*Can the laws of physics fully explain the “aboutness” of life and morality?*
Reductionism and emergence are central to the question of whether life can be fully explained by physics and chemistry, or whether genuinely new properties arise at higher levels of organization. In this dialogue, *Terrence Deacon* argues that emergence isn’t just about complexity; it’s about the unique relations and constraints that generate novel possibilities.
From the spontaneous order of thermodynamics to the future-directed nature of evolution, explore how life becomes more than the sum of its parts through a revolutionary framework of Teleodynamics.
*In this video, we explore:*
* The Reductionism Gap: Why physics and chemistry alone can’t account for “meaning.”
* The Power of Constraints: How “what doesn’t happen” defines the emergence of life.
* The Three Stages: A deep dive into Homeodynamics, Morphodynamics, and Teleodynamics.
*Chapters:*
00:00 Introduction: Reductionism vs. Emergence in Biology
01:14 How Novelty Shows Up: Morality and “Aboutness”
02:12 The Importance of Constraints: What Doesn’t Happen
03:06 Linguistic Capacities and the Nature of Reference
04:10 Strong vs. Weak Emergence: The Explanatory Gap
05:36 Beyond Top-Down and Bottom-Up Causation
06:53 The Origins of Life: Future-Oriented Molecules
08:01 Thermodynamics: Spontaneous Breakdown and Order
08:52 Morphodynamics: The Dynamics of Making Forms
09:27 Three Stages: Homeodynamics, Morphodynamics, & Teleodynamics
10:58 End-Directed Processes in Bacteria and Viruses
11:52 Open-Ended Evolution and the Capacity to Think
Terrence William Deacon is a Professor of Anthropology and a member of the Cognitive Science Faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of the landmark book _Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter._
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Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
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