Entropy, to me, refers to the affect which the passing of time has on the physical world. But this concept reveals a deep deficiency in the thinking of physicists. In physics, time is not considered to be a real property of the physical wold, it has been conceptually removed through the synthesis of space and time, and the conception of four dimensional space. Yet engineers who work with real physical things need to employ the concept of entropy, to account for the fact that the passing of time has a real affect in the physical. This means that the passing of time is understood by these engineers to be a real causal agent in the physical world.

Now we have a ontological gap to bridge. Theoretically, time is not a real, active thing within the physical world, it is not actively passing, and therefore could not be a causal agent. In practise, the affects of time passing must be accounted for. The gap manifests as the micro/macro division. This can be related to the internal/external division, because the micro necessarily requires the assumption of a boundary for its creation. The gap can then be modeled as the difference between the bounded and the unbounded. Entropy is proposed to account for the difference between the unbounded (real time), and the bounded (conceptual space-time).

Models of spontaneous symmetry breaking have to introduce a material efficient cause to break the symmetry. There must be "a fluctuation" that disturbs the ball enough that slope and gravity take over.
Then the ball rolls until it falls off the dome and reestablishes a state of symmetry - sitting still with all forces in equilibrium. — apokrisis

Here is a reductionist attempt to bridge that gap. The reductionist will not consider the possibility of a real, non-physical, (unbounded), immaterial cause, to assist in understanding the role of time in the universe. Hence an efficient cause is assumed to set the ball rolling. But this is so blatantly contradictory, because prior to symmetry breaking there could be no time passing, therefore no efficient causation.

That is why the discussion of entropy here is completely misdirected. It is simply a way of circling around the real issue, while still avoid a direct approach. However, the focus on entropy is somewhat useful for bringing the specifics of the problem into view. Modern science really has no understanding of time, and other non-physical, or immaterial things. Unbounded things fall out of the scope of the scientist's carefully controlled experimentation. Furthermore, it has no approach, or method, for gaining an understanding of these things.

The habits of thought, which would make someone posit something like a chance fluctuation, to facilitate one's metaphysical belief, have developed into a particular form of laziness which permeates the intellectual society.

What's the difference between saying that the plant intends to produce seed and saying that the plant will produce seed? — Michael

There is a chance (chance in the proper, primary sense, as possibility) that the plant will not produce seed. There is a big difference between things which have already occurred, in the past (they are necessary), and things which may occur in the future (they are possible). It seems like many choose to ignore this difference.

Perhaps MU is using 'intend' to mean something like 'inward tendency'. The inward tendency of plants to produce seed could be said to be a function of the earlier instantiations of plants' relationships (in terms of viability) to the later instantiations of those plants, as it affected past (to us) but future (to the earlier plants) instantiations of those plants. — John

You could use the word tendency, and "tend" lends itself to care, attend, and intend. But tendency itself tends to imply a form of habituation. And if we keep looking for earlier instantiations, we must approach a first, because it is known that there was a time with no life on earth. So "tendency" does not approach the root of the issue, which is the cause of the tendency. "Intention" on the other hand is understood as a cause, final cause, and therefore gives us an approach to the issue, which is an issue of causation.

Entropy could be understood also as a tendency, with the same problem. it doesn't give us an approach to the cause. Instead, we are left to assume a chance fluctuation.

There is a chance (chance in the proper, primary sense, as possibility) that the plant will not produce seed. There is a big difference between things which have already occurred, in the past (they are necessary), and things which may occur in the future (they are possible). It seems like many choose to ignore this difference — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't see how this explains the difference between "the plant intends to produce seed" and "the plant will produce seed". Are you saying that the former means "the plant has a chance to produce seed"?

Necessity is not in conflict with chaos, but rather an expression of it. Order is not an absence of possibility. It's expressed through it--when the world does something at "random," the necessary order of that state is spoken by the world.

Any actual state is born of possibility rather than eliminating it.

If you mean to say that I still don't really grasp how order necessarily evolves out of chaos, and am therefore somewhat skeptical of the idea, then yeah... — John

As I said, planets and stars and other "gravitational clumping" in Reality have more entropy than an evenly distributed gas.

