Introduction – Being like-minded

We readily recognize the universal agential propensity of organisms to survive, reproduce and flourish. But we also see in non-human organisms behaviour that closely resembles what we call, for example, ‘caring’, ‘deception’, ‘preference’, ‘attraction’, ‘knowing’, and ‘reasoning’. And biologists speak of organisms employing ‘strategies’, having ‘interests’, and ‘favoring’ one particular outcome over another. Such language is usually dismissed as anthropomorphism. ^[6]

By describing non-human behaviour using this kind of language – the cognitive language of human intentional psychology – we seem to be ignoring a crucial difference between humans and other species. We humans operate in a minded and intentional way, while other organisms are mindless or merely sentient, lacking the capacity for self-reflection, reason, and abstract thought. When I deceive, I generally intend to deceive and am aware of my deception. Other organisms may deceive but they are not aware like this – they just behave.^[3]

This article is a critical investigation of the biological similarities and differences that exist between minded and mindless organisms. 

How biologically significant is the self-reflective mindedness that distinguishes the human from the non-human? It investigates the universal properties of biological agency^[4] (the biological axiom) that are expressed by all living organisms, and one of their evolutionary developments, the uniquely minded agency of Homo sapiens. Are humans the only agents that express purpose, use reason, have values and interests, and accumulate knowledge?

Humans share with all other organisms their goal-directedness – the universal, objective, and ultimate goals of biological agency – as the propensity to survive, reproduce, and flourish. We intuitively recognize this biological agency as a critical difference that exists between life and non-life – between the living and the inanimate or dead. This intuitive agential distinction between life and non-life is uncontroversial. But the distinction between biological agency and human agency, between the minded and the mindless, has long been a major source of philosophical and scientific confusion and controversy.

The prevailing scientific and philosophical view is that there is only one form of agency, and that is human agency. Biological agency is either denied altogether by treating it as a metaphorical creation of the human mind, or is dismissed as being merely agent-like. You will not find entries in either biological text-books or Wikipedia discussing biological agency in the sense used on this web site. This traditional denial of biological agency does a major scientific disservice to the real agency that created human bodies and minds. It is time that biological agency be given full scientific recognition.

So, what is the relationship between biological agency and human agency?

Principle  – living organisms are distinguished from the inanimate and the dead by their flexible goal-directed agential behaviour, referred to here as biological agency. Humans share these characteristics, but in a highly evolved and uniquely minded form that we call human agency

Principle  – human goals are manifest as conscious intentions – they are a product of a unique and critical self-awareness 

Functional adaptation

The ‘What is it for?’ question that is so much a part of biological explanation is a question about purpose. But science and philosophy are uncomfortable attributing purpose to mindless biological processes.

So, why not remove all talk of agents, goals, and purposes from biological language. Wouldn’t this be a simple way of removing any hint of teleology, the supernatural, or philosophical obscurity? Why not exorcise biology of this unnecessary metaphysical burden?

Questions about what things are for in biology, are usually answered using the detached scientific language of functional adaptation. These descriptions provide a post-Darwinian account of how structures, processes, and behaviours arose through the process of natural selection – the algorithm of life. They are functions that arose mechanically, without foresight or minded intentions and also, by implication, without purpose.  

This way of dealing with biological agency as functional adaptation has generated a philosophical industry that has replaced purpose with function that explores Selected Effects Theory, Generalized Selected Effects Theory, Etiological Theories, Causal Role Theory, neo-teleology, teleosemantics, and more – all in the belief that the removal of agency from nature is doing biology a service.

There are three major obstacles to this program.

First, a recognition of evolutionary biological connection. This is an intuitive identification with and empathy for the shared goals, flexible behaviour, and adaptive traits of our living evolutionary relatives. This is a recognition of shared biological likeness – our shared evolutionary biological heritage. The minded language we sometimes use to describe this likeness is grounded in the real biological likeness of evolutionary connection, however distant.

Second, the denial of biological agency that equates non-minded organisms with the inanimate and dead. Restricting agential talk to humans deprives living organisms of any form of agency. This denial of goal-directed and flexible behaviour that distinguishes the living from the inanimate and dead is, in effect, a denial of life. Without this agency non-human organisms assume the purposeless and inert status of inanimate objects. The same mechanical process (algorithm of life) that gave rise to goal-directed structures, processes, and behaviors also gave rise to the functional adaptations of foresight and conscious intention.

Third, the unrealistic scientific demand to replace the semantics of ‘purpose’ with that of ‘function’. There is a distinction, albeit somewhat unclear, between the unified and purposive ultimate goals of all organisms (biological axiom) and the function-talk that applies to the proximate support (adaptive significance) of traits that support biological agents in these ultimate existential biological goals. In loose general terms, organisms as autonomous agents express ultimate purposes, while adaptive traits express proximate functions that serve organisms in these ultimate goals.

Principle  – restricting all talk of agency to human agency is attractive because it allows non-human existence to be described in terms of adaptive significance and function, thus obviating any need for the language of agency and teleology. However, this: denies real evolutionary connection; denies the real biological agency that distinguishes the living from the inanimate and dead; and places an unrealistic demand on the semantic distinction between ‘purpose’ and ‘function’ – which is best understood in terms of the goals of autonomous organisms (purposes) and the subordinate support given by their parts (functional adaptations).   

Being like-minded

It is obvious that the mindlessness of non-human organisms is very different from the mindlessness that exists in a rock. This is because we realize, intuitively, that the biological agency that we see all around us in mindless nature shares many similarities with our own human minded agency. Clearly, we are biologically more closely related to other living beings than we are to rocks.

We sometimes use minded words to express the closeness we feel to non-human organisms. We say that a plant ‘wants’ water or that a spider builds its web ‘in order to’ catch flies. In using language like this it seems we are attributing minded attributes (cognitive faculties) to organisms without such faculties. But we are not trying to draw attention to a closeness of minds, rather a similarity of biological processes, behaviour, and objectives (our shared biological agency) and, of course, this makes good evolutionary sense. We are related to all other organisms by common ancestry and, though our bodies are made of matter that occurs in rocks – we are, indeed, stardust after-all – we share with the community of life a common agency that is very different from the mode of existence of a rock.

Biological agency – as a propensity to survive, reproduce, and flourish – is a universal and objective property that we observe in the goal-directed and flexible behaviour of all living organisms. It emerged from nature with the first life and is manifest in the multitude of behaviours and physical forms that arose from nature by descent with modification from a common ancestor. The minded agency of human beings is just one evolutionary development of this biological agency.

Principle  – humans are related to all other organisms, not by a communion of minded intentions, but by a shared evolutionary ancestry of biological agency. This is the unified purposeful autonomy of organisms with the universal biological propensity to survive, reproduce, and flourish, and their structures, processes, and behaviours functionally organized in support of these ultimate existential objectives.

Agency & intention

Human minded intentions are, in biological terms, just another biological adaptation – one more tool from the evolutionary toolbox that arose out of natural selection’s creation of goal-directed behaviour.

So why do we regard our human mindedness as something unique and very special? What is it, in scientific terms, that warrants the distinction between a goal and an intention?  Why do we treat the human intellect with such high esteem?

Minded human intentions are directed towards the same ultimate biological ends as the agential goal-directed and flexible behaviour of mindless organisms. Both minded and mindless organisms share this goal-directedness. This is precisely what we mean by ‘agency’, and since all organisms share this agency it is referred to on this web site as biological agency. Since humans are biological organisms their goals (intentions) must, in a sense, be biological goals – and yet they are different from the goals of other organisms because they occur in self-conscious and reflective minds. This creates a cognitive dissonance because it is now apparent that human agency and biological agency express simultaneously both similarity and difference.

How are we to provide a scientific account of something so abstract as the difference between an agential propensity and a minded intention?

In what ways are biological agency and human agency similar, and in what ways are they different?

The agency error

There are several reasons why we use cognitive metaphors – why we describe mindless biological agency using the minded language of human agency – saying organisms have ‘wants’, ‘preferences’, ‘strategies’ and so on.

Metaphors have an educational or literary attraction, they reflect our human cognitive bias, and they make biological explanations simpler and easier to understand. But there is always a problem: they gift organisms with qualities that, in reality, they do not possess. Agency, and its mental properties, are products of human minds only. How could it possibly be otherwise?

There is a major flaw in this conventional account of cognitive metaphor. Subsuming all agency under human agency deprives mindless organisms of any form of agency. It refuses to acknowledge the real and evolutionarily graded nature of the biological agency that unites the community of life.

With self-awareness the measure of agency there is a simple dichotomy between, on the one hand, organisms with minds and cognitive faculties acting as agents (viz. humans) and, on the other, non-human organisms. Denied biological agency, organisms assume the agential status of rocks: or they are only agent-like at best. A spider with no self-awareness has no agency.

This philosophical error arises from the ‘as if’ connection between the relata in a cognitive metaphor (the use of self-aware words of human cognition in relation to mindless organisms) which attributes self-awareness to mindless organisms when, in fact, it is drawing attention to the real shared likeness that exists between biological agency and human agency (see metaphor fallacy).

Principle  – agency, as goal-directed behaviour (biological agency), is a universal property of all life. Human agency expresses biological agency in the unique form of conscious intention.

Following from this conclusion, and supported by the fact that human agency must have evolved as a unique form biological agency, it is clear that human goals are proximate goals in relation to ultimate biological goals: the goals expressed by human intentions are, in this sense, subordinate to the ultimate goals of biological agency and evolution.

