While I agree with the importance you give this topic, it never seemed remotely as powerful a refutation of physicalist/naturalism as the simple fact (made very clear in Hart's "The Experience of God") that the only way human beings have knowledge of anything is through (non intentional) Consciousness.
I've so far never come across a physicalist (or naturalist) who has anything approaching a reasonable answer to this:
If all we know is through consciousness, on what basis should I believe in a purely faith based hypothesis regarding some kind of non conscious physical "stuff" that exists independent of any kind of consciousness.
One of the (non) answers I get is, "Well, then, you think this stuff only exists in some kind of universal "consciousness"? We have no "evidence" for that.
I rarely get this from scientists, but on occasion, some scientist who really doesn't understand what science tells us about the universe uses it too.
Here's a simple response for that:
Try to adopt a thoroughly physicalist outlook. Now look at all the science tells us about the universe. Look at all the technology around you.
Now, try to adopt a thoroughly physicalist outlook. Now look at all the science tells us about the universe. Look at all the technology around you.
Do you notice that NOTHING changes? This means science provides no evidence for physicalism, for idealism, for panentheism, for monotheism, for dualism, for non duality, etc.
Eric, can you point out the flaws in my reasoning above? I've not come across any, but there must be something wrong with what I wrote, otherwise, since it so simple, someone would have used it to defeat physicalism.
In fact, this is basically the argument Bernardo Kastrup uses, and so far, I haven't come across anyone (not even Jeffrey Garfield) who has refuted it - at least, not accurately. If you can, please do!!
Great thoughts here! I don’t think I’d have a refutation to offer insofar as I, like yourself, find physicalism, naturalism, materialism (all of which are the same at the end of the day), utterly incoherent pictures of reality.
You’re absolutely right that physicalism fails on its own terms. The claim that “non-conscious matter” is the foundation of reality is a metaphysical leap made within consciousness, and therefore self-undermining. All that we ever know, all that science ever measures, and all that philosophy ever articulates, appears only within the field of awareness. So yes, every physicalist assertion depends upon the very consciousness it tries to explain away. As you put it, we have no rational basis for believing in some kind of “non-conscious stuff” that exists independently of awareness. On this, both Madhyamaka and what I call Emergent Coherence Metaphysics (ECM) fully agree.
But I’d suggest that while this is a devastating critique of physicalism, it doesn’t quite lead us to the metaphysical conclusion that thinkers like David Bentley Hart or Bernardo Kastrup draw, namely, that Consciousness itself must be the ontological ground of being. That move, subtle as it is, simply inverts the same assumption it seeks to refute.
When we notice that everything appears in awareness, it’s natural to assume that awareness must therefore be what everything is made of. Yet this turns consciousness into a kind of metaphysical “stuff,” an eternal substrate - the same kind of move physicalism makes when it declares matter to be ultimate. From a Madhyamaka or ECM standpoint, this is a refined version of what Nāgārjuna called śāśvatavāda, the view that something must truly and independently exist. But awareness, like matter, has no independent essence. It is not a self-sufficient entity.
In reality, what we call “awareness” and “the world” are mutually arising aspects of one interdependent process. There is no consciousness apart from its contents, and no “stuff” apart from the field of relations in which it appears. Both poles arise together, each giving the other meaning and actuality.
You note that science provides no evidence for or against physicalism, idealism, dualism, or theism and that adopting any of these metaphysical lenses leaves the empirical content unchanged. That’s an important insight, and from an ECM/Madhyamaka view, it’s exactly what we should expect. Science doesn’t reveal a hidden substance, whether physical or mental, but maps the patterns of relational regularity that appear within experience. Its success does not depend on metaphysical commitments. It reflects the dependently co-arising coherence of reality itself.
In ECM terms, science succeeds not because the world is “made of” matter, but because reality exhibits stable, emergent coherence within relational processes. That coherence is what we call “the world.”