Modern science really has no understanding of time, and other non-physical, or immaterial things — Metaphysician Undercover

You could start with this book:

The Physical Basis of the Direction of Time

If you don't want to read the whole thing:

http://www.time-direction.de/

I don't see how this explains the difference between "the plant intends to produce seed" and "the plant will produce seed". Are you saying that the former means "the plant has a chance to produce seed"? — Michael

To say that the plant intends to produce seed implies that it is recognized by the speaker of the phrase, that it is possible that for one reason or another, the plant will not produce seed. To say that the plant will produce seed implies that the production of seed is a necessity. The former recognizes the act as a contingent act, while the latter implies that it is necessary.

You could start with this book:

The Physical Basis of the Direction of Time — tom

Yes, the title of the book, betrays the problem I referred to, assuming that time has a physical basis. Here's a quote from what little I have access to, without paying, through your links:

"More recent conceptions of time in physics may instead be understood as a complete elimination of absolute time, and hence of absolute motion. This approach is equivalent to the construction of 'timeless orbits', ...".

I suggest you read something like theoretical physicist Lee Smolin's "Time Reborn", for an outline of the problems faced by physicists with respect to the ontology of time, and an explanation of the inadequacies of "entropy".

"I don't see how this explains the difference between "the plant intends to produce seed" and "the plant will produce seed". Are you saying that the former means "the plant has a chance to produce seed"?

"Intention" and "will" are identical. "The plant shall produce seed", or "the plant is going to produce seed" would be preferable, as "Will" implies intent, whereas "shall" is neutral.

Obviously will or intent and even "purpose" are bad language when it comes to evolution, as they hint at a teleology. But you do not have to go far even in the works of the greatest writers on evolution to see this mistake made again and again.

Yes, the title of the book, betrays the problem I referred to, assuming that time has a physical basis. — Metaphysician Undercover

Sure, that's why experiments like this work

https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/quantum-experiment-shows-how-time-emerges-from-entanglement-d5d3dc850933#.uty0d36wp

To say that the plant intends to produce seed implies that it is recognized by the speaker of the phrase, that it is possible that for one reason or another, the plant will not produce seed. To say that the plant will produce seed implies that the production of seed is a necessity. The former recognizes the act as a contingent act, while the latter implies that it is necessary. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then you are saying that "the plant intends to produce seed" just means that there is a chance that the plant will produce seed. So this use of the word "intention" is just a replacement for the word "chance". And given that you're arguing that there is an element of intention in genetic mutation and evolution you're just arguing that there is an element of chance in genetic mutation and evolution.

So, rather than arguing that "chance within evolutionary theory is simply a myth", as you say in the OP, you're actually arguing that it isn't a myth.

No, black-holes are not an exception. Black-holes have vastly more entropy than the matter that created them, be that a perfectly spherically distributed ideal gas or a solar system. Every state on the way to creating a black hole has greater entropy than the previous state. — tom

And yet black holes evaporate. So while clumping increases the entropy in terms of dissipating gravitational degrees of freedom, dark energy expansion is then a further complication that overwhelms that clumping given enough passing time. The highest entropy state becomes the blackbody radiation of minimal temperature cosmic event horizons on current physical understanding. It all ends with a fizzle of photons with a wavelength the span of the visible universe - the inverse of the Planck-scale state of things at the hot Big Bang.

Why should "planets and stars and other "gravitational clumping"" be thought to possess more symmetry than "an evenly distributed gas".

You could use the word tendency, and "tend" lends itself to care, attend, and intend. But tendency itself tends to imply a form of habituation. And if we keep looking for earlier instantiations, we must approach a first, because it is known that there was a time with no life on earth. So "tendency" does not approach the root of the issue, which is the cause of the tendency. "Intention" on the other hand is understood as a cause, final cause, and therefore gives us an approach to the issue, which is an issue of causation.

Entropy could be understood also as a tendency, with the same problem. it doesn't give us an approach to the cause. Instead, we are left to assume a chance fluctuation. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is a useful distinction between tendencies which are inherent and those which are the result of "habituation". Whether all tendencies that are inherent today are exhaustively resultant from past habituations or not is not something which can be demonstrated logically or determined by empirical observation. There seems to be no doubt that present inherencies are influenced by past habituations. But 'influenced' is not coterminous with 'determined' or "exhaustively resultant". So, whether you believe one story or the other comes down to an exercise of intuition and faith. Do you trust your own intuitions or the intuitions of the majority of the materialistically minded intelligentsia? If you opt for the former then be prepared to endure some ridicule from the like-minded mob.