Principle  – the minded goals of human agency – those of conscious intention – are proximate goals that are subordinate to the ultimate existential goals of biological agency

Biological agency & human agency

How can science acknowledge the goal-directed and flexible behaviour of mindless organisms and the way that adaptations can facilitate or impede life while, at the same time, treating behaviour that is ‘for’ something as an Aristotelian teleological blunder?

By any lights, goal-directed biological behaviour is both agential and purposeful. Where there are autonomous organisms with goals there is agency and reasons for existence that are best described as purposes.

There is now a long tradition of obfuscation dissolving teleology away with talk of metaphor, adaptation, fitness, heuristics, and function. The language of adaptation and function is not deliberately deceptive, but neither does it convey what is real in the world. It tells the truth, but not the whole truth. We avoid the embarrassing topic of agency by hiding behind official dogma and the accepted technical terminology of evolutionary biology. We fall back on circumlocution – the ‘lifeless’ and detached language more appropriate to the inanimate than the agency that is clearly manifest in the structures, processes, and behaviours of all organisms.

All living organisms share with humans the biochemical pathways that contribute to our understanding of what it is to be a living creature. They are self-organized and integrated into self-regulating and goal-directed autonomous units of matter that pass through a life cycle of fertilization, growth, reproductive maturation, senescence, and death. That is, organisms are autonomous agents, each with its own individual operational identity.

The behaviour of each species is ultimately constrained by the degree of behavioural flexibility that is possible given the limitations of its physical structure. Animals with fins, wings, and brains all pursue the goals of the biological axiom but in ways that are determined by their species-specific physical form.

It is the concept of biological agency that has been problematic.

This arose partly from our anthropocentrism, by regarding human agency as the only real form of agency. Biological agency thus becomes an unreal creation of human minds with all talk of non-human agency taking on the character of metaphor. Alternatively, biological agency becomes a mere shadow of real human agency by being only agent-like.

This is a supreme irony since human minds did not create biological agency, it was biological agency that ‘created’ human bodies, human brains, and therefore human minds.

So, how are we to make a clear scientific distinction between the life-defining goal-directed agency that is universal in nature, and the special kind of minded agency that occurs in humans?

This task is problematic because human agency and biological agency are not mutually exclusive. Human agency is an evolutionary development of biological agency and while it displays uniquely human minded (emergent) properties it also shares the universal (grounding) properties of biological agency.

Coming to terms with this cognitive dissonance – the clash of simultaneous similarity and difference – is made easier by examining the evolutionary history of agency.

The scientific challenge is to clarify, by expressing in clear scientific language, the agential difference between the mindlessness of rocks, the mindlessness of non-human (exc. sentient organisms), and the mindedness of humans, this task being complicated because biological agency and human agency are not mutually exclusive, they demonstrate pronounced similarities and differences.

Much of this boils down to the relative significance that we place on either (external) behaviour or (internal) mental states. Our human conscious mental states – our desires, beliefs, fears, and intentions – are real, vivid, and immediate. It is clearly these factors that drive our behaviour, that are, indeed, our agency.

Though our inner state is crucial, it is the way that inner state is manifested in behaviour that ultimately determines our fate in the world. Both crabs and plants also have inner states that determine their behaviour, but it is the behaviour (as a manifestation of agency) that interacts with the world, not the inner state.

In sum: we judge agency through the evidence of action and behaviour, not through inner states. This does not deny the significance of inner states in driving behaviour but it is a recognition of the more direct significance of behaviour on existential outcomes.

From this perspective human mental states are highly evolved internal mechanisms guiding behaviour – but it is the fact that behaviour is generated that is common to all organisms.

Humans can, unlike other organisms, communicate their inner states using language – as the complex behavioral capacity for speech. The combination of complex and conscious inner mental states communicated between individuals using language has undoubtedly facilitated human ascendency among other creatures.  But, in evolutionary terms, mental attributes are simply another tool (adaptation) subject to the testing of the algorithm of life and the biological axiom as played out in the arena of behavior.

Though we empathize with organisms most closely related to us – recognizing their fear, aggression, anger, uncertainty etc. – we also recognize in distantly related organisms like plants, the physical-behavioral signs of good health, the need for resources, and so on. Even without language or consciousness mindless organisms share with humans the goal-directed behaviours of biological agency that determine their fate.

Evolution of agency

Coming to grips with the evolution of biological agency entails some basic evolutionary theory that helps in the understanding of the cognitive dissonance created by simultaneous similarity and difference.

Most importantly, the goal-directed behaviour referred to here as biological agency emerged with the first life billions of years before its most complex evolutionary development, the minded agency we associate with humans.

Unique & shared characters

Establishing the evolutionary context of any organism, structure, process, behaviour, or concept, requires two sets of characters. First, there are those characteristics that are shared with evolutionary relatives (referred to here as grounding characteristics). It is these characteristics that establish evolutionary connection. Second, there are those characteristics that are unique. These are the characteristics that uniquely identify and define the item under investigation and are here referred to as emergent characteristics.

The Darwinian theory of descent with modification reveals why it is that the minded goals of human agency resemble biological goals. Just as different physical structures (e.g. the fins of whales and wings of bats) may appear very different but share the grounding characteristics of their evolutionary history (both have the ground-plan of a pentadactyl limb), so unique mental concepts (minded intentions) share mind-like grounding characteristics with their evolutionary mental antecedents (the mind-like goals or primitive grounding ‘intentions’ of biological agency).

Thus, there is an evolutionary continuity and physical connection between the mind-like and the minded. Concepts that are uniquely minded are, as it were, a subset or development of the universal and grounding agential characteristics of biological agency: the minded has a mindless (but mind-like) grounding component. Also, recall that humans express many agential characteristics that are either mindless (breathing, sweating, digesting) or unconscious (phobias, spontaneous emotions etc.).

This point is laboured here because the logical difference between ‘minded’ and ‘mindless’ seems so logically transparent and impregnable that, over the years, it has swept aside all complications that might exist in biology itself – in the world. It has ignored or denied the existence of biological agency as an evolutionary grade between the mindlessness of inanimate nature and the mindedness of humans.

Starting with an understanding of biological agency as behaviour motivated by the goals of the biological axiom, and human agency as behaviour motivated by the goals of conscious intention, scientific clarification begins by recognizing that the minded goals of human agency are not separate from, but particular instances of (extensions or evolutionary developments of) the more general and mostly mindless goals of biological agency. That the unique and emergent goals of minded conscious intention are grounded in the mindless goals of biological agency.

Our intuitive merging of the concepts of ‘agency’ and ‘mind’ is best explained in evolutionary terms, whereby uniquely derived characteristics (such as minds and mental concepts) share some of the ‘ancestral’ shared characteristics out of which they were derived. That is, bodies expressing biological agency evolved into bodies that continued to express biological agency but supplemented with minds. The mental concepts created by these minds are also grounded in (evolved out of, superimposed on) biological agency.

Principle  – all organisms express biological agency through the universal, ultimate, and objective goals (‘intentions’) of the biological axiom – to survive, reproduce, and flourish. It is these goals that distinguish living agents from non-living matter.  But only one species, Homo sapiens, pursues these goals with highly evolved minds that can communicate using symbolic languages.

Spiders and plants do not have human intellects, they are not self-aware, and they are not capable of rational deliberation. However, their behaviour is very different from that of rocks. Theirs is not the minded agency we associate with humans, but it is a real goal-directed agency nevertheless.

We make a simple and understandable error when describing biological language as cognitive metaphor . . . by saying, for example, that a spider ‘knows’ how to build a web. We take the language literally to mean that a spider ‘knows’ in the way that humans ‘know’. However, in most cases this literal interpretation is not the intended meaning. The intended meaning relates to the shared biological agency, not the uniquely human mindedness.

Principle  – the unique and emergent goals of minded conscious intention are grounded in the mindless goals of biological agency

We like our ideas to be clear and distinct because this simplifies understanding, explanation, and communication. Sometimes, however, when taking a broad view, physical features in nature are not just present or absent (and statements about them true or false). Rather, they are best represented scientifically as present by degree. We see a rainbow and find it convenient to speak of its discrete colours when, in nature, colour is a continuum of wavelength. The practicality of colour distinction makes it tedious to point out that, scientifically speaking, discrete colours are an illusion. But convenience and human perceptions do not negate the scientific findings. A similar situation pertains in the relationship between biological agency and human agency.

Principle  – Intentions are the minded evolutionary products of mindless biological goals; they express proximate minded human goals that are subordinate to the ultimate and mindless goals of the biological axiom.

Behavior & goals, brains & intentions

We associate intentions with the conscious mental activity going on in brains and minds. It seems obvious that when we grant mindless organisms mind-like characteristics – when, for example, we say that a spider weaves its web in order to catch flies, or that a plant wants water – we are simply reading our own human mental qualities into organisms that do not, and cannot, possess such qualities, because they do not have minds or cognitive faculties. And to say that a mindless oak tree expresses ‘wants’ or ‘needs’ is just nonsense: it doesn’t even have a nervous system.

The standard model

When viewed from this perspective it is hardly surprising that mainstream science and philosophy reject the notion of mindless goals, values, agents, knowledge, and purpose as a contradiction in terms – a misunderstanding of the way our language is used – because these are all ‘minded’ concepts. When we use this language we are being unscientifically anthropomorphic – because it is only ‘as if’ mindless organisms have cognitive faculties. These are all cases of cognitive metaphor – situations in which we are using human intentional language in a figurative way (see metaphor and cognitive metaphor).

