Returning to the original topic, I do wonder how much of the success of anti-realism has to do with how people have learned to think of alternatives to it as being something like positing "objective values." The focus on "values" doesn't really fit with philosophy prior to the 19th century. In it's current usage, it's a term coming down from economics. Nietzsche seems to have been big in popularizing it, and I honestly think he uses the shift to "values" as a way to beg the question a bit in the Genealogy (to the extent that it assumes that the meaning of "good" has to do with valuation as opposed to ends). I'd agree that the idea of something being "valuable in-itself," is a little strange, since "value" itself already implies something of the marketplace, of a relative transaction or exchange. At the very least, it seems to conflate esteem with goodness, which essentially begs the question on reducing goodness to subjective taste. — Count Timothy von Icarus

In respect to this, I'd be happy to change my terminology, this in terms of my use of "value" in the context of ethics, if I thought it might be helpful in better conveying the concepts I wish to express. But I so far don't see any pragmatic reason to do so; despite being very open to change.

In today's lexicon, there is the whole branch of philosophical study of axiology, which by definition is the study of values, such that both ethics (and in some ways meta-ethics) and aesthetics are deemed subsets of axiology. In this and similar contexts, "value" is synonymous to "significance" in the sense of "the extent to which something matters and the type of quality of so mattering" (and, hence, in some ways synonymous to "importance"). As one further sub-example, in psychology the term "valence" is defined as "A one-dimensional value [emphasis mine] assigned by a person to an object, situation, or state, that can usually be positive (causing a feeling of attraction) or negative (repulsion)." (reference here). And, to further complicate issues, this just mentioned definition of valence could potentially also be interpreted in the mathematical sense of the term "value" - roughly, a quantitative and hence "mathematical object determined by being measured, computed, or otherwise defined" (reference)

I'm very sympathetic to how the term "value" can be easily interpreted in terms of marketplace exchanges and, hence, monetarily. I however find this pervasive association to be largely due to the materialistic metaphysics and quick to follow materialistic ideologies (to not here say "values") that pervade most societies today (as one possible example, the prioritizing of economy over politics; as yet another example, the thinking of success in terms of financial gains rather than in terms of intent-accomplishments).

So "intrinsic value" can well intend and thereby mean "a significance, or mattering, that has no instrumental utility but, rather, matters in and of itself to those agent(s) concerned". At least two potential examples come to mind: First, an agent's (well-)being will be of intrinsic value to the said agent; an agent's very own well-being holds no usefulness to the said agent but, instead, is that by which all usefulness to the agent is established. Secondly, for those who entertain the possibility of the Good, the Good too would then necessarily also be intrinsically valuable - and hence devoid of instrumental worth in accomplishing something else. And these two examples of intrinsic value certainly can have a lot to do with discussions regarding both ethics and metaethics - wherein multiple agents are at play.

I so far don't see any alternative terminology to that of "value" in today's world that would better serve the conveyance of these same ideas - this despite the term's many definitions and the audiences' tendency to be materialistic in its interpretation of the term. Do you?

Although I agree that the notion of "objective values" at the very least feels exceedingly misplaced.

In what sense can anything be "good" "from the perspective of the Cosmos?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

And how can the Cosmos be self-organizing while lacking any self? — Count Timothy von Icarus

You are trapped in a search for meaning in an ordinary socially constructed use of these terms. You are not receptive to a technical redefinition that could make good metaphysical sense. So the discussion will just loop.

Stan Salthe is a natural philosopher and biosemiotician who defines three grades of telos sufficient to span the range of natural systems from the physical to the biological to the cognitive.

The Cosmos would have its entropic tendencies. Life has its telic functionality. Cognition can be said to have its deliberative purpose.

So there is a hierarchy of systems. Those with self-organising constraints and gradients, but no informational codes. Those with biological codes. Then those with the benefit of neural codes, and in the case of humans, the sociocultural level of semiotic self hood and telos that comes with verbal and numeric codes.

This is what makes biosemiosis a natural philosophy. It puts us firmly in the Cosmos with its general thermodynamic constraints, but then is a theory of the negentropic freedoms that levels of encoding and world-modelling can buy.

Everyday language is shaped by its need to function as a way to organise everyday society. You need to develop a more technical use of language to have a more technical understanding of our situation as semiotic creatures riding thermodynamic gradients.