The habits of thought, which would make someone posit something like a chance fluctuation, to facilitate one's metaphysical belief, have developed into a particular form of laziness which permeates the intellectual society. — Metaphysician Undercover

Not really. Instead, what it says is that if you try to strip reality back to some foundational material monism, what you arrive at is quite different from conventional linear notions of efficient cause. Instead of the particularity of some cause creating some effect, you instead have just thermal noise - pure fluctuation.

This is what the butterfly effect in deterministic chaos models was all about. The most innocuous fluctuation, like a beating wing, could retrospectively be blamed as the efficient cause of a big storm halfway around the world. But what that means is that in a non-linear world, trying to separate causal signal from causal noise in the usual way is futile. At the time, anything could have been the crucial trigger.

More important is the way events snowballed. And even more important is that there was some generic attractor - a global finality - towards which any such snowballing fluctuation was always going to tend. It really never mattered what might be said to break the initial symmetry as all paths were going to lead to much the same eventual outcome.

So this is the ontic message of dissipative structure theory. It doesn't really matter how things begin. Any old fluctuation will do as the fluctuations simply represent the infinity of particular ways to get rolling towards the one waiting generic global outcome. It is formal and final cause that tell the story.

And learning to tell such a different story of reality hardly seems intellectually lazy. The ball on the dome paradox is simply meant to illustrate what a basic problem the old Newtonian model of things in fact had.

According to Newtonian laws - which are all about crisp material/efficient causes - a ball sitting still would never have reason to move. But a view of reality founded on indeterminism says the opposite. Spacetime itself fluctuates on the smallest scale. It is noisy or grainy in a way that can't ultimately be suppressed.

And from there, the fact that fluctuations are largely suppressed - on our classical scale of observation - can be retrojected to the question of initial conditions. The beginning of everything must logically be a case of fluctuation unbounded - a roil or vagueness.

Then you are saying that "the plant intends to produce seed" just means that there is a chance that the plant will produce seed. — Michael

No, to say that the plant intends to produce seed, is to say that it has as a goal, purpose, or objective, to produce seed. We've been through this already. The fact that there is a chance that it will not is irrelevant to this point. I know that you don't agree with me, you don't believe that any non-conscious thing could intend anything, or have a goal, objective, or purpose. But I think it is obvious, and you are in denial of basic facts of life.

I think this is just a consequence of your habit of usage of the word. You are in the habit of using "intend" and "intention", only to refer to properties of conscious beings. Since your usage has been restricted by this particular habit, you have come to believe that this is the only way that the word ought to be used. Your habit is the habit which others ought to have. I, on the other hand have a different way to use the word. I've spent much time now, with dictionary definitions and examples, trying to explain why I think my way is better than yours. You have merely repeated your assertions, only conscious things intend. Why do you think that your habit of use is better than the way I've explained to you?

So, rather than arguing that "chance within evolutionary theory is simply a myth", as you say in the OP, you're actually arguing that it isn't a myth. — Michael

I already went through these two substantially different ways of using "chance". One, the one I just used, refers to a future possibility, as a chance that something may occur. The other, the one I object to, refers to a past event as a chance occurrence, or random event.

"Intention" and "will" are identical. — charleton

No, when Michael said "the plant will produce seed", "will" I believe, was used as a synonym for "shall". It is another sense of the word "will" which is associated with intention. We must be careful not to equivocate, but I think that it was clear from the context.

More important is the way events snowballed. And even more important is that there was some generic attractor - a global finality - towards which any such snowballing fluctuation was always going to tend. It really never mattered what might be said to break the initial symmetry as all paths were going to lead to much the same eventual outcome. — apokrisis

Why does this appear to be so opposed to you example? In the example, a small event such as the butterfly flapping its wings, could have a huge difference in the final effect, either nice weather, or a big storm. And proceeding from there, the difference would only get bigger and bigger, as the big storm would cause damage, etc.. Are you attempting to deny that a small event can make a huge difference over a long period of time?

This is exactly what we see as evidence in the evolution of life, a very small change occurs, then over a longer and longer period of time, this manifests into a bigger and bigger difference.