Mind first

As self-aware human agents we place great emphasis on the causal power of our minds because we are vividly aware of the way that our conscious intentions precede and determine our actions (our behaviour). It is then applied intentions that dcetermine outcomes.

Put simply, we intuitively assume that our minds are the primary vehicle of our agency.

Behaviour first

Viewed more objectively from a biological (rather than human) perspective, intentions are simply internal factors guiding behaviour.

All behavioural responses are internally coordinated and integrated – even though they may be responses to either internal or external factors. In this sense, all behaviour is a consequence of inner processes whether these make a crab scuttle away when I approach, make a plant wilt from lack of water, or they are the thoughts, beliefs, and intentions that drive human activity.^[5] Biologically – that is, from an evolutionary perspective, and in terms of immediate outcomes in the world –  it is not internal processes that matter, but the behaviour that they generate. Biologically human mental processes are just one of many evolved internal factors directing behaviour.

It is not internal processes that interact directly with the world, it is behaviour. The intentions that arise as processes in my brain do not interact directly with the world, it is my behaviour as coordinated by me as an autonomous organism that does this. This is why we say that ‘actions speak louder than words‘ and why we can think what we like but not do what we like. This is a recognition that observable behaviour is the most obvious vehicle of agency, not the internal and private inner processing that is difficult to investigate and describe. The inner processing of all organisms (in the case of humans these are thoughts, beliefs, desires, and intentions) can indeed change the world, but only via the medium of behaviour.

With the realization of the explanatory priority of behaviour in relation to real-world outcomes, the biological significance of the particular kind of inner processing diminishes. It does not matter what is generating the coordinated behaviour, whether it be a brain, a simple nervous system, or integrated water-relations within a living body. What is biologically important – what is biologically prior – is the behaviour.

A subtle shift in meaning, understanding, and explanation occurs when the talk moves from brains with intentions to bodies with goals – as we move from mental states to bodily behaviour. Though we humans have access to other peoples’ intentions through language, it is by their deeds that we judge them. We are not committed to jail for our thoughts, but for our actions. – not our intentions, but our behaviour. But while intentions are strictly human, behavior is manifest by all living organisms.
Goal-directed activity is a universal and life-defining characteristic: it is also an objective fact.

The first living organisms arose billions of years ago as units of autonomous matter. Their existence followed a mechanical behavioural algorithm as they repeatedly self-replicated while incorporating feedback from the environment that would facilitate their intergenerational continuity. This simple mathematical operation – replication that engages an environmental feedback loop – is referred to here as the algorithm of life. As Aristotle realized this was a remarkable process in nature because while individuals died, their kind persisted – in a potential recipe for eternal life.

What the algorithm of life does not tell us is how autonomous goal-directed activity is a form of agency. With life there emerged a previously non-existent property . . . units of matter with the propensity to survive, reproduce, and flourish, a biological agency referred to here as the biological axiom.  The conditions of the biological axiom were universal preconditions for all life at a time when there was agency, but no minds, and no intentions.

This is a supreme irony. We assume that our minds invent mindless goals (through cognitive metaphor) when it was the algorithm of life that made minds possible. Minds are the evolutionary products of mindless matter and, though our proximate goals are infinite, they are subordinate to the mindless ultimate goals of the biological axiom. This is the behavioural heritage that we share with an oak tree – not its thoughts, but its agency.

There are clearly goals all around us in nature, and adaptations are an acknowledgement that biological goals can facilitate or impede, ‘help’ or ‘hinder’. But most of these goals are not minded goals. The mental hurdle we must overcome is the realization that we don’t create these goals in our minds, it was these goals that made our subjectivity possible.

Intentions are the minded evolutionary products of mindless biological goals; they express proximate minded human goals that are subordinate to the ultimate and mindless goals of the biological axiom.

Minded intentions are a highly evolved form of mindless goals.

All behaviour of autonomous organisms is internally coordinated, but it may be a response to either internal or external factors. I might be shopping because I am hungry (an internal cause of behaviour) and carrying an umbrella because it is raining (an external cause of behaviour). In either case it is my behaviour, rather than the internal processing, that is effective or not. Whether I get food and keep dry depends most directly on the success of my behaviour not my intentions (internal processing) and all behaviour is public, observable, and amenable to empirical investigation. It is my behaviour, not my thought processes, that engage directly with the world.

Principle  – Intentions are the minded evolutionary products of mindless biological goals; they express proximate minded human goals that are subordinate to the ultimate and mindless goals of the biological axiom.

Principle  – biologically the intentions of minds are subordinate to the behavior of bodies, since it is behaviour, not thought, that changes the world. Human agency is just one expression of biological agency

Principle  – in agential terms, mental attributes are simply another evolutionary tool (adaptation) subject to natural selection (the testing of the algorithm of life and the biological axiom) as played out in the external arena of behavior

Brains and their products and abilitilies, such as the capacity for symbolic communication, are just another tool in the toolbox of physical factors influencing behaviour. In this sense the power of mindedness lies, not in our self-awareness or intentions (which is what we emphasize in our explanations of behaviour) but in the way these factors can enhance our behavioural opportunities.

While what goes on inside living bodies determines possible behaviours (as constrained by both biological possibilities of form and function and the circumstances of environment) it is the behaviour itself that is of direct agential and evolutionary  significance.

In this sense, having intentions and self-awareness, being capable of conscious deliberation and abstract thought, communicating using symbolic languages, and enjoying the benefits of collective learning are merely additional behavioural tools in the toolbox of biological agency.

The vividness of our self-awareness convinces us that it is our conscious intentions that are of paramount importance in guiding our lives; that it is our intentions that drive our minded human agency. This perspective on our agency is dampened somewhat by the realization that our agency also has mindless biological and unconscious ingredients. But, more importantly, whatever internal factors are at work in moulding our behaviour, it is the behaviour (not the internal process or thought) that is subjected to the testing biological arena of trial and error, of environmental correction and adaptation. In life, as in a court of law, the future of all organisms has depended not by what their internal processing dictated or what they ‘intended’, but on what they did.

Minds are biologically and agentially important partly because they are self-aware or capable of rational deliberation, but more generally because of what they have achieved by influencing behaviour.

Mindedness had its greatest influence on human history as, in the last 100,000 years or so, in a cognitive revolution, humans superimposed on biological time and genetic evolution the vastly more rapid cultural evolution driven by language and sociality. The mental tools of symbolic culture increased behavioural flexibility, yet more, by using technology to transcend natural biological constraints.

Thinking & doing

The causal interplay between an organism, as a (semi-) autonomous agent and its environment is complex and confusing one, so it helps to establish a few empirical generalizations about this interplay.

First, although we think and speak of ourselves and other organisms in the manner of independent agents, we all exist in a continuum with our surroundings. Our autonomy is constrained by the limitations of both our bodies and our environmental circumstances. Organisms without environments cease to exist so, in this absolute sense, organisms can only ever be semi-autonomous agents.

Second, although human thought can transcend the physical by ranging across all manner of possible worlds, brains are still organs within bodies, and they share the physical and agential limitations of an autonomous living agent. Brains and minds, like the bodies they are part of, are subject to the universal demands of the biological axiom that apply to biological agents.

Third, organisms respond, in an internally coordinated way, to both internal and external factors. That is, for all organisms internal states direct bodily behaviour (agency). In the case of humans mental processes, as intentions, are expressed in the behaviour of whole bodies which includes much more than mental process.

Language includes words that denote inner sensations like ‘wanting’, ‘deceiving’, and ‘knowing’. We understand the meaning of these words largely from the social contexts in which they are applied – from public behaviors and situations, not from inaccessible mental states. Language communicates the reality of shared public understanding, not our inner states, which can only be conveyed in a general sense.

Teleology & beneficiaries

The universe is not random, chaotic, and totally unpredictable. Science explores order as patterns, laws, principles, and regularities of various kinds. By convention we assume that this order is purposeless – it has no conscious design, ends, or values. But talk of order implies end states that are not mental constructs. The ‘laws of physics’ thus provide a mindless ‘direction’ or telos to the process of the universe. So, for example, the prevailing scientific opinion is that the universe is heading towards (will end in) a heat death.

The telos of biology is the autonomous agency of whole organisms that underpins the study of living organisms. This agency has direction (purpose) as the objective goals of living organisms. By necessity, organisms will be impeded or expedited (‘helped’ or ‘hindered’) by circumstances that impact the attainment of goals. 

Since the structures, processes and behaviour of organisms are directed towards goals, explanations that do not address these goals do not fully explain. Organisms are part-whole structures whose internal processes generate an autonomous agency, the parts contributing to the goals of the whole. That is why Aristotle placed such emphasis on final causes. Of course, these ends and limits are not ‘final’ in an absolute sense since, in nature, there is always continuity, but it makes sense to speak of the ultimate goals (survival, reproduction, flourishing) in which the many proximate goals of daily existence are grounded.

But how can an end be a final cause, as Aristotle claimed?

Given bricks and beams I need the concept of a house before I can comprehend the building; I need to know its mode of organization. Until the functional organization of a whole organism is known (the nature of its agency), there can be no role for its necessitating functions. Biological ends have explanatory priority, but they do not challenge the natural order of cause and effect. In a omparable way, the internal processing that initiates the behaviour of  organisms only becomes meaningful when we understand the behaviour that it generates. Behaviour is explanatorily prior to inner processing (whether mental or other).

The universal factors of the biological axiom – the attainment of maximum individual potential given biological and environmental circumstance – are the same, in principle, for all living organisms. That is, every organism has interests and needs.

