Ruyer is a dualist. From the perspective of a monist materialism he is asserting the independence of an ideal realm. But he's not trying to deny the existence of a material realm. Indeed, his ideal or purposeful world explicitly needs the material world as a means of accomplishing what it seeks. As we saw, I assert the existence of meaningful finalist activity by the simple act of making assertions that aim at producing truth, or at least meaning, regardless of whether my assertions affirm or deny meaning in the universe. Nevertheless, I still always use tools, like language and my larynx, to realize this sort of activity.
We can explain the operation of these tools or mechanisms in scientific fashion as a step-by-step causal process. But the existence of tools signals the existence of tool users. There are two distinct orders of reality here -- the laws governing the causal universe, and the use of these laws to given ends. This isn't a controversial point at the level of intelligent behavior. In fact, it's exactly the sort of reasoning by which we would establish the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. As Ruyer points out (NF, 26), we wouldn't be surprised to find that Martian phenomena obey the laws of geometry, but if we observed a figure that proves the Pythagorean theorem we'd flip our lids and probably start nuking the place. The idea that tools imply tool using agents only becomes controversial when we start to apply it at a strictly organic level below that of conscious intelligence. We're reluctant to say that the organs of an organism are 'for' anything. And of course, if you're an evolutionary biologist, it's absolutely anathema to suggest that the existence of a cat's fangs, which sure look like tools for rending meat, in any way demonstrate the existence of a real tool user or tool designer.
But what's the difference between a tool and an organ of an organism? The example Ruyer uses to question this distinction is cooking. Fires and pots testify to the existence of a tool user with a meaningful goal -- a clear indicator of the finalist activity called eating. But these implements are just improved means for accomplishing an organic activity that clearly preexisted them. In fact, in the case of fire we know that this form of pre-digestion actually partialy replaced human digestive organs; the line between them is not essentially distinct. So if the use of fire demonstrates directed finalist activity, then doesn't the existence of the colon as an organ? The colon is an internal tool that can be seamlessly replaced with an external tool that serves the same end. This implies that, just as we cannot self-consistently deny the reality of the conscious and intelligent user of fire, we also cannot deny the reality of the unconscious user of the colon, namely, the organism as a whole. Organisms use organs as means to ends.
Finalist activity, then, doesn't require conscious intelligence. The organism already testifies to intelligent activity with its very structure. And of course, this same type of argument applies to instinctual behavior, which forms an intermediate step between the inherited structure of the organism and conscious activity. I find Ruyer's logic pretty convincing -- if we're willing to attribute reality to conscious human activity, but at the same time ask how this activity can be carried out, we are forced down the rabbit hole of attributing reality to the activity of the organism which this conscious activity merely extends and continues to serve.
In many cases, we can discover three corresponding levels: organogenesis, instinctive behavior, and intelligent activity. Hence the formation of organic reserves (fat, sugars), instinctive reserves (honey, various provisions), and intelligent reserves (an Eskimo's meat caches, our jams and wealth). So long as we only consider instinctive behavior, it is vaguely possible—at the price of some bad faith and a good deal of nudging in the right direction, and provided we first imagine that organogenesis itself can be explained by physicochemical causes— to argue that instinctive behavior can be explained in the same way. But if we add the intelligent human behavior to the series, the theory becomes untenable. Humans exist and act, and their activity reveals the true nature of organic activity. (NF, 20)
To forestall confusion about Ruyer's argument, I want to note the word "reveals" in this quote. I've made it sound as if the justification for believing in the reality of a meaningful activity that cannot be reduced to step-by-step local causality is human consciousness. This might suggest that there's something special about humans or consciousness. In fact, Ruyer is demolishing this exceptionalism and spreading finalist activity throughout nature. He began with the contradictions that lead to the "axiological cogito" because this is the easiest place for us to convince ourselves of the reality of the activity. But our conscious thought only reveals an activity that is happening already. It does not create, or form the foundation of this activity. In short, humans were the starting point for pedagogical, not ontological reasons.
In fact, in chapter 4, Ruyer tries to demonstrate that an antifinalist position is as self-refuting on purely biological grounds as we saw it to be on logical grounds. He prefaces this with a description of the type of incarnated, as opposed to logical, contradiction he is looking for, "How could a being in whom consciousness is an ineffective pure accompaniment have invented anesthetics?" (NF, 23). If something has no reality, how would nature go about getting rid of it? Ruyer provides three examples of biological phenomena that directly demonstrate this same type of contradiction.
1) Biological use of chance. The evolutionary biologist tells us again and again that evolution has no goal. It is merely a chance process coupled to an automatic, even tautological, sorting mechanism. For whatever reason, DNA varies. It mutates. But some mutations reproduced themselves better than others. Pretty quickly, we would find the world populated by whatever random sequence happens to best crystallize the environment into more DNA. How then, are we to interpret the moments, like sexual reproduction, where this system seems to design a game of chance that keeps the genders in balance? Doesn't this suggest that this game is after all not so chance, if it goes to such elaborate lengths to interrupt its own functioning? How does the 'fittest' DNA come up with a way to not copy itself. We might be tempted to argue that anything other than an equal gender split is not sustainable. While undoubtedly true, this misses the point. If there were a deterministic mechanism for ensuring this split, evolution could have happened on it by chance. But how did this random process happen on a chance mechanism for avoiding a determinism which, by hypothesis, doesn't exist?
2) Biological self-modification. Let's assume instead that an organism is nothing more than a fancy chemistry experiment, just a deterministic set of interrelated chemical reactions that happen to lock into the temporarily self-sustaining loop we call 'frog'. In this sort of reductionist biology, the frog isn't a real entity. How then are we to explain those situations where this non-entity suddenly modifies its operation in a way that preserves it from some special danger by suppressing its normal functioning? By hypothesis, there's no real thing there that could need suppressing, and also nothing to do the suppressing.
3) Camoflage. For me, this was the most interesting version of the contradiction. How does a non-existent organism camoflage itself? Ruyer gives various examples that all suggest that not only the form, but even the habitat and behavior of the organism as a whole intervenes in its coloration. That is, 'something' seems to know not only what shape an animal has, but know how other animals will try to recognize this shape, and even what other shapes in the environment it could appear to have. He talks about the way that eyes are an obvious and well conserved shape with which to recognize other creatures. So the Lionfish disguises its eye with stripes that prevent the pupil from standing out. And the Butterfly fish puts a false on the other side of its body. The Amazon leaffish even disguises its eye as a leaf with a hole in it. If the organism is not a real unit, how does nature color it so that it doesn't look like one. This is the same sort of contradiction as the invention of anesthetics by unconscious scientists. These facts all seem impossible to explain without invoking the very phenomenon that is being denied. If there is something so obvious that it requires explaining away as an illusion, then perhaps it's a real thing after all!
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