisms: their inherent
context-dependency, together with egocentric centering in a
frame-of-reference (but not necessarily actually conscious
centeringsee, e.g., Einsteins observer relative frames-of-reference
for tracking motion), together with orientable space and
irreversible time (a.k.a. times arrow).
IV. Kantian Non-Conceptualism and the Complex Systems Dynamics
Model of Life
What is the semantic structure of the non-empirical
representation of life? I think
that Thompson is mistaken that the content of the non-empirical
representation of life is
conceptual. On the contrary, I hold that its content is
essentially non-conceptual and that
its structure directly corresponds to what Kant would have
called a form of intuition
(CPR A19-49/B33-73).35 As a consequence, I think that Kants
theory of teleological
judgments, when taken together with a Kantian theory of mental
content that I have
elsewhere dubbed Kantian Non-Conceptualism,36 provides a
sigificantly better account of
the nature of the distinctive semantic content and structure of
the representation of life
than Thompsons Fregean account does.
The thesis of Non-Conceptualism about mental content says that
representational
content is neither solely nor wholly determined by a conscious
animals conceptual
capacities, and that at least some contents are both solely and
wholly determined by its
non-conceptual capacities.37 Non-Conceptualism is often combined
with the further thesis
that non-conceptual capacities and contents can be shared by
rational human animals,
non-rational human animals (and in particular, infants), and
non-human animals alike.
But in any case, Non-Conceptualism is directly opposed to the
thesis of Conceptualism
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21
about mental content, which says that representational content
is solely or wholly
determined by a conscious animals conceptual capacities.38
Conceptualism is often
combined with the further thesis that the psychological acts or
states of infants and non-
human animals lack mental content.
As a sub-species of Non-Conceptualism, Kantian Non-Conceptualism
is the
following three-part doctrine:
(i) that mental acts or states in conscious human or non-human
animals have representational content whose semantic structure and
psychological function are essentially distinct from the structure
and function of conceptual content,
(ii) that the specific psychological function of non-conceptual
content is to guide conscious intentional body movements for the
purposes of cognition and practical agency,
and
(iii) that the semantic structures of essentially non-conceptual
content are equivalent to Kants spatiotemporal forms of
intuition,
More precisely however, according to Kantian Non-Conceptualism,
X is an essentially
non-conceptual content of representation if and only if X is a
mental content such that
(i*) X is not a conceptual content, as defined by a defensible,
non-question-begging theory of concepts and conceptual content,39
(ii*) X directly refers to some or another individual macroscopic
material being B in the local or distal natural environment of the
conscious (rational or non-rational) animal subject of Xand it is
also really possible that the conscious animal subject of X = Band
thereby both uniquely (if not always perfectly accurately40)
locates B in 3D Euclidean orientable space and also uniquely (if
not always perfectly accurately) tracks Bs thermodynamically
irreversible causal activities in time in order to guide the animal
subjects conscious intentional body movements for the purposes of
cognition and practical agency,
and
(iii*) X is an inherently context-sensitive, egocentric,
first-personal, intrinsically spatiotemporally structured content
that is not ineffable, but instead shareable or communicable only
to the extent that another ego or first person is in a cognitive
position to be directly perceptually confronted by the same
individual macroscopic material being B in a spacetime possessing
the same basic 3D Euclidean orientable and thermodynamically
irreversible structure.
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22
Here is a simple argument for the existence of essentially
non-conceptual content,
which I call The Handwaving Argument. This simple argument
stands on its own. But it
also anticipates a slightly more complicated argument for the
same conclusion, using
directly perceivable qualitative three-dimensional material
duplicates that are also mirror-
reflected spatial counterparts, a.k.a.incongruent counterparts,
or enantiomorphs,
which I have spelled out in detail and defended elsewhere.41
The Handwaving Argument
(1) Suppose that I am standing right in front of you and saying
All bachelors are males, and all males are animals, so it is
analytic that all bachelors are animals, right? By hypothesis, you
are concentrating on what I am saying, and clearly understand it.
