Life

by Reginald Firehammer

Objectivist metaphysics is sometimes mistaken for physicalism. The pure physicalist regards all existence as entirely and onlythe physical–in the physicalist view, whatever is not physical does not really exist, or at least only exists as a phenomena of the physical. This is not, however, the view of Objectivism. Ayn Rand made it quite clear, the physical (for which she used the word “material”) and the psychological are both real and both exist.

She recognized that consciousness is an existent:

“The units of the concepts “existence” and “identity” are every entity, attribute, action event or phenomenon (including consciousness) that exists, has ever existed or will ever exist.” [Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, p. 56]

She recognized the physical (material organism) and consciousness were not the same thing.

“You are an indivisible entity of matter and consciousness. Renounce your consciousness and you become a brute. Renounce your body and you become a fake.” [“Galt’s Speech”, For the New Intellectual, Page 142.]

If consciousness were only physical matter as the physicalists maintain, we would not be entities of matter and conscious, we would simply be entities of matter. But, we are not only beings of matter and consciousness, but volitional beings, and Ayn Rand makes it very clear, volition is not a physical attribute, that volition is impossible to physical matter alone.

“The day when [one] grasps that matter has no volition is the day when he grasps that he has—and this is his birth as a human being.” [“Galt’s Speech”, For the New Intellectual, Page 156.] (Emphasis mine.)

Even if Ayn Rand had never specifically said the physical and consciousness were not the same thing, it is not logically possible that they be. Physical existence is that which consciousness is conscious of. That which consciousness is conscious of and the consciousness itself cannot be the same thing; if they were the same thing, that is if the consciousness itself were the physical, it would be conscious of itself, which leads either to extreme empiricism (essentially denying that consciousness exists) or idealism (essentially denying the physical exists, that is, solipsism). Existence and our consciousness of it cannot be the same thing, consciousness cannot be physical.

Beginning With Life

If Objectivism had a thoroughgoing ontology this question would never be possible. The distinction between the merely physical, and consciousness, which is not physical, would be fully explained, because it is not only consciousness that is not physical, but life itself, which makes consciousness possible. That, of course is the purpose of my own Ontology, espeically the “Ontological Hierarchy of Differentiation”. The remainder of this article consists of notes and comments from other discussions about life, consciousness, and volition which were made before my Ontology was published. The ontology provides the technical basis for the arguments in these notes–the notes provide several important ways of viewing the technical aspects of the ontology in a non-technical way and will be useful to anyone who wants to fully understand the significance of the ontology.

Material Existence

The strict physicalist view is very tempting, especially to those who understand the nature of mysticism and want to avoid it. The mistake made by those who are physicalists for that reason is the assumption that if we cannot be directly conscious of a thing, it cannot be. The danger of this mistake is that it leaves the door open to mysticism, because it is obvious to everyone that there are phenomena which we cannot directly perceive, but know, if no other way, at least from introspection. To deny facts of reality out of fear of being mistaken for a mystic, places in the hands of true mystics those very facts they then use as evidence for their mystic views.

It is exactly this situation that led to the discussions these notes are taken from. Someone had aserted the physicalist view, and someone else, attempting to defend the supernatural view of life, consciousness, and volition took advantage of that assertion with this statement:

Because materialism is contradicted by my experience of consciousness as self-awareness and volition as free will, I reject it.

He is, of course, equating the physical aspects of existence (which is studied by the physical sciences) with material existence. They are not the same thing. The physical is a subset of the material. (See “The Categorical Hierarchy of Existence”)

Material existence is all that exists independent of any particular person’s consciousness or knowledge of it. It is metaphysically primary and includes all that is or can be known. It includes, for example, consciousness and volition, which are not “physical.” The physical world is the world consciousness is conscious of and which, as I said, is studied by the physical sciences, but consciousness itself is not directly perceived. Consciousness and that-which-consciousness-is-conscious-of are not the same thing.

But consciousness and volition are certainly part of the objective material existence, or the natural world, else there would be no living, conscious, or rational beings in the world—but we know there are.

The Computer Analogy

The mystics statement is further mistaken. Consciousness is not “self-awareness.” Consciousness is merely awareness; it does not need to be aware of itself at all. Conscious is awareness of existence. My cat is conscious, but certainly doesn’t have anything that could be called “self-awareness.”