Physicalism says that matter is real and consciousness derivative. Idealism says that consciousness is real and matter derivative. Both assume there must be a fundamental substrate - one “thing” that truly exists on its own. Madhyamaka and ECM reject this assumption entirely. Reality, they hold, is not made of anything. It is an ongoing process of dependent origination, or what ECM calls the emergence of coherence - the continuous unfolding of relational order that never requires an underlying substance to sustain it.
Awareness, then, is not the ground of reality, but one of its emergent dimensions: the world’s own self-reflexive participation in its becoming. To say that “everything arises in consciousness” is true phenomenologically, but to say that “consciousness is the ground of everything” is metaphysically mistaken. Both “matter” and “mind” are empty of inherent existence. They exist only as relational functions within the same field of emergence.
The deeper insight, then, is not that consciousness is ultimate, but that nothing whatsoever is ultimate in isolation. Reality is a dynamic, self-organizing pattern of interdependence in which coherence (not substance) is what persists. The ground of being is not a thing but a relation - the open potential for coherence continually arising as actuality. Consciousness is one form of that coherence - the lived immediacy of relation made self-aware.
So yes, you’re right: physicalism cannot justify itself, because it depends on the awareness it denies. But neither can idealism, because it posits a consciousness that exists apart from its relational arising. Both dissolve when we see that “mind” and “world” are not two separate orders of reality, but two perspectives on one interdependent process - the emergence of coherence itself.
As such, the question of whether reality is “physical” or “mental” loses its meaning. Reality simply is the luminous unfolding of interdependence - appearance and awareness, inseparably co-arising. That, I think, is the real middle way.
I fully agree, and you've given a much richer, deeper more insightful response. I try to keep it simpler for physicalists (sort of the way some of the Yogachara philosophers - as a skillful means - kept aside the deeper truth, often using dreams as a first step toward the deeper way of seeing>
You write VERY well - do you have a book, or substack, or anything written online (or better, any videos?) on ECM? if you feel like it, could you write me at donsalmon7@gmail.com. I've seen (over 50 years or so!) many versions of what you write and yours is surprisingly simple and accessible. Alan Wallace, in "Meditations of a Buddhist skeptic" has a progression from Yogachara to Madhyamaka but yours is clearer and more accessible.
Well done!! I'm now going to search for any of your ECM writing:>))
I completely agree about the Yogācāra “skillful means” approach. It’s a helpful pedagogical bridge, and I think something similar is needed today to move from contemporary physicalism toward a more relational, process-based understanding of reality. That’s actually what I’m trying to develop with Emergent Coherence Metaphysics (ECM) - a framework that integrates insights from Madhyamaka, Perceptual Control Theory, and process philosophy. It aims to describe how consciousness, mind, and matter can be understood as dynamically co-arising expressions of a single relational field, without reifying either “mind” or “matter.”
Excellent. I've had numerous conversations with Bernardo Kastrup about the problems with his privileging mind over matter. He kind of winks his eye and says "I'm really talking about non dual consciousness" but - following Shankara's unbalanced version and supported by Advaitins like Swami Sarvapriyananda, he ends up with a weird, kind of creepy non intelligent mechanistic "mind at large." You emphasis on process and playfulness and practice is a powerful antidote to this. You might consider writing a rejoinder for the Essentia Foundation, but i would STRONGLY suggest exploring this with more folks (in much shorter bites than the otherwise excellent essay on your substack page) before trying to respond to Bernardo, as he is not very good at responding to his critics!
I totally agree. Kastrup’s privileging of mind, even under “non-dual consciousness,” can easily drift into abstract, mechanistic mentalism. That’s why ECM emphasizes process, relationality, and playfulness, keeping theory grounded in lived, emergent dynamics rather than a metaphysical monolith.
I also agree that any direct rejoinder would be premature. Exploring these ideas in smaller, interactive bites first seems far wiser, both for clarity and for seeing how ECM resonates before engaging with someone like Kastrup. Your Essentia suggestion is intriguing and something to keep in mind down the line!
I think believing that the mind is unique is the wrong conclusion. We see intentionality all through nature, if we don’t dogmatically reject the idea of it.