(2) Suppose also that as I am I saying All bachelors are males, my
arms are held out straight towards you and I am also moving my
right hand, rotated at the wrist, in a clockwise circular motion
seen clearly from your point of view, which is also a
counterclockwise circular motion seen clearly from my point of
view. (3) Suppose also that as I am saying, and all males are
animals, I begin moving my left hand, again rotated at the wrist,
in a counterclockwise circular motion seen clearly from your point
of view, which is also a clockwise circular motion seen clearly
from my point of view. (4) Suppose also that as I am saying, so it
is analytic that all bachelors are animals, right? I am moving both
hands simultaneously in front of you in the ways specified in (1)
to (3). (5) Your conceptual capacities are being used by you to
concentrate on what I am saying about bachelors, males, and
animals, and to understand it clearly, which by hypothesis you do.
(6) Insofar as you are using those conceptual capacities to
concentrate on and to understand clearly what I am saying, you are
not using your conceptual capacities to see clearly what I am doing
with my hands. (7) Yet you also see clearly what I am doing with my
hands. Your conscious attention is divided into linguistic
understanding and lucid vision, but by hypothesis your conceptual
capacities for linguistic understanding are not distracted. (8)
Therefore you are using your non-conceptual capacities to see
clearly what I am doing with my hands. (9) The kind of mental
content that guides and mediates the use of non-conceptual
capacities is essentially non-conceptual content.
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23
(10) Therefore essentially non-conceptual content exists. In any
case, and furthermore, I also think that there are contemporary
scientific
models of lifee.g., those provided by non-equilibrium
thermodynamics, a.k.a. dynamic
systems theory, a.k.a. complex systems dynamics,42 when informed
by contemporary
biology43 which conform much more closely to our everyday,
pre-theoretical
representation of life, as informed by Kantian ideas about the
representation of life, than
to the scientific model provided by reductive materialism or
physicalism about life, i.e.,
Natural Mechanism. Here is Bruce Webers highly informative
summary description of
the complex systems dynamics model of life:
Animate beings share a range of properties and phenomena that
are not seen together in inanimate matter, although examples of
matter exhibiting one or the other of these can be found. Living
entities metabolize, grow, die, reproduce, respond, move, have
complex organized functional structures, heritable variability, and
have lineages which can evolve over generational time, producing
new and emergent functional structures that provide increased
adaptive fitness in changing environments. Reproduction involves
not only the replication of the nucleic acids that carry the
genetic information but the epigenetic building of the organism
through a sequence of developmental steps. Such reproduction
through development occurs within a larger life-cycle of the
organism, which includes its senescence and death. Something that
is alive has organized, complex structures that carry out these
functions as well as sensing and responding to interior states and
to the external environment and engaging in movement within that
environment. It must be remembered that evolutionary phenomena are
an inextricable aspect of living systems; any attempt to study life
in the absence of this diachronic perspective will be futile.
[L]iving systems may be defined as open systems maintained in
steady-states, far-from-equilibrium, due to matter-energy flows in
which informed (genetically) autocatalytic cycles extract energy,
build complex internal structures, allowing growth even as they
create greater entropy in their environments.
The impact of Schrdinger's [What is Life?The Physical Aspect of
the Living Cell] on a generation of physicists and chemists who
were lured to biology and who founded molecular biology is well
chronicled. Knowledge about the protein and nucleic acid basis of
living systems continues to be obtained at an accelerating rate,
with the sequencing of the human genome as a major landmark along
this path of discovery. The self-replicating DNA has become a major
metaphor for understanding all of life. The world is increasingly
divided into replicators, which are seen to be fundamental and to
control development and be the fundamental level of action for
natural selection. Indeed, Dawkins relegates organisms to the
status of epiphenomenal gene-vehicles, or survival machines. A
reaction has set in to what is perceived as an over-emphasis on
nucleic acid replication. In particular developmental systems
theorists have argued for a causal pluralism in developmental and
evolutionary biology. However, the rapid progress in gene
sequencing is producing fundamental insights into the relationship
of genes and morphology and has added important dimensions to our
understanding of evolutionary phenomena.
