fresco wrote:ebrown_p is correct.
"Goal direction" implies a "desired end state" (see cybernetics) Unless we evoke a reductionist argument for "desire" in terms of say "neural processes" then process of itself cannot have a goal.
process is the goal.
the meaning of life is living.
the step by step increase in complexity, from atoms to molecules to life to consciousness, to values is referred to as the theory of emergence or the theory of levels.
essentially, in the on-going process of the universe new qualities or forms appear which can not be deduced from the properties of the previous, less comlex levels which are the building blocks of the new level.
Ken Wilbur is the guy whose work brings this out most facily in his " A Brief History of Everything," but I read about it in college from Lloyd Morgan.
^
| Value
| Mind
| Life
| Matter
Olaf Stapledon's "Star Maker" uses it as a description of the ultimate meaning of the Cosmos, the striving to higher consciouseness as an attempt to merge with the Ultimate Creator fulfills the Creator's Plan and Itself.
And my favorite science fiction book (this side of a Kilgore Trout novel).
