For-ness and About-ness

For-ness

Of value for, good for, bad for, functional for, useful for, significant for, information for - these only make sense when selves of some sort follow. Things are for selves and selves only. Nothing is of value or significance for a rock, an atom, a galaxy or the universe as a whole. It doesn't make sense to say that something is good for, or significant for, even the fastest supercomputer programmed with the best current approcimation of artifical intelligence.

No matter how good artifical intelligence ever becomes there's no reason to start wondering whether anything is of value or significance for it until it somehow became a true self. What would that take? Most fundamentally the computer would need to have aims of its own and do self-directed work that is at risk of being thwarted. Were we to dismantle even the "smartest" computer we have, it wouldn't resist. It has no skin in its own game. Indeed, it has no game of its own.

Though it's obvious when we stop to think about it, it's worth noting that explaining for-ness is not a question about the function of an object but rather the beneficiary of that function. One could mistakenly argue that a hammer has for-ness since it's good for things. But that's not the issue. A hammer is good for things only for selves given their aims. Without selves who benefit, a hammer is not for anything.

About-ness

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What then is fitness? "Survival of the fittest," a phrase that pholsopher Herbert Spencer coined and Darwin embraced, can easily misrepresent the idea, suggesting either self-assertion(the survival of the fiercest) or accommodation (the survival of those that fit in).

What's really meant is the survival of those selves that fit their circumstances well enough, in other words, the survival of the well fitted. Fittedness is tailoredness or suitability of selves for survival, given, about, or with reference to their circumstances.

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Inanimate artifacts like suits, tools, and machines are fitted to circumstances by the work that selves do to achieve their aims. A computer fits the user's aims, given the user's circumstances. A nest fits a bird's aims given the bird's circumstances. The river altered to irrigate crops is suited to the farmers' aims, given their circumstances. As such, the fittedness fits selves to circumstances and reflects, represents, or is about both the self and it's circumstances. From functional or fitted features, we can tell something about a self's aims and circumstances. I will call this quality about-ness. About-ness only occures for selves.

In the absence of selves and aims, nothing is about anything....

About-ness is a distinguishing feature of selves. Drives, desires, intentions, and all the rest of the qualities that we associate with aims are always about circumstances for selves in a way that cause-and-effect events are not. As biologist Jesper Hoffmeyer argues, "Thoughts, hopes, desires etc. are always about something else, and we distinguish them according to what they are about. Lifeless things, on the other hand, such as stones or clouds are not - to the best of our knowledge - about anything else."

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... what makes a trait functional is a three-way relationship linking the trait to self to circumstance by means of for-ness and about-ness:

A functional trait is significant or valuable for a self about its circumstances.