What's going on in my peircean rubric is a move from any robust metaphysic to a vague

phenomenology.
To bust that move, one simply prescinds from necessity to probability in one's modal
ontology.
If, ordinarily, whether in a folk essentialism or naturalist nominalism, the necessary
(normative) mediates between the possible (interpretive) and the actual (descriptive) to
effect various teloi (evaluative) ...
Then, in a vague phenomenology, it is, instead, the probable (normative) that will mediate
between the possible (interpretive) and the actual (descriptive) to effect various teloi
(evaluative).
This vague phenomenology is only ever normative because it successfully references,
maybe in part even describes, what we know from evolutionary epistemology, which is
realist, fallibilist, hedonic/noxious oriented and so on. It accounts for our common sense
and common sensibilities.
Alas, at reality's emergentist thresholds (veldo-, cosmo-, bio-, sentio- and sapio-poietic
entwinements), our vague conceptions break down because our metaphors have
collapsed.
So, we go searching for root metaphors to normalize gravity and quantum mechanics, to
cross the threshold from the inorganic to life, to resolve the hard problem and articulate
a philosophy of mind, to explain symbolic versus syntactic consciousness and so on.
The various emergent teloi- (teleo -potent, -matic, -nomic and -logic) refer to various
end-phenomena (un/bounded, stated, directed and intended). They evoke Aristotelian
notions of formal and nal causation. Rather than remaining wholly vague, however,
when talking in terms of nal causation, such as in classical metaphysics, they aspire to
a tad more specicity.
My inventory of teloi, therefore, does NOT mark an advance in certainty regarding
putative eternal verities, but, instead, marks a RETREAT.
It's easy to plug extremely vague concepts like nal causation into formal syllogisms in
order to reason one's way to apodictic truths and necessary conclusions, but such
tautologies add no new information to any systems.
However, the emergentist heuristic says, hold your epistemic horses, the concept of nal
cause might refer only analogically, maybe even equivocally, to different realities.
Finality, itself, may well be emergent.
We can't be playing so fast and loose with such conceptions, much less employing them
in a modal ontology that presupposes necessities rather than probabilities.
Peirce, himself, crafted a neologism, nious, to refer to telic realities that were not
robustly teleoligical. Ernst Mayr, I think, popularized the teleonomic conception. Deacon's

building on this approach but his understanding is far more rigorous than my
folk-peircean rubric.
My rubric, though, has had great heuristic value for me, personally, helping me better
grasp some of the issues in play in popularized quantum interpretations and
cosmogony.
So much will turn on the quality and degree of reality's mix of chance/necessity,
order/chaos, a/symmetry, un/boundedness, ir/regularity, pattern/paradox and
dis/continuity. That in turn will suggest alternate mereological stances regarding
whether the whole truly begs explanation or can be understood in terms of each part.
One remains a phenomenologist, in my view, to the extent one remains agnostic both
regarding primal mereology and putative root metaphors.
One crosses the threshold and becomes a metaphysician when taking a mereological
stance, a vulgar metaphysician when settling on a root metaphor, and a metaphysical
menace when employing necessity in one's modal ontology.
I employ hyberbole, here, because, properly considered, since metaphysical stances refer
to putative primal realities being merely evidentially plausible, at best, per our
meta-mythic constraints (dare I suggest, ortho-mythic religious naturalism), they would
not tend to interfere, epistemically, in our more robustly probabilistic descriptions,
evaluations, interpretations, hence, norms. Liberal regimes reect this situation,
implicitly and properly, allowing the free exercise, while proscribing the establishment, of
same.
So, treating naturalism as a fuzzy concept, the gradient might take
1) lowercase n to represent agnostic phenomenologists
2) bold lowercase n to represent provisional mereological stances
3) uppercase N to represent an addition of a root metaphor, whether consciousness,
energy, etc to one's meteology
4) bold uppercase N to represent an implicit or explicit use of necessity in one's modal
ontology, added to a mereology and root metaphor.
My Vague Phenomenology and Emergentist Heuristic
veldopoietic entwinement - marked by the teleopotent end-un/boundedness of eld
(veld-) dynamics
cosmopoietic entwinement - marked by the teleomatic end-statedness of a
materio-energetic, proto-sentience

biopoietic entwinement - marked by the teleonomic end-directedness of an

electro-chemical, incipient sentience;
sentiopoietic entwinement - marked by sentience, broadly conceived to include
hormonal sentience;
neuronal sentience (including, for example, abductive instinct);
striatal sentience;
limbic sentience and
cortical sentience (including, for example, nonreective awareness, nonarbitrary
inconicity and indexicality).
sapiopoietic entwinement, marked by the teleologic end-intendedness of
sapient sentience (including, for example, abductive inference, reective awareness,
arbitrary symbolicity and subconscious problem solving).
metaphysics, phenomenology, emergentism, emergentist, emergence, modal ontology,
teleomatic, teleodynamic, teleonomic, teleological, nious, naturalism, metaphysical
naturalism, methodological naturalism, cosmogony, mereology, primal reality, root
metaphor, moral probabilism, quantum interpretation, quantum gravity, philosophy of
mind, emergence of consciousness, origin of life, hard problem of consciousness,
sentience, sapience, teloi, modal ontology, folk essentialism, naturalist nominalism,
evolutionary epistemology, metamythic, common sense, religious naturalism