John G. Messerly's Blog, page 152

Reflections on a 30 Year College Teaching Career

I vividly remember walking into my first college classroom almost 30 years ago. I was nervous and excited at the same time. Was I the professor or an impostor? What would I say for 50 minutes, 3 times a week, for 16 weeks? Well, I found out I could easily talk that long! It was fun having a captive audience forced to as least pretend to listen to me.

For thirty years I tried to combine enthusiasm with command of my subject. I did some lecturing, as it is hard to generate discussion without there being something in a student’s mind, but I didn’t see my students as empty receptacles to be filled. Instead I tried to pull from what was already inside them, employing a more Socratic method. I didn’t learn from all of my nearly 10,000 students, but I did learn from many of them and for that fills me with gratitude.

The most influential that informed my teaching came from the Martin Heidegger.

Teaching is even more difficult than learning. We know that; but we rarely think about it. And why is teaching more difficult than learning? Not because the teacher must have a larger store of information, and have it always ready. Teaching is more difficult than learning because what teaching calls for is this: to let learn. The real teacher, in fact, lets nothing else be learned than—learning… The teacher is far ahead of his apprentices in this alone, that he has still far more to learn than they—he has to learn to let them learn. The teacher must be capable of being more teachable than the apprentices. His conduct, therefore, often produces the impression that we properly learn nothing from him, if by “learning” we now suddenly understand merely the procurement of useful information.  The teacher is ahead of his apprentices in this alone, that he has still far more to learn that they—he has to learn to let them learn. The teacher must be capable of being more teachable than the apprentices. The teacher is far less assured of his ground that those who learn are of theirs. If the relation between the teacher and the taught is genuine, therefore, there is never a place in it for the authority of the know-it-all or the authoritative sway of the official. It is still an exalted matter, then, to become a teacher–which is something else entirely than becoming a famous professor. 

Still your students forget you, as one of my first mentors told me long ago. Thus you should focus on your own work; work that expresses or elaborates your being, not alienated labor. So with many thanks to those thousands of students, now is the time to do less teaching and more learning. I so need and want to learn.

 

Prison and the Meaning of Life – Convict 79206

In 1930 the historian and philosopher Will Durant–who was at that time a famous public intellectual–received a number of letters from persons declaring their intent to commit suicide. The letters asked him for reasons to go on living. In response Durant asked a number of luminaries for their views on the meaning of life, publishing those responses in his 1932 book, On the Meaning of Life.

As the manuscript was being prepared for publication, Durant received another letter from “Convict 79206″ at the Sing Sing maximum security prison in New York from a man recently sentenced to life in prison. Durant published the entire letter as an appendix to the above-mentioned book. Of the contents of the letter Durant could only write solemnly: ”It is incredible that we should be unable to find any better use for such intelligence than to lock it up forever.”

Convict 79206′s response is too long to print here, but we can highlight a few points. He argued that suicide would be permissible for those who found life meaningless, but that he had not yet reached that point. He argued that life was accidental but not necessarily meaningless. He was not religious and advised against seeking ”comfort in delusions, false tradition and superstition.” He discusses the difference between truth, which is neither beautiful or ugly, and belief  ”the idol-worshiping strain in our natures.” He says that “happiness is a state of mental contentment [which] can be found on a desert island, in a little town, or the tenements of a large city.” And he is optimistic about the future: ”[Humans are] an integral part of the universe in which [they] live, that universe which is ever moving forward to some appointed destiny.”

In the end, before heading back to live what most of us would assume is a barren and meaningless existence, convict 79206 paints a picture with his words. His dignity and integrity glow brightly.

This evening I stood in the prison yard amid other prisoners, with eyes lifted aloft  gazing at that great … airship … as it sailed majestically over our heads. Into my mind came the thought that, just as that prehistoric creature struggled up out of the sea to the land, so is man struggling up from the land into the air. Who dare deny that, some day, up, ever up he will struggle thru the great reaches of interstellar space to wrest from it the knowledge which will enable him to lift his life to a plane as high above this, our present one, as it is above that of prehistoric man?

I do not know to what great end Destiny leads us, nor do I care very much. Long before that end, I shall have played my part, spoken my lines, and passed on. How I play that part is all that concerns me.