There seems to be a large distinction between "the reasonable universe," which seems to actually be acting "for no reason at all" and the "reasonable creatures," who act for intentional purposes. The use of "good" for both seems completely equivocal. And perhaps this is why you (apokrisis) have put "good" in quotes when referring to the universe? — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up:

You are not receptive to a technical redefinition that could make good metaphysical sense. — apokrisis

I will chip in here, even though the objection was not addressed to me, as I've taken the time to read material about biosemiosis, Howard Pattee, Stan Salthe, and others, as a consequence of your mentioning them (and learned a lot by so doing). However, I maintain that what you're proposing is not metaphysics - it's the attempt to re-purpose concepts from the natural sciences, specifically, the second law of thermodynamics, and Schrodinger's concept of negentropy, to fabricate what sounds like a metaphysics, but which ultimately reduces back to physics, within which the only 'purpose' that organisms serve is to hasten the rate of entropification.

The big difference between natural science and philosophy, is that in the former, there is always a gap between knower and known. It seeks objective knowledge. But philosophy considers questions of our own lived existence in which we are inevitably both participants and instigators. It's a very different thing. I believe that's why Wittgenstein said that 'We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.'

Have you never heard of natural philosophy as a metaphysical tradition then? :roll:

https://www.nbi.dk/~natphil/salthe/NatPhil_of_entropy.pdf

Have you never heard of natural philosophy as a metaphysical tradition then? — apokrisis

But is it? Naturalism loosely concerns what can be known objectively, made subject to scientific hypotheses and measured mathematically. I don't see anything in that paper that really strays from that, although it extrapolates a rather speculative interpretation of what the scientific data really means or how it might be interpreted.

But consider this passage from one of the Platonic dialogues, the Phaedo, directly germane to this debate:

One day...Socrates happened to hear of Anaxagoras’ view that Mind directs and causes all things. He took this to mean that everything was arranged for the best. Therefore, if one wanted to know the explanation of something, one only had to know what was best for that thing. Suppose, for instance, that Socrates wanted to know why the heavenly bodies move the way they do. Anaxagoras would show him how this was the best possible way for each of them to be. And once he had taught Socrates what the best was for each thing individually, he then would explain the overall good that they all share in common. Yet upon studying Anaxagoras further, Socrates found these expectations disappointed. It turned out that Anaxagoras did not talk about Mind as cause at all, but rather about air and ether and other mechanistic explanations. For Socrates, however, this sort of explanation was simply unacceptable:

To call those things causes is too absurd. If someone said that without bones and sinews and all such things, I should not be able to do what I decided, he would be right, but surely to say that they are the cause of what I do, and not that I have chosen the best course, even though I act with my mind, is to speak very lazily and carelessly. Imagine not being able to distinguish the real cause from that without which the cause would not be able to act as a cause. (99a-b)

Frustrated at finding a teacher who would provide a teleological explanation of these phenomena, Socrates settled for what he refers to as his “second voyage” (99d). This new method consists in taking what seems to him to be the most convincing theory—the theory of Forms—as his basic hypothesis, and judging everything else in accordance with it. In other words, he assumes the existence of the Beautiful, the Good, and so on, and employs them as explanations for all the other things. If something is beautiful, for instance, the “safe answer” he now offers for what makes it such is “the presence of,” or “sharing in,” the Beautiful (100d). — Phaedo, IEP

I'm not going into exegesis of Plato here - there are many other threads that do that - but simply pointing out that the distinction between physical causation and what are described 'real causes' - why some course of action is taken, and not another. The kind of judgement that requires discriminative wisdom.

(This sentiment lived on in Aristotle's 'final causation', the end to which things are directed, which has on the whole has been rejected by modern philosophy as an example of teleological reasoning.)

The Salthe paper concludes:

...why is there anything? Because the universe is expanding faster than it can equilibrate. Why are there so many kinds of things? Because the universe is trying to simultaneously destroy as many different energy gradients as possible in its attempt to equilibrate.

To which a Platonist response might be: so what?

To which a Platonist response might be: so what? — Wayfarer

To which natural philosophy would reply, so what? We're Aristoteleans.

Perhaps you might elaborate.

Systems science takes Aristotle as its founding figure. It expands on the holism and organicism of his hylomorphism, whereas regular science riffs off the atomistic causality of Aristotle's earlier Organon. (Francis Bacon got modern experimental science rolling with his publication of the "New Organon".)

