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The Very Act of Affirming Materialism Refutes It

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Consider the following statement:  “My liver believes materialism is true.”

Sheer lunacy, right? But on materialism, there is no fundamental difference between the brain and the liver. They are both just meat. Therefore, for the materialist, the phrase “my brain believes materialism is true” is equivalent to the phrase “my liver believes materialism is true.”

The materialist really is stuck. Objects like the liver do not have belief states. Philosophers say they do not exhibit “intentionality” (the “aboutness” a subject has towards an object). A rock cannot have a belief about the proposition “materialism is true.” Neither can a liver. Neither can a brain. Thus, the very act of affirming materialism denies one of its fundamental tenants because the act of affirming necessarily requires intentionality.

But I can hear the materialist object, the human body is a system which is greater than any of its individual components like the brain and the liver alone.  It still does not work, because on materialism, each human is reducible to the chemical components of his body. Therefore, the body is nothing but a complex amalgamation of chemicals, and the statement “complex amalgamation of chemicals believes materialism is true” gets the materialist no further than “my liver believes materialism is true.”

Materialism requires its proponents simultaneously to hold the following contradictory beliefs:

1. A material object cannot have a belief state.

2. A brain has belief states even though it is just another kind of material object.

A metaphysical system that requires its proponents to hold mutually exclusive propositions simultaneously should be rejected. Our materialist friends can have logic and reason or they can have their materialism. They can’t have both.