In the knowledge that I am an inalienable part of this wonderful, upward movement called life, and that nothing, neither pestilence, nor physical affliction, nor depression, nor prison, can take away from me my part, lies my consolation, my inspiration, and my treasure.

Owen C. Middleton (convict 79206) was a transhumanist before his time, and a man of greater depth and humanity than most. How much human potential wastes away in our prisons.

 

 

 

When Children Ask About the Meaning of Life

A good friend wrote me recently. He said that his young son has begun to wonder if life is meaningless, and if death ruins the joy of life. This is an intelligent, athletic, handsome young man with loving, highly educated, and economically successful parents, living in a first world country. Truth be told this young man’s grandfather has recently die and his grandmother is gravely ill. But even absent these tragedies, the question inevitably arises. Why is this?

WHY DO WE WANT TO KNOW IF LIFE IS MEANINGFUL?

The question of the meaning of life arises for almost anyone who begind to think. As Camus said “beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.” The desire to make sense out of life is a primary motivator of human life. As the famous cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz said: “The drive to make sense out of experience, to give it form and order, is evidently as real and pressing as the more familiar biological needs.” Thus the question emanates, in part, from a deep wellspring of biological and psychological need; the need to answer the question springs from our nature, reaching in some sense into the genome itself.

The other source for the question is undoubtedly our historical, cultural, social and family environments. What is happening in this moment in history, culture, society, and family elicits and frames the question of meaning in a certain way. And, given that the question of life’s meaning only became a prominent one in western civilization in the 19th century, it is reasonably to think that there is something about secularism and modernity that has brought the question to the surface.  Philosophers as diverse as Habermas, Nagel, Dworkin, and Charles Taylor all argue that something is missing in the secular world, while religious thinkers as diverse as the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, and John Fire Lame Deer believe that consumerism, capitalism, and materialism leave many bereft of hope and meaning.

Thus the general answer to a question about human thought and behavior is always some combination of nature and nurture, of a genome in an environment.  Of course a specific case of an obsession with the question could emerge from psychological maladies like depression or anxiety, although we shouldn’t draw this conclusion too quickly. Asking about meaning is often a mark of an authentic human life, not of a mental disease.

THE ANSWER IS FOUND IN SOMETHING LARGER THAN OURSELVES

I have written at length on this blog and in my book about meaning in human life. There are many ways to derive it, and all sorts of people live what they believe are meaningful lives. But one idea that comes up constantly is to place our lives in a larger context. For example Bertrand Russell said he overcame the fear of death when he let the walls of his ego recede, and saw himself in a larger context. The things he cared about: truth, beauty, goodness, knowledge and all the rest would be pursued without him. The historian and philosopher Will Durant suggested something similar:

“If we think of ourselves as part of a living … group, we shall find life a little fuller … For to give life a meaning one must have a purpose larger and more enduring than one’s self. If … a thing has significance only through its relation as part to a larger whole, then, though we cannot give a metaphysical and universal meaning to all life in general, we can say of any life in the particular that its meaning lies in its relation to something larger than itself … ask the father of sons and daughters “What is the meaning of life?” and he will answer you very simply: “Feeding our family.”

To better understand consider that the meaning of a movie or painting is difficult to discern if you see only a small part of them. If I only see a few moments of the movie or a few brushstrokes of the painting, I can’t understand them as well as if I see the whole thing. Of course we might see the whole movie or painting and still find them meaningless. But it is somewhat comforting to know that if we saw the entire movie or painting–or the past and future of all reality–then we might be able to understand their meaning.  If there is meaning to the life, the universe, and everything then it must come from a perspective we now lack. This means the problem might not be that the universe lacks meaning, but that we lack the proper perspective.

SHOULD IT BOTHER US THAT WE CAN’T ANSWER THE QUESTION?

Some might reply that it is not comforting but depressing to lack the universal perspective needed to make a determination about meaning. Should we respond like this? In some sense we should, because our dissatisfaction pushes us to do whatever it takes to answer our questions. On the other hand we must accept that we do not now have all the answers we desire, and probably will not get them in our lifetime. Life calls upon us to learn to live without being sure. It is a hard lesson and most never learn it. But the honest and courageous live with ambiguity and without answers–they live authentically.