What is less known is the over half-a-century of work inspired,
in part, by the other pillar of Schrdinger's argument, namely how
organisms gain order from disorder through the
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24
thermodynamics of open systems far from equilibrium. Prominent
among early students of such nonequilibrium thermodynamics was Ilya
Prigogine. Prigogine influenced J. D. Bernal in his 1947 lectures
on the physical basis of life to start to understand both how
organisms produced their internal order while affected their
environment by not only their activities but through created
disorder in it. Harold Morowitz explicitly addressed the issue of
energy flow and the production of biological organization,
subsequently generalized in various ways. Internal order can be
produced by gradients of energy (matter/energy) flows through
living systems. Structures so produced help not only draw more
energy through the system, lengthen its retention time in the
system, but also dissipate degraded energy, or entropy, to the
environment, thus paying Schrdingers entropy debt. Living systems
then are seen an instance of a more general phenomen[on] of
dissipative structures. [According to Jantsch] With the help of
this energy and matter exchange with the environment, the system
maintains its inner non-equilibrium, and the non-equilibrium in
turn maintains the exchange process. A dissipative structure
continuously renews itself and maintains a particular dynamic
regime, a globally stable space-time structure . However,
thermodynamics can deal only with the possibility that something
can occur spontaneously; whether self-organizing phenomena occur
depend upon the actual specific conditions (initial and boundary)
as well as the relationships among components.
Seeing the cell as a thermodynamic dissipative structure was not
to be considered as reducing the cell to physics, as Bernal pointed
out, rather a richer physics of what Warren Weaver called organized
complexity (in contrast to simple order or disorganized complexity)
was being deployed. The development of this new physics of open
systems and the dissipative structures that arise in them was the
fulfillment of the development that Schrdinger foresaw. Dissipative
structures in physical and chemical systems are phenomena that are
explained by nonequilibrium thermodynamics. The emergent,
self-organizing spatio-temporal patterns observed in the
Belousov-Zhabotinski reaction are also seen in biological systems
(such as in slime mold aggregation or electrical patterns in heart
activity). Indeed, related self-organizational phenomena pervade
biology. Such phenomena are seen not only in cells and organisms,
but in ecosystems, which reinforces the notion that a broader
systems perspective is needed as part of the new physics. Important
to such phenomena are the dynamics of non-linear interactions
(where responses of a system can be much larger than the stimulus)
and autocatalytic cycles (reaction sequences that are closed on
themselves and in which a larger quantity of one or more starting
materials is made through the processes). Given that the catalysts
in biological systems are coded in the genes of the DNA, one place
to start defining life is to view living systems as informed,
autocatalytic cyclic entities that develop and evolve under the
dual dictates of the second law of thermodynamics and of natural
selection. Such an approach non-reductively connects the phenomena
of living systems with basic laws of physics and chemistry. Others
intuit that an even richer physics is needed to adequately capture
the self-organizing phenomena observed in biology and speculate
that a fourth law of thermodynamics about such phenomena may
ultimately be needed. In any event, increasingly the tools
developed for the sciences of complexity and being deployed to
develop better models of living systems. Robert Rosen has reminded
us that complexity is not life itself but what he terms the habitat
of life and that we need to make our focus on the relational.
Organization inherently involves functions and their
interrelations.. Whether the existing sciences of complexity are
sufficient or a newer conceptual framework is needed remains to be
seen. Living beings exhibit complex, functional organization and an
ability to become more adapted to their environments over
generational time, which phenomena represent the challenge to
physically-based explanations based upon mechanistic
(reductionistic) assumptions. By appealing to complex systems
dynamics there is the possibility of physically-based theories that
can robustly address phenomena of emergence without having recourse
to the type of vitalism that was countenanced by some in the
earlier part of the twentieth century.44
In other and fewer words, dynamic systems are unified
collections of material
elements in rule-governed or patterned motion. In connection
with dynamic systems,
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25
complexity is the fact that the causally efficacious exchange of
energy and matter
between a dynamic system and its local natural environment does
not remain constant, or
fluctuates. Self-organizing complex thermodynamic systems, in
turn, are unified
collections of material elements in rule-governed or patterned
motion, involving heat and
other forms of energy, that also have dissipative structure and
natural purposiveness. A
dissipative structure is how the natural energy loss or entropy
in a complex
thermodynamic system is absorbed and dispersed (hence
dissipated) by the systematic
re-introduction of energy and matter into the system, via a
non-static causal balance
between the inner states of the system and its surrounding
natural environment. And
natural purposiveness is how a complex thermodynamic system with
dissipative structure
self-generates forms or patterns of order that determine its own
causal powers, and in turn
place constraints on the later collective behaviors, effects,
and outputs of the whole
system, in order to maintain itself. The prime example of a
self-organizing complex
thermodynamic system is a living organism, with its teleological
dynamics, its causal
spontaneity by means of epigenesis, and its essential
indexicality.
