Second Renaissance Goals and Teleology

There are two very different kinds of teleology involved here.

(1) Teleology as a guiding goal. This is the purpose of Principle 1 of the New Epistemic Deal

1: Ecocivilisation is our shared destiny and guiding goal.

Ecocivilisation represents a vision of a society that harmonises human activity with ecological principles. This is not a utopian ideal but a necessity dictated by the realities of ecosystems and evolution. The claim that ecocivilisation is our destiny is pre-political, transcending specific ideologies or systems. The social, political, and economic structures of ecocivilisation are not part of this definition, but the core premise is clear: civilisation must work ecologically to endure.

(2) Teleological processes in physics/metaphysics.

In Mind and Cosmos, Nagel hypothesised teleological laws, but failed to propose any. In 2PC, the concept of praeternatural causality exists, the most fundamental examples of which are the evolution of consciousness (psychegenesis), free will and synchronicity. In each case this requires what appears to us to be retrocausality: the whole course of the evolution of consciousness was guided by its goal, free will requires physical events in brains to be guided by their goal, and synchronicity requires the whole of reality conspiring to make meaningful co-incidences happen.

All alleged praeternatural phenomena, if they exist, will also involve teleological processes. This is only possible because Phase 1 of 2PC is timeless. The laws of physics (unitary evolution of the wavefunction) are reversible, but wavefunction collapse (the phase transition) is irreversible. Collapse selects a whole timeline (since the last observation) at once.