Neuron’s activity are quite obviously goal directed. AI bots don’t say hello by accident but by design, and are naturally experienced as meaningful. Even rocks rolling down hills and chemical reactions can be understood teleologically, as things seeking thermodynamic equilibrium.
We have to actively indoctrinate children to stop seeing teleology in the world. But we’re not doing this on the basis of any scientific evidence. It’s just a dogma we’ve inherited from the mechanical philosophy.
Neurons don’t “intend” in the human sense. But if we drop the assumption that intentionality requires reflection, we can see that goal-directedness operates on many levels of organization. A neuron’s “goal” isn’t psychological but functional: to maintain and propagate coherent neural activity within the organism. This isn’t choice, but neither is it blind mechanism. It’s an expression of the teleodynamic tendency of systems to sustain viable order.
Freeman Dyson has claimed that electrons exhibit something it would be reasonable to call "choice." I know nothing (next to nothing!) about physics, so I can't add anything to that fascinating comment.
I think you’re pointing to something profoundly right: purposefulness is not confined to human mentation. What we call “intentionality” shows up throughout nature, not as conscious deliberation, but as patterned orientation toward stable states or ends. In that sense, yes, neurons, plants, ecosystems, even rivers “seek” equilibrium; they manifest goal-directed coherence within their own domains.
Where I’d nuance your point is in how we understand that teleology. From what I call an Emergent Coherence (and broadly Madhyamaka) standpoint, this teleological order isn’t evidence of a pre-existing cosmic mind or built-in design, nor is it an illusion imposed by us. It is an emergent property of relational systems - the spontaneous tendency of interacting processes to organize toward more coherent, sustainable configurations.
In other words, teleology itself arises dependently. Physicalism tries to erase it, seeing only mechanism. Intelligent-design idealism hypostatizes it, seeing a hidden Mind behind it. ECM treats it as a relational dynamic. That is, reality’s own recursive self-ordering, where purpose appears wherever coherence emerges.
Even in a rock tumbling downhill, we can meaningfully speak of an “aim” toward lower potential energy, but that aim is not an inner intention. It’s the local expression of relational stability within the gravitational field. The same principle scales upward: in organisms, in cognition, and even in culture, teleology becomes increasingly self-reflexive, culminating, in humans, as conscious intentionality, which is simply teleology aware of itself.
So I’d fully agree. The mechanical worldview flattened something essential. But the alternative isn’t to re-infuse matter with mind as a separate essence. It’s to see that mind and matter are both ways coherence manifests, and that purposiveness is woven into the fabric of relation itself.
In that sense, your intuition that “we have to indoctrinate children to stop seeing teleology” is exactly right. What we’re really teaching them to suppress is their native perception of emergent coherence - the sense that the world is alive with orientation, pattern, and meaning. Recovering that perception doesn’t require abandoning science. It requires recognizing that teleology and causality are two perspectives on the same interdependent process, one looking from outside (as cause), the other from within (as purpose). That’s where ECM would locate the bridge between consciousness and nature, not in a metaphysical substance, but in the self-organizing tendency of reality toward coherence at every scale.
Exactly! And intelligent design itself is *based on* a mechanistic idea of nature that excludes teleology from physical reality. But if we really pay attention to the idea of evolution we see that it presents a thoroughly physical teleology. Daniel Dennett put it nicely, saying that Darwin didn't expel teleology, he naturalised it.
And really it's an extremely modest idea. We're just talking about things having tendencies. We could say that intending is built out of tending.
I think the resistance comes because we typically think in terms of matter as a substance, rather than understanding things primarily relationally. When we understand the physical as relational too, it's not so crazy that physical things could have a relation of "tending towards" something.
I completely agree. What evolution shows is that teleology doesn’t have to be imposed from “outside” or require a pre-existing mind. It’s built into relational dynamics. Patterns of interaction stabilize precisely because they “tend toward” coherent, viable configurations. Dennett’s phrasing (that Darwin naturalized teleology) captures this beautifully.
From the ECM perspective, this is just the general principle of emergent coherence in action. Conscious intention is the same process reflected back on itself - teleology aware of its own tendencies. But those tendencies exist at every level, from molecules to ecosystems to minds.
