Intent

[Resha Caner]

I'd like to better understand the paradigm of unbelievers when dealing with life in science.

For my own part, when I use words like "purpose" or "intent" in talking within scientific disciplines, I don't mean to ascribe any kind of sentience to what I'm describing. It's just that, because I'm a person and think in terms of purpose and intent, some things are hard to describe without using those words and I don't feel it's necessary to jump through hoops and burden my description with a lot of obtuse words just to enforce a philosophical paradigm.

But maybe I just don't "get it" yet. I understand there is a perspective that, under the given conditions, whatever happens happens per the scientific rules in play.

But I guess my question is this: Do you see a difference in the chemical reactions that result from a volcanic eruption versus those that occur to sustain a living cell apart from simple categorical distinctions? In other words, is there ever a justification for ascribing 'intent' to the cell?

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

In other words, is there ever a justification for ascribing 'intent' to the cell?

Find where it is written, if possible, that Yahweh Created Everything to reproduce after its own kind.

And as Yahweh "... Formed <the,his,my,your> Body in the Womb.... "

Yahweh's Purpose ('Intent') in Christ Jesus, described in His Word.

 

[expos4ever]

I am a believer but, without intending to sound patronizing, probably not a very typical one. As a believer, I am challenged by the "problem of free will" - the notion that modern scientific orthodoxy asserts that free will is an illusion. In other words, what appears to be a free choice on my part is a chimera, and any seeming free choice I make is really just the high-level consequence of mindless chemical processes going on in my brain.

While I am not ready to defend free will at the moment, I will simply state that there are minds much greater than mine that defend free will despite the attack it is under from current scientific orthodoxy. David Deutsch - a highly credentialed physicist from the UK - is one such person. He thinks the reductionist orthodoxy so prevalent today is basically dogma. He argues, for example, that "knowledge" is actually a real thing - not merely an abstract concept. And he believes in free will. Just so readers will know that Deutsch is not a crackpot (at least I think he isn't), he very clearly insists that all good "theories" of reality have to survive the evidence. Plus, he rejects anything that outright contradicts our best orthodox physical theories.

In short, I think the argument in defence of free will is based on attacking current reductionist thinking as effectively being an assumption, not an established fact.

 

[Resha Caner]

I am challenged by the "problem of free will"

Aren't we all. But, just to be clear, I didn't intend my question to be about free will.

In short, I think the argument in defence of free will is based on attacking current reductionist thinking as effectively being an assumption, not an established fact.

With that said, this comment is perceptive. Though not about free will, it probably does fit to say my question is a challenge to reductionist thinking. Is there something emergent about a cell's intent that distinguishes it from a volcanic eruption? IOW, does the cell appropriate food with the intent of using it, or is that just a categorically different kind of chemical reaction from a volcano, though still just a chemical reaction?

 

[zippy2006]

In other words, is there ever a justification for ascribing 'intent' to the cell?

This seems very much related to the classic questions of teleology and final causes. In my opinion it all comes down to definitions and mutual understanding (and, of course, mutual effort to understand). For example, from the perspective of a contemporary lexicon we would say that words like "intent" and "purpose" have classically been used analogically for, say, the way that an acorn is naturally ordered to the oak tree. You might say that the intent, purpose, or final cause of the acorn is the oak tree. If intent is thought to primarily apply to creatures such as humans who can self-consciously intend outcomes, then the alternative usage is clearly analogical, yet still relevant and intelligible.

The second thing you point out with the chemical reaction question seems to get at the question of secondary intent in a different way. Could a chemical reaction that is an integral part of a larger organism be said to have more intent than a chemical reaction that is not? Sure, insofar as it partakes in the intent and purpose of the organism to which it belongs. I wrote about this very recently (there I spoke about the difference between a part that belongs to an artificial collection and a part that belongs to an organism, but the volcanic chemical reaction and the cellular chemical reaction approximate those categories).

 

[Resha Caner]

In my opinion it all comes down to definitions and mutual understanding (and, of course, mutual effort to understand).

That's part of it. But also, if definitions are not done carefully, they can obscure important phenomena or ascribe them to inappropriate causes.

This seems very much related to the classic questions of teleology and final causes.

Yes, as I noted to @expos4ever this probably becomes an issue of the whole being more than its parts.

