It does not follow from your reasoning about matter and form that _everything_ is empty of intrinsic self-existence. All it shows is that the actuality of things cannot arise from either their matter nor their form, and that all finite, contingent things are all empty of intrinsic self-existence. This does not only not rule out the existence of something that is neither matter nor form, but necessitates it.
This is because interdependence cannot account for the actuality of any object. If neither A nor B in themselves have actual existence, rather they only have the potential for existence, the unity of A and B cannot be actual either, unless this unity is more than the sum of its parts. But then, since nothing can produce that which is "more" than itself, this unity itself must be given by something other than A and B. And this is the One, which is the principle of the unity of the various interdependent entities comprising the universe.
You make a good, strong argument. And I kind of suspect that we are arguing for what amounts to the same thing, but using different language. But, I will try to defend the coherence of my way of looking at it, because otherwise what's the point, right?
I think interdependence does account for the actuality of an object. Fundamentally, I believe that parts depend upon their wholes, rather than the other way around (for their actuality, anyway). Things only exist in relation. It is not that A and B together produce AB, it is that AB produces/actualises A and B. The unity (or relatedness) of AB is not contained in A or B, as you correctly noted. This is what I was gesturing towards when I called it "relationality itself". Wherever things are related/unified, that is the presence of that "pure potential for relation" or "relationality itself", or "the One".
I think the difficulty here may be ambiguity in how we often think about potentiality and actuality. At times we think of things as more actual because they are "underlying", such as when people think matter or the laws of physics are what's really real. But at other times, we see such things as less real because they are not the full, concrete picture. We can perhaps cut through this confusion by instead speaking in terms of determinate vs indeterminate. Then I think you and I might agree that the One is the absolute indeterminate, underlying all determinacy. We can also say that it is "Being itself", since it is "relationality itself" (and I hold relations to be the same as being), and yet it is Being considered apart from any determinate forms -- "Being itself", not "a being".
I don't recall the name of the philosopher, but he did write an entire book on how both in Plato and Plotinus, the One is sheer relationality itself.
I don't think it is fully true to say either that parts actualize wholes or that wholes actualize their parts. AB cannot actualize A and B: because in AB, both A and B are already actual. There is nothing to actualize. However, AB is contingent, and so are A as well as B. Also, AB can cease to exist when one takes away either A or B. What we should conclude from this is that neither A nor B nor AB are in themselves actual. I agree that just because something is _underlying_ something else, it doesn't follow that the underlying thing is more actual: if the underlying thing is only the material cause of the supervening thing then it is certainly not more actual. But if we take _actual_ to mean just what concretely exists, then both the whole and the parts are inderdependent in distinct ways: the whole is the formal cause of the parts and the parts together are the material cause of the whole. The unity of the whole is its concrete existence. But this unity is found neither in A nor in B nor is it intrinsic to AB, therefore that which unifies A and B is not AB, but the One, which is not a _passive_ potentiality for relation but an active potentiality and therefore is not _indeterminate_. Nor can one say however that it is determinate, because only those things which have a passive potentiality for this or that form can be said to be indeterminate. As something which stands outside both matter and form, the determinate/indeterminate distinction doesn't apply to its nature, even if it can apply to its acts.
You ask if there are any logical errors or leaps in your reasoning. I noticed that you began by asking what if the Earth or planets disappeared, and then proceeded, bit by bit, to make the Sun disappear instead. This might trouble some readers. I think your point is that once you remove the properties of a thing, the effects of those properties are also removed. This is more dramatic in the case of the Sun.
Would it have worked to begin by asking what if the Sun disappeared? It would have been easier for the reader to jump ahead and realize, at least, that the planets would go spinning off. Unfortunately it would also suggest that you can't have the properties or effects of a thing without having the thing. This is certainly not what you want to suggest.
(Here I want to stop and object to the word "properties," which is a confusing reification of "effects" -- as if properties existed as "things" of some kind. I've never liked that word. I'm just going to talk about effects.)
On the other hand, do you want to suggest that you can't have a thing without having the effects -- and therefore, that there are no "things" as such, only effects? I think this may be the same misunderstanding, turned on its head. "Things" and "effects" seem to be two sides of the same coin.
Likewise when we consider finer and finer articulations of "matter" until we come to a "prime matter" which is really "no-matter," but only "effects," some sort of leap across that coin seems to be required. That may be the wrong way of looking at it -- not that there's any right way, necessarily, so kudos for trying!
