Animus

I want to make a brief note of the concept of "Animus". I'm almost pulling this term out of thin air to refer to an idea that is still crystallizing. The word does already have meanings and connotations which I will comment on when the  opportunity presents itself.

At the core of the idea is recognition of a "system" that shows intentional behavour. Lately I have been using "system" in preference to "thing" because I recognize that nothing really exists in isolation. We recognize a system by (somewhat arbitrarily) drawing a line around all the forms and relationships that determine the dynamic behavour of those forms and relationships (i.e., how they change with time).

Animus refers (or does it?) to the property of a system's behavour that cannot easily be described without reference to the future state of the system. The system is behaving in a way that tends to bring about some future states of affairs rather than others. One might say this of the Earth/Moon system, governed by gravity, but in this case and others not showing "animus", the behavour can be described by a physical "law" or simple cause and effect relationships.

Animus obviously covers the behavour of living things, which behave in ways to perpetuate their form into subsequent generations. Their behavour is described in Darwinian terms as "adaptive".

I would extend animus to cover machines, which behave (by definition) "mechanically" according to ordinary cause and effect like a falling rock, but cannot be sensibly described without reference to the purpose of their behavior. A theologically-minded philosopher would say something like the "animus", if any, was inherited by the designer of the machine who is the one who is "really" alive and the real possessor of "animus". I would reply that "animus" and "life" are not identical concepts. Life is a special case of animus.

It is animus that we see in the "Dragons" of dragon theory. It is animus that we do not see in the Universe as a whole, which is at the heart of the debate over the existence of God. Belief in God is just one way to "explain" animus (purposefulness) in the Universe in general. Other explanations, such as "fate" have their followers. Anthropomorphic  cosmology tries to show that the fundamental laws of the Universe are somehow chosen in advance to make human life possible.

So, while I'm not sure exactly how to define "animus", nor even sure what kind of a thing it is, I'm sure that attempting to put my finger on this slippery idea may help to add another key concept to my intellectual tool kit.

Western philosophy got itself in a tangle by mis-handling analogies to some fundamental ideas - many newly discovered in the Enlightenment:

• Machine. We have been in awe of our machines since the 17th century. Descartes and Hobbes took it for granted that animals "were" machines. The analogy persists with modern philosophers such as Dennett, who takes it for granted that our brains are "kinda" like computers. This is so ingrained and "obvious" that it's hard to make people realize that it's an analogy - maybe not a good one.
• Math Envy. The idea that everything can be reduced to a series of axioms and proofs, like Euclid's geometry. Descartes (whose lasting mark was in geometry) is a perfect example. On a more subtle level, the idea crept into politics: "We hold these things to be self-evident - that all men are created equal ...".
• Free Will. This idea is a relative of "animus". It attempts to distinguish humans from "mere machines" in that their behavour is not governed by mechanical laws. It became important when it seemed that Newton's "laws" were the first step in explaining everything that happens in the world, including human history, in terms of precise, inflexible, deterministic "law". Of course, this project did not proceed as predicted, but many cling to the idea that there exists some kind of distinction between behavour motivated by reason and behavour motivated by physical law. Moreover, this distinction is held by many to be the key to what we call the "soul".
• Physical Law.   It seems that Newton was the one that first developed what we now refer to as a "law" of nature. It's hard to take ourselves back to that period, where there was serious debate (even in the mind of Newton himself) as to just what sort of a thing this "law" was. Newton naturally took it to be a law decreed by God, bringing all of physics into the realm of "animus". We would now see this as mere superstition but it's a superstition that is buried in our language, most notably in the very word "law".