We feel special today
More pondering on this question of what is good and for whom. Compassion is an important human virtue, but would it be an important virtue, or a virtue at all, if humans were different kinds of entities? If we were conscious but immortal and perfect, if we never suffered, if we had no vulnerability of any kind (and didn’t know of any entities that did), would compassion be a virtue? Would we see it as a good thing? I tend to doubt it.
I had similar doubts and questions about some things Keith Ward said in a discussion with Anthony Grayling in Prospect last year.
The scientific perception of the cosmos is that it is an intelligible, law-like, mathematically complex structure, which produces intelligent moral agents by a process of increasingly integrated complexity from an initial state of extreme simplicity (the big bang).
Um – is it? I don’t think so, I think Ward stacked the deck a little there, sneaking in that ‘intelligent moral agents’ – I don’t think that is a particularly scientific perception. It’s not a terribly precise description, frankly, and it’s certainly not a complete one. Bipedal language-using primates would be a more precise description – which is not to disagree with Ward that our (inadequate) intelligence and (frighteningly inadequate) moral agency are much the most interesting (at least to us) things about us, but it is to say that’s more a moral perception than a scientific one.
Contemporary religious thought sees the purpose of creating such a cosmos as the production of finite minds that can enter into loving relationships with one another, take partial responsibility for the world and be fulfilled by knowing the supreme mind of the creator…Is this the best of possible worlds? It is the only one that could have us in it, and while we are not the best of possible beings, we are perhaps – each one of us – of great intrinsic worth.
Well, perhaps, but perhaps not. But I have to say that it strikes me as unpersuasive. Why would the purpose of creating the cosmos be the production of finite minds that can enter into loving relationships with one another? If it were, why would it take a cosmos like this to do that? Wouldn’t something smaller, simpler, and less expensive have done the job? And also if it were, are we the best, or a very good, example of minds that can enter into loving relationships with one another? If it is, why do we do so much entering into hating relationships with one another?
But the ‘why would that be the purpose of the cosmos’ question is the most basic one, because why would that be anyone or anything’s purpose? Suppose a world (a pre-cosmos world, which is tricky) without any finite minds that can enter into loving relationships with one another, and a creating entity of some kind (of what kind, we don’t know). Why would it want them? Why would it think they ought to exist, and so have the purpose of creating them when it decided to create the cosmos? That’s not clear, to say the least. So isn’t this kind of thing just more of the same? Just more of the starting from human assumptions and wants and needs and likes, and trying to make them cosmic absolutes? We think compassion is good because we suffer so we need it; we think beings like us are good because we are us and we think we are (sort of, more or less) good. It’s all local, it’s all particular, it’s all about us. It’s intuitively appealing, of course, and it may all be true, but there doesn’t really seem to be any compelling reason to think it’s true. The localism is kind of a giveaway of that.
Does the cosmos HAVE a “purpose”? Should it have?
Better, that it is, and that we do our best to understand it.
How is quite difficult enough, without spurious “why’s” thank-you very much
Well Ward did say it’s contemporary religious thought that sees it that way. But it interests me to try to figure out what these ideas mean in their own terms, or at least starting from their own terms. They seem to depend on a lot of local or parochial assumptions at every step, not just at the first one. I find it interesting to try to tease them out. Amateurish of course, but interesting all the same.
‘Finite minds’ though need not necessarily be or exclusively be about us. I don’t think Keith Ward is necessarily be anthropocentric here. There may be billions upon billions of finite minds we have no knowledge of at all.
I really can’t see what such people would have to be compassionate about, hence compassion wouldn’t exist.
Merlijn, hmm…but he says in the very next quoted sentence, “Is this the best of possible worlds? It is the only one that could have us in it”. It’s true that ‘finite minds’ need not necessarily or exclusively be about us, but it looks to me as if we are what Ward has in mind. True that there may be billions of others – but I see no sign that Ward is thinking about them.
“It is the only one that could have us in it”? Is it? Why?
But basically I agree (gasp!) with GT: the main problem with the ‘why would that be the purpose of the cosmos’ question is that it is question-begging.
Extended comment on the whole purpose/teleology thing, and some stuff which I think underlies Ward’s acceptance of teleological explanation and GT/Outeast’s non-acceptance of such.
I think part of the problem is that for theists and atheists, the criteria for what counts as acceptable support for a knowledge claim differ. I’ve been arguing against the whole Flying Spaghetti Monster/detectability/why not Wotan/teapot-around-Uranus line of argumentation as it seems to lack relevance to me, and I would gather, to most theists. Because the God we’re interested in is not a limited spatiotemporal being. The obvious comeback is then that for many atheists, it makes no sense to talk about anything not spatiotemporally limited.
Likewise with the whole question about the purpose of the universe. I do not believe the question is necessarily question-begging if there are good reasons to suppose purpose within the universe which do not presuppose a Deity. But I don’t think there can be decisive reasons. Any such reasoning – whether anthropic, based on mathematical/rational Platonism/whatever remains open to skeptical attack. Simply because they, in various ways, mix scientific observations with metaphysical speculation.
I think we can dispense with the observability/experiencability criterion unless we accept religious and mystical experiences as proof – but I wouldn’t. So any line of thought which regards truth and knowledge being established only on those criteria can dispense with the idea of God. What it does not have, however, is a compelling case for atheism to anyone not sharing its epistemology.
Conversely, any theistic view would
count comprehensiveness, coherence and possibly beauty as criteria for truthfulness (the latter one being dicey and already presupposing some metaphysical views). I believe theism wins out on that one on for example the mind-matter issue, the lawfulness of the universe, etc., which the physicalist view often (though not necessarily) underlying atheism has difficulties with (and if “we’re working on it!” is a valid answer, I submit that it be accepted for questions concerning theodicy as well ;-)). However, to the skeptical mind-set, these criteria would lose much of their force.
I’m not defending epistemic relativism here, mind you – but I do believe things get a bit fuzzy when dealing with philosophical ultimates. The difference between me and probably a lot of other commenters here being that I don’t think that’s a reason to avoid them. In any event, the problem is that any metaphysical system, including physicalism or materialism as well as all the theist ones, simply do not have the same ‘compellingness’ as the proverbial truthfulness of a hyena tugging at your leg. Which is why just about any position on the mind-matter issue has its adherents, and metaphysical systems have varied widely from Plato to Descartes to Leibniz to Whitehead to physicalism – whereas no such wiggle room exists for doubting relativity or the periodic table.
A possible answer would seem to be a very hard-headed agnostic, rather than atheist, skepticism – but this would seem to run into the problem that in practical life, we accept a lot of things such as causality and the enduring validity of basic physical laws which could be corroded by such.
On the other hand, I like the openness of a lot of these questions. I’m currently reading a thought-provoking defense of the ontological argument by Charles Hartshorne, and while reading it, it suddenly occurred to me that an unassailable, compelling proof of God through logic alone would be a very frightening idea to me. (Hartshorne, as it is, makes sure his argument remains open to attack). It would be, simply, no fun. I would probably instinctively reject any philosophical or metaphysical viewpoint which allows one to stop thinking. Theistic or otherwise.
“The obvious comeback is then that for many atheists, it makes no sense to talk about anything not spatiotemporally limited.”
Well…I’ve probably said that, but if so I take it back. I don’t think it makes no sense to talk about it – because why not, after all? But I think it’s a mistake (and an irritating and often downright coercive one) to talk dogmatically about it, to insist on it, to boast of ‘faith’ in it.
I’ve just read a very persuasive article on the value of open questions, as a matter of fact. It will be in the next issue of TPM – Issue 37, now under construction.