This in turn raises a further important issue about how the
biological and
psychological properties of rational human animals are cognized
or known in the exact
sciences, as Kant understood those sciences. Kant has
notoriously high standards for
somethings qualifying as a science. Not only must a science
involve a systematic
organization of objective facts or objective phenomena of some
sort, it must also be
strongly nomological in the sense that it expresses necessary a
priori laws (MFNS 4:
468). Sciences in this sense, in turn, can include either
constitutive (existentially
committed without conditions, and assertoric) principles or else
regulative (at best
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26
hypothetically existentially committed, logical-fictional, and
non-assertoric) principles.
Now an exact science can be a naturally mechanistic physical
sciencethat is, an exact
science which satisfies the conditions of Natural Mechanismif
and only if its
phenomena and its laws are fully mathematically describable
(MFNS 4: 470) in terms of
recursive functions, which in turn are all Turing computable,
according to the Church-
Turing Thesis. But as I have argued elsewhere, Kants notion of
mathematics is
significantly narrower than our contemporary notion.45 So we
must assume that full
mathematical describability in tersm of recursive functions for
Kant is equivalent to
analyzability in terms of Primitive Recursive Arithmetic or PRA,
the quantifier-free
theory of the natural numbers and the primitive recursive
functions over the natural
numbersthe successor function, addition, multiplication,
exponentiation, etc.46
Therefore for Kant, at least implicitly, a given theory will be
a naturally mechanistic
physical science if and only if its underlying mathematics is no
more complex than PRA.
Because PRA encodes all and only the primitive recursive
functions, then obviously
every function in PRA is also inherently
Turing-computable.47
As we have seen, Kant regards biology as a merely regulative
non-mechanistic
life science that supplements the classical Newtonian
deterministic, mechanistic
mathematical physics with the teleological concept of a natural
purpose or living
organism (CPJ 5: 369-415). But at the same time Kant regards
this biological
supplementation of physics as explanatorily necessary. And that
is because biology
provides representations of natural phenomena that are
themselves explanatorily
irreducible to deterministic mechanistic concepts:
It is quite certain that we can never adequately come to know
the organized beings and their internal possibility in accordance
with merely mechanical principles of nature, let alone explain
them; and this is indeed so certain that we can boldly say that it
would be absurd for humans ever
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27
to make such an attempt or to hope that there might yet arise a
Newton who could make comprehensible even the generation of a blade
of grass according to natural laws. (CPJ 5: 400, underlining
added)
Translated into contemporary terms, this means that according to
Kant, biology adds the
notion of the non-linear, non-equilibrium dynamics of
self-organizing complex
thermodynamic systemsi.e., complex systems dynamicsto the
familiar classical
notions of mechanistic causation and the linear equilibrium
dynamics of inertial physical
systems.
As I mentioned above, the general mathematical theory of complex
dynamic
systems is often called dynamical systems theory or DST. The
mathematics of DST is
essentially richer than PRA and Peano Arithmetic alike, in that
it includes a full range of
non-linear functions. Now Gdels incompleteness theorems say
(i) that there are logically unprovable true sentences in any
elementary or classical second-order logical system that also
includes enough axioms of Peano arithmetic,
and
(ii) that all such logical systems are consistent (i.e.,
non-contradictory) if and only if they are incomplete (i.e., not
all the truths of the system are theorems of the system) and have
their ground of truth outside the system itself.48
So Gdels incompleteness theorems, taken together with the
Church-Turing Thesis,
jointly show that formal logical proof is not sufficient for
mathematical truth, and also
that mathematical truth itself is not a Turing-computable
function that could be realized
on a digital computing machine. Therefore mathematical truth
itself, and especially
including mathematical truth in DST, is an inherently
uncomputable, non-mechanical fact
of nature.
The thesis of ontological emergence says that new, global or
system-wide
causally efficacious properties can arise in certain complex
thermodynamic systems over
time, and that these properties inherently change the overall
dynamic constitution of the
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28
entire system.49 This emergence thesis is significantly
metaphysically stronger than either
the thesis of epistemic emergence (which merely says that
dynamic systems can
exemplify global relational properties that cannot be known or
predicted by knowing the
intrinsic non-relational properties of their parts together with
their extrinsic law-governed
modes of relational combination) or the minimal thesis of
historical emergence (which
merely says that dynamic systems can exemplify global relational
properties at later times
that they did not exemplify at earlier times). Given the notion
of a self-organizing
complex thermodynamic system, DST predicts that there are
natural systems of
interacting material proper parts or elements whose actual
behaviors over time can be
neither digitally computed nor nomologically predicted due to
random exchanges of
causal information, energy, and matter with the surrounding
environment, and which
exemplify ontologically emergent causally efficacious properties
that are not
explanatorily reducible to and thus not logically supervenient
on the intrinsic non-
relational properties of the elements of the system together
with their extrinsic relational
properties. For example, according to the accounts provided by
contemporary
cosmological physics, the Big Bang and black holes are
self-organizing complex
thermodynamic systems with ontologically emergent
properties.50
For our current purposes, what is most crucial is neither the
non-trivial fact that
the Big Bang and black holes are self-organizing complex
thermodynamic systems, nor
the equally non-trivial fact that the thesis of ontological
emergence predicted by DST is
significantly more metaphysically robust than either a mere
epistemic emergence thesis
or a mere historical emergence thesis. Instead, what is most
crucial for our current
purposes is that according to this Kantian account the
biological, conscious, intentional,
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29
and rational processes of human animals also constitute
self-organizing complex
thermodynamic systems and also exemplify ontological emergence,
and thus that this
self-organization is inherently non-mechanical in the strong
sense that it inherently
exceeds the reach of Turing-computability. The rational,
conscious, intentional, and
caring biological and neurobiological processes of human animals
are, as it were, and as I
mentioned above, Little Bangs. Like all living organisms, they
are really causally
efficacious in physical nature, yet they are also
underdetermined by all the general causal
laws of nature, whether deterministic laws or
probabilistic/statistical laws, and
nomologically unique. This means that via their rational,
conscious, intentional, caring
and living organismic, causally spontaneous choices and acts,
they bring into existence
one-off or one-time-only causal-dynamical laws of rational human
activity, which
significantly enrich and supplement the repertoire of general
causal laws.
On this Kantian picture of physical nature, most explicitlybut
unfortunately,
also only fragmentarilypresented in the Opus postumum, the
complete set of general
causal laws provides a skeletal causal-dynamic architecture for
nature, which is then
gradually (and, in the special case of human organisms,
literally) fleshed in by the one-off
laws of self-organizing complex thermodynamic systems. So on
this Kantian picture, not
only is there natural entropy via naturally mechanical or
Turing-computable physical
processes, there is also a natural generative negentropy via
natural purposiveness in
accordance with the causally efficacious operations of onboard
epigenetic systems,
according to which every living organism contains a real
causally spontaneous
productive capacity for constructing its own process of
self-organizing growth from
environmental inputs (CPJ 5: 421-425). As with organisms, so too
the basic formal
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30
principles of epigenesis apply to the self-organizing activities
of the Big Bang, black
holes, the creation of stars, the atmospheric and topological
causal system of the Earth,
hurricanes, traffic jams, and the surface structure of boiling
water. For the purposes of
correctly understanding Kants theory of transcendental freedom,
we must be able to see
how it is no trivial fact that in the 1750s, he wrote treatises
on the rotation of the Earth,
the age of the Earth, universal natural history, fire,
earthquakes, and the theory of winds.
Kant was in fact a proto-theorist of complex dynamic systems,
lacking only the
essentially richer mathematics of DST and the other post-Kantian
formal tools of modern
logic, biology, chemistry, and physics. In this way, on this
Kantian and post-Kantian
picture, nature inherently contains not only deterministic or
indeterministic automatic,
mechanical, or Turing-computable processes, but also inherently
uncomputable, naturally
creative or self-organizing complex thermodynamic processes.
Nature essentially grows
and has a complex dynamic history.
Thus there is for Kant an irreducible explanatory gap between
the correct biology
on the one hand, and classical or Newtonian physics on the other
handan explanatory
gap which, when it is updated to include modern formal theories
of arithmetic, also
entails the contemporary explanatory and ontological gap between
the non-linear, non-
equilibrium, non-mechanical, uncomputable thermodynamics of
self-organizing complex
living organismic physical systems on the one hand, and the
classical linear, equilibrium,
mechanical, Turing computable dynamics of inertial, non-living
physical systems on the
other. Otherwise put, for Kant all biological facts are
explanatorily irreducible to the facts
of classical Newtonian mechanistic physics,51 and,
correspondingly, for us post-Kantians
all biological facts are explanatorily irreducible to naturally
mechanical facts more
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generally. But at the same time, as rational human minded
animals or real human
persons, we do consciously possess the feeling of biological
life occurring in our own
bodies via our teleological inner sense intuitions, and thus at
least some biological facts
actually exist. Therefore for Kant there can never be a Newton
of the actual biological
life of the human animal body in both an explanatory sense and
also an ontological sense.