I see potentiality, not as a sort of basis for being and becoming , as if it were a building-block for more of the same, but as a possibility for being and becoming, as if it were an opportunity for being to happen. I'm not sure that's any clearer. Your account at least has the benefit of offering a glimmer of what needs to be said.
Byung-Chul Han, a German-South Korean philosopher who is enjoying something of a moment, once wrote a book called _Absence_. About a year ago I read it, but I found it hard to understand. I must read it again.
>I think your point is that once you remove the properties of a thing, the effects of those properties are also removed.
That's was not the point I was trying to make, although I suppose that is true. I was trying to suggest that if we remove all the relations a thing has, there's no meaningful "thing" left at the end.
>Unfortunately it would also suggest that you can't have the properties or effects of a thing without having the thing. This is certainly not what you want to suggest.
I'm actually fine with that suggestion, but I apologise for not making that clear. This is a bit of a shift from my previous position (or at least a shift in how I present it). As you say, things and their effects (or more broadly their relations) are two sides of the same coin. And more precisely, I think that the two sides represent the Aristotelian duality of potentiality and actuality.
>(Here I want to stop and object to the word "properties," which is a confusing reification of "effects" -- as if properties existed as "things" of some kind. I've never liked that word. I'm just going to talk about effects.)
I get what you mean about the word "properties". I'll note that I didn't use it significantly in the post, for similar reasons. Although I think we might be able to get a decent concept of properties if we consider them as a kind of implicit potential relation, eg a rose still has the property of being red in a dark room, because *if* the lights were on, it would reflect the red light and appear red. And more precisely, I suppose they are potential relations that are implicit within the thing's (actual) internal relations.
>Likewise when we consider finer and finer articulations of "matter" until we come to a "prime matter" which is really "no-matter," but only "effects," some sort of leap across that coin seems to be required.
I wouldn't say prime matter is only effects, in fact, I would say it's entirely ineffectual. It's a complete absence of all relations, including cause-effect relations. It's mere potentiality for actual relations. Would you say this still requires a "leap" across the coin?
>I see potentiality, not as a sort of basis for being and becoming , as if it were a building-block for more of the same, but as a possibility for being and becoming, as if it were an opportunity for being to happen. I'm not sure that's any clearer.
Yes, that's what I was trying to say! We look at prime matter or the thing-in-itself more closely, and we don't find either "matter" or a "thing", we find emptiness! Sheer possibility for being and becoming. In Daoist imagery, we can picture it as the uncarved block, or the emptiness within the pot or wheel that makes it useful. In Buddhist imagery, we can picture it as the limitless sky.
When we say that a rose has a property, it sounds like the rose is a thing, and the property is something it possesses. If red is a property belonging to a rose, it would have to be red in a dark room, because it has that property no matter what. But because it isn't red in a dark room, we have to add that it's potentially red, and explain that a property is not a thing that it owns, but a potential that it has. I think it's simpler just to say it has a potential, and leave the property out. It's actually _not_ red in a dark room, because its interactions, its effects, are different in a dark room than one where there is light it can interact with. Anyway, I appreciate that you're trying to avoid the word.
--
It sounds like "no-matter" is also "no-effects." At this point the coin disappears, and it makes no sense to talk about a leap across it. But this disappeared condition is how we try to visualize the edge between potentiality and actuality. And here I wonder if perhaps things don't move from potentiality to actuality, as if the "matter/effects" coin continuously appears from nowhere at the edge. I wonder if we should say they move from actuality to potentiality, as if the "matter/effects" coin, which has already passed into actuality, now becomes anew. Not from nothing, but from what it was, plus the freedom or potential that is the edge of becoming.
Re properties, I think sometimes our metaphysical terms are just dancing around our grammatical terms, and the fluidity of language better grasps the fluidity of reality. What I mean is, "properties" are basically adjectives, "objects" are basically nouns, and so on. What I mean about the fluidity of language, is that we can transform these grammatical forms into each other, eg "I *ran*" (verb) --> "I went for *a run*" (noun), or "the fluid *runs easily*" (verb + adverb) --> "the fluid is *runny*" (adjective). If we accept that grammatical fluidity as the metaphysical reality, we can sidestep a lot of difficulties. But maybe this is too easy a get-out. Still, it would at least fit the thesis that all things are empty...
