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emergence is teleological when combined with Platonism

Steven Jay Gould compared the increase of complexity to a drunken man's stumbling walk ... he eventually finds the gutter.  Nature likewise finds more complex life forms.

But what actually happens is emergence, not mere increase in complexity (granted the latter occasions the former).

And what emerges is a greater openness to a reality that is not itself evolving.  Think of aspects of rationality that we would share with rational creatures that have evolved through different paths than ourselves.  Objects of mathematics.  A recognition of some kind of justice.

Nature, as emerging into rationality, is not merely stumbling via random variation upon a gutter-like stability of more complex forms: it is reaching toward the infinite... through its  more and more perfect cognition it attains nobler and nobler objects of reason.

Just as the gutter is already there to be found, so too are the real objects of reason.

To mistake the ideal objects of reason for a kind of complex gutter: that mistake characterizes materialism.

Gotta polish this up later on, but I think it shows promise!


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