One of the most profound conundrums of human existence ultimately questions how mindless mathematical laws can give rise to aims and intentions? Alternately, should this order of causality actually be reversed? Indeed, what factors of the motivated human intellect actually promote the development of the advanced mathematical models so conducive to explaining the dynamics of a callously-silent natural world? Any foundational explanation of goal-seeking intentionality necessarily invokes the scientific precepts of Behavioral Psychology: defined as a dynamical set of laws governing survival through learned behavior where homeostatic conditions at one moment of time extend inexorably into a future time-frame in order to maintain a safe range of homeostatic equilibrium. Truly intelligent agents appear to mentally plan in relation to long-term goals and intentions that serve the crucial aims of physical-survival, reproduction, and thriving. This treatise proposes how complex goal-oriented systems evolved (through an appeal to evolutionary and biophysical neuroscience), whereby further speculating how such intentional goal-seeking behavior emergently functions within a natural world that we can scientifically describe through the aid of mathematical symbolism.
John Edward LaMuth