Comments
VL at 23 claims, "the other half of the hard problem of consciousness is how an immaterial something can interface and interact with the material world. I’m a non-materialist, but I don’t think non-materialists have any more idea of the solution to that half of the problem than materialists have to the first half." Well actually, whilst the Darwinian materialist has no earthy clue as to how unconscious material particles may ever give rise to subjective conscious experience, the Christian Theist does have a fairly good 'scientific' clue, via advances in quantum biology, as to how God might go about connecting the soul/mind to the material body.
since Darwinian Atheists, as a foundational presupposition of their materialistic philosophy, (and not from any compelling scientific evidence mind you), deny the existence of souls/minds, (and since the materialist’s denial of souls/minds, (and God), has led (via atheistic tyrants) to so much catastrophic disaster on human societies in the 20th century), then it is VERY important to ‘scientifically’ establish the existence of these ‘souls’ that are of incalculable worth, and that are equal, before God. https://uncommondescent.com/off-topic/what-must-we-do-when-the-foundations-are-being-destroyed/#comment-768496
bornagain77
February 6, 2023
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"what you and your ID compatriots are offering up in materialism’s stead. Thus far I see nothing…." In the meantime, CD is going to pretend to believe in something that he knows is wrong, indefinitely, rejecting all other answers that he doesn't like, which is all the rest of those that will ever be presented to him. How scientific is that? Andrewasauber
February 6, 2023
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That is true. Modern concepts of materialism (or other variations of the idea) accept that the quantum world is part of the physical world, and if consciousness is a different manifestation of the quantum world, then it is also part of the physical world. Barry writes in the OP, “ On materialism, each human is reducible to the chemical components of his body. Therefore, the body is nothing but a complex amalgamation of chemicals,...” But if you want to be reductionistic about it, each human being is reducible to quantum events, and consciousness and and its associated parts (beliefs, intentions, etc) might therefore be just as much “us” as our liver.Viola Lee
February 6, 2023
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Consciousness existing because of quantum effects, if it does, is not evidence against materialism.Ford Prefect
February 6, 2023
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Staying on the topic of the OP! :-) The subject is not how humans got to be. The question is whether materialism is self-refuting.Viola Lee
February 6, 2023
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Realtd writes, "However, in the case of the brain, once it decides to measure something in the quantum world, the quantum world has awareness of this intention and reacts to an attempt to measure instantly. This is the Brain-Quantum interface." And is there any evidence for this, or is this just a speculative hypothesis? I too think that consciousness is most likely associated with some aspects of quantum reality, but I don't think anyone has any idea how or if this is true.Viola Lee
February 6, 2023
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PyrrhoManiac1 @8,
I don’t believe any naturalist, and certainly not myself, has a fully convincing story of how we got from the apes to the Enlightenment.
I’d bet it’s even more convincing to use Darwinism to explain how apes evolved from the enlightenment. -QQuerius
February 6, 2023
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Barry Arrington @OP,
But on materialism, there is no fundamental difference between the brain and the liver. They are both just meat. Therefore, for the materialist, the phrase “my brain believes materialism is true” is equivalent to the phrase “my liver believes materialism is true.”
Ah, but the brain is thinking meat, which MUSTA EMERGED from what MIGHTA been a useful electrical anomaly from a bundle of nerve tissue that centralized evolving sensory input. LOL See, I used all three secular gods-of-the-gaps devices in a single sentence!
Materialism requires its proponents simultaneously to hold the following contradictory beliefs: 1. A material object cannot have a belief state. 2. A brain has belief states even though it is just another kind of material object.
Excellent, but I’d say that this is exactly why some aging scientists drift toward Cosmic Consciousness as a fundamental property of matter and energy. They would argue that this property, when collected into a specific arrangement magnifies the property into first self-awareness and, eventually into (drum roll) Cosmic Enlightenment! ;-) -QQuerius
February 6, 2023
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BA/17 I don’t believe I was trying to “refute” the OP. I’m simply looking to see what you and your ID compatriots are offering up in materialism’s stead. Thus far I see nothing….chuckdarwin
February 6, 2023
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VL at 22, The human brain has a direct link to the quantum world. And that links directly to an intelligence beyond space-time. “the brain and the liver are both just meat.” That is a true statement. The liver's function and design cannot be explained by the arrangement of atoms it contains. The same with the brain. However, in the case of the brain, once it decides to measure something in the quantum world, the quantum world has awareness of this intention and reacts to an attempt to measure instantly. This is the Brain-Quantum interface.relatd
February 6, 2023
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to BA: the other half of the hard problem of consciousness is how an immaterial something can interface and interact with the material world. I'm a non-materialist, but I don't think non-materialists have any more idea of the solution to that half of the problem than materialists have to the first half.Viola Lee
February 6, 2023
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Barry should read this paper, in its entirety, to give him some idea of serious attempts to deal with the issue, not strawmen like "the brain and the liver are both just meat." linkViola Lee
February 6, 2023
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This just in: Journal of Reproducible Results, Vol. XVII, No. 2 The Seversky and Chuck Problem - skipping to the conclusion - Careful study has concluded that The Seversky and Chuck Problem on Uncommon Descent involves standard propaganda techniques, including obfuscation, misdirection and repetition of claims regardless of evidence to the contrary. However, we recommend further study. A monograph is being prepared by the University of Cambridge titled: "The Seversky and Chuck Problem. A new category of propaganda."relatd
