If physicalism were true, and abiogenesis happened without any intervention of "higher being"(s), and Darwinism were correct; then life wouldn't be meaningless. Neither would its purpose be determined by each individual. Life would have exactly two objective purposes: to survive and to reproduce.
It's actually no more of a purpose than a tautology. It just happens that a species that survives and reproduces will continue to live.
That also means that there's no good or bad. There are only what traits are advantageous to survival and what traits aren't.
For example, being trustworthy is "good" because trust within a group is a prerequisite for achieving a relatively advanced society like Homo Sapiens has built. Breaking into someone's house is "bad" because otherwise we would only be as advanced as other primates that take each other's territories all the time.
But when you think about it, there are "good" things that aren't advantageous (or even are harmful) to survival, and there are things advantageous to survival that are considered "bad" by most people. Many examples would be highly controversial, so I'd pick a less controversial example, but probably not the best one: eugenics.
So, how exactly do we know which is good, which is bad? Is there even an objective good or bad without invoking the idea that some higher beings say so?
> So, how exactly do we know which is good, which is bad? Is there even an objective good or bad without invoking the idea that some higher beings say so?
I’m not sure how “higher beings say so” gets you to objectivity, especially when the very nature of our understanding of any such being would be anything but objective.
Mostly what you’ve touched on there is that “good” and “bad” are rather inadequate descriptors of any sort of well reasoned and thorough analysis of many subjects. There can be multiple competing objective functions and incentives to analyze in complex systems, and simply labeling such things with any sort of dichotomy is liable to leave you wanting.
This does not mean the answers lack objectivity, or value propositions that can be meaningfully evaluated, it simply means the objective evaluations are considerably more complex and nuanced than many are willing try and assess, and this poled subjectivity serves as a somewhat lazy proxy for performing a better evaluation. Sometimes this is necessary given our limited capacities in day to day life, but it does not inherently speak to limitations of objectivity or evaluation of morality or philosophy.
> There can be multiple competing objective functions
But my whole point is that there can only be one ultimate objective function: to maximize the chance of survival. There might be some other objective functions derived from the ultimate one, but none can be standalone.
Other standalone "objective functions" can always be asked "Why is it desirable?" For example, why is minimizing suffering desirable? Pain is just a signal to the brain that something dangerous is happening. Murder is "bad" because a species that has fewer counts has a lesser chance to survive. Torture is not necessarily "bad", unless it's argued that it in the long run will lessen the chance of survival.
I disagree that maximizing the chance for survival is the only ultimate objective function, or that it's somehow the only one that can escape "why is this desirable?" questioning, or that it is even coherent as an objective function in the long run (I see no reason to think the we'll run into technological limits that prevent us from deviating from natural evolution in the future for much, if perhaps not most of life).
Evolutionary mechanisms do not bestow some "ultimate" or unquestionable truth/goal of which all others are subservient or branched from, it is merely an explanatory framework for biological continuation we've observed in the world, and like other similar explanatory frameworks we generally would do well to avoid attributing "purpose" where all we can see (if we can even see that) is "is." It certainly is likely an attributable factor for much of what we value as we are products of said process, but we do not owe it primacy any more than a computer off the assembly line owes the assembly line its purpose.
To be honest I'm now a bit confused on your position, as you explicitly brought up points in your previous post that elucidated some of the cracks in attempting to treat survival as the "one true goal":
> But when you think about it, there are "good" things that aren't advantageous (or even are harmful) to survival, and there are things advantageous to survival that are considered "bad" by most people. Many examples would be highly controversial, so I'd pick a less controversial example, but probably not the best one: eugenics.
And I could posit other thought experiments or examples or such, but perhaps first I should ask how this line of questioning doesn't lead you away from survival as the ultimate objective function.
First of all, thanks for the compelling discussion so far.
> To be honest I'm now a bit confused on your position, as you explicitly brought up points in your previous post that elucidated some of the cracks in attempting to treat survival as the "one true goal":
> ...
> perhaps first I should ask how this line of questioning doesn't lead you away from survival as the ultimate objective function.
To be clear, I don't hold any strong position. All my previous comments are based on the assumption that the three premises I wrote in the very beginning of the first post are true, but I'm not arguing that those premises are true. I was just elaborating the implications if they were true:
1) To survive and to reproduce would be the closest thing to the ultimate purpose of life.
2) What traits we consider "good" or "bad" would actually be just what traits are beneficial for survival or not.
When at the end of the first post I brought up the fact that morality doesn't always align with beneficialness for survival, I was trying to do reductio ad absurdum.
Maybe the three premises were not all true after all. Maybe there's something beyond the physical universe*, from which some higher being impulsively created the universe out of boredom, in which case there would still be no ultimate purpose. Or the higher being created it intentionally and with some purpose.
This might also elucidate the common argument, originated by C. S. Lewis, that all human beings know something good or bad because God imbued humans that ability. A common misconception interpreting this argument is to say only theists can do something good. Knowing is not the same as doing. All humans have the ability to distinguish good from bad, regardless of what they believe in, or whether they want to do something good or not.
---
* We don't even know if the observable universe is all physical. No one knows what dark energy is, maybe it's not energy after all. In fact, dark energy is just a placeholder—we might as well name it XYZ.
> First of all, thanks for the compelling discussion so far.
Likewise thank you for the compelling discussion and clarifications.
> To be clear, I don't hold any strong position. All my previous comments are based on the assumption that the three premises I wrote in the very beginning of the first post are true, but I'm not arguing that those premises are true. I was just elaborating the implications if they were true:
1) To survive and to reproduce would be the closest thing to the ultimate purpose of life.
2) What traits we consider "good" or "bad" would actually be just what traits are beneficial for survival or not.
I think you need a few extra steps to get you from those premises to these conclusions. In fact, I'd suggest you may not even really be able to get from those premises to those conclusions, in particular I think you'd need to invoke "designers" (or "higher beings") imbuing purpose into the functional specifics of evolution to arrive there (thus contradicting one of those premises).
The premises as stated don't tell you much in the way of ascribing "purpose" to life, only how the mechanisms behind how it propagates and changes over time, just as Maxwell's equations do not define some "purpose" to electromagnetism but rather describe its evolution across time. And further the emergent systems that arise from these underlying processes, of primary importance for our conversation here consciousness and emergent from that society and civilization, need not owe all their properties to the mechanisms of the underlying systems (indeed this is what we often mean by emergence).
So ultimately I think that not only is survival not the "ultimate purpose," I think it's difficult to argue there is any intrinsic purpose there at all.
> So ultimately I think that not only is survival not the "ultimate purpose," I think it's difficult to argue there is any intrinsic purpose there at all.
Maybe I was not explaining it clearly enough, but I agreed with this. Similarly to what you said here, I said in the original post that to survive and to reproduce is more of a tautology than a purpose. What I meant is that if there must be a purpose of life, survival would be the closest thing to it, but in some strict senses of "purpose", it is not a purpose.
What's more interesting is the second implication, which suggests that there would be no objective morality if the three premises were true. I wonder if you agree that there's an objective morality. Or, to put it into a question, how do you think humans, almost universally, can distinguish good from bad?
> Maybe I was not explaining it clearly enough, but I agreed with this. Similarly to what you said here, I said in the original post that to survive and to reproduce is more of a tautology than a purpose. What I meant is that if there must be a purpose of life, survival would be the closest thing to it, but in some strict senses of "purpose", it is not a purpose.
Ah, well apologies I spent several replies only to be redundant :-).
> I wonder if you agree that there's an objective morality.
I don't think there is an intrinsic value function we can perceive/verify writ into the universe. There could be one or many, but I don't think we're presently in a position to assert what it is with any degree of confidence beyond wild speculation. This doesn't leave us with pure subjectivity/relativism, I think it just means we need to use a priori means to arrive at value functions. And once you do reason yourself to a value function or combination of value functions there are objective (though often quite difficult to analyze) answers to its optimization.
So I don't think there can be pure objectivity in value assignment, however once you bootstrap into value propositions, which could be so universally recognized so as to be very difficult to argue against (the reduction of suffering for instance), there are objective answers to optimizing for those values.
> Or, to put it into a question, how do you think humans, almost universally, can distinguish good from bad?
Without rigor I think most people instinctively tend to distinguish good from bad (insofar as those words have real meaning) by way of empathy, by the recognition of one's own internal desires and suffering and joy and recognizing the same states in others. The golden rule if you will, it's about as inherent a moral compass as I can think of.
And this indeed could be traced back to evolutionary origins and our sociability as a species. It's also quite fallible, and at scale you can see it break down again and again (empathy is a face to face sort of mechanism and tends to struggle to maintain its hold at a distance over space and time and in large numbers we find ourselves congregating and competing in, and as already noted good/bad are pretty poor substitutes for the complicated situations we find ourselves in at scale, and our evolutionary toolset is rather lacking in getting us to pay attention to the nuance and working through optimization deliberately), thus I think one could give pretty good reasons why this should not be an overriding guiding value function but rather a sort of starter's pack.
You’ve jumped to a conclusion here. If you take a step back further, you will see that your meaning is dependent on the fact that life has evolved. Prior to the existence of life, the “meaning” should be the same. If your meaning is dependent on life, it can’t be axiomatic.
You’ve only realized that life is optimized for survival and reproduction. While that’s not wrong, there’s no intrinsic meaning in this.
Ultimately, meaning and purpose are what you make them. The beginning of spacetime being equal to zero at the Big Bang is the quintessential example of a concept beyond conception. This concept similarly falls into that category.
> While that’s not wrong, there’s no intrinsic meaning in this.
I actually agreed about this. As I said in the first comment, to survive and to reproduce is more of a tautology than a purpose. If the three premises I mentioned in the first comment were true (I'm not arguing they are true), then to survive and to reproduce would be the closest thing to the ultimate purpose of life.
> Ultimately, meaning and purpose are what you make them.
While many, if not most, of us have some purposes of our own life, that doesn't change the fact that life as a whole would probably not have an ultimate purpose. Whether it matters or not is another discussion.
My perspective is that if there is any objective "meaning" to be known, we are as incapable of understanding it as mitochondria are incapable of understanding why they produce ATP.
We don't "know", in the objective scientific sense, whether anything has any meaning, but it's useful to act as though it does. Useful being defined as reducing suffering/providing reward for ourselves and, on the scale of the species, for others. People search for meaning because finding it relieves suffering and provides reward, and people generally encourage others to find meaning because there are generally benefits to the species as a whole. Perhaps it's just a sophisticated way for our DNA to ensure its own propagation, perhaps there's something more to it, perhaps it's a random outcome of mutation. But it does relieve suffering and provide reward. That's good enough for me, there's plenty to do between here and the obvious limits of human knowledge that's likely to have far more impact on how we live.
It's like if we're living on one of those flat-earther maps, and we can see the edge of the world, but there's lifetimes of uncharted territory between here and that edge. You can sit still and impotently focus on the edge, wondering if whatever's beyond it means that the world itself is meaningless, or you can explore the land in front of you and try to make something good happen, without particularly worrying about what's over the edge. Maybe one day we'll collectively get there and find out, but there's no way for you and I to do so in our lifetimes. So why worry about it?
Of course if you want to claim that science and logical analysis is the be-all-end-all of existence, and you're unwilling to accept the unknown will likely remain unknown with our current biological capabilities, well I'd say "have fun" but you certainly won't. You'll just continuously suffer of your own accord, unwilling to accept any relief, continuously staring into Nietzsche's abyss until your organic form expires. If there is a metaphorical hell brought on by sin, that state would certainly be a candidate (the sin in this case being pride).
Exodus (bible OT) contains a phrase (in the voice of god) that is remarkably precocious of its purpose: asserting, through unconventional grammar, a certain essentially existentialist claim completely unique to its speaker.
έγώ είμι ό ών ( pardon the abuse of the acute accent, I can't get this IME to reproduce the grave) which is translated as "I am that I am," means something dynamically close to "I am the IS." or "I am that which IS." A structure that implies being outside the passage of time, uncreated and therefore not dependent on reproduction to continue surviving, or even on life to keep on living.
Which is where Aquinas and others get / build on the concept of 'God as verb'. God is not a thing or a being (not even the Supreme Being), but rather God is to be: Being itself. See Aquinas Summa contra Gentiles, XXII.
When you say "survival" in terms of Darwinian evolution, you're really talking about survival of specific genes. Why should we choose to be beholden to the primal "desires" (if you'll grant me the intentional stance) of our genes? We are the AI that our DNA invented that turned around and overthrew it. The planet is ours now, not our DNA's.
There are many other things that evolve too: ideas, memes, viruses, and many more if you relax "evolution" to simply mean "progress", like my own knowledge and the capabilities of the human race. It's myopic to focus on genes alone.
> eugenics
Eugenics takes for granted the idea that some "genetic purity" is good for its own sake. Why? Why is a world with fewer, but "genetically superior" people, (and more genetically similar), better than a world with more people and more genetic variety? That's not even necessarily good even if you myopically focus on the actual gene pool, much less if you take all the other aspects of humanity into account.
> So, how exactly do we know which is good, which is bad? Is there even an objective good or bad without invoking the idea that some higher beings say so?
Yes, there is: we all collectively decide properties of the world we'd like to live in, and we try to guess what kind of world future generations would also like to live in, and then we call those actions that ultimately improve those properties "good" and those that lessen those properties "bad", and we can even partially rank actions based on the integral of their effect on these properties from now until the end of the universe (allowing a Net Present Value calculation to avoid infinities, to acknowledge our imprecision of future outcomes and preferences, and even to simply prefer utility now over the same utility later). We try to maximize happiness (in its various forms, some more important than others) and minimize suffering (ditto), taking diminishing returns into account so we don't just make one dude trillions-happy at the expense of everyone else. This has infinite degrees of freedom and requires perfect knowledge of the future, so we know it's not actually possible to achieve, but it gives us a direction to orient our moral compasses and strive to get as close to this perfection as we can.
> Eugenics takes for granted the idea that some "genetic purity" is good for its own sake. Why? Why is a world with fewer, but "genetically superior" people, (and more genetically similar), better than a world with more people and more genetic variety? That's not even necessarily good even if you myopically focus on the actual gene pool, much less if you take all the other aspects of humanity into account.
'Genetic purity' is not a charitable way of looking at eugenics; how about 'genetic quality'? That's what most of us seek. Nobody asks for a disabled baby.
Should we edit our genes to allow for more diversity? How about all the diverse genetic mutations we haven't dreamed of yet! We could rediscover a lot of weird and wonderful maladaptations that our ancestors have spent millions of years weeding out. We'll have X-Men in no time.
> Yes, there is: we all collectively decide properties of the world we'd like to live in, and we try to guess what kind of world future generations would also like to live in, and then we call those actions that ultimately improve those properties "good" and those that lessen those properties "bad"
First of all, who are "we"? Second of all, you just proved my point, unless you want to redefine "objective" as something that the majority accept. Also, why are those properties desirable? Because the majority prefer it? There would be no objective good or bad, then—it's just the preference of the majority.
People are responding that I'm using the word "we" and therefore I'm not being objective. I think I need to emphasize a point better: there are infinitely many objective measures. Here's one: how many total paperclips humanity produces over the lifespan of the universe. That's a truly objective measure; we can just count them. We can analyze every action any human ever takes and estimate whether it increases or decreases the total number of paperclips any human will ever create. There's no subjectivity at all -- it's completely objective.
While objective, paperclip count is notorious for not really aligning with our intuition of good vs. bad; I'm pretty sure we can do better. But this illustrates the point that the problem is really about picking from the infinitely many objective measures that, objectively, do already exist.
Humans exist; that is objectively true. Humans have preferences; that is objectively true. Humans take pleasure from some experiences and experience pain from others; that is objectively true, albeit a big simplification. It's objectively true that humans dislike having rusty nails jammed into their eyes. It's objectively true that humans enjoy eating nice meals when they're hungry. We should seek to perform those actions which minimize the number of rusty nails jammed into eyes and maximize the number of times humans can enjoy nice meals when they're hungry. Obviously there are trillions more considerations, but nowhere has subjectivity even entered the picture yet.
What I'm saying is that we can pick, or define, or refine, a truly objective measure; one that is much better than paperclip count. You could say "well there's subjectivity in picking which measure we use " -- only because we have imperfect knowledge of the universe and its future. If we had perfect knowledge of all the likes and dislikes of all humans that will ever exist, all sources of pain and pleasure and suffering and contentment and sadness and happiness, all their values and goals and desires, and how all actions affect all of that, then we could simply integrate their effects over time. Yes, we have to weight them appropriately, and find a good NPV discount rate, and all that, but with perfect knowledge, we could easily find one that's at the very least on the Pareto surface. That's our metric.
So our subjectivity comes from imperfect knowledge. But that's OK -- we accept that we have imperfect knowledge. There's a huge difference between "there's no objective measure of good vs. evil" and "it's really hard to pick an optimal measure of good vs. evil, and to know which actions maximize the net present value of that metric over the course of the universe." The former gives you nothing; the latter at least orients your moral compass toward something that humanity can all work toward together.
I'll get straight to the point. Abortion. Controversial topic, yes? People view it as a moral question, and it's a fairly direct reflection of one's moral values. Do you mean to say that a reasonable vision of the world based on everyone's moralities where there isn't a huge conflict? What compromise (if any) would be reasonable?
Abortion is just one, albeit salient, example. People differ in small ways and in big ways. I daresay your idea of a unified course of action is arrogant.
> a reasonable vision of the world based on everyone's moralities
I was actually careful not to say "moralities" as parameters of the model, because people's claimed moralities are often really awful representations of what they actually want, believe, or care about in life. Nobody is against abortion when their own daughter gets impregnated by a rapist or when it's their own ectopic pregnancy. Abortion is only controversial because it's politically convenient. It's not actually a particularly difficult moral conundrum, which -- again -- you can tell by the fact that everyone is pro-abortion when it's them or their daughter. I don't care about people's stated morality. I care about what actually brings about happiness vs. suffering.
> you can tell by the fact that everyone is pro-abortion when it's them or their daughter.
Wow. By the fact? Really? I thought there's a small chance that the discussion with you could be saved, but now you've said this, no, this discussion won't get anywhere, ever.
What you've been doing is coming up with an "objective" moral compass / objective function of life (maximizing happiness, minimizing suffering) that you strongly believe literally everyone will agree in such and such conditions. No, they won't.
> I think I need to emphasize a point better: there are infinitely many objective measures.
No one here or anywhere is arguing that there are no objective measures. Of course, there is! The question is whether there is an objective measure from which good or bad is determined. Or in a logical statement, whether this statement is true: There exists something that is an objective measure AND from it good or bad is determined.
> It's objectively true that humans ... It's objectively true that humans ...
There are humans, albeit in minority, that take pleasure from painful experiences. While most of us want to maximize our lifespan, soldiers do not. They consider protecting their nations are far more important than their life. While most of us want to minimize suffering, Mother Teresa was instead experiencing prolong suffering for the sake of, not her family, not her friends, but strangers. Despite all of this, we all agree that what soldiers and Mother Terese did is "good." So no, none of your "It's objectively true that humans ..." statements are true, unless, as I said in the previous comment, you're willing to redefine "objective" as the majority's preference.
> We should seek to perform those actions which minimize the number of rusty nails jammed into eyes and maximize the number of times humans can enjoy nice meals when they're hungry.
I assume this is the objective measure that you think from which good or bad is determined? Say all humans agree with this objective, the obvious follow-up question could be: Which is worse: having 10 nails in each pair of eyes of 10 people, or having 1 nail in either eye of 100 people? Even if everyone agreed with the initial objective, they wouldn't unanimously say one case is worse than the other.
Okay, I suppose what you wanted to say is to minimize suffering and maximize happiness, which is a very common argument. It's a seemingly crazy question, but why? Pain is not inherently bad. If you think about it, pain is just a signal to the brain that something dangerous is happening. From the survival's perspective, it's even good! Unnecessary pain is bad, you might say. Not really, because it doesn't change anything. Only when you argue that excessive pain can be harmful to survival that the question of why can end. Why maximizing the chance of survival? Otherwise, life couldn't survive and we wouldn't have this discussion. Yes, it's a tautology. In fact, I already explained this in my original post [1].
As I explained in my original post [1], if the three premises written in the very beginning were true, "good" or "bad" would be nothing else other than being beneficial for survival or not. But this view of morality is not without its problems. At the end of the post I also mentioned that morality doesn't always align with beneficialness for survival. So, what now? I have written a follow-up in [2] as a response to another commenter.
> there are humans, albeit in minority, that take pleasure from painful experiences.
And we should seek to act in such a way that, all else equal, those humans have opportunities to do so, except in those cases where allowing masochists to engage in self-harm ends up causing more harm to others in the long run, e.g. if it emboldens them to torture others or if it causes them to end their own life which would otherwise have been rich and fulfilling for themselves and others. There's no need to generalize to some weird Kantian categorial imperative bullshit here; there's no "lying is always bad", there's only looking at two pairs of actions (or an action and its inaction) and running a net present value calculation on those actions from now until the end of time -- or at least doing our best at this. I didn't say it was easy: it's absolutely not. It's the appeal to a higher power or some bullshit categorical imperative that takes the easy, lazy way out. In fact my moral theory compels us to do a hell of a lot more work and deep thinking than any of the others do.
> While most of us want to maximize our lifespan, soldiers do not. They consider protecting their nations are far more important than their life.
Wow, no, that's not true at all. People don't join the army to lay down their life for their nation, they join the army because in that moment (as a teenager, often in the face of a very convincing recruiter who is loose with the truth), it seems like the best option for their lives.
> we all agree that what soldiers and Mother Terese did is "good."
No, we absolutely do not all agree on this, and "we all agree" is an opener to a lot of bullshit in this world. I don't know Mother Teresa's own internal motivations but the evidence suggests she was a horrible human being who caused a lot of undue suffering. Nor do many people, especially pacifists, agree that soldiers are automatically good people.
> unless, as I said in the previous comment, you're willing to redefine "objective" as the majority's preference
If I allow you to use the shorthand "preference" for the 20 or so measures that I stated (and there are hundreds more), then I'm not redefining anything. These preferences already exist. It'd be nonsense to deny that.
> Which is worse: having 10 nails in each pair of eyes of 10 people, or having 1 nail in either eye of 100 people?
Silly trolly problems get us nowhere. The answer is: it depends on the context. It depends on the people. It depends on whether they were already blind or not. It depends on what the course of their lives would be like with and without those nails. It depends on trillions of factors, and all we can do is do our best.
Luckily, the vast majority of problems we face in life are not gotcha-trolly problems where we have to make these kinds of decisions in absence of literally any other context. In real life, using this framework to orient our moral compass, and then acting roughly in line with that as best we can, will end up with extremely moral people creating a wonderful world for everyone. If we get to the point where we're having to fiddle over the minutiae of utility calculations, then we've already created a magnificent utopia for all anyway.
> There exists something that is an objective measure AND from it good or bad is determined
Unlike my discussions with other people in this thread, who also have different opinions, I don't think this discussion with you will ever be productive.
You just keep arguing against what I didn't support or even mention. You were focusing on nonessential details of imperfect examples, which should at least give a glimpse what I've been meaning all this time. Or maybe you really didn't understand of what my counter-arguments really are, after all.
> No, we absolutely do not all agree on this ... Nor do many people, especially pacifists, agree that soldiers are automatically good people.
> ...
> The answer is: it depends on the context. It depends on the people.
The fact that we—and people in general, e.g. pacifists you mentioned—don't agree what's moral or not just proves my point that it's probably impossible to define objective morality from physicalists' point of view. As I've said many times, the closest thing to objective morality is a concept of good or bad based on whether it's beneficial for survival or not. But even this, as I explained in other comments, has its own problems.
> Is there even an objective good or bad without invoking the idea that some higher beings say so?
Physics has no concept of good or bad, so if you mean universally objective then I would argue not. However an analogous question might be, is there an objective comfortable or uncomfortable air temperature, and I think we could all agree that 25C is comfortable wheres 40C is not, so objectivity in that case is species-dependent. Therefore as you alluded to earlier in your post, what's 'objectively' good or bad is based on a consensus of what's good or bad for members of our species. It's actually relatively easy to have a good moral compass without a higher being looking over one's shoulder, although the idea of the higher being seems to induce some people to favour 'objectively' good over personally good when there is a choice to be made.
Things can have a purpose, even if God didn't ordain it.
Whether people suffer or not, whether people are good to me or not, whether I am good to other people are all important, even if our life here is temporary. Yes, in the long run all will be forgotten, but in the short run, the long run doesn't matter. Suffering and joy are to be managed in the meantime; we can experience both directly, and we can get satisfaction and meaning indirectly by helping other attain joy/avoid pain. That is something that we can demonstrate to be true here and now, something that is beyond dispute.
It seems to me we should work on the here and now and not spend so much energy trying to curry favor to better our position in a hypothetical afterlife.
The one argument about religion I find especially hard to understand is that of needing some higher entity to give your existence meaning.
It sort of comes off to me as a lighter way of asking how you can be a moral person without the threat of eternal suffering in the afterlife (not to suggest that you actually mean that).
I consider myself agnostic, practically an atheist, I just don't really like associating myself with the "hurr durr sky daddy" types, I think religion and the idea of a creator are valuable to help people cope with situations which are totally out of their control, but I can't really relate to needing a creator to give me purpose. I give myself purpose by doing and supporting the things that I feel are right/important.
I don't think existence needs any overarching purpose offered by a creator, it's fine that everything is ultimately meaningless. If anything I find it relieving since it also means that our failures also only have as much meaning as we ascribe to them.
> It sort of comes off to me as a lighter way of asking how you can be a moral person without the threat of eternal suffering in the afterlife
This is a very common argument that comes from a misconception of what theists argue. There's a difference between knowing what's good or bad, and doing it. What theists argue is not that only who believes in God can do something good. They argue all human beings know something good or bad because God imbued humans that ability, regardless of what they believe in, or whether they want to do it or not.
Interestingly, Christianity is unique regarding this matter. While most, if not all, religions say you have to earn it in order to go to the desirable afterlife (heaven/paradise/etc.), Christianity says no one, whatever good things they do, can earn it. Only because of God's grace they can be saved. Also, we love because God loved us first. We do good things not for earning an eternal life, but for an act of gratitude that God has saved us.
Ah that's an interesting explanation I hadn't heard before. It makes a lot more sense than the idea that theists are only moral because of a fear of hell.
I'm an agnostic (absolute, textbook definition) but I disagree. As a human with consciousness and free will (whether that's an "illusion" doesn't make a difference from where I'm standing), I define meaning in my life. Not all consciously, but I have thoughts and desires. If it'll all be irrelevant when I die, why should I care? I'm not dead yet. If there is no afterlife, I won't be around to care. If there is, I'll figure it out on the fly.
What actually changes if there is a creator though? Isn't it exactly the same, it "just happens" that a creator created a species and that species survives and reproduces. As you yourself say, it's merely a tautology to define purpose into existence, but the same is true even if a creator is involved, it's still just something that "happens".
Something was created by a creator. Now what? Where did purpose come from?
The purpose comes from why the creator created it. Whether the created likes and accepts its purpose is a different question.
George MacDonald was quoted as saying something to the effect of: "did it ever occur to you that God created you for one purpose: simply to love you". All the stuff that we do would then flow from experiencing that reality. This would suggest a view of us as God's children (indeed, in Gen 1, the point is arguably that in the end, God reproduces after his kind [as much as is possible]). I don't have kids, so I don't no, but it seems like that is ideally why people have children--to love them.
The Westminster Catechism is related: "What is the chief end [purpose] of Man? The chief end of Man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever." It is less satisfying, since it seems to sound like it requires toil on our part, although I doubt the authors saw it that way.
Imagine an earthquake occurs along a fault line, and causes a cliff to shake asunder, sending lots of pebbles and rocks flying down to the ground below. After the earthquake is done, on the ground there, we see a rock.
Why is the rock there, in that particular location? Well, we know why, it's because it fell from the cliff above, which was sundered by the earthquake, which was caused by the tectonic plate movement.
So we have a reason why the rock is there. Does that mean the rock has a purpose? No? But that's why it's there though!
What if I deliberately picked up a rock and placed it on that location instead. Does it have a purpose now? Does my hands have that power?
The idea that a creator imbues their creation with purpose by creating them is just as arbitrary as an earthquake. It's wordplay at best, where the layman's "purpose" is being confused with a sort of higher cosmic meaning "purpose". The purpose of a hammer is to drive down nails, but that doesn't mean the hammer has a purpose in the way we are talking about here. But that's exactly the mixup you do when you say that the creator gives the creation it's purpose. It's kinda funny because it elevates hammers making them fulfilled and meaningful, but rocks are left to suffer in their nihilism.
The person you replied to didn't say "the purpose comes from any why", but:
> The purpose comes from why the creator created it.
Some higher being might impulsively created the universe out of boredom, in which case there would be no ultimate purpose at all. But maybe they created it intentionally, with a purpose, which is the ultimate purpose of universe and everything inside it.
So no, it's not what you condescendingly said "wordplay at best." There can be a relationship between the purpose of a creation and the reason why the creator created it. In fact, for many everyday things, the purpose of their existence is exactly the reason why the inventors created them.
(I'm not arguing that there exists a creator of the universe. I'm just showing how irrelevant, to put it mildly, your seemingly strong argument is to the post you replied to.)
I get that, and my response did probably not convey what I meant to explain very well.
How about this angle: Does that creator itself have any purpose or meaning? If God exists, is he utterly nihilistic and void of meaning? After all, there was no creator to give God purpose.
If God does have purpose somehow, that shows that purpose does not only come from being created. Problem solved.
If God does not have purpose, then that creates a rather strange situation where a being without purpose can create beings with purpose. Presumably we too can create things with purpose, in a godless universe, and thus infuse the world with purpose ourselves.
Personally, I think people are too quick to mix up purpose (the how) with meaning (the why). There are all kinds of mechanical reasons as to how you came about, from nature, your parents, circumstances. And some of those reasons even include agency, for example, your parents might have decided to have a child. That's a decision they took, not just random luck.
But these are reasons as to how you came about to exist, not the actual meaning behind your existence. Meaning is something else entirely, it's a very difficult topic to struggle with. But we diminish it greatly by dumbing it down to "the meaning with your life is whatever intentions behind what created you". Our lives does not belong to our parents, nature or our creator, but rather, ourselves. And thus it's only we who can imbue that life with meaning, nobody else.
Presumably the creator created with purpose. If I make a chair, it fulfills its purpose when it serves as a place to sit. It does not serve its purpose if someone uses it to awkwardly dig a hole.