And, correspondingly, for us post-Kantians there can also never
be either a Church or a
Turing of a blade of grass, a non-human animal, or a rational
human minded animal or
real human person in both an explanatory and also an ontological
sense.
We will recall here Chalmerss remark, quoted above as one of the
epigraphs of
this paper, in strong support of reductive materialism or
physicalism about life, i.e.,
Natural Mechanism:
Presented with a full physical account showing how physical
processes perform the relevant functions, a reasonable vitalist
would concede that life has been explained. There is not even
conceptual room for the performance of these functions without
life.
What I want to say in direct, three-part reply to Chalmers is
(a) that a reasonable
vitalist is in fact a Representational Vitalist, and neither a
Substance Vitalist nor a
Property Vitalist, (b) that the relevant vital functions are
best described by the complex
systems dynamics model of life, not by naturally mechanistic
functionalist analysis, and
(c) that even if there is not even conceptual room for the
performance of these functions
without life, there is nevertheless more than enough essentially
non-conceptual room for
life to perform its vital functions non-mechanically. This sets
the stage for the three non-
reductive arguments I will spell out in the next section.
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V. Inverted Life, Suspended Life, and Non-Local Life: How
Biological Life Does Not Supervene on the Physical, and Why
As we saw in the last section, it is arguable that biological
life is not merely the
performance of certain mechanical or Turing-computable
behaviors, functions, or
operations. I think that life also essentially involves what I
will call vital systems:
complex organismic processes with teleological dynamics, causal
spontaneity, and
essential indexicality. If this is correct, then organisms
occupy unique spatial locations in
their environments, take unique paths through them when they are
motile, and in any case
necessarily include intrinsic temporal asymmetries, and inherent
forward-directedness.
Metabolic processes, e.g., are thermodynamically and temporally
irreversible processes.
Now as I argued above, it is plausible to hold that essential
indexicality is the same as
inherent context-dependency,52 together with egocentric
centering in a frame-of-
reference, together with orientable space and thermodynamically
irreversible time. Facts
about vital systems are therefore essentially indexical
facts.
In The Conscious Mind, Chalmers explicitly argues that indexical
facts do not
logically supervene on the fundamental physical facts:
Does indexicality pose a problem for reductive explanation? For
arbitrary speakers, perhaps not, as the fact in question can be
relativized away. But for myself, it is not so easy. The indexical
fact expresses something very salient about the world as I find it:
that David Chalmers is me. How could one explain this seemingly
brute fact? . The issue is extraordinarily difficult to get a grip
on, but it seems to me that even if the indexical is not an
objective fact about the world, it is a fact about the world as I
find it, and it is the world as I find it that needs explanation.
The nature of the brute indexical is quite obscure, though, and it
is most unclear how one might explain it. The indexical fact may
have to be taken as primitive. If so, then we have a failure of
reductive explanation distinct from and analogous to the failure
with consciousness.53
Granting Chalmerss thesis that indexicality does not logically
supervene on the physical,
let us consider now the phenomenon of metabolism in living
organisms, and the three
following arguments.
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Argument 1: Inverted Life
(1) It is representable that actual organismic metabolism is
either enantiomorphically reversed in space or that its times arrow
is systematically structurally deformed away from the classical
time-model of continuous linear development (e.g. cyclical time,
hyperbolic spiralling time, punctuated equilibrium time, etc.),
while also representing all other actual physical properties and
facts as fixed. (2) We assume that Minimal Representational Realism
obtains. (3) Therefore there is an instantiated or uninstantiated
property in the world according to which actual organismic
metabolism is either enantiomorphically reversed in space or its
times arrow is systematically structurally deformed away from the
classical time-model of continuous linear development, while also
holding all other actual physical properties and facts fixed. (4)
Therefore it is possible that actual organismic metabolism could be
be either enantiomorphically reversed in space or its times arrow
is systematically structurally deformed away from the classical
time-model of continuous linear development, while all other actual
physical facts and properties are held fixed. (5) Therefore the
logical supervenience of biological life on the physical fails.