February 6, 2023
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JVL: "Plus there are those annoying stones I keep stubbing my toe on." That subjective conscious experience of pain, i.e. qualia, of you stubbing your toe on a rock sure is very real for you isn't it JVL? Yet qualia is the exactly the main and primary thing that materialism CANNOT EVER give us a coherent explanation of. i.e. the 'hard problem of consciousness'.
David Chalmers - Why is Consciousness so Mysterious? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTIk9MN3T6w Darwinian Psychologist David Barash Admits the Seeming Insolubility of Science’s “Hardest Problem” Excerpt: ‘But the hard problem of consciousness is so hard that I can’t even imagine what kind of empirical findings would satisfactorily solve it. In fact, I don’t even know what kind of discovery would get us to first base, not to mention a home run.’ David Barash – professor of psychology at the ­University of Washington http://www.salvomag.com/new/articles/salvo19/opening_salvo_19.php "It’s sobering to note that neuroscience has utterly failed to explain how the brain and mind relate. It is as if cosmology had failed to tell us anything meaningful about the universe; or medical science failed to tell us anything about health and disease; or geology failed to tell us anything about rocks. Neuroscience has told us nothing— nothing—about how the brain gives rise to the mind. The Hard Problem (of consciousness), after two centuries of neuroscience and a vast trove of data, remains utterly unsolved." - Michael R. Egnor, MD, Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook “We have so much confidence in our materialist assumptions (which are assumptions, not facts) that something like free will is denied in principle. Maybe it doesn’t exist, but I don’t really know that. Either way, it doesn’t matter because if free will and consciousness are just an illusion, they are the most seamless illusions ever created. Film maker James Cameron wishes he had special effects that good.” - Matthew D. Lieberman – neuroscientist – materialist – UCLA professor
bornagain77
February 6, 2023
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. Materialism asserts that the liver is nothing but an amalgamation of chemicals and that amalgamation of chemicals is incapable of exhibiting intentionality. Materialism asserts that the brain, like the liver, is nothing but an amalgamation of chemicals. Yet, materialists insist that the brain exhibits intentionality by holding belief states about propositions.
The "nothing but" is your interpretation of materialism. It has nothing to do with the real McCoy. If you want to foist this absurd caricature onto materialists, you deprive yourself of a response to atheists who insist on portraying the God of Abrahamic religion as being no different in kind from the gods of Greek or Norse mythology. Either you refuse to accept their caricature of your views, or you refrain from caricaturing their views. You can't have it both ways.PyrrhoManiac1
February 6, 2023
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PyrrhoManiac1 @ 8 Nope. You evaded the OP. Not surprising. The OP asserts that materialism cannot account for intentionality. You skated right by the whole point of the OP and talked about something else. You didn't think we would notice? If so, you were wrong.
But any criticism of naturalists needs to begin with what they actually say, and not with what one imagines they say.
Nope. Materialism asserts that the liver is nothing but an amalgamation of chemicals and that amalgamation of chemicals is incapable of exhibiting intentionality. Materialism asserts that the brain, like the liver, is nothing but an amalgamation of chemicals. Yet, materialists insist that the brain exhibits intentionality by holding belief states about propositions. Pyrrho, you can't have it both ways. And stamping your feet and insisting I just don't understand what materialism posits gets you exactly nowhere.Barry Arrington
February 6, 2023
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Chuck.
at some point you will have to come up with a testable alternative
Nope. If my goal is to refute materialism on its own terms all I have to do is show that materialism is self-referentially incoherent pursuant to its own terms. I understand that you and Sev are desperate to change the subject. "Don't look at that man behind the curtain!" Chuck, consciously absent from your post was any attempt to refute the OP. I get it. You've got nothing to say on that subject so change the subject. Not gonna let ya off the hook that easy.Barry Arrington
February 6, 2023
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BA/6
Materialism is false whether or not some other proposition is true.
However, at some point you will have to come up with a testable alternative model to explain behavior, including "beliefs."chuckdarwin
February 6, 2023
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Bornagain77: You see Sev, in order to even be able to differentiate beliefs that are real from beliefs that are illusory, you must first have a mind that is itself NOT a neuronal illusion of the material brain. I might buy that IF there was only one mind that counted (WJM's assertion). Because I think there are actually other conscious beings that I interact with (you, for example) then I accept input from others to be reflective of their, idiosyncratic experience and that the underlying reality lies somewhere or partially in the overlap. When we take the experiences of lots and lots of people AND take them as true and honest experiences then we can arrive at a rough, consensus view of reality. In other words, I think we can get at the physical truth because of sharing our experiences. Plus there are those annoying stones I keep stubbing my toe on.JVL
February 6, 2023
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Ba77, "You see Sev, in order to differentiate beliefs that are real from beliefs that are illusory, you must first have a mind that is itself NOT a neuronal illusion of the material brain." "Moreover, We have far more observational evidence for the reality of immaterial minds/souls than we do for the Darwinian claim that unguided material processes can generate functional information." Meanwhile, Seversky and Chuck will continue to post as if you never wrote that. Hopefully, scientists will begin studying that... uh... problem.relatd
February 6, 2023
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Sev, you tried the “change the subject” trick. But the catastrophic epistemological failure inherent in your materialism, which Barry highlighted,
1. A material object cannot have a belief state. 2. A brain has belief states even though it is just another kind of material object.