 

[expos4ever]

My intuition- and I am a layman - is that reductionism is wrong. Think of the first footprint on the moon. Is the “true” explanation of that really a long tortuous tale based solely on configurations and interactions of quarks and fundamental forces, with no reference to intention-laden human beings? Seems unlikely.

Note that I am aware that some will bring up the “argument from incredulity” fallacy. Fair enough, but that does not prove I am wrong in being skeptical about reductionism, but rather that I need other arguments over and above mere incredulity.

 

[GlabrousDory4]

But I guess my question is this: Do you see a difference in the chemical reactions that result from a volcanic eruption versus those that occur to sustain a living cell apart from simple categorical distinctions?

Is there a reason to do so?

Stripped of all metaphysical aspects, life utilizes regular chemical reactions, each of which can be wholly understood just like any other set of chemical reactions.

In other words, is there ever a justification for ascribing 'intent' to the cell?

I see no necessity to do so, nor any valid reason to do so.

Sure it may feel good to think that way, but there's no reason to think that way. There's no mechanism of the cell to have any intent. I'm even going to go further and say something like an amoeba doesn't have "intent" and it's a full-on living thing. It behaves according to relatively straight-forward chemical impetus.

 

[Resha Caner]

Note that I am aware that some will bring up the “argument from incredulity” fallacy. Fair enough, but that does not prove I am wrong in being skeptical about reductionism, but rather that I need other arguments over and above mere incredulity.

A good point. Do you have any of those arguments? In my experience they are hard to come by.

 

[Resha Caner]

I see no necessity to do so, nor any valid reason to do so.

So you don't accept that any phenomena is emergent? Your confidence in our ability to explain why single-cell organisms do what they do seems overdrawn, but what I'm wondering is if that relates to a disbelief in the emergent. i.e. it's not emergent, just not fully explained yet.

 

[expos4ever]

A good point. Do you have any of those arguments? In my experience they are hard to come by.

I am even now grappling with a book written by David Deutsch that attacks reductionism. I will try to get back to you on this, but it may take a few days.

 

[Resha Caner]

I am even now grappling with a book written by David Deutsch that attacks reductionism. I will try to get back to you on this, but it may take a few days.

Cool. I'll be waiting.

 

[GlabrousDory4]

So you don't accept that any phenomena is emergent?

I can accept emergent complexity. That doesn't mean that there's any reason to assume it is in a cell.

Your confidence in our ability to explain why single-cell organisms do what they do seems overdrawn

Really? Why? I'll admit it's been a long time since I took biochem but for all the complexity of the reactions that explain the functions in the cell, they were all just regular chemical reactions. Wholly describable in the same manner as any other chemical reaction.

, but what I'm wondering is if that relates to a disbelief in the emergent. i.e. it's not emergent, just not fully explained yet.

I guess I don't fully understand why there's a linkage there. I accept emergent properties that arise out of multiple complex systems. I just don't see how that means that intent must exist at the base levels.

I'm here typing this in response to your question. My thoughts are my own but they ultimately emerge from neurochemical reactions within my brain. No doubt that my thoughts such as they are here are more than just the sum of chemical reactions, but the metes and bounds are established by the neural networks in my brain.

For instance I could just type the word "llama" here 100 times. But I don't. My brain has developed over time a suite of markov chains that allow me to formulate a response to external stimuli based on a set of "rules" within my neural network, but if you hit my head hard enough I'm sure you could get random words here.

There's no reason to assume that cells themselves have any intent.

Take the example of the amoeba. How can it have intent? Considering that much of what it does can be explained by chemosensitivity.

 

[Resha Caner]

There's no reason to assume that cells themselves have any intent.

Take the example of the amoeba. How can it have intent? Considering that much of what it does can be explained by chemosensitivity.

First, let me reiterate that in using the word intent, I am not implying sentience. Rather I am implying a sort of higher capability - when the external environment is not deterministic, something exhibits intent by making consistent choices based on something internal. When the external environment makes it possible for the cell to either live or die, the cell consistently pursues a course of life, whereas when an external environment makes it possible for a volcanic reaction to continue or end, the course of action is random.

What makes this discussion difficult is that the "something" internal which I interpret as intent is, for the most part, unknown. So I can't prove intent, and I'm not trying to. But neither can you prove any alternative. My requirement would be the ability to predict the outcome, but that is not yet possible. So, I was just wondering what leans you away from intent when there is no quantifiable means for justifying leaning one direction or the other? Is it your unbelief of other things that creates a pattern of unbelief here?

