A Rational Cosmology: Complex Self-Sustaining Physical Systems

Essay LXXI

This is Essay LXXI of Mr. Stolyarov's series, "A Rational Cosmology," which seeks to present objective, absolute, rationally grounded views of terms such as universe, matter, volume, space, time, motion, sound, light, forces, fields, and even the higher-order concepts of life, consciousness, and volition. See the index of all the essays in "A Rational Cosmology" here.

The thinker Reginald Firehammer has recently released an installment in his project to create an objective, rational ontology. This treatise, titled, "Life," explores Mr. Firehammer's ideas concerning the ontological nature of the process of the same name.

As a purveyor of a different fundamental definition and thus a different theory on life, however, I intend to give Mr. Firehammer's treatise a thorough analysis with the intention of demonstrating where he has erred.

Using Mr. Firehammer's language, I would be called a "physicalist," who holds the view that "whatever is not physical does not really exist, or at least only exists as phenomena of the physical."

To clarify, a physicalist such as myself still considers life, consciousness, volition, ideas, abstractions, and concepts to have a real existence. However, he considers all of these phenomena as arising from certain physical interactions, be they among parts of the body or cells of the brain; he recognizes that any concept must ultimately refer, however indirectly and by whatever multiplicity of steps, to properties of physical existents and be formed by a physical mind in a physical brain.

He recognizes that life, perception, and volition are the result of an immensely complex series of physical interactions among the trillions of components of the human organism, a system so complex that it has attained the capacity to direct its own operations in a self-sustaining manner instead of just being passively manipulated from without. There are essential differences between this position and Mr. Firehammer's, and I hope to demonstrate the greater accuracy of the physicalist view in the course of this treatise.

Mr. Firehammer writes: