Broadly speaking, Ruyer's goal in the next two chapters (18 and 19) is to distinguish his theory of finalism from related theories that today go under the names of vitalism and panpsychism. For this reason he surveys a number of authors who represent each of these schools of thought. Since I'm not familiar with most of these thinkers, it makes little sense to go into the details. However, I do think it's clarifying to understand some of the subtleties involved in why Ruyer's theory differs from these other, better known, alternatives to reductionist materialism.
Let's define vitalism as the idea that there is a specifically vital force that exists outside the realm of the physical. This is obviously not a single theory, but a broad category of theories that Ruyer actually calls "organicism". What all of these theories have in common is positing at least two types of order in the universe -- a deterministic step-by-step casual 'order' of physical particles, and a separate holistic order of sense, meaning, and purpose which constitutes the vital. There can be significant differences in how these theories think the two type of order relate -- Kant saw the physical world evolving deterministically, but still "as if" it followed a divine plan, so that both sides were real but never touched (NF, 192), others thought the vital force could directly influence the physical in some magical fashion, and still others, like Merleau-Ponty, that the physical was effectively a subset of the vital, in the sense that to be is to be perceived by a living being (NF, 199). But they all think of the vital order as categorically distinct from the physical.
For Ruyer, none of these alternatives are quite right because for him the vital isn't really separate. Earlier we called him an monist idealist. And this is still a fine description as long as we keep in mind that for Ruyer, Ideas are independent real entities that don't need to be inside the mind of hairless chimps or any other living thing. Indeed, they are the only real entities, and as a result they cannot be parallel to or in interaction with or even contain within themselves a physical world which, for Ruyer, does not have a separate real existence. Everything is Ideas -- domains of absolute survey that exist as "autosubjects".
As a domain of absolute survey, an organic form is altogether different from a physical Gestalt, and yet it is not a "perceived form." It is an abuse of language to say that the organic form is "perceived by itself," as though it had to present its own image to itself, like a man who looks at himself in a mirror instead of looking at others. It is an abuse of language to consider the autopossession of self, the "for-itself," the autosubjectivity of every being as self-knowledge or self-perception. This "texture-knowledge," this primary consciousness, is not knowledge; it is being. Perception's mise-en-scène must not be transported into the absolute survey of form-being and of activity-being. (NF, 199)
As a result, while Ruyer can often sound superficially like a vitialist because of his emphasis on the efficacy of transspatial entities, and his constant appeal to the centrality of the organism, his theory goes much further than vitalism's attempt to put life or consciousness back into contact with matter. In fact, there's no need to do this as matter and consciousness are both already life. Ruyer illustrates this with a wonderful image that he assumes everyone has seen.
Let us imagine three humans A, B, and C on the model of Ripolin's famous poster. The first, A, is just an automaton but very sophisticated, made up of metallic cogs and dynamic systems of equilibrium. B is a living man but is deaf and blind and even temporarily deprived of every psychological life in the ordinary sense. The third, C, observes the first two. The first is certainly not a true form. Its "form" is constituted as a whole only in C's perception. It does not maintain its structure on its own, and it requires external maintenance and repairs. But B, an organism without psychological and sensory consciousness, is indeed a true form, because he is living and can be distinguished from a corpse, and be- cause his organism actively maintains its structure (e.g., the stomach does not digest itself and the neural cells do not chemically degrade). This form does not depend on C's perceptive image of B. B's brain has a proper form and activity, which are no doubt less "molar" than if B were not temporarily unconscious, but less "molecular" than if he were dead. Our three humans represent three levels: physical, vital, and psychologically conscious. Gestalttheorie as much as mechanism seeks the unity of the three levels by starting from A. Merleau-Ponty as well as idealists seek this unity by starting from C's interpretations. We seek it by starting from B, or from C as living, because B as a living organism is the type of normal and in fact universal being: it is an autosubjective form, an absolute domain, self-surveying, which is synonymous with "self-perceiving." A is merely a step-by-step assemblage of elementary beings. As to C, it is identical to B, with the difference that he perceives A and B through healthy sensory and cerebral assemblages. This perception is secondary relative to C's life: to perceive, to be psychologically conscious, one has to be alive. To have a conscious "image" of another being, one has in the first place to be a "true form." (NF, 199)
This image helps us clarify that Ruyer's Ideas are primary relative to consciousness. Consciousness is inside Ideas, the vital precedes the cerebral, and not vice versa. But of course it may still leave us with the impression that the vital is somehow qualitatively distinct from the physical. This is only true, however, if we conceive the physical on the model of 19th century machines, ie. in the sense of classical physics. If we instead conceive of the physical as Ruyer does, using the quantum physics appropriate to his era (and still appropriate to ours), we find that "the physical" is already 'vital' on its own.
The "particles of matter" are domains of action that become, in their interaction, a single domain and share their energy. The modern conception of bonds turns an interacting system into "a kind of organism in the unity of which the elementary constitutive unities are nearly absorbed" and which therefore acts as a systematic unity and not as a sum of elementary actions. So, like the problem of the origin of life, the problem of the origin of so-called vital—it would be better termed "microorganic"— force no longer arises. Macroscopic organisms are progressively formed along the lineage of individuality of the universe, through colonization, dominated division, and hierarchical association of microorganisms, that is, of molecules. "Vital force" does not differ in nature from physical force, from the force of internal bonds of atomic physics's unitary domains of action, whose "force," as it appears in classical physics, is merely a statistical resultant. (NF, 202)
So in reality, the middle character in Ripolin's image is equivalent to all three of them. Consciousness is a development of vital force and matter is already a vital force. So not only are the three in continuity with one another, but they all exhibit the same "true form", the same type of absolute survey. Ruyer's 'vitalism' goes all the way up and all the way down, which is why it merits the new name 'finalism'.
While we could think of Ruyer as a vitalist if we bear in mind certain caveats, we could also call him a panpsychist given other clarifications. We saw that the problem with panpsychism is right there in the name -- it inevitably ends up modeling all entities on the human psyche (NF, 74). By contrast, we've seen that finalism models all entities -- including the psyche and matter -- on the organism. Ruyer has spent a good deal of the book distinguishing the way the organism as a domain of absolute survey is distinct from the step-by-step causality of what we usually call 'the physical' (though which we should perhaps should refer to as the macrophysical to avoid confusion). Thus we've had lots of discussions about how we cannot reduce the meaningfulness of organic activity to the meaningless interaction of particles. However, Ruyer has spent much less time distinguishing the organism from its seemingly much closer avatar -- the conscious mind. We know the vital is primary relative to the psychological, but what exactly distinguishes these two?
I construe the survey of "Psycho-Lamarkism" in chapter 19 as an attempt to more carefully specify exactly what's wrong with panpsychism. Why is the psyche a bad model for the organism? Roughly speaking, the problem is that the psyche is too substantial. We conceive our psychological continuity as the continuity of a substantial self that exists inherently before it goes out and acts in the world. Its development then becomes a step-by-step process of the accumulation of experiences -- the psyche learns by accumulating knowledge as a result of its encounters with the outside world. I think this is why Ruyer is describing it as "Lamarckian". NeoDarwinism reduces the phenotypic agent to an illusion, a mere byproduct of the true genetic unit that is being reproduced and selected. But Lamarckism requires a real agent that can possess acquired traits in order to be able to pass those on. We might imagine a type of Lamarckism where the random mutations accumulated in any cell of the organism would be passed on to its progeny (if we replace "any" with "germ line" we reduce this theory to Darwinism). But this wouldn't really be a case of the inheritance of acquired traits in a strong sense, and it certainly wouldn't help explain how an organism's learned adaptations to an environment could be passed on. In short, Lamarckism requires learning, and learning requires a substantial agent called the psyche.
We can ask as a matter of fact whether every Lamarckism is not psychological. By psycho-Lamarckism, we mean the conception that explains the internal finalist assemblage and the de facto adaptation of organisms to their environment or to their living conditions as the result of an accumulation of direct individual efforts, psychological in nature and similar to the conscious effort. (NF, 210)
By contrast, Ruyer's finalism is built on the idea of an activity without a substantial agent. His ideal individual is inherently active, and its activity is given all at once, across time as a trans-spatiotemporal unity that only appears as a development when we look at it from the outside. There's no static continuing substance here that could develop by acquiring properties. There's no agent that could learn anything by accumulation. In a sense, all of Ruyer's individuals are born fully formed, though this form actually spans the entire life of what we would think of as the psychological self or organic individual. And when he speaks of a continuity of fibers, this doesn't result from the development of each individual segment involved, but from the transformation of one individual into another, the 'lighting up' of a new fiber segment that lay darkly hidden in the bundle stretching back to the beginning of the universe. It's like the continuity of each torch lighting the next by touching a relay that has been waiting all along to meet it. Obviously, this is not how we normally think of the continuity of our self. We imagine ourselves as a single continuous flame, and if this consciousness is perhaps passed from moment to moment, this evolution of momentary selves is Lamarkian, not Darwinian. In short, the psyche is a bad model for the organism because we habitually tend towards a flawed (ie. non-Buddhist) model of our self. Obviously, this opens the door to thinking of ourselves as much more fundamentally organisms than consciousnesses, a thought I'll try to come back to in a later post.
So if Ruyer's ideal individuals cannot appear as a development -- either through a Darwinian evolution that would reduce them to chance variations, or a Lamarckian evolution that would slowly accumulate them around a central core -- how can they appear? How are they constructed? In fact, they aren't constructed at all. They exist eternally as Platonic types. And they appear through memory. They are 'invoked' or 'incarnated' in the world in the same mysterious way that a memory pops into our consciousness.
The critique of psycho-Lamarckism (especially if the loophole of natural selection is rejected) leads us very closely to metaphysics, to the metaphysical element of reality. The type cannot be explained by psycho-Lamarckian action; and because it also cannot be explained by the formula mutations + adaptive selection, it remains only to accept it as a primary fact.
... the finality of the "type" forces us to admit straight away a kind of metaphysical and theological initial emplacement, a primary plan(e). The historical character of the evolution of types and species must not veil their ideal and systemic characters. The types and species invent themselves in time, but this invention is guided, predestined. In some sense, organic memory is a ready-made pseudo-memory. Instinct, which has all the traits of memory, is no doubt a pseudo-memory for the individual. The pace of evolution compels us to go further and to admit that it is even a pseudo-memory for the species. It is a "reminiscence" memory, through the apperception of a "type," a memory with a determined program, a memory that is inseparable from a predestined invention. (NF, 220)
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