The “resistance” you notice comes exactly from thinking in terms of independent substance. Once we see matter relationally, teleology appears as the natural expression of relational organization. It's a modest, pervasive, and fully physical feature of reality. I look forward to reading your post when you write it!
Hi Aaron: This might be better on your substack but I think there's more folks here so that might be helpful.
I've been reading your article on ECM and realized I didn't know much about perceptual control theory (PCT), You wrote you wanted to have a practical application, so I looked up PCT in relation to borderline personality disorder.
now, not to be overly critical, it sounds like a rather complex way of saying that borderline folks maintain conflicting goals and use all kinds of defense mechanisms to keep them from recognizing this.
The solution recommended by PCT is to help them become aware of the conflicting goals.
Having worked with hundreds of people with various kinds of personality disorders, the problem with this is that this is the starting point - we know we want the patient to become more aware, but their root aim in life is to keep themselves from becoming aware.
I wonder if ECM provides any kind of practices or training to get past all of our defenses (like being part of a 2000+ year old system that reifies everything - when I offer challenges to physicialism I can see the underlying psychological mechanisms at work, clinging to reified concepts and memories in order to avoid being challenged.
Thanks, Don. You're pointing precisely to the heart of what ECM/PCT aims to do. You’re right that simply identifying conflicting goals is just the starting point. The real work is in helping the system experience and reorganize itself safely and effectively, which is where ECM/PCT becomes practical.
The most detailed, stepwise articulation of this work is in my paper "From Control to Communion", where I outline exercises and practices for:
- Mapping internal goal hierarchies and noticing where conflicting aims maintain maladaptive coherence.
- Creating safe experiential feedback loops so the system can “feel” and integrate tension rather than bypass or defend against it.
- Working with defensive patterns without forcing awareness, allowing gradual reorganization of perceptions, attention, and responses.
- Structured practices like guided self-observation, journaling, reflection on conflicting references, and relational feedback exercises that concretely support emergent coherence.
That said, the paper is written from an Orthodox Christian lens, so some of the framing and practices are embedded in that tradition (hesychia, discernment of logismoi, sacramental awareness/prayer). The underlying PCT principles, however, are fully generalizable. The process of noticing conflicts, allowing safe experiential exploration, and fostering hierarchical reorganization can be applied in secular, clinical, or philosophical contexts without the religious scaffolding.
In short, ECM/PCT provides both the conceptual map and the practical scaffolding for moving past defenses, habitual clinging, and entrenched patterns, whether in therapeutic work, philosophical engagement, or everyday self-transformation. The next step is translating these exercises into a fully secular, broadly accessible format for general ECM audiences, which is something I’m actively thinking about.
Looking at your website, I see you're also interested and involved in helping others achieve these same goals. I’d be happy to discuss these applications further. It’s exactly the kind of practical grounding that makes ECM more than just metaphysics (which I obviously think it is).
35 years into practice in clinical psychology, I was utterly convinced when I began in 1990 that some kind of 'spiritual" (i know, language is impossible!) foundation/integration is absolutely necessary for healing. Now, I'm more convinced than ever. In fact, I would make a case (far deeper, I hope, than Carl Jung, who said something along these lines) that al the healing that takes place is ultimately spiritual.
interesting that you seem to want to be avoiding God language but are Eastern orthodox - but that's for another conversation. My first "christian" book was "Way of the Pilgrim," which brought me back to the Desert Fathers and a search for a deeper meaning of the now somewhat new age "Jesus prayer" (that was 1972 - ok, gotta make dinner, may I with Brother Lawrence cook "in the Presence of God."
While I agree with the importance you give this topic, it never seemed remotely as powerful a refutation of physicalist/naturalism as the simple fact (made very clear in Hart's "The Experience of God") that the only way human beings have knowledge of anything is through (non intentional) Consciousness.
I've so far never come across a physicalist (or naturalist) who has anything approaching a reasonable answer to this:
If all we know is through consciousness, on what basis should I believe in a purely faith based hypothesis regarding some kind of non conscious physical "stuff" that exists independent of any kind of consciousness.