The instrumental view of organisms (that we only consider them in relation to human interests and needs) is grounded in the mistaken belief that only conscious goals and purposes have significance and that it is anthropomorphic to attribute goals to mindless organisms. And, since only humans have values and purposes, then only humans can have ends and goals . . . only humans can have agency. It is the problems with this view that are now being addressed.

It is argued here that the ‘goods’ of all species are as real as those of humans. But how are we to establish an objective and practical value system that avoids an impractical egalitarianism or the subjectivity of the system it will replace – how do we rank-order values in nature itself?

Aristotle ordered kinds on the basis of their capacities and functions arranged in a nested hierarchy of ontological dependence. That is, the inanimate is of little intrinsic value relative to plants which are lesser than mobile but gradedly sentient animals, and less than that of conscious organisms with the deliberate intellectual habits of symbolic culture. Such a system places responsibility for the interference with natural goods and ends on the agent doing so. This is not just a cost-benefit analysis for humans – there are natural constraints on the human exploitation of nature beyond necessity. To exceed these obligations is to abuse the contingency of human power and to disrespect the mindless creative agential power of nature that made humans and their subjectivity possible.

Language of agency

It was tacitly assumed, in the 20th century, that metaphysical ambiguity – concerns about the ‘reality’ of agency, teleology, and purpose in biological systems – would be exorcised if the word ‘purpose’ were avoided altogether. This could be done by using more detached (less subjective) terms.

Concealing purpose in nature has entailed the use of two key words of sufficient semantic generality to facilitate the obfuscation required . . . ‘function’ and ‘adaptation’.  Though these words are locked semantically into the ‘for’ that defines ‘purpose’, and which also characterizes biological explanation, the philosophical confusion they have generated cries out for the clarity of scientific definition.

The Epilogue at the end of this article offers eight reasons why this attempt has failed, the main reason being that mindless biological agency (that which distinguishes the living from the inanimate and dead) is real – it is not a creation of human minds, it exists objectively in nature – and where there is agency there is purpose.

In biology a function is what something does or is used for, while an adaptation is a modification that makes an organism fitter for existence under its current environmental conditions. Since all adaptations have functions, these concepts appear to be opposite sides of the same coin with clear semantic overlap.

Cactus spines, the white fur of the Arctic fox, emperor penguins huddling together to keep warm, are adaptations whose proximate ‘function’ is conventionally regarded as better fitting these organisms to their environments. It must be noted that any suggestion of ‘better’ and ‘worse’, ‘helping’ or ‘hindering’, ‘facilitating’ or ‘impeding’ are value-like judgements made in relation to a standard. Maximizing fitness in relation to environment can only ever be a proximate reason grounded in the ultimate goals (purposes) of survival, reproduction, and flourishing.

It is helpful to think of functions in relation to the traits and adaptations that serve the purposes of a greater and more integrated whole viz. an organism (see, for example, Okasha on agency). This is a worthy attempt at clarity but difficult to justify, and more difficult to enforce. It seems intuitively just as acceptable to refer to ‘purposes’ (reasons for) as ‘functions’ in the above cases of the cactus, Arctic fox, and Emperor Penguins.

Homeostasis is a mechanism that mindlessly maintains (or has a propensity to maintain) a stable internal environment regardless of changes in the external environment. Indeed, homeostasis describes the very nature of autonomous living organisms. So, for example, sweating in humans has the proximate function of cooling the body in ultimate purpose of surviving – common usage would suggest the word ‘purpose’ (reason for) would also serve as well as ‘function’ in this context. Insisting that the use of ‘purpose’ is unacceptable in such cases, because it is teleological, seems like pedantry in the extreme, which is why it is so often ignored, even by biological scientists.

It is tempting to treat the word ‘adaptation’ as being synonymous with the expression ‘mindless purpose’ (free-floating rationale) except that many adaptations are minded traits. So, what about ‘mindless adaptations’? This sounds strange and unnecessary.

Biological agency is confusing because we think of it in terms of its minded and mindless components, forgetting that biological agency encompasses both. Biological agency is about goal-directed behavior manifest in the world and this is common to all organisms, regardless of the internal mindedness that is a special evolutionary development in Homo sapiens.

We stress the minded component not only because we are humans, but also because we see the impact of mindedness on the world.

In the attempt to establish a clear distinction between biological agency and human agency it might be thought that agential characteristics could be divided into two groups. In one group there are the familiar minded agential concepts like reasoning, caring, knowing, choosing, and valuing. In the other group are concepts describing the mindless goal-directed behaviour of non-human organisms.

It soon becomes clear that there is a poverty of language to describe the agential (objectively goal-directed) behaviour of mindless, or merely sentient, organisms. With a lack of readily available technical terms we fall back on the cognitive language of human agency and, in so doing, meet the charge of creating a fictitious (metaphorical) biological agency. The situation is further complicated when it is realized that biological and human agency are not mutually exclusive.

In the face of this attitude towards mental attributes it is instructive to consider the use of anthropomorphism as non-mental likenesses to humans. There is, for example, a wide application of the vocabulary of human physical structures (e.g. ‘leg’, ‘arm’, ‘head’, ‘body’) to non-human organisms – the arms of the octopus, the legs of spiders and so on. Part of the reason for this is the non-technical highly generalized and loose meanings for these words. They are not being used in a precise evolutionary sense but may be conveying functional, positional, or other likenesses to humans.

Since minded human agency evolved out of mindless biological agency it is hardly surprising that the language of human intentional psychology (reason, desire, knowing, liking etc.) often includes within its semantic range the grounding similarities of biological agency. That is, cognitive terms are used widely in biology in relation to non-minded organisms. This is similar to the situation of physical structures.

However, we treat the physical and psychological modes differently. So, for example, we accept the loose sense in which an octopus has ‘arms’, but reject the loose sense in which the cuckoo ‘deceives’, insisting that the latter is cognitive metaphor. We are especially sensitive to mental comparisons.

There are several factors operating here, including a preciousness about minds that does not extend to bodies.

The insistence on scientific clarity in distinguishing between minded and mindless agency has resulted in, on the one hand, a denial of mindless agency and, on the other, a confusion over the distinguishing features. We say a plant ‘wants’ water, not because we think a plant has cognitive faculties (human agency) but because we share with plants the behavioural propensities of the biological axiom (biological agency). That is, watering may be necessary for survival.

Plant ‘wanting’ is clearly not the same as human ‘wanting’, but human and plant ‘wanting’ share criteria of real biological ‘likeness’ based on evolutionary connection. This is not the ‘as if’ likeness of metaphor but the real likeness grounded in biological agency.

It turns out that much of the human-talk that has proved problematic in biology has ignored the capacity of cognitive language to infer the reality of both grounding and emergent concepts.

Principle  – there is an inconsistent scientific and philosophical attitude towards structural (physical) metaphors and cognitive (mental) metaphors

Principle  – human cognitive vocabulary is agential language with a hybrid semantics that can refer to both human minded intentions and the goal-directed behaviour of mindless organisms (a consequence of their evolutionary connection). The attempt to provide clarity by making agency and cognitive language exclusive to the human domain has resulted in the problematic denial of both the real agency of mindless goal-directed behaviour, and the real evolutionary likeness inherent in notions such as purpose, value, knowledge, and reason

Describing mindless biological agency

There are self-evident reasons for cactus spines, white fur on the Arctic fox, and spider webs. Nature is saturated with reasons for structures, processes, and behaviours. These reasons are purposes because they are not accidental, they are the goals of living agents: they arose by natural selection as functional adaptations that contribute to the survival, reproduction, and flourishing of living organisms. However, they are not minded reasons and purposes; they are not the products of conscious intention and thus, the prevailing view (based on the intuitive prioritization of minded intention over mindless goal-directed behaviour) is that they do not warrant the title ‘purpose’.

Today, a biologist is not permitted to say that the purpose of eyes is to see because, although eyes serve an obvious biological function, they do not have intentions themselves, nor are they the products of conscious intention. The traditional view is that speaking and writing in this way is being carelessly teleological.

In the struggle to avoid teleology philosophers and scientists have been unable to reconcile the seeming conflict between, on the one hand, the reality of biological goals and, on the other, the fact that most of these goals are mindless. Philosopher Dan Dennett has referred to these mindless goals, so evident in functional adaptations, as free-floating rationales.

If we are to give scientific credence to mindless biological agency, then we must not only find a way to accommodate ‘mindless reasons or purposes’ but also have a clear understanding of what is so unique and special about mindedness and conscious intention.

The following glossary draws attention to the grounding of human minded agency in the universal (shared) characteristics of biological agency. The characteristics of biological agency are given in italics.