But then you make a conclusion completely opposed to these observations, all paths are going to lead to the same eventual outcome. Where is your evidence, or what kind of principles are you following?

So this is the ontic message of dissipative structure theory. It doesn't really matter how things begin. Any old fluctuation will do as the fluctuations simply represent the infinity of particular ways to get rolling towards the one waiting generic global outcome. It is formal and final cause that tell the story. — apokrisis

Again, this principle is completely opposed to the evidence. Changes closest to the beginning of any event have the most potential to change that event. This is due to the reality of momentum. From any point in space, motion can begin in any direction. Since such a beginning is necessarily an acceleration, the difficulty in adopting a different direction is exponential with the passing of time. Therefore the act at the beginning, being furthest back in time has the greatest influence over the final outcome.

Are you attempting to deny that a small event can make a huge difference over a long period of time? — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm making the point that material/efficient cause gets overplayed in regular metaphysics. The butterfly effect was understood by many in just the way you say - the smallest initiating event can have incredible consequences. Yet really, what it says is that the critical event was no better than random noise. There were any number of butterfly wings beating that same morning. To single out one as the prime mover is thus a retrospective fallacy. Especially if there was always a global attractor saying that every path was the first step to the same final destination.

So the beating of the butterfly wings is as contingent a material fact as you can get - just a fluctuation. And the weather that developed was the kind of weather that always develops - being ruled by formal/final cause.

But then you make a conclusion completely opposed to these observations, all paths are going to lead to the same eventual outcome. Where is your evidence, or what kind of principles are you following? — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, this was the important thing that chaos theory modeled - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor

Changes closest to the beginning of any event have the most potential to change that event. This is due to the reality of momentum. From any point in space, motion can begin in any direction. Since such a beginning is necessarily an acceleration, the difficulty in adopting a different direction is exponential with the passing of time. Therefore the act at the beginning, being furthest back in time has the greatest influence over the final outcome. — Metaphysician Undercover

This may seem true of linear Newtonian mechanics. But it is not true of non-linear worlds in which feedback both amplifies and damps action at a collective level of interaction.

In real world full of interactions - like a chaos of billiard balls rattling around a table - any new ball you fire into the mess is going to have a high chance of being redirected. Most of the collisions are going to decelerate your ball, although there is also the slim chance that some collisions send it going even faster in the direction you intended. But either way, your initial act of acceleration to the ball will have exponentially less to do with its actual continuing behaviour over time.

Yet really, what it says is that the critical event was no better than random noise. — apokrisis

This is exactly the kind of thinking which I am being critical of. Instead of singling out, and understanding the particular acts themselves, to see which one has which effect, they are all lumped together as random noise. However, within all that seemingly random noise, one intentional act may have a huge outcome over an extended period of time.

In real world full of interactions - like a chaos of billiard balls rattling around a table - any new ball you fire into the mess is going to have a high chance of being redirected. Most of the collisions are going to decelerate your ball, although there is also the slim chance that some collisions send it going even faster in the direction you intended. But either way, your initial act of acceleration to the ball will have exponentially less to do with its actual continuing behaviour over time. — apokrisis

But you were clearly referring to how things "begin". So your analogy, that there are balls already rattling around, doesn't suffice. Introducing a new efficient cause into a sea of efficient causes does not describe a beginning. This is what you said:

It doesn't really matter how things begin. Any old fluctuation will do as the fluctuations simply represent the infinity of particular ways to get rolling towards the one waiting generic global outcome. — apokrisis

So if we're not talking about the beginning now, we are talking about a universe with organised structures, not the random noise, of your chaos of billiard balls. With organized structures, a strategically placed, tiny efficient cause, can have a huge effect over an extended period of time, just like the butterfly effect.

Either way then, the direction of the tiny event may have great significance over the final outcome. At the beginning, there is no random noise, so the first event sets the direction for everything. In the middle, there may be what appears to be random noise, but all this apparent random noise is really part of the organized structures which we observe around us, the earth, solar system, galaxies, etc.. Here, an intentionally placed, minute efficient cause, could also significantly effect the final outcome.

So I maintain my accusation that this line of thinking amounts to an intellectual laziness. Instead of determining particular causes, this line of thinking lumps them altogether as some type of random soup, with no particular cause of existence of that soup, yet an assumed particular final outcome (effect). Doesn't this seem contradictory to you, a determined effect, from an indeterminate cause?