One of the (non) answers I get is, "Well, then, you think this stuff only exists in some kind of universal "consciousness"? We have no "evidence" for that.
I rarely get this from scientists, but on occasion, some scientist who really doesn't understand what science tells us about the universe uses it too.
Here's a simple response for that:
Try to adopt a thoroughly physicalist outlook. Now look at all the science tells us about the universe. Look at all the technology around you.
Now, try to adopt a thoroughly physicalist outlook. Now look at all the science tells us about the universe. Look at all the technology around you.
Do you notice that NOTHING changes? This means science provides no evidence for physicalism, for idealism, for panentheism, for monotheism, for dualism, for non duality, etc.
Eric, can you point out the flaws in my reasoning above? I've not come across any, but there must be something wrong with what I wrote, otherwise, since it so simple, someone would have used it to defeat physicalism.
In fact, this is basically the argument Bernardo Kastrup uses, and so far, I haven't come across anyone (not even Jeffrey Garfield) who has refuted it - at least, not accurately. If you can, please do!!
Don,
Great thoughts here! I don’t think I’d have a refutation to offer insofar as I, like yourself, find physicalism, naturalism, materialism (all of which are the same at the end of the day), utterly incoherent pictures of reality.
Gosh, I was hoping for a good argument: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLlv_aZjHXc
I'm sure someone among your readers can try to pick flaws with what I wrote. The more the merrier!
You’re absolutely right that physicalism fails on its own terms. The claim that “non-conscious matter” is the foundation of reality is a metaphysical leap made within consciousness, and therefore self-undermining. All that we ever know, all that science ever measures, and all that philosophy ever articulates, appears only within the field of awareness. So yes, every physicalist assertion depends upon the very consciousness it tries to explain away. As you put it, we have no rational basis for believing in some kind of “non-conscious stuff” that exists independently of awareness. On this, both Madhyamaka and what I call Emergent Coherence Metaphysics (ECM) fully agree.
But I’d suggest that while this is a devastating critique of physicalism, it doesn’t quite lead us to the metaphysical conclusion that thinkers like David Bentley Hart or Bernardo Kastrup draw, namely, that Consciousness itself must be the ontological ground of being. That move, subtle as it is, simply inverts the same assumption it seeks to refute.
When we notice that everything appears in awareness, it’s natural to assume that awareness must therefore be what everything is made of. Yet this turns consciousness into a kind of metaphysical “stuff,” an eternal substrate - the same kind of move physicalism makes when it declares matter to be ultimate. From a Madhyamaka or ECM standpoint, this is a refined version of what Nāgārjuna called śāśvatavāda, the view that something must truly and independently exist. But awareness, like matter, has no independent essence. It is not a self-sufficient entity.
In reality, what we call “awareness” and “the world” are mutually arising aspects of one interdependent process. There is no consciousness apart from its contents, and no “stuff” apart from the field of relations in which it appears. Both poles arise together, each giving the other meaning and actuality.
You note that science provides no evidence for or against physicalism, idealism, dualism, or theism and that adopting any of these metaphysical lenses leaves the empirical content unchanged. That’s an important insight, and from an ECM/Madhyamaka view, it’s exactly what we should expect. Science doesn’t reveal a hidden substance, whether physical or mental, but maps the patterns of relational regularity that appear within experience. Its success does not depend on metaphysical commitments. It reflects the dependently co-arising coherence of reality itself.
In ECM terms, science succeeds not because the world is “made of” matter, but because reality exhibits stable, emergent coherence within relational processes. That coherence is what we call “the world.”
Physicalism says that matter is real and consciousness derivative. Idealism says that consciousness is real and matter derivative. Both assume there must be a fundamental substrate - one “thing” that truly exists on its own. Madhyamaka and ECM reject this assumption entirely. Reality, they hold, is not made of anything. It is an ongoing process of dependent origination, or what ECM calls the emergence of coherence - the continuous unfolding of relational order that never requires an underlying substance to sustain it.
