Studies on Metaphysical Foundations Possessed by Naturalistic Worldviews

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 20K00110
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Review Section: Basic Section 01040:History of thought-related
• Research Institution: Teikyo University
• Principal Investigator: Okinaga Shohachi 帝京大学, 文学部, 教授 (80269422)
• Project Period (FY): 2020-04-01 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: 機械論的世界 / 物理主義 / 生命 / 負のエントリピー / 創発 / 汎心論 / 目的論 / 形成作用

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The research plan was to investigate the logical structure that presupposes life-specific and not material workings such as self-preservation, even at the ground of the naturalistic understanding of evolution and life phenomena.
More specifically, our research analyzed the characteristics and problems of the argument that the physicist Schroedinger regarded "negentropy" in relation to entropy as a characteristic of life phenomena. Then we examined his argument on statistical laws of thermodynamics as the basis of the mechanistic laws of matter. This was an attempt to connect the mechanistic world, which is explained by the composite motion of atoms, with the spontaneous and order-forming nature of life.
And we also examined the problem of the cleavage between the contingency of mutation and the spontaneous ordering in biological evolution from the viewpoints of Darwinism and physicalism and the classical theory of life.

Free Research Field

哲学・倫理学　思想史

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究成果が関わるのは、物質と生命との裂け目の問題を通じて、物質の無情的・機械論的、客観的性質と、生命の有情的・自発的・主観的性質との断絶をいかにに結びつけるのかという問題であった。これは具体的な生命論を通じて、実在に関する哲学一般の問いに根本的に関わる点で学術的意義があると思われる。
たとえば西田の「形成作用」のように、機械的な物質の属性ではなく反対に純粋に自発的な主体でもない生命の特性を取り上げるとき、この作用は機械論的世界を前提にするとそこから決して帰結し得ないが、作用自体を前提にするならば機械論的世界の方が形成の結果として扱い得て、かつその論理も存在論的に妥当性があることを確認した。