>And here I wonder if perhaps things don't move from potentiality to actuality, as if the "matter/effects" coin continuously appears from nowhere at the edge.
This is an interesting angle. In regards to prime matter, the point is not that forms are continually moving from pure potentiality to actuality, but that they simply *are* a realisation of that potentiality. So I think Aristotle would probably agree that they don't move, per se, from potentiality to actuality at the extreme of prime matter.
On the other hand, there's an idea in Zen Buddhism that time comes in discrete moments, and all of reality genuinely appears from nowhere moment by moment, though "inheriting" from the previous moment. I suppose it's an extreme expression of impermanence. I think it's very similar to Whitehead's idea of "atomic" time and actual entities being momentary products of "the Creativity", which is almost equivalent to Aristotle's prime matter, except it is "conditioned" by the world up to that point [p47]. The point in both, I think, is the radical novelty and uniqueness of each moment. There's a real sense in which each moment comes ex nihilo. I think it's very much related to what you described in your recent post about seeing for the first time.
>I wonder if we should say they move from actuality to potentiality, as if the "matter/effects" coin, which has already passed into actuality, now becomes anew. Not from nothing, but from what it was, plus the freedom or potential that is the edge of becoming.
This is brilliant. I think what you're calling "the edge of becoming" (fantastic phrase btw) is the same as Whitehead's "Creativity". Am I understanding you correctly, that you are suggesting each new moment involves a kind of indeterminacy? Almost as if the past moment posed a question that the new moment must now provide an answer to. Like Whitehead's idea of each actual entity as "causa sui"?
"Each new moment involves a kind of indeterminacy. Almost as if the past moment posed a question that the new moment must now provide an answer to."
Absolutely! That's what intrigues me about quantum mechanics. In fact, in "Ego/Time and the Nature of Consciousness," I wrote, "This resonates with Werner Heisenberg’s conception, in Physics and Philosophy, of an Aristotelian transition from potentiality to actuality driven by an 'observer'—wherein a question is posed, or poised, to produce a somewhat unpredictable answer. It’s as if, at the 'event horizon' of reality, we find acts of enquiry moving the world forward. It’s as if the suspense of the wave function is transformed by an act of attention into the crystallized actuality of the physical. "
In retrospect, "event horizon" is probably the wrong phrase. (Who knows what I meant at the time?) I think "edge of becoming" works better.
As an ontic structural realist myself, I'm onboard with most of this. Although I'm not sure about the pure potentiality part. It seems like what we usually mean by "potential" implies that something is well perched to achieve certain states or goals. But "well perched" implies a lot of causality for it to be there. If we unwind all that, we could call the result "pure", but it seems like the purity of a zero entropy state.
I don't know if I necessarily find it beautiful or exciting, so much as it's the only thing that really makes sense for me. Although I have to admit when initially discovering structural realism that I was pretty excited to find a way to be a scientific realist again.
(reposting my reply here, since the first reply seems to have been taken as a note reply. Substack is confusing)
>It seems like what we usually mean by "potential" implies that something is well perched to achieve certain states or goals.
I think it's a bit broader than that, although that's definitely one meaning of it (including in an Aristotelian context). “Well perched” seems kind of goal-directed, but potentiality more generally is just about what possibilities are open to it. (Apologies if I'm reading too much into your phrasing).
>But "well perched" implies a lot of causality for it to be there.
That is true. It seems like potentiality always needs to latch onto something actual, even while what's actual presupposes its own potentiality (otherwise it would not be possible). That's why prime matter shouldn't be thought of as something we could ever actually have.
>If we unwind all that, we could call the result "pure", but it seems like the purity of a zero entropy state.
Yes! I think that's very much it. Zero entropy, zero information. It's the ultimate blank slate. A sheer space of possibilities, open for creative decision making.
>I was pretty excited to find a way to be a scientific realist again
Yeah, that is a great benefit. It really cuts through a lot of knotty philosophical problems I think.
(Weird. I don't think I got a notification on your note reply, or if I did, I missed it. Substack might simplify things by combining them into one communication medium. But I'm sure doing that would be far from simple, particularly with all the history already there.)
I tried to avoid the teleological implications with "state or goal", but admittedly that meaning is laced with it. And no worries with reading into it. I didn't give it much thought, and so there was probably more there than I imagined.