Adaptation – for some reason we accept that plants can ‘adapt’ both short-term by responding to their conditions of existence, and long-term by genetic alteration. For example, in the short-term they respond to light direction and intensity in a way that maximizes sunlight absorption. This is driven by a genetic program, and not conscious understanding. These strategies could be thought of as a type of accumulated knowledge that has been encoded in their genetic makeup.
Agency – The human capacity to act in an autonomous way by, for example, making independent moral judgments. The exercise of autonomous goal-directed behavior.
Biological agency – The capacity to act on, and respond to the conditions of existence in an autonomous and flexible goal-directed way that expresses the universal, objective, and ultimate propensity to survive, reproduce, and flourish
Cognition – The human mental processes and activities related to acquiring, processing, storing, and using of knowledge. The processes and activities related to acquiring, processing, storing, and using of information by a biological agent.
Consciousness – The human awareness of immediate experiences. Also, the entire range of mental processes, including cognitive functions such as self-awareness, introspection, reasoning, memory, imagination, and the capacity for abstract thought. The totality of an individual’s subjective experiences and mental life. The capacity of a biological agent to orientate itself in relation to space, time, & its conditions of existence
Communication – The exchange of knowledge between humans by both verbal and non-verbal means. The exchange of information
Experience – event(s) that a human goes through or encounters, often characterized by being special in some way – by, say, uniqueness or personal involvement; sometimes the totality of life events, knowledge, emotions, and perceptions and overall comprehension and awareness of the world. The event(s) that a biological agent goes through or encounters in its umweldt including the way these are processed as information.
Human agency – A specialized form of biological agency that uses language and cognition.
Intelligence – The ability to acquire, understand and apply knowledge and reason to solve problems and adapt to new situations.
The capacity to acquire and process information that facilitates adaptation to the circumstances of existence and the attainment of goals.
Intention – The conscious attitude towards the effect of actions. Behavioral orientation
Knowledge – All forms of human awareness and comprehension of the world, including both subjective and objective aspects of our understanding. Information accumulated by an agent about its conditions of existence
Learning – The ability for personal growth and development through the processes of acquiring knowledge and skills. The capacity to process and accumulate information that may facilitate adaptation to the circumstances of existence and the attainment of goals.
Memory – The ability of the mind to store and recall information, experiences, and knowledge. The capacity for information storage and retrieval.
Perception – the human processing of sensory stimuli through the sensory system that includes the five traditional senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, but sometimes including cognitive factors like mental processes, beliefs, desires, reason and their role in experience. The processing of the full range of experiential information (the umweldt) of a biological agent.
Reason – the mental faculty that enables individuals to think, analyze, and draw conclusions logically and rationally – to make sound judgments based on evidence and a structured thought process. The capacity to process information in a way that facilitates the attainment of goals.
Value – The word ‘value’ can be used as both a verb or a noun. When used in a human context it refers to the importance or significance attached to something based on emotional, objective or other factors. Values can include moral, ethical, cultural, and personal principles that guide behavior and decision-making. A behavioral propensity or disposition (towards).

Behavior & intention

Although we can study the physiology and comparative anatomy of non-human organisms it is nevertheless extremely difficult to imagine the actual experience of being a bat, herring, or plant. We mostly judge what their inner states must be like by assuming a detached third person perspective but often imposing our own subjective first-person human interpretation on their behaviour. We get stung by ‘angry’ bees, we greet a ‘friendly’ dog with a wagging tail, and notice a ‘stressed’ plant that is wilting from lack of water. We assess the internal states of other organisms from their external behaviour and often superimpose on this a human interpretation.

The human case is strangely different and complicated. I have no more direct access to your inner states than I do to the crab that scuttles away from me on the beach.  There is, however, a major difference. Humans have developed language. And because we can safely assume a similarity between our own and other peoples’ inner states (because of our biological similarity) we are able to communicate about these inner states not only directly though our bodily behavior, but indirectly through the additional behavioral characteristic of speech.

Thus, humans can communicate about inner states in two modes: as third-person detached observers of behaviour, or as first-person experiential sharers via language. That is, when we describe internal states we can assume an objective-observer-of-behaviour perspective, or we can assume a subjective-sharing-of-experience perspective.  The former is the behavioral, and the latter the mental or experiential mode. We could say in observer (objective) behavioural mode that ‘Tom ran away from the snake’ or, alternatively, in experiential (subjective) mode that ‘Tom was frightened of the snake’. The same event is thus being described from the point of view of both an observer and experiencer, subject and object.

As humans we have developed a specialist vocabulary describing our inner states – so we speak of fear, jealousy, anger, confusion and so on. And we treat these inner states as causally prior to the behaviour they generate. He ran away because he was frightened – and so on. There is a causal sequence here: the fear caused the running away.

But this is a form of anthropocentrism that is scientifically unacceptable because we are describing human behaviour in experiential mode. Biologically, behaviour is explanatorily prior to internal states and we must describe human behaviour in the same behavioural observer mode that we use to describe non-human organisms. We must describe human behaviour in observer mode. We say that the crab ‘scuttled away’, that the dog ‘attacked the sheep’, that the spider ‘caught the fly’ and so on. To avoid anthropocentrism we must describe the outward manifestation of human internal states in exactly the same way. The lady ‘jumped over the puddle’, ‘caught the train’, and ‘slapped his face’. To provide a detached scientific account we must study human behavior dispassionately, from an observer perspective, as we would any other organism.

From a biological perspective we know that all organisms have the same ultimate goals and that it is these ultimate and universal goals that best account for the shared features that define biological agency.

However, from an evolutionary perspective we need to know how the behavioral features that are unique to each species are related to (grounded in) these universal features. Because behavior is explanatorily prior to inner states we need, for example, to find the best possible behavioral equivalents to words like ‘intention’, ‘knowing’, ‘reasoning’, ‘valuing’, ‘purpose’, and ‘agency’. We need, in a counterintuitive way, to reduce the mental to the behavioral.

Reducing the mental to the biological is a difficult step for us humans to take – a ‘strange inversion of reasoning‘ (Dennett) because while only humans express intentions (mental states), all organisms express goals (behavior). We suddenly realize that human intentions are just one form of biological goal – and that human agency is simply a highly evolved form of biological agency.

The difficult conclusion to accept is that it is bodies and biology, not brains and minds, that are in control here. Biologically, behavior is prior to the mental processes that generate it.

When proximate and emergent human intentions (using human minded language) are translated into behavior (using the universal language of living bodies) they take on the more general grounding characteristics of biological goals. We see:

biological ‘intention’ as the goal-directedness of behaviour

biological ‘agency’ as the ultimate propensity of all life to survive, reproduce and flourish

biological ‘value’ as proximate goals grounded in the ultimate goals of biological agency

biological ‘knowledge’ as the transmission of information both within and between organisms

biological ‘reason’ as the orderliness with which biological ‘knowledge’ is used to pursue the proximate and ultimate goals of biological agency

These properties of life are discussed further in the article on biological intention.

Biological agency is understood, explained, and defined, using behavioural criteria. Though each organism and species displays a wide range of proximate behaviour that is constrained by its environment and physical form, all organisms share the universal, objective, and ultimate goals of biological agency as outlined in the biological axiom.

Biologically the powerful arsenal of human minded cognitive properties – the capacity for abstract thought, foresight, hindsight, reasoned and conscious deliberation, and the ability to devise symbolic languages of communication – has created a sociality that has allowed humans to dominate planet Earth.

But in spite of all this, our minds and brains are, nevertheless, part of (one organ of) our bodies and, of necessity, they share the unity of purpose of all living bodies as functional and autonomous living wholes – the goals of the biological axiom as they emerged with the first life.

Intentions and mindedness are subordinate to bodies, behaviour, and actions. Our minds might wish to transcend the lowlines of these simple biological goals – but if it did, then it would not be life. Both morality and science are partially successful in the attempt to overcome our biology but the concept of complete detachment from our biological nature is incoherent.

The immediacy and vividness of our experience, combined with our self-awareness as agents creates the impression of mental power over the world. But we can overestimate the power of the mental alone. Beliefs and feelings can change the world, but only when translated into the agential behaviour of living bodies.

Even our mindedness (our subjectivity) which seems replete with infinite imaginative possibilities, is subordinate to the goals of the process that created it. For all members of the community of life – and in spite of the brilliance of the human intellect – ultimately, it is behaviour that decides fates even when these are motivated by mental states.

Action trumps thought: behaviour trumps intention.

Deception

Is ‘deceiving’ what I think, or what I do? Clearly it is both – but in a court of law in which we claim to have been deceived, we use behaviour as evidence, not the contents of minds. It is not what you think that counts in life, it is what you do. Acts trump concepts: behaviour trumps thought.

When we say the cuckoo ‘deceived’ the Meadow Pipit, we are not discussing the devious cunning of the cuckoo, we are describing a mode of behaviour that falls under the conventional understanding of how ‘deception’ is manifest in the world as a mode of behaviour.

Principle of behavioral primacy – words and their meanings are derived from a shared and commonly-understood public context – from our understanding of particular kinds of behavior in particular situations, not from inaccessible mental states.

This principle of behavioral primacy relates to the entire vocabulary of intentional psychology, and it places a new complexion on questions generally regarded as being primarily about mental processes and the human mental domain. It shifts questions about the ‘reality’ of the human and mental, to general questions about behaviour.
The question to be addressed is no longer, for example, ‘Can non-human organisms express purpose, agency, values, knowledge, and reason?’, a question posed with the popular assumption that these are all minded concepts (questions about processes restricted to human brains). Instead, the question becomes ’Do non-human organisms express behaviour that we would judge as ‘purposeful’, ‘agential’, ‘valuing’, ‘knowing’, and ‘reasoning’? When viewed from this perspective matters become more challenging: the criteria of evidence, of justification, relate to circumstances in the external world not the private world of the human mind.

In short, the sentence ‘the cuckoo deceived the pipit’ is no longer a statement of cognitive metaphor gifting the cuckoo with cognitive faculties (a figurative representation of what is going on in the cuckoos brain and mind). Instead, it is a more generalized statement about behavioral conditions in the world, not in human minds – specifically, statements about misleading behaviour. In this context the word ‘deceived’ is a description of real behaviour in the world whereas, in its former sense it referred to a private inner mental state. Since the mental state is essentially unknown (figurative) this means that the language of intentional psychology assumes the status of metaphor and we end up with a seemingly preposterous conclusion. The language of intentional psychology is a figurative (metaphorical) representation of the world. When I say ‘the cuckoo deceived the pipit’, the word ‘deceive’ is a metaphor, not because cuckoos don’t have cognitive faculties, but because minded concepts are not part of the world. The figurative element is not the mindedness of the cuckoo, but the mindedness itself.