This is exactly the kind of thinking which I am being critical of. Instead of singling out, and understanding the particular acts themselves, to see which one has which effect, they are all lumped together as random noise. However, within all that seemingly random noise, one intentional act may have a huge outcome over an extended period of time. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well what makes a fluctuation intentional rather than just actually being random noise?

Local intentional acts are possible. We humans - as the most complex kinds of thing - produce them all the time. But here we are talking of physics - the metaphysics of simplicity.

But you were clearly referring to how things "begin". So your analogy, that there are balls already rattling around, doesn't suffice. Introducing a new efficient cause into a sea of efficient causes does not describe a beginning. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are just persistently grabbing the wrong end of the stick every time you face some fresh example. The point was that regardless of beginnings, context is what rapidly matters. A system - especially a Newtonian one with no foresight to avoid accidental collisions - is going to develop towards its equilibrium average behaviour pretty quickly.

Either way then, the direction of the tiny event may have great significance over the final outcome. — Metaphysician Undercover

From what point of view exactly? Especially if the outcomes all look generically the same.

So sure, the tale feels significant if you have a metaphysics dependent on every big event having its tiny triggering cause. But instead this is about how regularity arises from randomness in a self-organising fashion.

In that light, efficient causes become a metaphysical red herring. Or at least, it only makes sense to talk about them in retrospective fashion from some perspective where a form or purpose is said to have been achieved.

Why should "planets and stars and other "gravitational clumping"" be thought to possess more symmetry than "an evenly distributed gas". — John

They clearly don't. What's your point?

Then why do the most symmetrical objects in the universe have the highest entropy — tom

As I said, planets and stars and other "gravitational clumping" in Reality have more entropy than an evenly distributed gas. — tom

Since you claimed that planets and stars "have more entropy than an evenly distributed gas", and that
" the most symmetrical objects have the highest entropy", it would seem that you would be committed to the claim that planets and stars possess more symmetry than " an evenly distributed gas".

So I asked:

Why should "planets and stars and other "gravitational clumping"" be thought to possess more symmetry than "an evenly distributed gas". — John

And you replied:

They clearly don't. What's your point? — tom

:s

Well what makes a fluctuation intentional rather than just actually being random noise? — apokrisis

An intentional act is one which is carried out for a purpose. That means that it is a part of a lager whole, the means toward an end. The whole, being something which will come to fruition in the future, is not immediately evident. Therefore it may appear as random noise, but this description would be a failing to recognize it as a part of a whole which has not yet come into existence.

Local intentional acts are possible. We humans - as the most complex kinds of thing - produce them all the time. But here we are talking of physics - the metaphysics of simplicity. — apokrisis

Physics is not metaphysics. So if you are reducing your metaphysics, such that it becomes a form of theoretical physics, just so that you can exclude the relevance of local intentional acts, you are either not engaged in metaphysics, or a very sloppy, lazy form of metaphysics.

You are just persistently grabbing the wrong end of the stick every time you face some fresh example — apokrisis

Each end of the example you hand me has to make sense, or else what is the point of making the example? You could hand me a valid conclusion with false premises, or excellent premises with an invalid conclusion, each is equally pointless.

So when you say "regardless of beginnings, context is what rapidly matters", I receive this as a premise because you have not provide the logic to support it as a conclusion. But as a premise, it has complexities which are difficult to understand without contradiction. Within a context, an event cannot properly be called a beginning. "Context" implies that there is a presupposed extension surrounding that supposed beginning, contradicting the meaning of "beginning".

If by "beginning" you mean something which comes into existence that is not directly part of, or caused by, the context, then we have to look for a cause outside of the described context. This is when we look for intention as a cause. But when we look at intention as a cause, the context which is evident is not what really matters, because the cause is part of a bigger whole, which will only come into existence in the future.

So sure, the tale feels significant if you have a metaphysics dependent on every big event having its tiny triggering cause. But instead this is about how regularity arises from randomness in a self-organising fashion.