Furthermore, volition is not “experienced,” as, “free will,” or anything else. Volition is only that aspect of human nature that makes it necessary for humans to act by conscious choice, or not act at all. There is no mystery about it. It has nothing to do with the fact the material (physical) existence is determined by the laws of physics. Volition is an aspect of life, that self-sustained process that uses the the physical organism to sustain itself and the organism as a living entity. It is the life process that is volitional, not the physical organism.

The proper analogy is the computer. The hardware of a computer has a fixed and determined nature, but a program running on that computer is not determined by the nature of the physical components of the hardware. The program can do anything possible to programs, and is not determined or limited by the hardware at all.

The mystic asks for more explanation:

If the hardware (body) does not determine what the program (volition) is – what does?

The computer illustration is only an analogy. The point is, given a sufficiently sophisticated computer (mostly in terms of memory size) virtually any program can be run on it to do anything programs can do. The analogy does not pertain only to volition, but to life itself.

Life is the self-sustaining process of a living organism. The physical organism does not “cause” or “determine” the life process. It is the opposite. An organism remains an organism only so long as the life process continues. The moment the process ceases, the organism reverts to a non-living entity, even if all the parts remain identical. The physical organism is used by the life process to sustain itself, as a process, and the organism, as a living entity.

Just as a computer is just so much useless hardware without the programs which run on it (note, it is the running program that makes the computer function, not the other way around), so it is the life process that makes an organism a living entity and without that process, the organism is just so much physically determined matter.

The behavior of a non-living entity is entirely predictable by the laws of physics, but the behavior of a living organism could not even be guessed from the physical nature of the organism, however complex it is, and the moment the life process ceases, that behavior of an organism, unique to it as a living entity, ceases.

Another Question

There was another questions about the computer analogy:

… which aspects of the material which the life process acts upon is the life process allowed to influence? May the life process move a particle of matter in a certain direction that it was not moving before? I suppose the life process may not decompose the matter upon which it acts into its constituent particles in order to pass through a solid object, violating the strong force, or dissolves the mass of its particles, allowing the organism to fly (convenient as these things would be.

The question is the perennial question of philosophy about volition, “how does a consciousness, if it is not physical affect what the physical organism does?” The question incorrectly implies that volition in some way overrides the physically determined behavior of the material aspects of the organism. The answer is in the nature of life itself.

Until now there is one aspect of the nature of life and organisms always implied but which I have not made explicit. The implied difficulty with consciousness being able to “change” what matter does is the result of viewing the physical aspects of an organism and the life of the organism as separate and distinct things. They are different things, but not separate things.

It is at this point the computer analogy breaks down. The analogy is useful for illustrating how life (the program) is dependent on the physical organism (the computer) but not determined by the laws of physics itself. But the unique aspect of the life process and physical organism is that an organism ceases to be an organism without the life process, while a computer is still a computer, whether there is a program running on it or not.

An organism is not just a piece of complex matter with a process running on or in it. An organism is an integration of physical substance and a process that maintains it as an organism. All that an organism does, as an organism, it does because it is living. The life process, as a process of the organism, is a purely physical process, obeying all the laws of physics, and requires the physical organism to function. One of the requirements of the life process (determined by its nature) is it must maintain the integrity of the physical organism it is the life of.

It is this integrated nature of an organism that makes the behavior of an organism unique. As a physical entity, it is still subject to the laws of physics. A fish being pushed around by the currents and eddies in a stream is a purely physical action. That same fish swimming against the current exhibits living behavior. The behavior itself is a physical action, but it is not the physical nature of the organism that initiates or makes possible that behavior, but the life process. If it were not for that process the fish would not be a living organism capable of that unique behavior we call living behavior, such as swimming.

A Different Kind of Existent

Life is not a “thing” but an attribute, an attribute of a kind of existent that without life would be a mere physical entity. An organism is not just another kind of physical existent, it is a different kind of existent, a living one differentiated from physical existents by the attribute life.

Life does not exist independently of the organism, but it is the life, the self-generated and self-sustained process that creates (grows) and sustains the organisms as a living entity. An organism is not just a physical entity that behaves in an unusual way. An organism is a unique kind of existent. An organism no only ceases to be an organism if the life process ceases, it begins immediately to change physically in response to the physical laws that govern the behavior of the merely physical.

