Hi again Matt,
I think in this video you get at the core issue that distinguish your ideas from mainstream sciences. Even if your argument seems to imply that your infroming yourself from the recent sciences, in fact, I believe you’re returning to an antique mythological paradigm by metaphorically anthropomorphizing particules since you’re refering to intentionnal causality as explanations for natural phenomenon.
3 Things :
1-Attribution of intentions can be viewed as the results of an evolved Theory of Mind (or Folk Psychology) faculty of our brain that impute mental states to middle-size non-mecanical moving objects for predicting their behaviors.
2- The history of science since Antiquity is grossly the story of remplacing explanations that refers to intentional causality (e.g. Zeus’s anger caused the thunderstorm, God’s will explain the multitude of species) by neo-mecanical(dynamical)explanations. For me the paradigm shift you’re advocating do result from a will to increase our understanding of life but a reactionary obstination motivate by the fact that phenomenological consciouness is not yet explainded by science. Yes, our world is full of intentionnality (attributed by us) but this phenomenal counsciousness is an evolved functions that regulate behavior for optimizing inclusive fitnees not a a-perspectival truth-seeking faculty.
3- You support this weird reactionnary move by saying that modern quantum physics is not Newton physics. But quantum physics is in no way attributing intentions to particules, quite the contrary, quantum physic is actually named quantum MECANICS. Furthermore, I believe these quantum effects that motivate your attribution of intentionnality to particules are happening mainly to level of organisation of the scale of nanometers. (Yes, there are exceptions when we reach extremely low or high level of energy e.g. superconductivit or superfluidity) So, I believe that dynamical systems are still pertinent for explaining interractions happening at the level of organism, or at the level of neurons. For the moment, I don’t know any kinds of molecular or neurological account of the dynamics of the brain that need to refer to some nano-level quantum effect ( I believe Penrose theory of counciouness is not a well accepted view). Again, most of brain scientists view the brain as a dynamical system.