In that light, efficient causes become a metaphysical red herring. Or at least, it only makes sense to talk about them in retrospective fashion from some perspective where a form or purpose is said to have been achieved. — apokrisis

The point is, that at every point in time of the "big event", every stage of proceedings, from the first triggering cause, to the finality, the event must be guided by intention. This means that at every moment of time, along this extended occurrence, there must be more and more tiny triggering causes, to keep the big event from going off track. The event can only be said to be "self-organizing" if each tiny triggering event emanates from within the context of the whole. That is, the cause of the organism must be truly immanent. Then each tiny efficient cause is of the utmost importance, in directing the "self-organizing", and clearly not a metaphysical red herring.

I just want to suggest that if one is arguing for a telos, one can dispense with intention, which has strong connotations of conscious purpose, even if it can be defined to exclude all psychology. Aristotle himself doesn't depend on any psychology in his notion of final causes, i.e., on intention as conscious purpose.

The more I think about it, it seems to me that asymmetry and entropy are the same. — John

Clearly you are wrong about this as black-holes demonstrate. Also, @apokrisis pointed out, the final state of the universe may indeed be a perfectly symmetrical photon sea and the state of ultimate entropy.

Since you claimed that planets and stars "have more entropy than an evenly distributed gas", and that
" the most symmetrical objects have the highest entropy", it would seem that you would be committed to the claim that planets and stars possess more symmetry than " an evenly distributed gas". — John

It is a well known physical fact that gravitational clumping is associated with an increase in entropy, and a loss of symmetry. So, disorder must be increasing as stars and planets form. Ar this matter is accreted into a black hole, disorder again increases, but this time the symmetry increases.

Asymmetry and entropy don't appear to be the same.

Gravitational clumping would be symmetrical in its asymmetry if the distribution of matter ended up fractally spread.

Fractals have scale symmetry in that things look the same or self similar no matter what scale of observation is chosen. So a fractal is a maximum entropy condition.

When I spoke of asymmetry and entropy being the same I had in mind systemic asymmetry not the asymmetry of individual entities. From a systemic perspective, considered in terms of gravity or mass, the black hole would seem to be the supreme asymmetry.

When I spoke of asymmetry and entropy being the same I had in mind systemic asymmetry not the asymmetry of individual entities. From a systemic perspective, considered in terms of gravity or mass, the black hole would seem to be the supreme asymmetry. — John

But your point of view is the unrealistic one that is imagining a single black hole in an unbounded void. So it is asymmetric in the sense of being everything massive lumped in the one place.

Yet as said, a black hole - as an event horizon of some entropic size - is as simple and symmetric state as it gets. A smooth sphere. So it has a temperature and a size, and that's it.

It is an asymmetry from one point of view - being hyperspheric curvature in contrast to the flat spacetime around it. But from its own point of view, it is a state of high symmetry.

And then from the world's point of view, the black hole is never alone. At the very least - for there to be a world that is generally flat - it would have to exist as part of a fractal distribution of black holes, an entropic symmetry from that point of view.

If all the black holes started to collect, then the whole of the Universe would be gravitationally collapsing and becoming a single ball of hyperspheric curvature.

In fact, the cosmological problem of a few years back was that the Universe appeared under-dense in terms of gravitating mass and so should be expanding and diluting rather faster than it is. This is why the further ingredient of dark energy or the cosmological constant fixes things. It ensures the Universe expands with a slightly hyperbolic curvature and so - in Red Queen fashion - it will in fact bottom out eventually in the scale symmetry of a heat death.

We will be bounded by event horizons at a fixed distance just a little larger than our near heat death condition today. So in a way, it will be like being inside a black hole looking out. We will be closed off by a wall of maximum entropy that makes further change inside our region of spacetime meaningless. You will still have a quantum sizzle of thermal fluctuations - the black body photons emitted by the event horizon - but it will do no work and not change the entropy.

A symmetry is a difference that doesn't make a difference. An asymmetry is a difference that does.

So for us as human scale observers, a black hole in our vicinity makes a difference. But for a Universe, the black hole doesn't if it is part of an even fractal distribution of such clumping (the cosmological flat balance), or as now seems the case, it only has to be roughly fractal as any clumping tendency is already being overwhelmed by many orders of magnitude by a general dark energy acceleration of spacetime - an acceleration that will put us inside a fixed event horizon that puts an end to thermal events that make any difference to the state of what is left within.

