Metaphysical Humanism and the Laws of Being, part XXIV—The Law of Intention, part I

The abbey Church of St, Jouin de Marnes

detail of a capital

Photograph by the author

The Law of Intention

Intention, as the termite biologist Scott Turner puts it, is one of the central questions about why life behaves the way it does:

“… We may be imagining that termite colonies are deliberate simply because we’re human. But…if you deny the intentional behavior, you’re missing biology. The challenge is to come up with a credible theory of intentionality… And you also have to wonder what it's that allowed us to become intentional beings.” 

—Underbug, by Lisa Margonelli, p. 43.

And,

“If the termites in a mound “know” where their boundaries are, if they understand where they maintain homeostasis and where they don't, then the combination of termites, fungus, microbes and mound constitutes some kind of cognitive system. This cognitive systems has some kind of desire—to stay whole—and, in some way very different than our own, an outlook on life… The thing about living systems is that they have these essential qualities of wanting to do something.” 

—Ibid, P. 52.

The explanation for this isn’t actually that complicated, although the implications are. Intent (desire) isn’t, as mechanistic rationalists would have it, an accidental byproduct of emergent behavior. It’s a natural law that acts in conjunction with emergence. And this is exactly why we see it in the social constructs of (supposedly) much more “primitive“ organisms— as well as the collective macro-communities they form with the other organisms they act in concert with. In this example, arthropods, fungi, and microbes—all very different creatures that form a single super-organism partnership.    

 The laws of emergence, intention, and purpose collectively impart meaning through their interaction — and at the same time, they also form what is called agency. 

Agency is the least understood of all the properties of life, and has so far defied every reasonable attempt at a scientific explanation. Yet agency is, in its summary, what life consists of; and the premise of metaphysical humanism is that agency isn't just an emergent property of life alone, but exists, in fact, as an embedded, active entity—a lawful condition—both at the root of material reality, and the universe we inhabit.   

Furthermore, agency and meaning are deeply intertwined; and although they’re different properties, they’re so closely related to one another that it’s fair to say that without agency, there can be no meaning, and without meaning, no agency. 

They’re reciprocal properties.

Agency is part of what determines meaning; and so when we discuss the law of intention, we can’t do so without acknowledging its dependence on the other partner laws in the triad, emergence and purpose.

The law of emergence, producing ordered systems with hierarchies of complexity as it does, lays the groundwork for intention and purpose. All systems, highly ordered or not, inherently have emergent behaviors and properties. Once those begin to express, intention and purpose follow quite naturally. 

The emergent character of the universe acts as a mediating function between intention and purpose, what Gurdjieff would call third force, the reconciling factor. It binds the two of them together in a perpetual evolutionary relationship.

When we speak of emergence, of course we speak about the more organized properties and behaviors that it produces: this is its nature. The two things that it produces are intention and purpose. 

Intention is an aim: a direction in which things go. 

May your heart be close to God, 

and God close to your heart.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.