It does not follow from your reasoning about matter and form that _everything_ is empty of intrinsic self-existence. All it shows is that the actuality of things cannot arise from either their matter nor their form, and that all finite, contingent things are all empty of intrinsic self-existence. This does not only not rule out the existence of something that is neither matter nor form, but necessitates it.
This is because interdependence cannot account for the actuality of any object. If neither A nor B in themselves have actual existence, rather they only have the potential for existence, the unity of A and B cannot be actual either, unless this unity is more than the sum of its parts. But then, since nothing can produce that which is "more" than itself, this unity itself must be given by something other than A and B. And this is the One, which is the principle of the unity of the various interdependent entities comprising the universe.
You make a good, strong argument. And I kind of suspect that we are arguing for what amounts to the same thing, but using different language. But, I will try to defend the coherence of my way of looking at it, because otherwise what's the point, right?
I think interdependence does account for the actuality of an object. Fundamentally, I believe that parts depend upon their wholes, rather than the other way around (for their actuality, anyway). Things only exist in relation. It is not that A and B together produce AB, it is that AB produces/actualises A and B. The unity (or relatedness) of AB is not contained in A or B, as you correctly noted. This is what I was gesturing towards when I called it "relationality itself". Wherever things are related/unified, that is the presence of that "pure potential for relation" or "relationality itself", or "the One".
I think the difficulty here may be ambiguity in how we often think about potentiality and actuality. At times we think of things as more actual because they are "underlying", such as when people think matter or the laws of physics are what's really real. But at other times, we see such things as less real because they are not the full, concrete picture. We can perhaps cut through this confusion by instead speaking in terms of determinate vs indeterminate. Then I think you and I might agree that the One is the absolute indeterminate, underlying all determinacy. We can also say that it is "Being itself", since it is "relationality itself" (and I hold relations to be the same as being), and yet it is Being considered apart from any determinate forms -- "Being itself", not "a being".
What do you think?
I don't recall the name of the philosopher, but he did write an entire book on how both in Plato and Plotinus, the One is sheer relationality itself.
I don't think it is fully true to say either that parts actualize wholes or that wholes actualize their parts. AB cannot actualize A and B: because in AB, both A and B are already actual. There is nothing to actualize. However, AB is contingent, and so are A as well as B. Also, AB can cease to exist when one takes away either A or B. What we should conclude from this is that neither A nor B nor AB are in themselves actual. I agree that just because something is _underlying_ something else, it doesn't follow that the underlying thing is more actual: if the underlying thing is only the material cause of the supervening thing then it is certainly not more actual. But if we take _actual_ to mean just what concretely exists, then both the whole and the parts are inderdependent in distinct ways: the whole is the formal cause of the parts and the parts together are the material cause of the whole. The unity of the whole is its concrete existence. But this unity is found neither in A nor in B nor is it intrinsic to AB, therefore that which unifies A and B is not AB, but the One, which is not a _passive_ potentiality for relation but an active potentiality and therefore is not _indeterminate_. Nor can one say however that it is determinate, because only those things which have a passive potentiality for this or that form can be said to be indeterminate. As something which stands outside both matter and form, the determinate/indeterminate distinction doesn't apply to its nature, even if it can apply to its acts.
You ask if there are any logical errors or leaps in your reasoning. I noticed that you began by asking what if the Earth or planets disappeared, and then proceeded, bit by bit, to make the Sun disappear instead. This might trouble some readers. I think your point is that once you remove the properties of a thing, the effects of those properties are also removed. This is more dramatic in the case of the Sun.
Would it have worked to begin by asking what if the Sun disappeared? It would have been easier for the reader to jump ahead and realize, at least, that the planets would go spinning off. Unfortunately it would also suggest that you can't have the properties or effects of a thing without having the thing. This is certainly not what you want to suggest.
(Here I want to stop and object to the word "properties," which is a confusing reification of "effects" -- as if properties existed as "things" of some kind. I've never liked that word. I'm just going to talk about effects.)
On the other hand, do you want to suggest that you can't have a thing without having the effects -- and therefore, that there are no "things" as such, only effects? I think this may be the same misunderstanding, turned on its head. "Things" and "effects" seem to be two sides of the same coin.
Likewise when we consider finer and finer articulations of "matter" until we come to a "prime matter" which is really "no-matter," but only "effects," some sort of leap across that coin seems to be required. That may be the wrong way of looking at it -- not that there's any right way, necessarily, so kudos for trying!
I see potentiality, not as a sort of basis for being and becoming , as if it were a building-block for more of the same, but as a possibility for being and becoming, as if it were an opportunity for being to happen. I'm not sure that's any clearer. Your account at least has the benefit of offering a glimmer of what needs to be said.
Byung-Chul Han, a German-South Korean philosopher who is enjoying something of a moment, once wrote a book called _Absence_. About a year ago I read it, but I found it hard to understand. I must read it again.
>I think your point is that once you remove the properties of a thing, the effects of those properties are also removed.
That's was not the point I was trying to make, although I suppose that is true. I was trying to suggest that if we remove all the relations a thing has, there's no meaningful "thing" left at the end.
>Unfortunately it would also suggest that you can't have the properties or effects of a thing without having the thing. This is certainly not what you want to suggest.
I'm actually fine with that suggestion, but I apologise for not making that clear. This is a bit of a shift from my previous position (or at least a shift in how I present it). As you say, things and their effects (or more broadly their relations) are two sides of the same coin. And more precisely, I think that the two sides represent the Aristotelian duality of potentiality and actuality.
>(Here I want to stop and object to the word "properties," which is a confusing reification of "effects" -- as if properties existed as "things" of some kind. I've never liked that word. I'm just going to talk about effects.)
I get what you mean about the word "properties". I'll note that I didn't use it significantly in the post, for similar reasons. Although I think we might be able to get a decent concept of properties if we consider them as a kind of implicit potential relation, eg a rose still has the property of being red in a dark room, because *if* the lights were on, it would reflect the red light and appear red. And more precisely, I suppose they are potential relations that are implicit within the thing's (actual) internal relations.
>Likewise when we consider finer and finer articulations of "matter" until we come to a "prime matter" which is really "no-matter," but only "effects," some sort of leap across that coin seems to be required.
I wouldn't say prime matter is only effects, in fact, I would say it's entirely ineffectual. It's a complete absence of all relations, including cause-effect relations. It's mere potentiality for actual relations. Would you say this still requires a "leap" across the coin?
>I see potentiality, not as a sort of basis for being and becoming , as if it were a building-block for more of the same, but as a possibility for being and becoming, as if it were an opportunity for being to happen. I'm not sure that's any clearer.
Yes, that's what I was trying to say! We look at prime matter or the thing-in-itself more closely, and we don't find either "matter" or a "thing", we find emptiness! Sheer possibility for being and becoming. In Daoist imagery, we can picture it as the uncarved block, or the emptiness within the pot or wheel that makes it useful. In Buddhist imagery, we can picture it as the limitless sky.
When we say that a rose has a property, it sounds like the rose is a thing, and the property is something it possesses. If red is a property belonging to a rose, it would have to be red in a dark room, because it has that property no matter what. But because it isn't red in a dark room, we have to add that it's potentially red, and explain that a property is not a thing that it owns, but a potential that it has. I think it's simpler just to say it has a potential, and leave the property out. It's actually _not_ red in a dark room, because its interactions, its effects, are different in a dark room than one where there is light it can interact with. Anyway, I appreciate that you're trying to avoid the word.
--
It sounds like "no-matter" is also "no-effects." At this point the coin disappears, and it makes no sense to talk about a leap across it. But this disappeared condition is how we try to visualize the edge between potentiality and actuality. And here I wonder if perhaps things don't move from potentiality to actuality, as if the "matter/effects" coin continuously appears from nowhere at the edge. I wonder if we should say they move from actuality to potentiality, as if the "matter/effects" coin, which has already passed into actuality, now becomes anew. Not from nothing, but from what it was, plus the freedom or potential that is the edge of becoming.
Re properties, I think sometimes our metaphysical terms are just dancing around our grammatical terms, and the fluidity of language better grasps the fluidity of reality. What I mean is, "properties" are basically adjectives, "objects" are basically nouns, and so on. What I mean about the fluidity of language, is that we can transform these grammatical forms into each other, eg "I *ran*" (verb) --> "I went for *a run*" (noun), or "the fluid *runs easily*" (verb + adverb) --> "the fluid is *runny*" (adjective). If we accept that grammatical fluidity as the metaphysical reality, we can sidestep a lot of difficulties. But maybe this is too easy a get-out. Still, it would at least fit the thesis that all things are empty...
>And here I wonder if perhaps things don't move from potentiality to actuality, as if the "matter/effects" coin continuously appears from nowhere at the edge.
This is an interesting angle. In regards to prime matter, the point is not that forms are continually moving from pure potentiality to actuality, but that they simply *are* a realisation of that potentiality. So I think Aristotle would probably agree that they don't move, per se, from potentiality to actuality at the extreme of prime matter.
On the other hand, there's an idea in Zen Buddhism that time comes in discrete moments, and all of reality genuinely appears from nowhere moment by moment, though "inheriting" from the previous moment. I suppose it's an extreme expression of impermanence. I think it's very similar to Whitehead's idea of "atomic" time and actual entities being momentary products of "the Creativity", which is almost equivalent to Aristotle's prime matter, except it is "conditioned" by the world up to that point [p47]. The point in both, I think, is the radical novelty and uniqueness of each moment. There's a real sense in which each moment comes ex nihilo. I think it's very much related to what you described in your recent post about seeing for the first time.
>I wonder if we should say they move from actuality to potentiality, as if the "matter/effects" coin, which has already passed into actuality, now becomes anew. Not from nothing, but from what it was, plus the freedom or potential that is the edge of becoming.
This is brilliant. I think what you're calling "the edge of becoming" (fantastic phrase btw) is the same as Whitehead's "Creativity". Am I understanding you correctly, that you are suggesting each new moment involves a kind of indeterminacy? Almost as if the past moment posed a question that the new moment must now provide an answer to. Like Whitehead's idea of each actual entity as "causa sui"?
"Each new moment involves a kind of indeterminacy. Almost as if the past moment posed a question that the new moment must now provide an answer to."
Absolutely! That's what intrigues me about quantum mechanics. In fact, in "Ego/Time and the Nature of Consciousness," I wrote, "This resonates with Werner Heisenberg’s conception, in Physics and Philosophy, of an Aristotelian transition from potentiality to actuality driven by an 'observer'—wherein a question is posed, or poised, to produce a somewhat unpredictable answer. It’s as if, at the 'event horizon' of reality, we find acts of enquiry moving the world forward. It’s as if the suspense of the wave function is transformed by an act of attention into the crystallized actuality of the physical. "
In retrospect, "event horizon" is probably the wrong phrase. (Who knows what I meant at the time?) I think "edge of becoming" works better.
As an ontic structural realist myself, I'm onboard with most of this. Although I'm not sure about the pure potentiality part. It seems like what we usually mean by "potential" implies that something is well perched to achieve certain states or goals. But "well perched" implies a lot of causality for it to be there. If we unwind all that, we could call the result "pure", but it seems like the purity of a zero entropy state.
I don't know if I necessarily find it beautiful or exciting, so much as it's the only thing that really makes sense for me. Although I have to admit when initially discovering structural realism that I was pretty excited to find a way to be a scientific realist again.
(reposting my reply here, since the first reply seems to have been taken as a note reply. Substack is confusing)
>It seems like what we usually mean by "potential" implies that something is well perched to achieve certain states or goals.
I think it's a bit broader than that, although that's definitely one meaning of it (including in an Aristotelian context). “Well perched” seems kind of goal-directed, but potentiality more generally is just about what possibilities are open to it. (Apologies if I'm reading too much into your phrasing).
>But "well perched" implies a lot of causality for it to be there.
That is true. It seems like potentiality always needs to latch onto something actual, even while what's actual presupposes its own potentiality (otherwise it would not be possible). That's why prime matter shouldn't be thought of as something we could ever actually have.
>If we unwind all that, we could call the result "pure", but it seems like the purity of a zero entropy state.
Yes! I think that's very much it. Zero entropy, zero information. It's the ultimate blank slate. A sheer space of possibilities, open for creative decision making.
>I was pretty excited to find a way to be a scientific realist again
Yeah, that is a great benefit. It really cuts through a lot of knotty philosophical problems I think.
(Weird. I don't think I got a notification on your note reply, or if I did, I missed it. Substack might simplify things by combining them into one communication medium. But I'm sure doing that would be far from simple, particularly with all the history already there.)
I tried to avoid the teleological implications with "state or goal", but admittedly that meaning is laced with it. And no worries with reading into it. I didn't give it much thought, and so there was probably more there than I imagined.