What you say here seems to be in agreement with what I was saying, and yet you seem think you are disagreeing.
:s

What you say here seems to be in agreement with what I was saying, and yet you seem think you are disagreeing. — John

You seem to be defending the notion that entropy = asymmetry.

I am saying that a state of entropy is a state of equilbrium - so a general symmetry in terms of its local fluctuations or differences.

But that then describes closed systems gone to equilibrium. And how this aspect of the thread got going was when far from equilbrium thermodynamics was introduced - or the still more generic thing of self-organising dissipative structure.

So the dissipative structure view talks about how symmetries can be broken by structural asymmetries - paths that point down a hill to (relatively) higher entropy states.

And then to talk about the Universe - which is a dissipative structure that is also its own heat sink - takes us up yet another level to where both symmetry and asymmetry, entropy and negentropy, have to be understood as two sides of the same coin that emerge synergistically out of a more foundational vagueness or quantum indeterminism.

So we start off with conventional closed system mechanical notions of entropy - the classical Boltzmann ideal gas type models - and move progressively through ever expanded notions of system thermodynamics to arrive at a self-organising cosmos that is dissipating vagueness in effect. Both order and disorder are being produced in equal measure by breaking the even more foundational state of "symmetry" which is the unbounded apeiron.

So rather than disagreeing with you, I have been trying to provide some sense of how the essential question - is entropy symmetry or asymmetry? - might be viewed across a spectrum of increasingly holistic or systematic thermodynamic models.

And on the whole, a state of high entropy is measured in terms of a state of high symmetry - a state in which there is plenty of particular difference, but it doesn't make a general difference. Change happens freely - in the same way as trapped gas particles rattle around inside a flask forever, or blackbody photons rattle around inside an event horizon. But the temperature and pressure of the system remains unchanged despite all this apparent difference, all this apparent busy action, just as a circle looks the same whether it is at rest or spinning at any speed.

I just want to suggest that if one is arguing for a telos, one can dispense with intention, which has strong connotations of conscious purpose, even if it can be defined to exclude all psychology. Aristotle himself doesn't depend on any psychology in his notion of final causes, i.e., on intention as conscious purpose. — jamalrob

Intention is directly related to purpose. Do you believe that purpose is necessarily conscious purpose? Let's assume that life evolved form consisting completely of non-conscious beings to having conscious beings as well, and that there is a vague boundary between the two, a grey area, such that it would be debatable whether certain creatures are conscious or not. How are we going to decide whether a being is conscious or not?

If we watch the creature's behaviour, and notice that it appears to act with purpose, we have reason to believe that it acts with intention. However, we see all kinds of creatures that we know are not conscious, which appear to act with purpose. Therefore, acting with purpose, or intention, is not a good indicator as to whether or not a thing is conscious. In this vague boundary, between conscious and non-conscious, all the creatures appear to act with purpose, or intention. Don't you think that we should dismiss this misleading idea that intention is necessarily conscious intention? All it does is create confusion when we attempt to distinguish conscious from non-conscious.

.

If we watch the creature's behaviour, and notice that it appears to act with purpose, we have reason to believe that it acts with intention. However, we see all kinds of creatures that we know are not conscious, which appear to act with purpose. Therefore, acting with purpose, or intention, is not a good indicator as to whether or not a thing is conscious. — Metaphysician Undercover

The essential difference here would seem to be that we call purpose conscious when it involves a conscious choice. That is, when the organism knows it is doing one thing and not another.

I could give money to a beggar because it will make him feel good. Or maybe the real purpose is that it just makes me feel good. So am I acting out of generosity or self-regard? To the extent that I can sort my intentions into polar alternatives, I am taking another step up in my consciousness.

So when we watch a creature act, we might be able to see it could have acted differently, but is that a choice it was aware of?

And so this is what justifies a graded spectrum of intentionality or telos in nature of tendency/function/purpose.

Telos in nature starts out as a propensity - the likelihood of something happen that has a vague family resemblance.

Then it can become crisply functional - a hardwired response to a learnt situation.

Then it can become crisply optional - it is a choice within a context. Action is justified in terms of it not being its binary other.

So telos is the universal growth of reasonableness. It starts out as the most generic kind of constraint on freedom - a tendency. And it achieves its most definite form when it is fully dichotomous - a crisp choice between two formally contradictory life paths.