In my next post I will quote at length from a 1932 letter from a convict sentenced to life in prison on the meaning of life.

 

 

 

More About Mind Uploading

Here’s a brief follow up to yesterday’s post. While perusing the the subreddit  cogsci  at reddit.com, I noticed that there were a number of comments about my recent blogpost. I read all of the comments and learned much from them. I wanted to comment briefly about a few issues that arose. Again thanks to all who read the post and commented on it.

To Cyberbyte & filterspam & Sockso -  Yes we should be careful as we don’t want to be tortured infinitely; and yes there are fates a LOT worse than death. The same issue comes up if considering cryonic preservation. Is it better to die and received a zero; or utilize technology and receive anything from heaven to hell? Wow, what a gamble! I suppose each will have to choose for themselves when such technologies are available. But faced with oblivion, I would probably gamble.

To egypturnash- We will need laws governing the procedure. Personally I think only one transfer should be allowed.

To Simulation Brain & reddell -  You captured my basic premise clearly and succinctly. When confronted with death most persons will copy their mind file to an AI and put it in a body or virtual reality. You will ignore philosophical issues about whether this copy is the real you.

To noggin-scratcher – Yes this will take some getting used to. And your comments about whether the uploading transition happens gradually or quickly is important.  I think you are especially insightful when you say: 

“… as I don’t believe in a soul or an essence or any other kind of magic “me” fluid that needs to be carefully poured between containers… doing a thing gradually ought to be equivalent to doing the same thing in a single step, since it results in the same physical arrangement at the final step. Smearing the transition out makes it difficult to pinpoint any single moment where you cease to be “Meat Me” and start to be “Android Me”, but I think that if replacing your brain with an identical synthetic substitute is problematic when done in one go, it should still be considered problematic when done piecemeal.”

I’d have to think about this more but off the top of my head I think I agree.

To Haydork & psiphre  – In the transporter you body is disassembled–annihilated if you will–and then you body is recreated. Is this a copy? Yes, and most people have no problem with this.  However, Larry Krauss,  in his book The Physics of Star Trek, said this almost certainly won’t work

To eudaimondaimon - I don’t think the ship of Theseus is a good analogy. The brain doesn’t have to be replaced piecemeal and the ships never were conscious. Think of it like this. You walk through a machine, your consciousness transferrs to a robotic body, your old body falls down dead emptied of its mind content, and “you” are alive in your new body. That’s not dying in a signficant sense, although its obviously not the same as living forever in your old body. And in principle it could work, as Kurzweil, Moravec, Kaku, Marshall Brain, and others suggest. 

To throweraccount – You see the possibility of living in a virtual reality. Remember the last line of the original Star Trek television pilot? The keeper says to Captain Kirk: “Captain Pike has an illusion, and you have reality. May you find your way as pleasant.” Let none of us forget how much better a virtual reality could be.

To andero – Another Star Trek fan. You worry about the copy not having the experience of dying. It wouldn’t have to have this experience if it doesn’t die but is transferred.

To Moarbrains -  You are right there may be better things to invest in, but I disagree that you can know beforehand if the attempt is useless. Who knows what we might become?

To filterspam – We do have reason to think that cryonics will work. If nanotechnology fulfills its promise, cryonics might very well work.

To vernes1978  - I like your idea that better to have some chance than no chance of immortality. And you are correct that some people will never be satisfied with their copy. I also think you make an excellent point about the richness of our experiences. They may be rich compared to non-human animal experience, but they may pale in comparison to the experiences of intelligent aliens or post humans.

To craigiest - If you can copy your mind file that will be good enough for most people. If it isn’t, you can still die and hope your soul is transferred to heaven.

To nukefudge –  You are correct, first we must overcome the technical problems and they are no doubt enormous.

Thanks again to all who contributed and from whom I learned so much. But keep the image in your mind. Assume you are old and want to live forever. You can die and hope or you can use technology and transfer or copy your mind file to another substrate. If you decide to do the latter, I doubt philosophical concerns copies versus transfers will deter you. That’s all I’m saying.

Most Will Upload Their Minds If They Can

Professor Susan Schneider has written a timely and important piece in today’s New York Times: The Philosophy of ‘Her.’ I do give her credit for recognizing that uploading should be pursued, and for writing a timely piece about an increasingly important topic. However I find her distinction between whether uploading is a copy or a transfer of consciousness to be trivial.

The primary reason is that when persons consider uploading, if and when its available, they won’t worry about whether they are copying or transferring their consciousness. Whether they can upload into a genetically engineered body, a robotic body or to a virtual reality, most will gladly do so rather than die.

Now the author is right to note there is a difference depending on whether or not the original survives. If the original “you” survives, then there are as many “yous” as there are copies, assuming the copies are perfect. If our consciousness were perfectly copied into 100 robotic or virtual bodies then there are 100 copies of you (plus the original) and each becomes different based on whatever experiences they have from that point forward. Each, including the so-called original, would continue to change going forward, in the same way that you change every moment based on your life experience. The problem of personal identity–how and if we remain identical over time–is one of the great philosophical problems, but it exists independently of uploading technology. That is there is always a problem of explaining how “you” persist through time. In a sense you are not the same you who lived yesterday, and you are  certainly not identical with your 10 year old self.

Of course there is no particular reason other than vanity that you would want 100 copies of yourself. But this issue is much more important than whether we call what happens a transfer or copy. Ideally it would probably be better not to make multiple copies, which is really just multiplying people.

If the original “you”" is destroyed in the uploading process then we have transferred our consciousness into however many bodies we choose to transfer it into, although again there is no imperative to upload into multiple bodies. But there is no important distinction between being copied or transferred, the point is merely semantic. If you want to hold on to essentialism–the idea that humans have an essence–then you could say you didn’t transfer yourself but only copied it. But if you reject an essentialist soul theory of personal identity, then copying yourself will be good enough, especially if you have no other options. Note too the same problem arises for the religious believer who dies and wakes up in heaven. Is the body that wakes up just a copy, or has your soul been transferred to heaven? Note that no one worries that what will wake up in heaven is just a copy–they just want to wake up!

Now suppose you are facing death with a decrepit body. A new technology promises to upload your memories, experiences and all your other psychological characteristics to a robotic body, an AI or a virtual reality.  Suppose further that the technology has been well-tested and many of your friends tell you of the wonders of their uploaded minds which exist in robotic bodies or virtual realities. Should you follow them? You may decide you don’t trust the technology, or you may decide to die and hope that Jesus or Mohammed will save you. But if you opt for the high-tech solution, philosophical concerns about whether this new you is a copy or a transfer will not stop you from uploading. Not if you want to live forever.

 

 

Can I Help Others Know the Meaning of Life?

One of my best students was looking for help with the big questions of life. As this is the last class I will probably ever teach–I am giving up college teaching after nearly 30 years to write full-time–I thought I might try to briefly answer.

We Are All Beggars When It Comes to Truth

William James taught me long ago that no one should claim intellectual superiority regarding questions about the mystery of existence. As James put it: “All of us are beggars here.” I like the humility of that statement, although I always thought it should be amended slightly to: All of us are beggars here, but some beg a bit better than others. In other words, while none of us know the answers to the big questions, some probably do know a bit more than others.

Truth is Ineffable

Unsurprisingly the more knowledgeable often aren’t the most vocal. Perhaps that’s because of their awareness of the complexity of reality and the humility that awareness engenders. Or perhaps that’s because truth, whatever it is, is ineffable. This is the basic idea of the first lines of the Tao Te Ching, in one of its many translations:

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao

The name that can be named is not the eternal name…

Arrogance about Truth

Another curious thing is those who pretend to own the truth and speak confidently about it seem the least likely to actually possess it. This is probably due to vanity, hubris, or insecurity. (Think TV evangelist, cable news host, or loud politician.) Bertrand Russell thought this attitude consequential:  ”The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”

You Must Find Truth for Yourself

If we are beggars when it comes to the biggest questions, because deep truths are ineffable or incomprehensible, then what do we do when asked about them? We could pretend to have answers like the priests, politicians, imams, and assorted gurus. Or we could reply humbly as did the Buddha on his deathbed when his students sought guidance: ”Therefore … be a lamp unto yourself, be a refuge to yourself.”

This is a most beautiful answer, as the only real answers to existential questions are the ones we find for ourselves. All others are hand-me-down or second-hand answers. Comrades may help us, but in the end we must find our own reasons to the mystery of being. This echoes what Walt Whitman taught me more than 40 years ago in some of the most moving lines in American literature:

I tramp a perpetual journey—(come listen all!)

My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods;

No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair;

I have no chair, no church, no philosophy;

I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, or exchange;

But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,

My left hand hooking you round the waist,

My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents, and a plain public road.

Not I—not any one else, can travel that road for you,

You must travel it for yourself.

It is not far—it is within reach;

Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know;

Perhaps it is every where on water and on land.

Shoulder your duds, dear son, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth,

Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.

If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip,

And in due time you shall repay the same service to me;

For after we start, we never lie by again.

This day before dawn I ascended a hill, and look’d at the crowded heaven,

And I said to my Spirit, When we become the enfolders of those orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them, shall we be fill’d and satisfied then?

And my Spirit said, No, we but level that life, to pass and continue beyond.

You are also asking me questions, and I hear you;

I answer that I cannot answer—you must find out for yourself.

Sit a while, dear son;

Here are biscuits to eat, and here is milk to drink;

But as soon as you sleep, and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I kiss you with a good-bye kiss, and open the gate for your egress hence.

Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams;

Now I wash the gum from your eyes;

You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light, and of every moment of your life.

Long have you timidly waded, holding a plank by the shore;

Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,

To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.

Stanza 46 from “Song of Myself.”

The Meaning and Purpose of Life

The Question and Possible Answers

The question of the meaning of life is the most fundamental question of human existence. It asks “what is the meaning, significance, point, or purpose of an individual life in the context of all that was, is, or could be?” Answers to this huge question come in many varieties: supernaturalists argue that meaning derives from a god or gods; skeptics doubt that an answer to the question exists, or that we could know the answer even if it did exist; nihilists claim that life has no meaning; while naturalists claim either that we create our own meaning (if they’re subjectivists), or that we find meaning in the good things in the world (if they’re objectivists). Yet none of these answers is entirely satisfactory.

Religious Answers

Religious (supernaturalist) answers are the most popular, but they depend on problematic philosophical assumptions about the nature and existence of a supernatural realm. Yet religious claims may simply be false. Only about 15% of professional philosophers and 7% of the National Academy of Sciences members are theists.1 2 The burden of proof clearly lies with those making such extraordinary claims about an unseen supernatural realm.

Moreover, even if religious claims are true, it is not clear how gods grounds meaning. For instance, if you are told that you are a part of a god’s plan you might reasonably ask, how does being a part of a god’s plan give my life meaning? Being a part of your parent’s or your country’s plan does not necessarily do so. Or if you are told that the gods just radiate meaning, you might reasonably ask, how do they do that? If you cannot be the source of your own meaning, how can something else be? Or if you are told that the gods’ love gives your life meaning, you might reasonably wonder why the love of people around you cannot do that. Or if you are told that life is meaningful because you will live forever with the gods after death, you might reasonably wonder how eternity makes life meaningful. You might also question why you would want to live forever with beings apparently responsible for so much evil. Thus even if there are gods life may still be meaningless.

Philosophical Answers

Turning to philosophical replies to our question, we cannot straightforwardly accept skepticism, since we are forced by constraints of consistency to be skeptical of skepticism. As for nihilism, it haunts us, and no amount of philosophizing is palliative in its wake. Yet we reject it too, for why accept such a depressing conclusion when we cannot be any more sure of its truth than of the truth of Pollyannaish religious assertions? Subjectivism provides a more promising philosophical response—we create limited meaning without accepting religious, agnostic, or nihilistic provisos. The main problem here is the meaning created does not seem to be enough; we want more than just subjective meaning, and the task of creating our own meaning is enormous. This leads us to consider objective values and meanings found in the natural world—the good things of life like knowledge, love, work, friendship, and beauty. In the meeting of subjective desires and objectively good things, we may have found the most meaning available to us in this life. For now we derive the limited meaning life offers by attraction to, and engagement in, the really good things of life.

Death

Yet this is not enough—because we die. Lives can be meaningful without the proviso of immortality, but they cannot be completely or fully meaningful if they are finite. And the reason is that completely meaningful lives must contain both an infinite quality and infinite quantity of meaning. Both are necessary though not sufficient conditions for meaning.