Awareness, then, is not the ground of reality, but one of its emergent dimensions: the world’s own self-reflexive participation in its becoming. To say that “everything arises in consciousness” is true phenomenologically, but to say that “consciousness is the ground of everything” is metaphysically mistaken. Both “matter” and “mind” are empty of inherent existence. They exist only as relational functions within the same field of emergence.
The deeper insight, then, is not that consciousness is ultimate, but that nothing whatsoever is ultimate in isolation. Reality is a dynamic, self-organizing pattern of interdependence in which coherence (not substance) is what persists. The ground of being is not a thing but a relation - the open potential for coherence continually arising as actuality. Consciousness is one form of that coherence - the lived immediacy of relation made self-aware.
So yes, you’re right: physicalism cannot justify itself, because it depends on the awareness it denies. But neither can idealism, because it posits a consciousness that exists apart from its relational arising. Both dissolve when we see that “mind” and “world” are not two separate orders of reality, but two perspectives on one interdependent process - the emergence of coherence itself.
As such, the question of whether reality is “physical” or “mental” loses its meaning. Reality simply is the luminous unfolding of interdependence - appearance and awareness, inseparably co-arising. That, I think, is the real middle way.
I fully agree, and you've given a much richer, deeper more insightful response. I try to keep it simpler for physicalists (sort of the way some of the Yogachara philosophers - as a skillful means - kept aside the deeper truth, often using dreams as a first step toward the deeper way of seeing>
You write VERY well - do you have a book, or substack, or anything written online (or better, any videos?) on ECM? if you feel like it, could you write me at donsalmon7@gmail.com. I've seen (over 50 years or so!) many versions of what you write and yours is surprisingly simple and accessible. Alan Wallace, in "Meditations of a Buddhist skeptic" has a progression from Yogachara to Madhyamaka but yours is clearer and more accessible.
Well done!! I'm now going to search for any of your ECM writing:>))
I completely agree about the Yogācāra “skillful means” approach. It’s a helpful pedagogical bridge, and I think something similar is needed today to move from contemporary physicalism toward a more relational, process-based understanding of reality. That’s actually what I’m trying to develop with Emergent Coherence Metaphysics (ECM) - a framework that integrates insights from Madhyamaka, Perceptual Control Theory, and process philosophy. It aims to describe how consciousness, mind, and matter can be understood as dynamically co-arising expressions of a single relational field, without reifying either “mind” or “matter.”
Excellent. I've had numerous conversations with Bernardo Kastrup about the problems with his privileging mind over matter. He kind of winks his eye and says "I'm really talking about non dual consciousness" but - following Shankara's unbalanced version and supported by Advaitins like Swami Sarvapriyananda, he ends up with a weird, kind of creepy non intelligent mechanistic "mind at large." You emphasis on process and playfulness and practice is a powerful antidote to this. You might consider writing a rejoinder for the Essentia Foundation, but i would STRONGLY suggest exploring this with more folks (in much shorter bites than the otherwise excellent essay on your substack page) before trying to respond to Bernardo, as he is not very good at responding to his critics!
I totally agree. Kastrup’s privileging of mind, even under “non-dual consciousness,” can easily drift into abstract, mechanistic mentalism. That’s why ECM emphasizes process, relationality, and playfulness, keeping theory grounded in lived, emergent dynamics rather than a metaphysical monolith.
I also agree that any direct rejoinder would be premature. Exploring these ideas in smaller, interactive bites first seems far wiser, both for clarity and for seeing how ECM resonates before engaging with someone like Kastrup. Your Essentia suggestion is intriguing and something to keep in mind down the line!
not to be too pushy, I'll just say once more, write me at donsalmon7@gmail.com; i'd love to talk IRL.
I think believing that the mind is unique is the wrong conclusion. We see intentionality all through nature, if we don’t dogmatically reject the idea of it.
Neuron’s activity are quite obviously goal directed. AI bots don’t say hello by accident but by design, and are naturally experienced as meaningful. Even rocks rolling down hills and chemical reactions can be understood teleologically, as things seeking thermodynamic equilibrium.