Principle  – in spite of the power of thought, agency is ultimately manifest in action.  For all organisms, including humans, it is ultimately behaviour that decides fates 

Principle  – the unique and emergent property of communication by speech is grounded in the universal property of communication through behaviour 

Science of mindless goals

The philosophy of biology today, rather than trying to remove purpose from biology, could be more productively engaged by providing a scientifically coherent account of the biological basis of the connection between uniquely human intentions and universal biological goals. That is, providing a comprehensive account of biological agency. 

Such a program could include the following:

First, the creation of a technical scientific vocabulary dedicated specifically to mindless biological agency.

Second, and in recognition of the fact that the language of intentional psychology is the species-specific language of human agency, we provide an agential vocabulary for each individual species.

Three, we make a scientific acknowledgement of the fact that the language of intentional psychology encompasses all biological agency, not just that of humans.

The first option is too controversial and complicated by the presence of mindless biological goals in minded humans. The second option is impossible because impractical.

It seems that we can only obtain some clarity about biological agency by acknowledging that in the light of its evolution, like consciousness, biological agency exists in nature by degree. This physical reality, is grudgingly recognized in the semantic compass of concepts that are generally treated as strictly and uniquely minded –  concepts like purpose, reason, value, and knowledge which all share grounding characteristics with mindless organisms – characteristics that are constituents of shared biological agency.

This aspect of mindless agency is discussed further in the article on biological intention but for now it can be pointed out that.

Language, behaviour, meaning

If we derive the meaning of words within a publicly meaningful (shared) behavioural context, then what are the agential (behavioural) meanings of purpose, agency, value, reason, and knowledge?
When expressed in behavioural terms these concepts are undifferentiated. That is, the satiation of my thirst by drinking a glass of water can be interpreted as an indication of purpose (there is a reason for the activity), value (my obvious desire for water), agency (goal-directed behaviour), and knowledge (responsiveness to circumstances and their consequences).
Since, in the reality of our everyday interaction, we treat these concepts as having different meanings, then the difference between them must lie in the linguistic distinctions that we make – distinctions that are not grounded in behaviour. We understand these distinctions because speech is a form of behaviour and these word meanings are part of speech behaviour. That is, behaviour that is related to meanings that exist in the language as socially accepted usages approximating dictionary definitions.
These definitions are part of symbolic culture as a domain of objective facts whose existence depends, paradoxically, not on the world, but more on collective beliefs embedded in language.
Language relates to the world and our minds in complex ways. However, some words clearly correspond to things in the world that are mind-independent: the Eiffel Tower is one of these, and the goal-directed behaviour of organisms is another.

Principle of like-mindedness  – the proximate and uniquely minded goals of human agency evolved out of, and share grounding characteristics with, the universal, objective, and ultimate mindless goals of biological agency

Biological agency is not a metaphorical creation of human agency: human agency is a real evolutionary development of biological agency.

The language of biological agency

The overwhelming task for the philosophy of biology today is to extend the realm of agency, purpose, and value beyond the realm of human subjectivity – to establish a secure scientific and linguistic foundation for non-human biological agency.

If goal-directedness (agency) depends solely on the capacity for mental representation, then we humans are, indeed, very different from most of nature. But, in reality, agency exists in all organisms, both those with minds and those without minds. Biological agency is not mind dependent, although it is the form of agency that is most familiar to us humans.

So why do we make agential notions like agency, purpose, reason, value, interests, knowledge, and preferences mind dependent by insisting that they are strictly the products of human minds?

Probably because of our anthropocentric bias and because it is convenient to do so.

A more scientific approach would be to explain and understand these words through the notion of biological agency existing in an intergraded agential way, loosely proceeding from mindless, to minded and unconscious, to minded and conscious, to cultural (collectively determined), with all these behavioural drivers integrated in human communities.

Biological agency (as objective goal-directed behaviour) is a real phenomenon in nature but its presence in nature has been largely ignored or denied because of its embarrassing association with teleology (as either anthropomorphizing language or supernatural agency). But if biological agency is there in front of us, then how have we managed to deny its presence?

We do so by conflating biological agency with human agency.

We intuitively recognize the similarity between the goals of non-human organisms (the biological values of biological agency expressed in the biological axiom) and the goals that are a consequence of conscious human intentions (human agency).  However, when biological agency is denied we fall back on the language of human agency, which is then treated as cognitive metaphor (with the concession that organisms can be agent-like).

It is therefore difficult to determine whether the language of human intentional psychology is referring to the grounding characteristics of biological agency, or the emergent minded characteristics of human agency.

Put in simpler terms, we recognize, for example, that even mindless plants share with us (as a matter of biological necessity) the agential propensity to survive, reproduce, and flourish – and that this propensity is evolutionarily closely aligned with human intention. But we refuse to acknowledge this in science.

Once we accept that, scientifically, it is more ‘realistic’ to think of non-human life as expressing transitional mind-like properties (rather than being mindless like a rock) then we also move towards a more scientifically realistic understanding of how the language of human intentional psychology connects with and shares many mind-like properties with the non-human community of life.

How does all this cash out?

The uneasy relationship between science and the reality of biological agency has inevitably created conceptual and linguistic tensions and contradictions.

On the one hand there is the insistence that agency, purpose, and value are strictly human because they are mind-dependent (there is no purpose, value, or agency in non-human organisms). On the other hand, science must account for the reality of the biological agency that is demonstrated by goal-directed organisms – real mindless reasons and goals (free-floating rationales).

We have ignored the fact that organisms are ‘competent without comprehension‘ (Dan Dennett), they are ‘for without foresight‘ (Roger Spencer), and that they express ‘knowledge without knowing‘ (David Deutsch).^[30]

Insights like these apply across the range of intentional discourse. We can extend this idea indefinitely. Mindless organisms also have ‘memory without remembering‘, ‘normativity without morality‘, and so on.

The likenesses being compared in these examples, the connections between relata, are not so much about a total separation of the minded and mindless, but a likeness founded on historical evolutionary connection – the unification of biological and human agency that occurs in humans.

What can be done?

We have three options: first, to deny the reality of biological agency by describing it using the minded language of human intentional psychology, this language then treated as cognitive metaphor (current situation); second, develop a technical vocabulary that addresses the specific mindless modes of biological agency (a scientific solution unlikely to be adopted); third, acknowledge the evolutionary grounding of minded human agency in mindless biological agency and thus the merging of minded and mindless concepts (an initial step in the recognition of the reality biological agency).

Principle  – to overcome the perception of biological agency as cognitive metaphor or heuristic there are two possible solutions: to develop a technical vocabulary that addresses the specific mindless modes of biological agency (a scientific solution unlikely to be adopted), or to acknowledge the evolutionary grounding of minded human agency in mindless biological agency and thus the merging of minded and mindless concepts. 

This, at present, offers the more realistic option.

This has profound consequences. It clarifies not only philosophically controversial words like ‘reason’, ‘interest’, ‘knowledge’, ‘purpose’, ‘agency’, and ‘value’ but, indeed, the entire vocabulary of human intentional psychology.

The scientific questions to be addressed are no longer those of mutual exclusivity, like ‘Is this, or is this not, a ‘mind’ word?‘ since we know that what we refer to as ‘minded’ includes ‘mind-like’ properties.  Instead, the important questions can now take the form of, for example:

‘In what ways does conscious deliberation compare with mindless reason?’

or ‘How do we compare the knowledge contained within non-human organisms with the specific kind of knowledge that is expressed by conscious minds?’

All organisms (including humans) demonstrate the grounding characteristics of biological agency, but only humans demonstrate this agency with the additional evolutionary advantage of minds that employ the language and concepts of intentional psychology that are grounded in biological agency.

Principle  – All organisms (including humans) demonstrate biological agency through their inherent ultimate biological goals of survival, reproduction, and flourishing, while only humans demonstrate this agency using minds that employ the language of intentional psychology. Just as, in an evolutionary context, uniquely human agency is grounded in (shares characteristics with) biological agency so, too, do uniquely human mental concepts.

Commentary

The geographic distribution and material composition of rocks can provide us with much information about the history of that rock. But this is nothing like the replicable ‘information’ or ‘knowledge’ that is found in the DNA of every living organism and passed down the generations: the precise information of identity such that humans give birth to humans, not fish or plants.

The world of living organisms is very different from the world of rocks because, unlike rocks, organisms are autonomous, self-organizing and self-regulating individuals that share a common biological agency – the propensity to survive, reproduce, and flourish.

We see biological agency manifest in both the quantitatively graded differences in structures, processes, and behaviour that occur between species, and the qualitative evolutionary change from mindless adaptation to minded conscious learning and collective decision-making. Just as, in an evolutionary context, uniquely human agency is grounded in (shares characteristics with) biological agency so, too, do many of the uniquely human mental concepts of intentional psychology. Many of the uniquely human emergent goals of conscious intention (those described using the language of human intentional psychology) are grounded in the mindless goals of biological agency.

We do not refer to the information carried in DNA as ‘knowledge’ because we only use the word ‘knowledge’ in relation to human minds. We do not refer to the logic of adaptation as ‘reason’ because reason entails the deployment of cognitive faculties. We do not refer to living organisms as expressing ‘purpose’ because only human minded objectives are true purposes. We do not refer to organisms as ‘agents’ because humans motivated by conscious goals are the only real biological agents. And so on.

Describing non-human organisms using the language of human intention has, by long tradition, been interpreted through the logic of a literary device, the metaphor. Darwin immortalized natural ‘selection’, and Richard Dawkins christened ‘selfish’ genes. Both men recognized a similarity or ‘likeness’ between minded and mindless processes occurring in organisms. By tradition, the ‘likeness’ of metaphors is figurative (unreal) and, by logical extension, so too is the likeness between such seemingly disparate conditions as being minded and mindless.

By demanding that agency and purpose be inextricably and uniquely associated with human minds and human agency, it follows straightforwardly that any other kind of agency is only ‘as if’ agency because in a metaphor one of the relata is always figurative (unreal). This leaves us with the denial of mindless biological agency – a scientifically untenable claim in the face of objective and flexible goal-directed behaviour.

But the subjectivity of minded human agency was made possible by mindless biological agency: there is a real evolutionary connection between the mindless and mindful agency of organisms. The ‘likeness’ is not figurative, but real – the likeness of simile, not metaphor.

A philosophical industry has been devoted to the avoidance of the word ‘purpose’ and the complications associated with the use of the word ‘function’ – all in the mistaken belief that this is doing a service to biology (see, for example, ^[26][27][28]). Attempts to ‘clarify’ the purportedly inappropriate notion of purpose has spawned Selected Effects Theory, Generalized Selected Effects Theory, Etiological Theories, Causal Role Theory, Neo-Teleology, teleosemantics, and various other philosophical diversions.

The biological world is composed of a community of life consisting of evolutionarily graded biological kinds, the concepts and language we use in relation to these kinds must follow the same graded form: where there is biological continuity there must be conceptual continuity too.

There is no scientifically acceptable language available to express those shared and mindless agential characteristics of organisms that are the evolutionary substrate of human conscious intention. In the absence of such a technical terminology we revert back to the language of human intentional psychology and, in so doing, provide the opportunity to ignore, deny, or downplay the reality of biological agency. That is, we either conflate (treat as identical) the universal and ultimate goals of biological agency and the uniquely minded goals of human agency.

The goals of biological agency can only be understood (represented by) human minds, but that does not mean that they only exist in human minds – that they are a creation of human minds. Biological agency is not an agent-like fiction invented by the human agential mind. Rather, human agency is just one highly evolved example of the many kinds of biological agency.

We proceed scientifically and philosophically with the assumption that biological agency does not exist – or that it only exists in human minds, not in the world. This leads to several errors.

We quickly assume that when we say that a plant wants water we are clearly mistaken because plants do not experience cognitive states. This is therefore an obvious scientific error.

But when we examine this locution more closely it becomes apparent that we are not making the literal claim that plants have cognitive faculties, rather we are acknowledging, and identifying with, the propensity for all organisms to survive and flourish; we are acknowledging the reality of biological agency. When, in such circumstances, we correctly reject the use of minded language we also, incorrectly, reject the possibility of there being biological agency.  There is an erroneous conflation of human agency and biological agency.

In the simplest terms. Plants express mindless biological agency. Humans express mindless biological agency and, in addition, minded human agency.  Because plants do not have minds, and their description using minded language is inappropriate, does not mean that they do not express biological agency. The confusion lies in whether the intended inference being made by the cognitive metaphor is to mindless biological agency (in which case the referent is real, even though the language is inappropriate), or to plant mindedness (in which case the referent is unreal).

The kind of agency being insinuated, but not said, when we say that a plant wants water is not as if (unreal) human cognitive agency, but the universal biological agency expressed in the biological axiom. Once it is realized that the underlying intent of such minded language is grounded in mindless universal biological values, rather than human intentions, then it is easier to understand not only how the literal interpretation of such language as metaphor is mistaken, but how this entails both an inversion and conversion of reasoning.

The claim being made here, and in other articles, is that much of the minded language applied to mindless organisms is, in intention or meaning, referencing, not cognitive faculties, but biological agency. And, secondly, that we use this minded language because we have no suitable scientific terminology for the mindless characteristics of biological agency.

Glossary - Biological Agency

Adaptation (biological) – the word 'adaptation' expresses, in the most parsimonious way, the means by which organisms, as biological agents, attain their goals. 'Adaptation' can refer to a structure, process, or behavior (a trait). The process by which populations of organisms change over many generations in response to environmental factors, developing heritable traits that enhance their survival and reproductive success in specific environments; the evolution of traits with functions that enhance fitness (being conducive to survival, reproduction, and flourishing); the capacity for self-correction - in the short-term through behavioral flexibility, leading to long-term genetic change
Agency - (general) the capacity to act on and react to conditions of existence with goal-directed behavior; (biological) the mostly mindless autonomous capacity of biological individuals to act on, and react to, their conditions of existence (both internal and external) in a unified, goal-directed but flexible way (see biological axiom). Agency is the physical manifestation of functionally integrated behavior. Human agency is biological agency supplemented by the evolved resources of the human mind including: language, self-reflective and conscious reason, hindsight, foresight, and abstract thought
Agent - something that acts or brings things about. Mindless inorganic agents include objects like missiles, cities, and computers. In biology - an organism as autonomous matter with the capacity to behave in a unified goal-directed way as stated by the biological axiom (sometimes extended to include genes, groups, or other entities, even natural selection itself) as a (semi)autonomous individual with inputs as flows of energy, materials, and information, internal processing, and outputs as energy, waste, action and reaction in relation to inner and outer environments. An organism motivated by real goals (these may be mindless, that is, without conscious intention);  an agent can act and react; it is the instrument or means by which a purpose is pursued
Agential realism - the claim that non-human organisms exhibit agency in a mindless way, and that humans combine both mindless and minded agency: the grounding of cognitive biological metaphors in non-cognitive biological facts
Algorithm of life - life is autonomous and agential matter that self-replicates with variation that, by a process of evolutionary selection, incorporates feedback from the environment thus facilitating its persistence.

1. Endow units of matter with agency as the capacity to adapt to their conditions of existence (to survive, reproduce, and flourish).
2. Combine the behavioral orientation of 1 with genetic modifications arising in each new generation
3. Expose 2 to evolutionary selection pressures resulting in differential survival
4. Surviving forms return to step 2