Second, neither chemistry nor biology is my thing. My science is mechanics. However, it's not hard to find evidence of non-deterministic behavior in simple organisms. So while there may not be a strong reason to say such behavior displays intent, neither is there any reason to say we can explain that behavior through simple chemistry. So, again, is it faith that it will be explained someday? [edit: And by using the word "faith", I'm not trying to trap you into admitting some type of scientism. Like intent, it's just the word that pops out that fits what I wanted to say. If you have another word that's better, that's fine.]

Third, then, let me clarify my use of the word "emergent". Something is emergent if a system behavior can't be explained through reductionism - through the sum of the parts. An example would be chaos, where a system has several possible solutions, and under the given conditions there is no way to determine which solution will result.

I'll conclude by noting that when I quoted you, your phrase indicated we can explain much of the behavior. So I would then emphasize: yes, much, but not all. However, I don't want to make too much of that, since at one point you also said it can be wholly explained. Maybe you believe it can be wholly explained, but I would dispute that. Per the link I gave above, I would maintain life can only be partially explained by chemistry - even at the lowest levels.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

I'd like to better understand the paradigm of unbelievers when dealing with life in science.

For my own part, when I use words like "purpose" or "intent" in talking within scientific disciplines, I don't mean to ascribe any kind of sentience to what I'm describing. It's just that, because I'm a person and think in terms of purpose and intent, some things are hard to describe without using those words and I don't feel it's necessary to jump through hoops and burden my description with a lot of obtuse words just to enforce a philosophical paradigm.

But maybe I just don't "get it" yet. I understand there is a perspective that, under the given conditions, whatever happens happens per the scientific rules in play.

But I guess my question is this: Do you see a difference in the chemical reactions that result from a volcanic eruption versus those that occur to sustain a living cell apart from simple categorical distinctions? In other words, is there ever a justification for ascribing 'intent' to the cell?

Even on the cellular level, the cell "fights" to survive and will send signals to you so you can pull your hand back from the flame. The chemical reaction resulting from volcanic eruptions, etc, just take whatever comes and could care less if the heat ends up destroying them...... Is it sentient or just following a program? Either way it is much more than just a mere chemical reaction......

 

[Justatruthseeker]

I can accept emergent complexity. That doesn't mean that there's any reason to assume it is in a cell.

Or to assume it isn't????

Really? Why? I'll admit it's been a long time since I took biochem but for all the complexity of the reactions that explain the functions in the cell, they were all just regular chemical reactions. Wholly describable in the same manner as any other chemical reaction.

Really? Ever seen a chemical reaction send out feelers to find its food supply them draw it back in?

Take the example of the amoeba. How can it have intent? Considering that much of what it does can be explained by chemosensitivity.

As per the example above, ever seen a mere chemical reaction send out feelers to capture its food then draw it back in?

A chemical reaction doesn't care if it continues reacting or not.... life does, even at the most basic of levels.... All life fights for survival, while chemical reactions do not.....

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I'd like to better understand the paradigm of unbelievers when dealing with life in science.

For my own part, when I use words like "purpose" or "intent" in talking within scientific disciplines, I don't mean to ascribe any kind of sentience to what I'm describing. It's just that, because I'm a person and think in terms of purpose and intent, some things are hard to describe without using those words and I don't feel it's necessary to jump through hoops and burden my description with a lot of obtuse words just to enforce a philosophical paradigm.

But maybe I just don't "get it" yet. I understand there is a perspective that, under the given conditions, whatever happens happens per the scientific rules in play.

But I guess my question is this: Do you see a difference in the chemical reactions that result from a volcanic eruption versus those that occur to sustain a living cell apart from simple categorical distinctions? In other words, is there ever a justification for ascribing 'intent' to the cell?

I don't think there is a difference, in terms of fundamental chemistry; the difference is in our interpretation of the behaviour - the chemistry of life is sufficiently complex that it produces behaviours that are easy to interpret teleologically.

Daniel Dennet calls descriptions in terms of behavioural intent or purpose, the 'intentional stance'. It's a way people have of interpreting behaviour in terms of mental phenomena.

It's probably a projective convenience, a kind of silent simile; i.e. a silent prefix of, "It's as if...". A consequence of our tendency to attribute sentient agency as the cause of unexplained events, a.k.a. hyperactive agency detection (HADD); the same tendency that leads to animism, panpsychism, polytheism, and bolsters religion in general.