Argument 2: Suspended Life
(1) It is representable that actual organismic metabolism is
universally frozen in actual time and actual placei.e., that it is
in a universal state of suspended animation without
terminationwhile also representing all other actual physical
properties and facts as fixed. (2) We assume that Minimal
Representational Realism obtains. (3) Therefore there is an
instantiated or uninstantiated property in the world according to
which actual organismic metabolism is in a universal state of
suspended animation without termination, while also representing
all other actual physical properties and facts as fixed. (4)
Therefore it is possible that actual organismic metabolism is in a
universal state of suspended animation without termination, while
all other actual physical facts and properties are held fixed. (5)
Therefore the logical supervenience of biological life on the
physical fails. Argument 3: Non-Local Life (1) It is representable
that actual organismic metabolism is spread over the universe in
such a way that it lacks unique location and causal determinacyas
in non-locality and indeterminacy effects in quantum mechanics,
e.g., Schrdingers cat paradox54while also representing all other
actual physical properties and facts as fixed. (2 ) We assume that
Minimal Representational Realism obtains.
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(3) Therefore there is an instantiated or uninstantiated
property in the world such that actual organismic metabolism is
spread over the universe in such a way that it lacks unique
location and causal determinacy, while also holding all other
actual physical properties and facts fixed. (4) Therefore it is
possible that actual organismic metabolism could be spread over the
universe in such a way that it lacks unique location and causal
determinacy, while all other physical properties and facts are held
fixed. (5) Therefore the logical supervenience of biological life
on the physical fails.
These three arguments, respectively, are precisely analogous to
Chalmers
formulations of (i) the Inverted Qualia Argument for the
non-reducibility of
consciousness, which entails the failure of the strict
determination of the specific
character of consciousness by the physical, (ii) the Zombie
Argument for the non-
reducibility of consciousness, which entails the failure of the
strict determination of the
existence of consciousness, and (iii) the Panprotopsychist
Argument for the possibility of
universal proto-mentality in a physical world, which shows that
some version of neutral
monism is possible.
The significant differences between my arguments and Chalmerss,
however, are
that, first, unlike Chalmers, I have not grounded the
inferential step to possibility on
conceivability but instead on representability more generally,
which fully includes the
semantics of essentially non-conceptual content, and second,
unlike Chalmers, I have not
grounded the inferential step from representability to
possibility on Two-Dimensional
modal semantics and Textbook Kripkeanism, which are both
questionable in various
ways, but instead on the much weaker and correspondingly much
more plausible thesis of
Minimal Representational Realism. The crucial point here is that
since essentially non-
conceptual content is inherently veridical, non-propositional,
and non-epistemic in nature,
and since Minimal Representational Realism excludes property
dualism, there is no gap
whatsoever between representability and possibility. Such a
representability gap can
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arise only if the content is conceptual or intensional, and only
if the properties picked out
are dualistic. For only in that case is it possible that a
representation which apparently
maps a priori to a non-physical property according to the
1-intension, actually maps a
posteriori to a physical property according to the 2-intension.
Essentially non-
conceptual contents in a Minimal Representational Realist
framework, sharply unlike
concepts or intensions in a Two-Dimensional framework, always
map representations to
properties one-to-one in a directly referential way like an
essentially indexical term, and
never many-to-one in a descriptive way like a Fregean sense or
Sinn.
To be sure, the acceptability of any inferential step from
representability to
possibility depends on the nature of the properties represented.
If the property picked out
were only a faon de parler property, then obviously that would
not be sufficient to
guarantee real possibility, but instead would guarantee only
faon de parler possibility.
Nevertheless, the primary goal of my strategy in being very
liberal about properties is just
to allow in my favored class of a priori immanent structural
(i.e., orientable,
egocentrically-centred, dynamically relevant, spacetime)
properties in addition to the
dualistic properties accessed by 1-intensions or 2-intensions,
and then to rely on the
semantic integrity of an essentially non-conceptual content to
guarantee the step to real
possibility. So the argumentative work in the three arguments is
really being done by the
essentially non-conceptual content of the representation, not by
the liberality of the
property ontology per se.55
If I am correct, then the phenomenon of biological life does not
logically
supervene on the Turing-computable deterministic or
indeterministic causal behaviors,
functions, and operations bound up with fundamental physical
properties and facts. So
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Natural Mechanism is false, and also, ironically, Chalmers is as
it were dead wrong
about the reducibility of the phenomenon of life, even though he
is absolutely right about
the non-reducibility of the phenomena of consciousness and
indexicalitybut not for the
reasons he gave.