Anthropocentric - to view and interpret circumstances in terms of human experience and values
Anthropomorphism - the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities
Apomorphy - a specialized trait or character that is unique to a group or species: a character state (such as the presence of feathers) that is not present in an ancestral form
Autopoiesis - self-replication combined with self-maintenance and modification is sometimes referred to as autopoiesis
Behavior (biology) - the outward expression of the internal processes of biological cognition; actions performed by a biological agent (or, more loosely, its parts); the internally coordinated but externally observable response of whole organisms to internal and external stimuli. Behaviour may be: mindless or minded; conscious, unconscious, or subconscious; overt or covert; innate or learned; voluntary or involuntary. Learning capacity is graded in complexity
Behavioral ecology – the study of the evolution of animal behavior in response to environmental pressures
Biological agency - the capacity of autonomous living organisms as biological agents to act on, and respond to, their conditions of existence in a flexible way and with a unity of adaptive purpose - the goal-directed behavioral propensity to survive, reproduce, and flourish; the capacity of living organisms to act with intentionality; a life-defining property of living organisms; the motivation for biological activity as described by the biological axiom; the capacity of organisms to act with purpose and intentionality; the biological principle that has generated the entire community of life; the capacity organisms act intentionally in the sense that their behavior is purposeful and adaptive i.e. directed towards objects, properties, or states of affairs
Biological agent - while biological agency, in a broad sense. can be ascribed to almost any biological structure, process, or behavior, it is the organism that best serves as its exemplar, standard, or prototype cf. organism, biological agency. an organism as an autonomous unit of matter with a flexible and adaptive propensity to survive, reproduce, and flourish (the universal, objective, and ultimate unity of purpose shared by all life); biological agents, organisms are self-replicating units that regulate the internal and external exchange of energy, materials, and information that is required for their autonomous pursuit of goals
Biological axiom – a universal biological principle paradigmatically exemplified by living organisms as biological agents that express their autonomy in a unity of adaptive purpose – the universal, objective, and ultimate behavioral propensity to survive, reproduce, and flourish in the face of their conditions of existence (sometimes referred to in evolutionary biology as 'fitness maximization'). These goals may be met in both cognitive and non-cognitive ways: they are universal because these are characteristics demonstrated by all organisms, objective because they are a mind-independent fact, and ultimate because they are a summation of all proximate goals. While aberrations may be found, the biological axiom is a processual and agential definition that expresses with greater clarity than definitions describing structures, the necessary and sufficient ancestral agential characteristics that define all life. cf. organism, biological agent.
Biological cognition - the accession, storage, interpretation, and processing of information necessary for biological agents to adapt to their conditions of existence. In its highly evolved sentient form, this entails the mental processes of perceiving, interpreting, and responding to stimuli that encompasses learning, memory, problem-solving, and decision-making, all grounded in the brain's structure and function as shaped by evolution cf. basal cognition, cognition
Biological goal - the object towards which the behavior of a biological agent is directed. Biological goals are the natural ends or limits of internally generated biological processes that follow transparent causal pathways - the development of a structure, maturation of an organism etc. Their sources may be mindless, minded but unconscious, or conscious. Short-term proximate goals serve long-term ultimate ends. Goal-directedness confers both purpose and agency. Biological goals are usually observed and studied as the behavioral outcomes of internal processes.
Biological object - something from the living world that can be studied scientifically; taken to be either a structure (whole or part), process, or behavior
Biological principle - an underlying regularity of a biological system e.g. evolutionary principles (like natural selection), agential principles (survival, reproduction, adaptation, evolution), biochemical laws (like the laws of thermodynamics), or ecological principles (like the cycles of matter and energy flow). By understanding these principles, scientists can make predictions about biological outcomes and develop theoretical frameworks that explain how and why organisms behave and evolve in particular ways.
Biological simile – a comparison (likeness) of biological phenomena that is based on real evolutionary connection
Bioteleological realism - the claim that purposes exist in nature and that most cognitive metaphors used in science are grounded in non-cognitive biological facts
Biosemiotics - the study of the production, interpretation, and communication of signs and meanings in living systems
Bioteleology - purpose resides in the fact that there are natural ends or limits to biological processes (e.g. the maturing of an acorn into an oak tree; the termination of a mating ritual in copulation), that these ends are objectively  goal-directed and therefore purposive. Teleonomy controversially interprets teleology as implying a metaphysically questionable source of purpose. The word teleonomy attempts to replace this purported implication with a naturalistic explanation. The distinction between teleology and teleonomy, and whether that distinction is warranted, remains unclear
Cognition - the internal processing that precedes and guides the behavior of biological agents; the goal-directed and adaptive process of acquiring and interpreting information about the conditions of biological existence;  the acquiring, processing, storing, organizing, prioritizing, and communication of information. In its highly evolved and limited human form, it involves perception, memory, reasoning, and problem-solving, allowing individuals to understand their environment, make decisions, and establish knowledge through experiences and interactions with the world cf. basal cognition, biological cognition
Cognitive ethology – the study of the influence of conscious awareness and intention on the behavior of an animal
Cognitive metaphor - a metaphor used in the context of human intentional psychology. When we have no words to describe real pre-cognitive agential traits, we resort to the language of human cognition, thus condemning these traits to the figurative world of metaphor
Complementary properties – the properties instantiated by the relata of a biological simile
Conditions of existence (biology) - those factors influencing the inner processing of organisms including triggers arising from both inside and outside the organism.
Derived concept – a concept with a narrow semantic range
Emergence - as used here - the origin of novel objects, properties, or relations in the universe that warrant human categorization
Environmental factors - the external factors impacting on the existence of an organism
Evolutionary biology – the study of evolutionary processes (notably natural selection, common descent, speciation) that created the community of life
Fitness - a measure of reproductive success (survival) in relation to both the genotype and phenotype in a given environment
Function - also referred to as adaptive significance. Typically, this is the role that the structures, processes, or behaviors of an organism play in the functional organization of the organism as a whole. It helps to regard these characters of organisms as having functions while organisms themselves, as independent agents, have purposes and goals
Genotype - the genetic constitution of an individual organism, encoded in the nucleus of every cell
Grounding concept – the general ideas that underpin more specific (derived) concepts
Heuristic – stimulating interest and investigation
Holobiont – an aggregation of the host and all of its symbiotic microorganisms
Homeorhesis - (Gk - similar flow) a term applied to dynamic systems that return to a specific path or trajectory, in contrast with systems that return to a particular state (homeostasis). Homeostasis refers to the maintenance of a stable internal environment in response to external changes (e.g. body temperature in mammals) while homeorhesis is the adjustment, sometimes changing over time, to meet particular organismal functions or goals (e.g. changes in blood composition that support the fetus during pregnancy).
Homology – a similarity in the structure, physiology, or development of different species of organisms based upon their descent from a common evolutionary ancestor
Human agency - behavior motivated by conscious intention; the uniquely human specialized form of biological agency that is described using the human agential language of intentional psychology; the capacity to act based on reasons as cognitive and motivational states (beliefs, desires, attitudes) (philosopher Kim)
Human-talk - the language of humanization - the attribution of human characteristics to non-human organisms, objects, and ideas. (Biology) the description of non-human organisms using language that is usually restricted to humans and human intentional psychology; the use of cognitive metaphor to describe non-cognitive but real biological agency; the psychologizing of adaptive explanations
Intention - a cognitive goal, or pre-cognitive behavior that is directed towards objects, properties, or states of affairs
Intentional idiom - the use of intentional language in a wide range of contexts including those relating to non-human organisms
Life – units of matter with the agential capacity to survive, reproduce, and flourish (cf. biological axiom) as best exemplified by autonomous organisms. Life processes, such as growth, reproduction, response to stimuli, and metabolism are subordinate to the organismal wholes of which they are a part
Metabolism - the set of processes that sustains an organism (or, more generally, any biological system)
Metaphor - figurative language as ‘nonliteral comparisons in which a word or phrase from one domain of experience is applied to another domain’. An 'as if' direct (not a 'like') comparison that is not grounded in reality e.g. 'You are a rat'.
Natural agency - any agency in the natural world
Natural purpose - the natural goals, ends, or limits of biological agents, both cognitive and non-cognitive
Normative realism - the view that normativity has its origin in biology through the mindless and mindful ultimate goals of survival and reproduction, and proximate goal of flourishing
Organism - unicellular to multicellular life forms that include fungi, plants, and animals. The mostly physically bounded and functionally organized basic unit of life and evolution. As a mostly autonomous biological agent the organism acts on, and responds to, its conditions of existence with flexible but unified and goal-directed behavior that demonstrates the objective, ultimate, and universal propensity of organisms to survive, reproduce, and flourish. While life can be described at many scales and from many perspectives (and the structures, processes, and behaviors of organisms all demonstrate a degree of autonomy), it is the entire organism that provides the agential reference point of life - whose autonomy is both intuitively and scientifically most discrete. Exceptional cases such as lichens, Portuguese Men-o-War, the Great Barrier Reef, sexually aberrant variants etc., do not erode these core characteristics.
Organismal factors - the internal factors impacting the existence of an organism
Personification - the representation of something in the form of a person
Phenotype - the set of observable characteristics of an individual resulting from the interaction of its genotype with the environment
Physical reductionism - the view that biological phenomena can be adequately explained in terms of physico-chemical entities
Pre-cognition - all organisms are goal-directed autonomous biological agents that act on and respond to their conditions of existence in a flexible way. Agency is usually associated with human cognitive traits like intention and deliberation. However, the presence of agency in non-cognitive organisms confirms the presence of non-cognitive agential traits, a characteristic of non-cognitive organisms that distinguishes them from inanimate and dead objects. These non-cognitive agential traits are referred to here as pre-cognition.
Process ontology – it is processes that create phenomena including emergent and ephemeral ‘things’ which are derived from processes as transient and cohesive patterns of stability within the general flux. Thus, things are derivative of processes. In practical terms this does not mean that things do not exist or are not useful concepts. However, instead of thinking of processes as belonging to things, it is more scientifically informative to think of things as derived from processes. Organisms are prime examples of transient things in process
Proximate explanation - an explanation dealing with immediate circumstances
Purpose – the reason (end, aim, or goal) why something exists or is done, made, used etc.; (biology) the goal of a biological agent, paradigmatically a living organism, but also the natural end-state, limit, or reason for a structure, process, or behavior (often referred to in this sense as a function). In humans, purposes can assume a cognitive form as mental representations (conscious intentions); what something is 'for'; Aristotle's final cause or telos. Purposes, as the goals or ends of organisms and their parts, are an emergent and agential property of life that preceded human cognition: causal (etiological) explanations of purpose do not explain it away. Darwin did not remove agency and purpose from nature, he showed how they generated a process of natural selection. Thus purpose, in a broad sense, is what a structure, process, or behavior is ‘for’ – its function, reason, or intention – its adaptive goal. In a narrow human sense, a purpose is the object of conscious intention. A distinction of convenience may be made between the functions of parts (the role of a part within a whole), and purpose (the 'function' of the whole organism - as biology’s canonical agent
Relata – the objects being compared
Semantic range – the degree of generality or abstraction encompassed in the meaning of a word - range of objects and ideas encompassed by its meaning
Synapomorphy - a characteristic present in an ancestral species and shared exclusively (in more or less modified form) by its evolutionary descendants
Teleology - the philosophical concept of purpose and design in the natural world. The claim that natural phenomena occur for reasons as natural ends or purposes that are neither necessitated by human or supernatural intention nor implying backward causation or foresight. For teleology in biology see bioteleology. The article on bioteleology discusses 8 senses of 'teleology'
Teleonomy - see bioteleology
Trait - a unit of the phenotype (physical or behavioral)
Ultimate explanation - a long-term, often evolutionary, explanation (e.g. in biology the purpose or measure of fitness of a particular trait)
Umwelt - an agent-centric orientation to the world; the environment of adaptive significance for a particular organism - its unique perspective or 'point of view': those factors important for its survival, reproduction, adaptation, and evolution: its mode of experience or 'reality'. For humans, this is the commonsense world of everyday experience (cf. manifest image) that is mostly a consequence of our innate mental processing which is, in turn, a consequence of our uniquely human evolutionary history
Values – (biological agency) that which ultimately motivates the behavior of biological agents (living organisms), namely the universal and objective goals of the biological axiom. Human agency - the proximate and subjective attitudes, beliefs, and inclinations that guide human behavior

First published on the internet – 15 June 2019

. . . 5 August 2022 – added Epilogue
. . . 9 August 2022 – editing Epilogue
. . . 14 August 2022 – substantial re-edit
. . . 1 December 2022 – trying to remove repetition from other articles

Venus Bay, Victoria, Australia