But What is Life?

It is at this point one of the most common questions is expressed:

But to say life is a process does not really say what life is? What is Life?

It is true, that saying, “life is a process,” or even saying, “life is a process of self-generated and self-sustained action,” does not really say what life is. It is not an attempt to say what life is, but to specirfy the unique characteristics of life that identify it, that is, to isolate the attribute life from all other attributes of existents conceptually. It defines life, it does not describe it.

But no concept, including life, means its definition. A concept means it’s particulars or units, with all those units qualities and characteristics. In this case the “units” are the attribute life of every organism. The description of life for any organism are all the characteristics of life exhibited by that organism, which we call that organisms nature.

Life itself is the self-sustained action that maintains the organisms as the kind of organism it is–it is all of the characteristics of that organism unique to it and the kind of organism it is as a living organism; that is, all the characteristics the cease to be if the organism dies. It is all the characteristics of the organism except those which are merely physical. It is all those characteristics that describe the life of the organism.

For a human being, life is all of the animal characteristics plus the rational/volitional nature, and all that those imply. That is human life.

Correcting a Misunderstanding

I include the following question to eliminate a possible ambiguity in understanding:

To address the “self-sustaining action”: I take it that this means that a system is “alive” if it is in some kind of equilibrium, and that it acts to preserve that equilibrium. Equivalently, it is a system which is ordered in such a way that it acts to preserve its own order.

It is not a “system” that is alive. You may think of an organism is a “system,” but if it is only the physical system, it is not alive itself. What is self-sustained is the process which uses the physical aspects of the “system” (organism) to sustain itself and the organism as an organism. It requires those physical aspects because a process must be a process of something. In that sense, it also maintains the organism as a living entity. As soon as the process ceases, the physical entity is no longer an organism.

You may be thinking of the organism as a “system that supports life,” but it isn’t. The organism cannot even do that. It is the life process that maintains the organism as an organism which it can use to perform its process. The moment the life process ceases, the organism immediately begins to disintegrate.

Another possible ambiguity is raised by this question:

As for the “self-generating action”: I do not agree that life must be self-generating as a matter of definition, even though the vast, vast majority of living things do have the capacity for reproduction.

Notice, it is not life that is self-generating, but action. It does not refer specifically to reproduction, but would include it as one of the actions the life process generates or initiates, where there is reproduction. The self-generated action applies to all organisms, even those incapable of reproducing. It is a very important part of the definition. It means, all the behavior of an organism that is “living” behavior is initiated by the life process, not the physical characteristics of the organism. Living behavior is all the behavior which ceases the moment the living organism dies.

Life, Volition, and Cause

These questions and comments pertain specifically to the supposed conflict between a determined physical existence and volition. The first question is primarily a confusion of terms between free will and volition.

If the life process is not determined by the laws of physics that direct physical nature of the organism it is inhabiting, why isn’t volition free will? In other words, if life is free of physical causality, then so is volition.

The physical aspects of an organism conform to the laws of physics. The life process does not violate any of those laws, but it is not itself subject to them, because the life process is its own cause.

Remember, cause is determined by the nature of the entities that are acting. Events do not cause events, entities cause events by behaving according to their nature. A non-living entity has only its physical nature to determine its behavior. If it is in a hot environment, it gets hot. A living organism has, in addition to its physical nature, the life process that sustains it as an organism, which is a different nature than a non-living entity. It is the life process that determines the behavior of an organism. When an organism is in a hot environment it might get hot, but it might sweat or perform some other function to cool itself, or it might move out of the heat, depending on the particular nature of the organism.

The life process is not “free of physical causality,” in the sense that it can violate it. All of the physical aspects of an organism must conform to the requirements of their physical nature. In fact, if the physical aspects did not exactly conform to the laws of physics, the life process could not successfully use those physical aspects of the organism to sustain itself. The life process depends on the physical laws of causality not being violated.

