Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

Neither Ghost Nor Machine
The Emergence and Nature of Selves

by Jeremy Sherman
Fwd by Terrence Deacon

Selves are both Ghosts and Machines

 Post 59. December 7, 2018

    The Ghost in the Organism

    The Self that Tries to Survive

 This book is a 2017 sequel to Terrence Deacon's Incomplete Nature, How Mind Emerged From Matter (2012). Sherman and Deacon have worked together for over 20 years to develop the counter-intuitive and "paradigm challenging" concept of "Absence" as a causal influence in the natural world. The paradoxical positive meaning of that negative term was explained in great detail by Deacon. For example, he developed a theory of "Autogens" to explain how Life and Mind could emerge from lifeless & mindless matter, without any divine intervention. So Sherman chose to expand upon the allied notions of "Selves" and "Aims" as meta-physical agents in physical reality. In the introduction, Deacon says that Sherman's book "explains the surprising role played by relaxation of selection in the evolution of biological complexity and higher-order cooperative behaviors". In other words, teleological selection for a null trait (absence) is allowed to slip through the filter.

Both of these books are serious Science and Philosophy, so the authors carefully avoided the pseudoscience of Supernaturalism1 : "the assumption that the solution to the mystery of purpose resides in a realm inaccessible to science". However, my BothAnd approach is not deterred from taking a single step across the self-imposed boundary of Cause & Effect Science, to engage the philosophical concept of First Cause (Singularity), if not the Final Cause (reason for Creation)2.  So, from the Enformationism perspective, I'd say that Selves are both Ghosts (metaphysical) and Machines (Physical); both Immaterial and Material; both Informational and Causal; both Subjective and Objective.

In Deacon's theory, the hypothetical self-creating Autogen is the missing link between physical and biological evolution. Nice theory, but how? So Sherman focuses on the plausible physical steps by which organic living cells coluld have emerged from disorganized non-living matter. Before he delves into the origins of Life and Mind that Darwin passed-up, he begins by asking : "What is purpose and how does it emerge from purposeless behavior?" But for simplicity, he typically uses the term "Aims" to describe the tendency of living things to move toward life-supporting environ-ments. And he refers to the organisms themselves as "Selves". Aims are means-to-ends behaviors, and Selves are natural objects that "try" to achieve those ends. Rocks don't try, but Rockys do. Those rare objects with aims & abilities, are Agents & Doers.

Although both authors try to avoid any references to supernatural causes, explanations for Life & Mind tend to make it unavoidable. Sherman quotes Jacques Monod, "The central problem of biology is how could purposeful systems have emerged from a universe with no purpose?" For the purposes of his book, Sherman side-steps such ultimate questions, preferring to focus on proximate features of nature. But I'm not a scientist, merely an interested layman, so I can ask the obvious follow-up question : "if there is purpose in parts of the universe, could there be a goal for the whole?"

Scientists tend to treat "evolutionary theory as though it were a complete explanation for life". But Darwin's story took the origin of life for granted. Now, Deacon and Sherman are pushing the narrative back to the missing link between Substance and Selves. Moreover, Natural Selection appears to naive observers to be goal-oriented. But scientists are only interested in the cause & effect inertia of billiard balls instead of the Final Cause (Aim) of the pool shooter. Without a beginning (intention) and end (goal) a series of events is not a story. Darwinism only explains the mechanism in the middle, not the Aim at the origin or the Goal at the end.

Blog Post 59 continued . . . click Next

1. Preternaturalism :    Science only goes back as far as Planck time – a fraction of a second after the Singularity created Space & Time from Infinity & Eternity.
   My Philosophical theory goes one step farther back to imagine how something (presence) emerged from nothing (absence). It stops short of Supernaturalism, to put words & ideas into the mind of God. I don’t know what the intention for creation was, only that the process shows signs of Entention.
   The physical Big Bang Inflation was an Effective cause of the world, but it was the Entention – the meta-physical First & Final Cause, Choice, Decision, Intention, Purpose – that motivated the physical action.
   A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, but a story begins with the decision to take a step in a particular direction. So, in order to explain the Alpha that leads to the Omega, you have to go beyond the first physical step, and ask why questions.

2. The Pull of the Future

   Sherman’s attribution of “Aims” in the minds of “Selves” goes contrary to most scientific theories of evolution. The typical Cause & Effect mechanism is pushed from behind by previous events, Hence the physical vehicle is not steered toward any particular destination. But Aims & Purposes imply some sense of Teleology and Future-oriented behavior in at least some evolved creatures.
   He poses a solution to the “Mystery of Purpose” in an otherwise aimless universe. But he also accepts the conventional view of Materialism, that such future-focused beings must have somehow emerged from random cause & effects pushes. Yet once that astronomically unlikely event occurred, the future became a new causal force, pulling minds & wills toward non-random states of mind & body.
   The Enformationism theory is based on the axiom that Will Power (Purpose and a Future Goal) was encoded in the Singularity that gave birth to our world. Just as a fetus takes time & effort to mature into adults, the universe may be just now reaching its mature form as an emerging ententional world, taking its destiny into its own hands. Aims, Teleology & Purposes didn’t emerge by accident, they were provided for in the Program for World Creation.
   Physical Cause & Effect in the sense of bouncing billiard balls gives no sign of creative intent. But the emergence of Entention couldn’t have happened by accident in a zillion years. So we need to look for it “in the beginning”.