We have to actively indoctrinate children to stop seeing teleology in the world. But we’re not doing this on the basis of any scientific evidence. It’s just a dogma we’ve inherited from the mechanical philosophy.
Intentionality seems to imply choice. As such, those examples don't seem to qualify.
What is the goal of a neuron?
Neurons don’t “intend” in the human sense. But if we drop the assumption that intentionality requires reflection, we can see that goal-directedness operates on many levels of organization. A neuron’s “goal” isn’t psychological but functional: to maintain and propagate coherent neural activity within the organism. This isn’t choice, but neither is it blind mechanism. It’s an expression of the teleodynamic tendency of systems to sustain viable order.
I wouldn't agree that it implies choice exactly. All that's needed is to be directed towards something.
There's evidence suggesting the goal of a neuron is minimising future surprise. https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-021-00430-y#:~:text=Thus%2C%20a%20single%20neuron%20is,of%20the%20brain%27s%20learning%20mechanism.
Freeman Dyson has claimed that electrons exhibit something it would be reasonable to call "choice." I know nothing (next to nothing!) about physics, so I can't add anything to that fascinating comment.
I think you’re pointing to something profoundly right: purposefulness is not confined to human mentation. What we call “intentionality” shows up throughout nature, not as conscious deliberation, but as patterned orientation toward stable states or ends. In that sense, yes, neurons, plants, ecosystems, even rivers “seek” equilibrium; they manifest goal-directed coherence within their own domains.
Where I’d nuance your point is in how we understand that teleology. From what I call an Emergent Coherence (and broadly Madhyamaka) standpoint, this teleological order isn’t evidence of a pre-existing cosmic mind or built-in design, nor is it an illusion imposed by us. It is an emergent property of relational systems - the spontaneous tendency of interacting processes to organize toward more coherent, sustainable configurations.
In other words, teleology itself arises dependently. Physicalism tries to erase it, seeing only mechanism. Intelligent-design idealism hypostatizes it, seeing a hidden Mind behind it. ECM treats it as a relational dynamic. That is, reality’s own recursive self-ordering, where purpose appears wherever coherence emerges.
Even in a rock tumbling downhill, we can meaningfully speak of an “aim” toward lower potential energy, but that aim is not an inner intention. It’s the local expression of relational stability within the gravitational field. The same principle scales upward: in organisms, in cognition, and even in culture, teleology becomes increasingly self-reflexive, culminating, in humans, as conscious intentionality, which is simply teleology aware of itself.
So I’d fully agree. The mechanical worldview flattened something essential. But the alternative isn’t to re-infuse matter with mind as a separate essence. It’s to see that mind and matter are both ways coherence manifests, and that purposiveness is woven into the fabric of relation itself.
In that sense, your intuition that “we have to indoctrinate children to stop seeing teleology” is exactly right. What we’re really teaching them to suppress is their native perception of emergent coherence - the sense that the world is alive with orientation, pattern, and meaning. Recovering that perception doesn’t require abandoning science. It requires recognizing that teleology and causality are two perspectives on the same interdependent process, one looking from outside (as cause), the other from within (as purpose). That’s where ECM would locate the bridge between consciousness and nature, not in a metaphysical substance, but in the self-organizing tendency of reality toward coherence at every scale.
Exactly! And intelligent design itself is *based on* a mechanistic idea of nature that excludes teleology from physical reality. But if we really pay attention to the idea of evolution we see that it presents a thoroughly physical teleology. Daniel Dennett put it nicely, saying that Darwin didn't expel teleology, he naturalised it.
And really it's an extremely modest idea. We're just talking about things having tendencies. We could say that intending is built out of tending.
I think the resistance comes because we typically think in terms of matter as a substance, rather than understanding things primarily relationally. When we understand the physical as relational too, it's not so crazy that physical things could have a relation of "tending towards" something.
I need to write a proper post on this.