Likewise if God made me to, say, love and forgive others, I can either serve my purpose or not. But the purpose is given to me by the intent of the creator.
If "purpose" is simply the intent of a creator, the words used to describe what the creator intended when they created, then I don't see the great loss in not having it.
Imagine your father always wanted a child, and for the child to take over the family business. Is your life without merit, utterly void of value, if you become a fireman instead? After all, you are not fulfilling the purpose, the intent, of those who created you. Anything outside their specifications is meaningless nihilism, right?
Personally, I think there is more to "purpose" than this definition, it's a very small definition that does not truly compass what people mean when they talk about purpose.
> Then I realised feeling dreadful about it was ultimately pointless ... And I moved on
But when you really think about it, moving on is as pointless as feeling dreadful. In fact, anything is as pointless as anything else. It might seem like an insane question, but why exactly is moving on somehow more desirable than feeling dreadful, if everything, including the universe itself, will be gone?
Life is about the journey, not the end, many people would argue. But in reality, most people live their life with long-term thinking. People study hard, so they can get a good job. Then they work hard, so they can retire comfortably. There's always delayed gratification in most life stages and even life activities (saving, exercising, dieting).
If life were all about the journey, we wouldn't need to feel pity for those who "wasted" their life, as long as they enjoyed it. Being drug addicts and die at twenties would not be "less" then being a president, they would be just.. different. But no, most of us think they are not just different, and it says something about human beings.
> But when you really think about it, moving on is as pointless as feeling dreadful.
Yes.
> In fact, anything is as pointless as anything else.
Absolutely.
> It might seem like an insane question, but why exactly is moving on somehow more desirable than feeling dreadful, if everything, including the universe itself, will be gone?
It isn’t. Once we’ve reached the conclusion that anything and everything is vain and pointless, we are simply faced with a choice. One that sure is as pointless as everything else. And one to which everyone is ultimately free to find whatever answer, or lack of answer they please. For better or worse we are alive, whatever that means, and it will probably only last so long. What will we do with that?
Edit: basically, to be unoriginal, "To be or not to be".
Some will believe they are entitled to have an opinion on others’ answers. Some will say it’s nobody’s business. Some are convinced they somehow have a somewhat universal answer. Others try to coerce others into what will benefit them.
> Life is about the journey, not the end, many people would argue. But in reality, most people live their life with long-term thinking.
I’d argue many believe they do, but few actually do. Considering their many long term impacts on quality of life, obesity and tobacco addiction are a few examples that come to mind.
> People study hard, so they can get a good job. Then they work hard, so they can retire comfortably. There's always delayed gratification in most life stages and even life activities (saving, exercising, dieting).
> If life were all about the journey, we wouldn't need to feel pity for those who "wasted" their life, as long as they enjoyed it.
I would argue that most have no clue as to what they are talking about. Myself included.
> Being drug addicts and die at twenties would not be "less" then being a president, they would be just.. different. But no, most of us think they are not just different, and it says something about human beings.
I'm not sure why parent involves abiogenesis, but as they go on to say, surviving and reproducing aren't really purposes (as in motivation) but self-evident truths. Something made to replicate itself into more things that self-replicate and so on.
Fair enough, but I felt you implied it by calling them self-evident. That's the sorta phrasing usually used when people try to wrangle meaning out of facts.
> Many examples would be highly controversial, so I'd pick a less controversial example, but probably not the best one: eugenics.
Yeah, it's so bad that people want to be with whoever they find the most attractive. The government should just allocate partners to people at random to avoid eugenics (If you want a divorce then you get put back in the pool for reallocation.)
Help me to understand, I can't see any relevance. The way I see it, the only assumptions are the three premises I mentioned in the very beginning of the original post.
It's actually no more of a purpose than a tautology. It just happens that a species that survives and reproduces will continue to live.
That also means that there's no good or bad. There are only what traits are advantageous to survival and what traits aren't.
For example, being trustworthy is "good" because trust within a group is a prerequisite for achieving a relatively advanced society like Homo Sapiens has built. Breaking into someone's house is "bad" because otherwise we would only be as advanced as other primates that take each other's territories all the time.
But when you think about it, there are "good" things that aren't advantageous (or even are harmful) to survival, and there are things advantageous to survival that are considered "bad" by most people. Many examples would be highly controversial, so I'd pick a less controversial example, but probably not the best one: eugenics.
So, how exactly do we know which is good, which is bad? Is there even an objective good or bad without invoking the idea that some higher beings say so?