The Conatus: A Naturalistic Life Force

When the scientific worldview comes to predominate ones thinking, the most difficult thing to contemplate about the world I think are living things. For billions of years there was no discernible life on earth, and so far we haven't discovered much life anywhere else. Evolutionary theory explains the diversity of life, but not its origin.

Richard Dawkins' book The Blind Watchmaker gave me a simple and for the time satisfying definition of what life is.

"Left to itself-and that is what it is when it dies- the body tends to revert to a state of equilibrium with the environment. If you measure some quantity such as the temperature, the acidity, the water content or the electrical potential in a living body, you will typically find that it is markedly different from the corresponding measure in the surroundings...when we die the work stops, the temperature differential starts to disappear, and we end up the same temperature as our surroundings. Not all animals work so hard to avoid coming into equilibrium with their surrounding temperature, but all animals do some compatible work...if they fail they die. More generally, if living things didn't work actively to prevent it, they would eventually merge onto their surroundings, and cease to exist as autonomous beings."

His definition of life is quite simple and had a profound impact on me. A living thing resists its parts returning to the equilibrium conditions of its environment. A living thing is a body in motion doing work to preserve its state of motion.

This seems to necessitate some kind of life force. After all, not everything in the universe acts like this. Quite the contrary. And living things just seem qualitatively different than non living things. And yet everything described in the passage obeys the laws of physics. There isn't anything supernatural occurring.

A couple years later I started reading Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan which despite being a work on political philosophy begins with an outline of human nature from which principles of government are deduced. Hobbes' famous violent state of nature is the result of a pre-Newtonian law of inertia.

"That when a thing lies still, unless somewhat else stir it, it will lie still forever, is a truth that no man doubts. But [the proposition] that when a thing is in motion it will eternally be in motion unless somewhat else stay it, though the reason be the same (namely that nothing can change itself), is not so easily assented to. For men measure not only other men but all other things by themselves. And because they find themselves subject after motion to pain and lassitude, [they] think every thing else grows weary of motion and seeks repose of its own accord, little considering whether it be not some other motion wherein that desire of rest they find in themselves, consists"

An object in motion preserves its state of motion until acted upon by another object. Applying this to human psychology, humans are dominated by small internal movements (passions) which cannot be stopped and so will always conflict with each other as individual bodies unless massive force brings them together (the leviathan which is the sum of their wills).

"So that in the first place, I put for a generall inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth onely in Death. And the cause of this, is not alwayes that a man hopes for a more intensive delight, than he has already attained to; or that he cannot be content with a moderate power: but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more. And from hence it is, that Kings, whose power is greatest, turn their endeavours to the assuring it a home by Lawes, or abroad by Wars: and when that is done, there succeedeth a new desire; in some, of Fame from new Conquest; in others, of ease and sensuall pleasure; in others, of admiration, or being flattered for excellence in some art, or other ability of the mind."

Dawkins and Hobbes brought me closer toward a satisfying naturalistic definition of life. Several properties of living things can be explained by such a "matter in motion" hypothesis. Life is quite frustrating and complete happiness is not fully attainable, and pleasure is fleeting as is pain. Life in some way comes from the inanimate world. Life follows the same laws as anything else in the universe. And ultimately Hobbes' conclusion that social life is defined by conflict rather than harmony, contrary to Aristotle.

This however is where I don't follow Dawkins or Hobbes; that humans are only aggregations of these moving parts, however complex and interconnected.

"The behaviour of the body as a whole will then emerge as a consequence of the interactions of the parts." -Dawkins

His naturalistic definition of life doesn't capture the uniqueness, the dynamism, the wholeness of life. My consciousness isn't reducible to separate sensations. It is one unified synthetic whole. Anything that can ever be known comes to this seemingly infinite understanding, capable of comprehending the vast infinite universe.

Why can't there be a non supernatural life force, that keeps the organism in existence as a whole? And would then apply to the universe itself? No longer a dead mechanical universe, but a driven unified one.

Rejecting the supernatural explanation means several things though.

This life force isn't teleological, that is it is not purposeful.

The life force does not aim at any particular being. There is no foresight, no planning. The existence of individuals no matter how complex is contingent.

The life force isn't itself conscious, as consciousness is defined by its individual objects (as I wrote about before).

The life force isn't a thing or particular being, and as such is not represented by the causal thinking of our own minds. Only individual objects subject to cognition are represented as such.

Accordingly this life force is as practically atheistic as the mechanical explanations of Dawkins and Hobbes.

Luckily for me there was a prominent philosopher who wrote in the same early modern era of Hobbes and had a similar understanding of the universe. Baruch Spinoza, the 17th Jewish-Dutch philosopher. He wrote at about the same time as Hobbes when the Aristotlean worldview was being replaced with the mechanical universe. Spinoza was a determinist and naturalist like Hobbes, but had very important differences in his system of the universe.

Spinoza didn't think mind could be reduced to matter. But unlike Descartes didn't think mind was a separate substance either. Rather body and mind are connected, as different aspects of the same universe. Just as with Descartes, matter is defined by its extended qualities and mind by its thinking qualities.

"A mental decision and a bodily appetite, or determined state, are simultaneous, or rather are one and the same thing, which we call decision, when it is regarded under and explained through the attribute of thought, and a conditioned state, when it is regarded under the attribute of extension, and deduced from the laws of motion and rest."

The Conatus, Latin for endeavor, comes to us in Book III of the Ethics. It is something like the will to live of Schopenhauer or the will to power of Nietzsche, though its also like Newton's first law. The word conatus was used by the Stoics like Cicero and was an explanation for the passions. We want something not because it is good, but rather we think something is good because we want it. Which seems pretty Stoic to me.

"Nothing comes to pass in nature, which can be set down to a flaw therein; for nature is always the same, and everywhere one and the same in her efficacy and power of action"

Spinoza was a monist, meaning that human activity follows the same laws as nature and can be understood causally, making him also a determinist. The mind is also determined by without, but can gain knowledge of the causes of its thoughts and actions and find a sort of happiness. What is unique and sort of counter intuitive at first is that Spinoza thinks not only that body and mind are connected, but that they don't actually cause each other. "The body cannot determine the mind to think, nor the mind the body to remain in motion or at rest." The reason they do not cause each other, as in thinking about raising my arm causes my arm to rise, is that they are different aspects of the same thing. "The mind is united to the body because the body is the object of the mind."

So the Conatus is what determines the motivation of the body and what the mind desires. But determined in an individual way for self-preservation.

The Conatus is presented thus;

Prop. IV Nothing can be destroyed, except by a cause external to itself.

Prop. V Things are naturally contrary, that is, cannot exist in the same object so far as one is capable of destroying the other.

Prop. VI Everything in so far as it is in itself endeavors to persist in its own being.

Prop. VII The endeavor wherewith everything endeavors to persist in its own being is nothing else but the actual essence of the thing in question...the power or endeavour, wherewith it endeavours to persist in its own being, is nothing else but the given or actual essence of the thing in question.

Prop. VIII The endeavor whereby a thing endeavors to persist in its own being involved no finite time but an indefinite time. 

Spinoza then reiterates the Stoics. "From what has been said it is plain, therefore, that we neither strive for, wish, seek, nor desire anything because we think it to be good, but, on the contrary, we adjudge a thing to be good because we strive for, wish, seek, or desire it." This is because the mind, though it can only perceive bodies, gains knowledge by the clarity and distinctness of its ideas, thus being ignorant of the particular causes of its desires.

The argument is that something being what it is means not being able to destroy itself, which means that so long as the parts "agree" in not excluding each other, then the whole wil continue to exist. And that the birth and death of this whole does not measure its existence, but rather its actual continual existence does. The whole is greater than the sun of its parts.

If different things can exist together, they belong together in some larger sense, like how the whole world "hangs together". In individual things however, within the same space and time, existence means not becoming something else. Nothingness does exist with the individual. If something continues to persist, it does so because what is opposed to its nature is avoided and what is advantageous is attracted to. From the individual's point of view, this is not a discrete process as this constitutes the essence of the individual. Duration begins and ends with the individual.

One perseveres through change and harm simply because one perseveres as a whole. What the reductionists don't understand is that different parts can become something greater by what they share in common. The omission is that there is a principle that gives an internal nature to things. Self-preservation is that principle. By simply striving to continue to be as an individual, we determine our nature.

The form of life is a pattern, a creation of opposites.