I completely agree. What evolution shows is that teleology doesn’t have to be imposed from “outside” or require a pre-existing mind. It’s built into relational dynamics. Patterns of interaction stabilize precisely because they “tend toward” coherent, viable configurations. Dennett’s phrasing (that Darwin naturalized teleology) captures this beautifully.
From the ECM perspective, this is just the general principle of emergent coherence in action. Conscious intention is the same process reflected back on itself - teleology aware of its own tendencies. But those tendencies exist at every level, from molecules to ecosystems to minds.
The “resistance” you notice comes exactly from thinking in terms of independent substance. Once we see matter relationally, teleology appears as the natural expression of relational organization. It's a modest, pervasive, and fully physical feature of reality. I look forward to reading your post when you write it!
Hi Aaron: This might be better on your substack but I think there's more folks here so that might be helpful.
I've been reading your article on ECM and realized I didn't know much about perceptual control theory (PCT), You wrote you wanted to have a practical application, so I looked up PCT in relation to borderline personality disorder.
now, not to be overly critical, it sounds like a rather complex way of saying that borderline folks maintain conflicting goals and use all kinds of defense mechanisms to keep them from recognizing this.
The solution recommended by PCT is to help them become aware of the conflicting goals.
Having worked with hundreds of people with various kinds of personality disorders, the problem with this is that this is the starting point - we know we want the patient to become more aware, but their root aim in life is to keep themselves from becoming aware.
I wonder if ECM provides any kind of practices or training to get past all of our defenses (like being part of a 2000+ year old system that reifies everything - when I offer challenges to physicialism I can see the underlying psychological mechanisms at work, clinging to reified concepts and memories in order to avoid being challenged.
Anyway, more grist for the mill!
Thanks, Don. You're pointing precisely to the heart of what ECM/PCT aims to do. You’re right that simply identifying conflicting goals is just the starting point. The real work is in helping the system experience and reorganize itself safely and effectively, which is where ECM/PCT becomes practical.
The most detailed, stepwise articulation of this work is in my paper "From Control to Communion", where I outline exercises and practices for:
- Mapping internal goal hierarchies and noticing where conflicting aims maintain maladaptive coherence.
- Creating safe experiential feedback loops so the system can “feel” and integrate tension rather than bypass or defend against it.
- Working with defensive patterns without forcing awareness, allowing gradual reorganization of perceptions, attention, and responses.
- Structured practices like guided self-observation, journaling, reflection on conflicting references, and relational feedback exercises that concretely support emergent coherence.
That said, the paper is written from an Orthodox Christian lens, so some of the framing and practices are embedded in that tradition (hesychia, discernment of logismoi, sacramental awareness/prayer). The underlying PCT principles, however, are fully generalizable. The process of noticing conflicts, allowing safe experiential exploration, and fostering hierarchical reorganization can be applied in secular, clinical, or philosophical contexts without the religious scaffolding.
In short, ECM/PCT provides both the conceptual map and the practical scaffolding for moving past defenses, habitual clinging, and entrenched patterns, whether in therapeutic work, philosophical engagement, or everyday self-transformation. The next step is translating these exercises into a fully secular, broadly accessible format for general ECM audiences, which is something I’m actively thinking about.
Looking at your website, I see you're also interested and involved in helping others achieve these same goals. I’d be happy to discuss these applications further. It’s exactly the kind of practical grounding that makes ECM more than just metaphysics (which I obviously think it is).
don't have time now, beyond just adding this.
35 years into practice in clinical psychology, I was utterly convinced when I began in 1990 that some kind of 'spiritual" (i know, language is impossible!) foundation/integration is absolutely necessary for healing. Now, I'm more convinced than ever. In fact, I would make a case (far deeper, I hope, than Carl Jung, who said something along these lines) that al the healing that takes place is ultimately spiritual.
interesting that you seem to want to be avoiding God language but are Eastern orthodox - but that's for another conversation. My first "christian" book was "Way of the Pilgrim," which brought me back to the Desert Fathers and a search for a deeper meaning of the now somewhat new age "Jesus prayer" (that was 1972 - ok, gotta make dinner, may I with Brother Lawrence cook "in the Presence of God."