So, again, where do teleological explanations come into it? Those being, explanations in terms of the reasons for the existence of particulars, as distinct from their antecedent causes?

I just cited Salthe's tellic hierarchy of tendency/function/purpose a few posts back. I've also cited it to you half a dozen times at least over at least a decade.

If you have an argument against that approach – other than it is not what a Platonist/Buddhist/Idealist/Ordinary Person/Whatever would mean by final cause – then trot it out.

And it doesn't even matter if Aristotle did not unpack the point. It is a distinction that has only become possible because of modern science and its understanding of what actually grounds the Cosmos and where negentropic complexity might fit with that in a holistic and hylomorphic fashion.

Stop asking me to do your homework. I've learnt it is a thankless exercise.

I just cited Salthe's tellic hierarchy of tendency/function/purpose a few posts back. I've also cited it to you half a dozen times at least over at least a decade. — apokrisis

The fastest route to non-existence is not a teleological explanation, sorry. You select from Aristotle and C S Pierce those elements which suit your naturalistic account and discard the elements that do not.

I just cited Salthe's tellic hierarchy of tendency/function/purpose a few posts back. — apokrisis

Entropy is perhaps (that is, as far as we can tell) a global tendency, not a purpose. The idea that the Cosmos is governed by some overarching (transcendent) purpose is necessarily a theistic idea, that is there cannot be, logically speaking, an overarching purpose without a transcendent purposer.

In case you misunderstand, I am not proposing that there is a transcendent purposer (designer).

The fastest route to non-existence is not a teleological explanation, sorry. — Wayfarer

It could be if it was planned, but not otherwise.

The idea that the Cosmos is governed by some overarching (transcendent) purpose is necessarily a theistic idea... — Janus

That's because in Western culture, it is construed that way. Buddhist culture, for instance, draws no such conclusions. Same with various schools of philosophy in the ancient world which construed purpose in terms of discerning the logos of the Cosmos, although that term then became appropriated by Christian theology to mean the Word of God.

Hence the problem!

That's because in Western culture, it is construed that way. Buddhist culture, for instance, draws no such conclusions. Same with various schools of philosophy in the ancient world which construed purpose in terms of discerning the logos of the Cosmos, although that term then became appropriated by Christian theology to mean the Word of God. — Wayfarer

I don't think this is right. First because it is a matter of language usage—it simply makes no logical sense to say there is a purpose if there is no purposer, or a design without a designer.

Buddhism, to my knowledge, at least in its seminal forms, simply doesn't talk in terms of overarching or cosmic purpose.

If you want to claim there is an overarching purpose then your claim must at least be consistent with and coherent within, ordinary language usages. @Apokrisis is guilty of anthropomorphizing if he speaks of entropy as being an overarching purpose, rather than simply a global tendency- such talk cannot be anything beyond metaphor

What could "logos of the cosmos" mean beyond simply "the way things work" in a similar sense as the Dao is understood to be the "Way" things work?

Hence the problem! — Wayfarer

What problem?

The fastest route to non-existence is not a teleological explanation, sorry. — Wayfarer

You're talking bollocks. Science is based on the axiom of the principle of least action. It is enshrined in Newtonian Mechanics, Einstein's Relativity and Quantum Field Theory. And guess what, it appears in thermodynamics too once it is upgraded to dissipative structure theory.

You only understand thermodynamics in closed and gone to equilibrium terms. The Heat Death as it was understood in Boltzmann's time. But the Heat Death is now a de Sitter spacetime story. The Comos expands and cools eternally as a story of constant growth (and contraction). It does come to a halt in eternalised fashion as it hits its Planck scale quantum limits. But hey, that is the effective end of time too.

This journey has a start because the Planck scale defines the "hot and small" that could be the Big Bang's beginning in terms of the reciprocality of its Heat Death – the Heat Death being 1/hot and small, or the inverse in being the "vast and frigid".

So – as biosemioticians discussing cosmic pansemosis would put it – there is a natural tendency, an arrow of time, built in. And all of physics reflects that in its grounding on the (rather metaphysical and holistic) principle of least action.

Listen up. You are critiquing old model thermodynamics which is just a model of equilibrium balances. You need to catch up with dissipative structure physics which shows that equilibriums are something different from the point of the view of something as large and growth-predicated as a Cosmos.

Closed systems are Gaussian equilbriums. Openly growing ones preserve their balance by maintaining a log/log or powerlaw direction of action.