I think it's a fairly harmless piece of folk psychology as long as the people involved recognise it as such (it's often used, knowingly, in respect of machinery, such as "That coffee machine hates me", or "The car refuses to start!"); but it can be misleading in biology, e.g. when dealing with animal behaviour (some have even interpreted the behaviourist movement as, in part, a reaction to over-literal application of the intentional stance).

So I don't think it's a problem to ascribe purpose or intent to a cell as long as you're sure it won't be taken literally. I've heard plenty of scientists using the intentional stance to make explanations or descriptions less formal, e.g. "The sperm is desperate to get to the egg first...".

 

[Resha Caner]

It's probably a projective convenience ...

OK. That's what I was hinting at with @GlabrousDory4 - that one possible explanation would be that for lack of anything definitive, we're simply applying our beliefs in one instance to another instance. So, believers assume intent and unbelievers argue against intent.

I think it's a fairly harmless piece of folk psychology as long as the people involved recognise it as such (it's often used, knowingly, in respect of machinery, such as "That coffee machine hates me", or "The car refuses to start!"); but it can be misleading in biology, e.g. when dealing with animal behaviour (some have even interpreted the behaviourist movement as, in part, a reaction to over-literal application of the intentional stance).

It could be harmful in both directions. If it's just a chemical reaction, there's no reason to treat it with any respect. Life is cheap.

But rather than launch into that never-ending argument, I've had other thoughts about the "it's just chemicals" approach. Should life exist elsewhere, how would we know it? I think intent is a large part of how we implicitly identify life, and why it's such a struggle to produce clinical definitions of life. Most definitions taste like a post-hoc attempt, i.e. I know life when I see it, now I'll make up rules that fit what I've already classified as life.

It seems to me that the search for life (SETI, etc.) is really more a search to find something else that's like us. If we found a silicon-based life form that replicated in a way completely distinct from DNA - the more foreign the life form becomes - the easier it gets to argue it's not life - it's just a chemical reaction, and any other attributions of sentience are just our imagination.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

My intuition- and I am a layman - is that reductionism is wrong. Think of the first footprint on the moon. Is the “true” explanation of that really a long tortuous tale based solely on configurations and interactions of quarks and fundamental forces, with no reference to intention-laden human beings? Seems unlikely.

Note that I am aware that some will bring up the “argument from incredulity” fallacy. Fair enough, but that does not prove I am wrong in being skeptical about reductionism, but rather that I need other arguments over and above mere incredulity.

I think the issue with trying to explain high-level behaviour in terms of the interactions of quarks and fundamental forces isn't that those interactions are not the underlying cause of the behaviour, but that multiple levels of emergence separate the two, each with its own emergent behaviours and rules, so that it is totally impractical to attempt to explain them using those fundamental interactions directly.

By crude generalisation: classical physics can be treated as an emergent treatment of quantum physics at everyday scales; chemistry as an emergent treatment of classical physical interactions; biology as an emergent treatment of certain complex organic chemistry, ethology as an emergent treatment of biology; each derived from the layer below, but with its own patterns of behaviour, following its own set of rules, and each given its own descriptive language.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

It could be harmful in both directions. If it's just a chemical reaction, there's no reason to treat it with any respect. Life is cheap.

Not if you use the appropriate level of description - see my post on emergence.

But rather than launch into that never-ending argument, I've had other thoughts about the "it's just chemicals" approach. Should life exist elsewhere, how would we know it? I think intent is a large part of how we implicitly identify life, and why it's such a struggle to produce clinical definitions of life. Most definitions taste like a post-hoc attempt, i.e. I know life when I see it, now I'll make up rules that fit what I've already classified as life.

Most definitions of life deal with metabolism, homeostasis, reproduction, and response to the environment. There are none I know of that satisfactorily deal with all the edge cases here on Earth, let alone elsewhere. NASA's definition is, apparently, "A self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution."

It seems to me that the search for life (SETI, etc.) is really more a search to find something else that's like us. If we found a silicon-based life form that replicated in a way completely distinct from DNA - the more foreign the life form becomes - the easier it gets to argue it's not life - it's just a chemical reaction, and any other attributions of sentience are just our imagination.

There are problems defining life on Earth - are viruses alive? are obligate parasites alive? obligate symbionts? prions? etc.