It is only in this sense that volition is also, “free of physical causality,” because volition is an aspect of a living organism. Volition can choose anything that is physically possible, not just anything at all, and requires knowledge, for example, to choose anything. Life, consciousness, and volition all have specific natures with specific requirements that determine how they function and can be used, just as physical entities do, but the principles that govern the psychological aspects of existence are not physical. If that is meant by, “free will,” fine, but it is not what most people mean by it.

Another question suggested a statement I have not actually made:

Since life is a self-sustaining and self-generating process, it is a process which need not act according to the physical causal laws of the material upon which it acts.

I have never said the life process is not subject to the laws of causality, but that it is not subject to physical causality. Cause is determined by the nature of the entity or existent doing the acting. Life does not have mass, a pH factor, a temperature, an electromagnetic state, or any other physical property or characteristic. Since the nature of life and the nature of the physical aspects of the organism share no qualities or properties their natures are entirely different and the specific causes that determine their behavior are entirely different.

Life, consciousness, and volition all have a specific nature that determines what they must do and what they are capable of doing. For example, the nature of volitional consciousness determines (causes) that all its behavior must be consciously chosen, but what it chooses is not determined.

A related question suggests something different:

But if we accept that physical causality is deterministic, it would seem that the only way not to violate the physical laws would be to conform to them exactly.

That’s true for the physical, but life itself is not physical, it is a process. As I said above, “the life process is not ‘free of physical causality,’ in the sense that it can violate it. All of the physical aspects of an organism must conform to the requirements of their physical nature. In fact, if the physical aspects did not exactly conform to the laws of physics, the life process could not successfully use those physical aspects of the organism to sustain itself. The life process depends on the physical laws of causality not being violated.”

What that means is the process depends on all of the physical aspects of the organism to act reliably. In fact, if the physical aspects are defective, the life process has difficulty performing its function–we refer to such conditions of an organism as “being sick.” This is one example of how the life process cannot violate physical laws; it cannot cause something broken to behave as though it were not.

But the life process, itself, does not have to conform to any physical laws because no physical law pertains to the self-sustained process, because it has not physical attributes to which they could pertain. There is no physical law that pertains to how something is consciously perceived, or how the life process reacts to it. It is the nature of the life that determines that, not physical laws.

Evidence of the Non-physical Nature of Life and Consciousness

I said that life does not have mass, a pH factor, a temperature, an electromagnetic state, or any other physical property or characteristic. This is true of the life itself, as the self-sustaining process that maintains an organism as an organism, but not true of the organism itself, as a physical existent. The physicalist might point this out as a mistake, indicating that an organism is the integration of physical and life. The fact that living behavior is dependent on the life process, and no aspect of that behavior can be attributed to the physical attributes of the organism are ignored by the physicalist. Nevertheless there are three characteristics of life and consciousness which are physically impossible, by which I mean, it is not possible for physical attributes alone to make them possible.

Those three characteristics are continuity, unity, and subjectivity. I described them in “Ontological Hierarchy of Differentiation—Consciousness, Volition”. Here I want to deal with them in a slightly different way.

_Continuity_—whether it is life or consciousness, an organism has the same one moment to moment, day to day, and year to year. It is the same life and the same consciousness from the moment it becomes conscious until it dies. It is because consciousness and life are not physical this is true. Notice, the physical characteristics of an organism can change. Hypothetically, all of the physical parts could be changed, but it would still be the same organism, because it would still be the same life process and the same consciousness. It is the life process that is the independent existence that identifies the organism as a particular organism, not the physical components, and consciousness is an attribute of life.

_Unity_—this aspect also pertains to both consciousness and life, but is more apparent as a characteristic of consciousness. Any organism has only one consciousness and it is the same consciousness that perceives what is seen, what is tasted, what is heard, smelled, and felt. It is the same consciousness that feels the wheel of the car with the hands, the accelerator pedal with the foot, sees the light change from red to green, and hears the music on the radio all simultaneously. This aspect of consciousness is almost never recognized. It is one reason, for example, no computer or computer program will ever create consciousness. It would be impossible, at the physical level, to make all the discrete physical events required for detection of separate phenomena be a single event. Because consciousness is an aspect of life, however, which is not physical and not limited by physical attributes, such as discreteness, the same consciousness can be conscious of an indefinite number of things at the same time.