There is thus a good reason why we find the Universe tumbling headlong into a heat sink of its own creation. That is how the Universe manages to exist as a process that persists. If there was not this tellic trick of heading towards its own inverse, we couldn't be here to inquire about it.

What is amazing about the Big Bang is how the Cosmos has kept up its doubling and halving powerlaw equilibrium despite a number of major phase changes brought about a dropping temperature and expanding space. Through Darwininan competition, new modes of thermalising keep self-organising and so keep the larger game going.

Radiation gets replaced by matter as the fuel. Then as matter splutters out, dark energy is able to take over.

Telos is there in natural selection fashion. The critical mass is maintained even through huge material disruption.

But all this is perhaps "too new" for you to realise how old hat your views of thermodynamics is?

Entropy is perhaps (that is, as far as we can tell) a global tendency, not a purpose. — Janus

Which is what I said and why I cited Salthe as the source.

The idea that the Cosmos is governed by some overarching (transcendent) purpose is necessarily a theistic idea, — Janus

Yep. It elevates the realm of human concerns – the purposes of a confused species not long departed from the life of an ape – to some transcendent "Mind of God" status.

I prefer a deflationary metaphysics that brings us humans back down to the Earth – the reality that we need to do a better job of tending.

No. It simply doesn't meet the criticism. All of what you're saying may well be quite accurate from a scientific perspective, without amounting to a metaphysics.

Buddhism, to my knowledge, at least in its seminal forms, simply doesn't talk in terms of overarching or cosmic purpose. — Janus

But, by cosmic purpose, don't you simply mean 'purposes other than those enacted by conscious agents'? In other words, you're conceiving of purpose as something carried out by an actor.

If there was not this tellic trick of heading towards its own inverse, we couldn't be here to inquire about it. — apokrisis

By the way, and as we're now discussing science, have there been any updates to the declaration from CERN some years back that the Universe shouldn't exist?

I can't really tell if it makes good metaphysical sense, that's why I asked all those questions. For example, if such a grounding of intentionality reduces to mechanism, i.e. something like causal closure (is it supposed to?), then I would say such a theory has dire epistemic and explanatory issues.

The thing is, if intentions have no causal efficacy, if everything is determined by mechanism—by statistical mechanics, etc.—then the contents of phenomenal experience can never, ever, be selected for by natural selection. This has two problems:

The first is epistemic. If how we experience the world and what we think of it has no causal effect on behavior, then there is no reason to think science is telling us anything about the way the actually world is. Natural selection would never ensure that phenomenal experiences don't drift arbitrarily far from whatever the world is actually like because the contents of awareness have absolutely no bearing on reproduction if they don't affect behavior. It's self refuting.

So folks who want to have people accept these sorts of narratives need some sort of "just so" story where "information processing," or some such, when it results in phenomenal awareness, just happens to not allow the contents of awareness to drift too far away from reality. But why should this be?

The second is explanatory. Evolution explains a lot of phenomenal awareness: why sex feels good, why sweets tastes good, why being tired feels such that you don't want to do anything. Yet if awareness doesn't dictate behavior, then sex could feel like torture and it would make no difference for reproduction. The "way things feel," could never be selected for (barring some "just so story" where somehow behavioral outputs drag along the contents of awareness with them).

Finally, there would be the fact that phenomenal awareness would now seem to be a sort of unique, sui generis sort of strong emergence, but not only that, it would be the only phenomena we have ever observed that only demonstrates causality in precisely one direction. Even with the introduction of panpsychism, this seems to remain a problem. I don't think it's unfair to say this one is only slightly less problematic than Cartesian dualism's interaction problem, it almost amounts to the same thing in many respects.

To my mind, those are big problems even for a theory that could lay out an adequate explanation of how first person experience emerges from entropy, information processing, computation, etc., which absolutely none can (and here most authors readily admit this—whoever figures this out will have a claim to surpassing Newton or Einstein). All we have is multiple competing "suggestive" theories, none of which can gain currency.

On the other hand, if a theory allows for something along the lines of "strong emergence," to get around these problems, I have no idea why we would be talking about mindless entropy gradients and intentionality as good in a remotely univocal or even analogous way. Goodness, as we experience it, would be defined in terms of an irreducible intentionality. This doesn't mean thermodynamics or complexity studies can't inform us about the nature of phenomenal awareness or how it emerges, but it would mean there is no reduction such that the goodness of practical reason can be explicable purely in terms statistical mechanics.