But the catastrophic epistemological failure inherent in your materialism, which Barry highlighted, extends even to your 'belief' that NDEs are merely dreams. You see Sev, in order to even be able to differentiate beliefs that are real from beliefs that are illusory, you must first have a mind that is itself NOT a neuronal illusion of the material brain.
The Confidence of Jerry Coyne – Ross Douthat – January 6, 2014 Excerpt: But then halfway through this peroration, we have as an aside the confession (by Coyne) that yes, okay, it’s quite possible given materialist premises that “our sense of self is a neuronal illusion.” At which point the entire edifice suddenly looks terribly wobbly — because who, exactly, is doing all of this forging and shaping and purpose-creating if Jerry Coyne, as I understand him (and I assume he understands himself) quite possibly does not actually exist at all? The theme of his argument is the crucial importance of human agency under eliminative materialism, but if under materialist premises the actual agent is quite possibly a fiction, then who exactly is this I who “reads” and “learns” and “teaches,” and why in the universe’s name should my illusory self believe Coyne’s bold proclamation that his illusory self’s purposes are somehow “real” and worthy of devotion and pursuit? (Let alone that they’re morally significant: But more on that below.) Prometheus cannot be at once unbound and unreal; the human will cannot be simultaneously triumphant and imaginary. https://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/the-confidence-of-jerry-coyne/?mcubz=3
The materialistic claim that our sense of self, that is to say, our conscious experience, is merely a neuronal illusion of the material brain is, in a word, insane. As David Bentley Hart states in the following article, “Simply enough, you cannot suffer the illusion that you are conscious because illusions are possible only for conscious minds. This is so incandescently obvious that it is almost embarrassing to have to state it.”
The Illusionist – Daniel Dennett’s latest book marks five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness. – 2017 Excerpt: “Simply enough, you cannot suffer the illusion that you are conscious because illusions are possible only for conscious minds. This is so incandescently obvious that it is almost embarrassing to have to state it.” – David Bentley Hart https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-illusionist
In short Seversky, you attempt at evasion fails since for us to even be able to form beliefs in the first place, the immaterial mind must be held to be real.
“The principal argument against materialism is not that illustrated in the last two sections: that it is incompatible with quantum theory. The principal argument is that thought processes and consciousness are the primary concepts, that our knowledge of the external world is the content of our consciousness and that the consciousness, therefore, cannot be denied. On the contrary, logically, the external world could be denied—though it is not very practical to do so. In the words of Niels Bohr, “The word consciousness, applied to ourselves as well as to others, is indispensable when dealing with the human situation.” In view of all this, one may well wonder how materialism, the doctrine that “life could be explained by sophisticated combinations of physical and chemical laws,” could so long be accepted by the majority of scientists." – Eugene Wigner, Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, pp 167-177.
Of supplemental note to Sev's claim that NDEs are merely dreams. The following study found, 'memories of near-death experiences are recalled as ‘‘realer” than real events or imagined events.'
Characteristics of memories for near-death experiences - Lauren E. Moore, Bruce Greyson - March 2017 Abstract: Near-death experiences are vivid, life-changing experiences occurring to people who come close to death. Because some of their features, such as enhanced cognition despite compromised brain function, challenge our understanding of the mind-brain relationship, the question arises whether near-death experiences are imagined rather than real events. We administered the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire to 122 survivors of a close brush with death who reported near-death experiences. Participants completed Memory Characteristics Questionnaires for three different memories: that of their near-death experience, that of a real event around the same time, and that of an event they had imagined around the same time. The Memory Characteristics Questionnaire score was higher for the memory of the near-death experience than for that of the real event, which in turn was higher than that of the imagined event. These data suggest that memories of near-death experiences are recalled as ‘‘realer” than real events or imagined events. https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/wp-content/uploads/sites/360/2017/03/NDE-85-MCQ-ConCog.pdf
Moreover, We have far more observational evidence for the reality of immaterial minds/souls than we do for the Darwinian claim that unguided material processes can generate functional information.
Near-Death Experiences: Putting a Darwinist's Evidentiary Standards to the Test - Dr. Michael Egnor - October 15, 2012 Excerpt: Indeed, about 20 percent of NDE's are corroborated, which means that there are independent ways of checking about the veracity of the experience. The patients knew of things that they could not have known except by extraordinary perception -- such as describing details of surgery that they watched while their heart was stopped, etc. Additionally, many NDE's have a vividness and a sense of intense reality that one does not generally encounter in dreams or hallucinations.,,, The most "parsimonious" explanation -- the simplest scientific explanation -- is that the (Near Death) experience was real. Tens of millions of people have had such experiences. That is tens of millions of more times than we have observed the origin of species , (or the origin of life, or the origin of a protein/gene, or of a molecular machine), which is never.,,, The materialist reaction, in short, is unscientific and close-minded. NDE's show fellows like Coyne at their sneering unscientific irrational worst. Somebody finds a crushed fragment of a fossil and it's earth-shaking evidence. Tens of million of people have life-changing spiritual experiences and it's all a big yawn. Note: Dr. Egnor is professor and vice-chairman of neurosurgery at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/near_death_expe_1065301.html
bornagain77
February 6, 2023
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PM1 @8
Naturalists would insist that brains and livers have different biological functions: the function of the liver is to remove toxins from the blood (among other things). The function of the brain is to guide behavior in response to perceptual information (among other things). What matters to the naturalist is not what something is made of, but what it is for — what the function is.