_Subjectiveness_—consciousness in all other creatures except ourselves is inferred, because consciousness is a subjective experience. There is no doubt that this inference is correct, but consciousness, itself, cannot be directly perceived, even in other people, much less other animals.

The fact that consciousness is experienced subjectively, and cannot be directly perceived, and is therefore not itself a physical existent (though dependent on the physical for its existence), does not mean it cannot be objectively identified. It exists as an attribute of living organisms, and is therefore material (though not physical), because it is independent of our consciousness or knowledge of it. It is known objectively by introspection.

While the subjectivity of consciousness is generally understood, it’s significance to philosophy is not always apparent. It is because consciousness is experienced subjectively that its nature is frequently neglected. What we mean by “being conscious,” the actual subjective experience itself, can only be known individually (by introspection) and cannot be directly perceived. Anything in the physical world that can be perceived, can be perceived by anyone. No one can perceive your consciousness or my consciousness, as we experience it. Technically, we cannot even perceive our own consciousness. We do not know we are conscious by perceiving it, we know it, because we are. We do not know we can see by seeing our seeing, we know we can see because we see.

Has There Always Been Life?

In the course of the conversation from which these notes are largely drawn, I made the following statement, which prompted the question that follows:

“Note, also, there is no way to put together an organism and, ‘start it up,’ from the outside, so to speak. Life always comes from life.”

The statement is no strictly speaking an Objectivist principle, but would logically follow the assertion that life is a self-generated and self-sustained action. If something else “started” it, it would not be self-generated. This is the question:

Hold on a second here. Does this mean that life has always existed? This statement seems to be in direct opposition to the fact that the early universe was unsuitable for sustaining organisms.

The apparent opposition assumes the life “process” must always have been confined to its present manifestation. The actual case is an unknown. The largely conjectural “science” of cosmology is on very unstable ground (one reason it keeps changing its assertions) and offers no argument refuting the possibility that life “always existed.”

Objectivism does not grant the possibility existence has a beginning. “Existence exists,” has no temporal component. In my article, “Objectivism Characterized,” I point out the following contradiction by Leonard Peikoff:

The minor contradiction is found in these two quotes from Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand; “Consciousness is not inherent in the fact of existence as such; a world without conscious organisms is possible,” (p. 5); and, “The Objectivist view of existence culminates in the principle that no alternative to a fact of reality is possible or imaginable,” (p. 23).

Obviously, Objectivists have not given this matter as much attention as they ought to have. Since conscious organisms are a fact of reality, and Peikoff says, an alternative to such facts is not only not possible, but cannot even be imagined, it means existence without conscious organisms is neither possible or imaginable.

(The, “cannot even be imagined,” phrase is somewhat careless. I suppose it is rhetorical, but even then, can only apply to metaphysical (non-contingent) existents, not the man-made. If what is not already a fact of existence could not even be imagined, nothing would ever be invented.)

This explanation prompted another question:

[Are you] saying that the universe could not have come out any different than it did? That the facts could not have been any other way? Not just metaphysical facts, but every particularity? Life had to evolve on earth? The universe had to be set up the way it was? With the precise topology and geography it had?

I mean the same thing Leonard Peikoff means by, “The Objectivist view of existence culminates in the principle that no alternative to a fact of reality is possible…” [Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, P. 23]

I was asked to “substantiate this assertion.”

But you can substantiate it yourself. Look around at the world as it is right now and ask yourself a question, “how could this possibly be any different?” Obviously, it could only be different if something acting in the past acted differently in some way than it actually did. Since the behavior of all existents is determined by their nature, and no existent can behave contrary to its own nature, nothing could have acted in the past differently than it did, unless it had a different nature.

No one believes anything that exists today can suddenly just be something other than what it is. At what point in history would this not have been true. Everything that ever existed must always have acted as it did because it was what it was. Since nothing in history could possibly have acted differently than it did …you know the rest.

Why people find this so alarming I cannot imagine. What now exists had to get this way somehow, and there are only two possible ways. Excluding the mystics belief that a god or some other mystic force caused everything (which certainly is not an escape from determinism) our present state either got this way as a result of absolute inviolable laws or it got this way in some willy-nilly haphazard undiscoverable way. We either live in a world that is absolutely certain (even if largely unknown) or a world in which nothing is certain. There is no middle ground.

—(04/07/05)