Goodness, as we experience, would be defined in terms of an irreducible intentionality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I see it, the only goodness we can know is the goodness of human intentionality. It seems we find it very difficult not to anthropomorphize.

No. It simply doesn't meet the criticism. All of what you're saying may well be quite accurate from a scientific perspective, without amounting to a metaphysics. — Wayfarer

There cannot be an intersubjectively valid metaphysics worth rational consideration which is not consistent with, and coherent within, the terms of science. That is not to say you are not free to believe whatever seems right to you for living your own life. We all have that prerogative, just don't expect such beliefs to be universally relevant, as science is.

You can be sure the scientists are not looking for any transcendent explanations.

It happens sometimes. The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman gets around to arguing for a sort of vaguely Hegelian objective idealism. The Fine Tuning Problem and some people's problems with multiverse has led to the Von Neumann-Wigner "Conciousness Causes Collapse" interpretation of quantum mechanics to get done fresh looks, and this is sometimes framed in such terms.

I'll admit that it does at least answer FTP. Why is the universe supportive of life? Because possibility retroactively crystalizes into actuality only when it would have spawned life. And why is it set up for complex life? Presumably because this does more to collapse potential into actuality. But honestly, this one always seemed a bit much for me because it seems unfalsifiable in a particularly extraordinary way.

There cannot be an intersubjectively valid metaphysics worth rational consideration which is not consistent with, and coherent within, the terms of science. — Janus

This from a self-described "non-positivist" :lol:

But all this is perhaps "too new" for you to realise how old hat your views of thermodynamics is?

Color me skeptical, but this new view of thermodynamics has now settled:
-the origin of the universe,
-the ultimate fate of the universe,
-how mind emerges and why it has the contents it does,
-and gives us a theory of morality?

I may have been unclear here. The language of values makes sense for those who chose to use it: Weber, Nozik, Rawls, etc. I was thinking particularly of backwards projecting the term onto thinkers from centuries prior. It seems to lead to confusion both because of the other connotations of the word and the way it is commonly understood today (which has bled into everyday life, e.g. "family values," etc.).

The language of "inherit value," used today might actually be a decent enough expression for older aesthetic theories, since the experience of the beautiful is "valuable for itself," and makes no necessary moral claims on us, but it isn't great the moral language of prior eras precisely because they draw a contrast here between the Good and the Beautiful.

This from a self-described "non-positivist" — Wayfarer

Your lack of nuanced understanding is again in evidence— I guess if you are a black and white thinker then of course everything will appear to you as such.

It happens sometimes. The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman gets around to arguing for a sort of vaguely Hegelian objective idealism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As I see it Hoffman's argument is a performative contradiction and hence self-refuting.

And why is it set up for complex life? Presumably because this does more to collapse potential into actuality. But honestly, this one always seemed a bit much for me because it seems unfalsifiable in a particularly extraordinary way. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm always skeptical when probabilities are being assessed from within the system they purport to characterize. Collapsing potential into actuality sounds pretty much the same as @Apokrisis talking about symmetry-breaking and entropy.

I agree with you about such notions, I see them as being merely imaginative or metaphorical, and not subject to falsification, which means they cannot rightly be granted the status of theories. They might have poetical value, though, even in the ancient sense of poesis as 'making'—ideas which cannot be determined as being true or false or even predictively accurate may nonetheless be profoundly transformative.

Your lack of nuanced understanding — Janus

Understanding your posts requires none. You fall back on positivist declarations whenever metaphysics comes up, but then deny that you're doing so.

Since you didn't understand it, how could you possibly know what is required to understand it? As usual you are treating this discussion in "schoolyard" fashion, instead of taking what your interlocutor says seriously, when you have no actual argument, you respond by casting unwarranted negative aspersions. It's childish behavior and very poor form. If you don't up your game you'll be on my 'ignore' list.

All of what you're saying may well be quite accurate from a scientific perspective, without amounting to a metaphysics. — Wayfarer

The truth of this relies on you being an expert in what counts as metaphysics. So...

By the way, and as we're now discussing science, have there been any updates to the declaration from CERN some years back that the Universe shouldn't exist? — Wayfarer

Sources of CP violation have indeed been found. Just not enough.

Rather than just react to catchy headlines, you ought to invest some effort into learning about what you just hope is good verbal ammunition.