Water can have the function to irrigate farmland. However, that function cannot be explained by water, because in the water there is no intention to irrigate farmland. And that is what this OP is about. So, if the function of the liver is to remove toxins from the blood, the OP argues that the matter that makes up the liver is not involved on its own accord. The naturalist claims that from matter function comes. In the OP it is pointed out that matter has no inclination to perform such a function. The fermions and bosons that make up the liver perform a function without even knowing it. The function is the result of FSCO/I that cannot be explained from matter precisely because matter lacks intentionality. Similarly, the matter that makes up the brain is not interested in beliefs. The functional complex specified organization of the brain forces brain matter to act in accord with reasoning, but like the water that irrigates farmland, the brain matter does not act from intention, instead, its activity is derived from immaterial FSCO/I. Brain matter and organization taken together, like water and farmland and its channels taken together, do not act with intention. Only an intelligent person acts with intention. In the case of the irrigated farmland, the farmer.Origenes
February 6, 2023
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BA @7: Good advice. And he does it all the time.AnimatedDust
February 6, 2023
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PM1 at 8, Complex functional specified information is a description not an addition. The question is: How did that information get there?relatd
February 6, 2023
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Tgpeeler at 1, Intellectual degeneracy does not appear everywhere in the culture. If it did then nothing would get done.relatd
February 6, 2023
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It's easy to define a view as being so absurd that no sane person would accept it. Naturalists can do the same for theism just as easily. But no good is served by trading caricatures back and forth.
But on materialism, there is no fundamental difference between the brain and the liver. They are both just meat.
Naturalists would insist that brains and livers have different biological functions: the function of the liver is to remove toxins from the blood (among other things). The function of the brain is to guide behavior in response to perceptual information (among other things). What matters to the naturalist is not just what something is made of, but what it is for -- what the function is. (Structure and function are answerable to each other: structures perform functions, functions are performed on structures.) It's a nice question as to how the naturalist can get from biological cognition in the broadest sense (guiding behavior in response to perceptual information) to rational cognition strictly speaking, both theoretical rational cognition (what and how should one believe) and practical rational cognition (what and how should one act). I don't believe any naturalist, and certainly not myself, has a fully convincing story of how we got from the apes to the Enlightenment. But any criticism of naturalists needs to begin with what they actually say, and not with what one imagines they say.
So, teleology is “naturalized” by identifying it in cybernetics and/or biological organization stuffed with complex functional specified information for which there is no natural explanation … Is that cheating?
Sachs argues that teleology isn't naturalized by way of cybernetics, though he thinks that biological organization is a promising way forward. I don't know if he would identify teleology with intentionality, though. Intentionality is usually thought of as the "aboutness" of mental states. It's different from the purposiveness of teleology. Closely related, yes, but still distinct. Bacteria are teleological systems, but do they have any mental states? It's hard to imagine how they could. The people doing the biological organization stuff tend to not write about "information", though they tend to talk more in terms of systems that can maintain themselves far from thermodynamic with their environments. It's a nice question whether those are two different ways of talking about the same thing. Is complex functional specified information something that has to be added to a system in order for it to maintain itself at far from thermodynamic equilibrium with its environment? Or is having complex functional specified information just the same thing as being able to maintain itself at far from thermodynamic equilibrium with its environment?PyrrhoManiac1
February 6, 2023
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Animated Dust, you fell for Sev's "change the subject" trick. Don't do that.Barry Arrington
February 6, 2023
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Seversky, Wrong. Your materialism fails because it is self-referentially incoherent. You insist that I need to prove something else is true for materialism to be false. That's just silly. Materialism is false whether or not some other proposition is true. Nice job trying to change the subject though. Now pay attention. This is important. Can you refute the logic of the OP without changing the subject? No? OK then. I assume you will give up you incoherent materialism and seek out another way. We can talk about what that way might be if you want.Barry Arrington
February 6, 2023
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Sev @ 3: but for peer reviewed studies on NDEs: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6172100/ There are many more, but you won't read them because you don't want it to be true. Sad spending all this time here with your fingers in your ears and your eyes slammed shut while you proclaim the way you want the universe to be, as true.AnimatedDust
February 6, 2023
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Barry's argument from intentionality (aboutness) is extremely challenging for materialism. The other day PM1 referred me to a paper by C. Sachs that made an attempt to "naturalize" intentionality (teleology). From the abstract:
Hans Jonas argued that cybernetics failed as a naturalistic theory of teleology and that the reality of teleology is grounded in phenomenology, not in scientific explanations. I shall argue that Jonas was correct to criticize cybernetics but that contemporary work in biological organization succeeds where cybernetics failed.
So, teleology is "naturalized" by identifying it in cybernetics and/or biological organization stuffed with complex functional specified information for which there is no natural explanation ... Is that cheating?Origenes
February 6, 2023
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