I think part of the difficulty I have in understanding your post is the distinction between active and passive systems, and it’s why I linked the article on emergence. No matter which way I think about it, I can’t disentangle a living (organic) system from its surrounding environment. It’s why I posed the question of what distinguishes living systems and non-living systems; when I look deep enough I still see the same fundamental rules of physics applied in each instance.
Under this view that all matter, living and non-living is indistinguishable and each running under the same laws of physics, purposefulness and purposelessness do not appear anywhere in these systems. Living objects can be regarded as atomic components moving and interacting in very interesting ways. So I cannot distinguish between purposefulness and purposelessness. Colloquially, of course, I know what you mean. You are talking about the behaviour of living organisms; but on a deeper inspection I can’t find purposefulness.
Is the argument you’re making that there are localized areas of space that possess lower levels of entropy, and that living systems can be generalized as simply lowering the entropy in an area of space?
Is the argument you’re making that there are localized areas of space that possess lower levels of entropy, and that living systems can be generalized as simply lowering the entropy in an area of space?
Yes, that’s part of it. As to what is “local”, that’s a question of where we draw boundaries, and in fact this gets at an issue fundamental to all of this, which is we have to have some way to even draw these boundaries. That’s a free variable that has to be fixed, ironically, by telos.
I think part of the difficulty I have in understanding your post is the distinction between active and passive systems, and it’s why I linked the article on emergence. No matter which way I think about it, I can’t disentangle a living (organic) system from its surrounding environment. It’s why I posed the question of what distinguishes living systems and non-living systems; when I look deep enough I still see the same fundamental rules of physics applied in each instance.
Under this view that all matter, living and non-living is indistinguishable and each running under the same laws of physics, purposefulness and purposelessness do not appear anywhere in these systems. Living objects can be regarded as atomic components moving and interacting in very interesting ways. So I cannot distinguish between purposefulness and purposelessness. Colloquially, of course, I know what you mean. You are talking about the behaviour of living organisms; but on a deeper inspection I can’t find purposefulness.
Is the argument you’re making that there are localized areas of space that possess lower levels of entropy, and that living systems can be generalized as simply lowering the entropy in an area of space?
Yes, that’s part of it. As to what is “local”, that’s a question of where we draw boundaries, and in fact this gets at an issue fundamental to all of this, which is we have to have some way to even draw these boundaries. That’s a free variable that has to be fixed, ironically, by telos.