Essentially the same non-reductive philosophical points I have
just made were
also made by Hans Jonas in the mid-1960s (although in the
framework of existential
phenomenology, not in my favored framework of Kantian cognitive
semantics and the
complex systems dynamics model of biological life, together with
Minimal
Representational Realism, and the three non-reductive arguments
from the essentially
non-conceptual representability of Inverted Life, Suspended
Life, and Non-Local Life):
Suppose that it is a living body, an organism, on which the gaze
of the divine mathematician heppens to rest. It may be unicellular
or multicellular. What would the God of the physicists see? As a
physical body the organism will exhibit the same general features
as do other aggregates: a void mostly, crisscrossed by the geometry
of forces that emanate from the insular foci of localized
elementary being . But special goings-on will be discernible, both
inside and outside its so-called boundary, which will render its
phenomenal unity still more problematical than that of ordinary
bodies, and will efface almost entirely its material identity
through time. I refer to its metabolism, its exchange of matter
with the surroundings. In this remarkable mode of being, the
material parts of which the organism consists at any moment are to
the penetrating observer only temporary, passing contents whose
joint material identity does not coincide with the identity of the
whole which they enter and leave, and which sustains its own
identity by the very act of foreign matter passing through its
spatial system, the living form. [T]he object-view of the divine
mathematician is less concrete and colorful than oursbut would we
also grant it, as before, the possibility of being truer?
Emphatically not in this case, and here we move on firm ground,
because here, being living bodies ourselves, we happen to have
inside knowledge. On the strength of the immediate testimony of our
bodies we are able to say what no disembodied on looker would have
a cause for saying : the the mathematical God in his homogenous
analytical view misses the decisive pointthe point of life itself:
its being self-centered individuality, being for itself and in
contraposition to all the rest of the world, with an essential
boundary dividing inside and outsidenotwithstanding, nay, on the
very basis of the actual exchange.56
It should be emphasized that the specifically Kantian and
representational version
of Vitalism that I have just spelled out does not require either
vital spirit (Substance
Vitalism) or the nomologically supervenient, synchronic, static
emergence of essentially
distinct vital properties (Property Vitalism) in biological
life. It is entirely a vitalism of
dynamic systems, and entails at most the non-supervenient,
diachronic, dynamic
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emergence57 of certain necessary a priori non-mechanical,
uncomputable immanent
structural properties in living organisms.
It is a characteristic thesis of Kants theory of mental
representation and his
transcendental metaphysics in the Critique of Pure Reason that
both representational
contents and the phenomena (things, properties, or facts) which
correspond to them can
be unanalyzable, non-reducible primitives in the sense that they
cannot be wholly
logically decomposed into conceptual, descriptive parts, or
propositional parts (a.k.a.
logical atoms), although they do nevertheless have some
necessary a priori immanent
structures and proper parts. Or in other words, for Kant either
a mental content and or a
phenomenon can fail to have a complete analysis, even though it
still has a non-substance
dualist, non-property dualist, and non-supervenient essence in
the sense of a set of
necessary and sufficient immanent structural conditions for its
real possibility, which can
be correctly stated by synthetic a priori propositions. It is
therefore possible to provide a
non-dualist Kantian metaphysics of X even if it is impossible to
provide an explanatory
reduction of X. It seems to me that life is one of the
explanatorily non-reducible
phenomena for which we can provide a Kantian metaphysics. More
precisely, when we
combine the Transcendental Aesthetic in the first Critique with
Kants account of life in
the Critique of the Power of Judgment, and take them together
with complex systems
dynamics and contemporary biology, we get the following Kantian
metaphysics of life.
The necessary and sufficient conditions of the real possibility
of biological lifei.e., of living organismsare: (1) teleological
dynamics in organisms: self-organizing natural purposiveness,
including reproduction, growth, motility, death, and evolution, (2)
causal spontaneity in organisms: efficacious metabolism (which, as
a matter of empirical fact, includes DNA) by means of epigenesis,
and (3) essential indexicality in organisms: inherent
context-dependency, together with egocentric centering in a
frame-of-reference, together with orientable space and irreversible
time.
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VI. Conclusion
The complex systems dynamics m