It is true that longer lives do not guarantee meaningful ones, but all other things being equal, longer lives contain the possibility of more meaning than shorter ones.  An infinite life can be meaningless, but a life of no duration, a non-existent life, is by definition meaningless. A happy, well-lived finite life of twenty years may contain a lot of meaning, but an identically well-lived life would be more meaningful if it were longer–it would contain more total meaning. Thus the possibility of more meaning increases proportionately with the length of a lifetime. Death is bad for many reasons (see”Is Death Bad?” Feb. 16, 2014) but it is bad mostly because death renders completely meaningful lives impossible. 

(This section was updated in response to the perceptive comments of Austin Stiller. A more detailed argument in support of the claims in this paragraph is in Chapter 8 of my book: The Meaning of Life: Religious, Philosophical, Scientific and Transhumanist Perspectives.)

Science and Technology

Fortunately science and technology may provide our salvation. Science might overcome death in the near future through some combination of nanotechnology, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and robotics. But even this is not enough, for immortality is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for full meaning; full meaning requires infinite qualitative goodness and joy as well as an infinite quantity of time. Yet science and technology potentially solve this problem too. If science overcomes death, why can’t it infinitely enlarged consciousness as well? With oceans of time for future innovation, it is plausible to think that science and technology could make fully meaningful lives possible; they could make heaven on earth a reality. Still we have no guarantees. We don’t know if science and technology will bring about a utopia or its opposite, or hasten our destruction. And even if a glorious future awaits our descendants, we don’t know if we’ll be part of it.

Evolution

Cosmic evolution reveals the emergence of consciousness, beauty, and meaning, as well as the possibility of their exponential increase, but it does not imply that a more meaningful reality will necessarily unfold or that a state of perfect meaning will inevitably ensue.

Hope

Uncertain that life will ever be completely meaningful, or that we will participate in such meaning even if it does come to pass, we can still hope that our lives are significant, that our descendants will live more meaningful lives than we do, that our science and technology will save us, and that life will culminate in, or at least approach, complete meaning. These hopes help us to brave the struggle of life, keeping alive the possibility that we will create a better and more meaningful reality. Hope is useful.

The Purpose of Life

The very possibility of infinitely long, good, and meaningful lives–along with the hope that this possibility can be realized–brings the purpose of our lives into focus. The purpose of life is to diminish and, if possible, ultimately abolish all constraints on our being—intellectual, psychological, physical, and moral—and to remake the external world in ways conducive to the emergence of meaning. This implies embracing our role as protagonists of the cosmic evolutionary epic, working to increase the quantity and quality of knowledge, love, joy, beauty, goodness and meaning in the world, while diminishing their opposites. This is the ultimate purpose of our lives; this is what we should do. In a concrete way this implies being better thinkers, friends, lovers, artists, and parents. It means acting in ways that promote human flourishing, and ultimately the flourishing of all being. Naturally there are disagreements about exactly what this entails, but the way forward should become increasing clear as we achieve higher levels of being and consciousness.

Is Life Meaningful?

Nonetheless knowing the purpose of our lives does not ensure that they are fully meaningful, for we may collectively fail in our mission to give life more meaning; we may not achieve our purpose. And if we do not fulfill our purpose, then life was not fully meaningful. Thus the tentative answer to our question—is life ultimately meaningful—is that we know how life could be ultimately meaningful, but we do not know if it is or will be ultimately meaningful. Life can be judged fully meaningful from an eternal perspective only if we fulfill our purpose by making it better and more meaningful. Meaning then, like the consciousness and freedom from which it derives, is an emergent property of cosmic evolution; and we find our purpose by playing our small part in aiding its emergence. If we are successful our efforts will culminate in the overcoming of all human limitations, and our (post-human) descendants will live fully meaningful lives. If we do achieve our purpose in the far distant future, if a fully meaningful reality comes to fruition, and if somehow we are a part of that meaningful reality, then we could say that our life and all life was, and is, deeply meaningful.

Hope Revisited

For now, forced to live with uncertainty about the future, we should have hope that life can be made ever more meaningful. Hope provides the impetus for our efforts, and makes the continued emergence of meaning possible. Our hope is no small thing.

But is hope justified? Can we live without it? Is it enough? Is it justified emotionally but not intellectually? Is a pragmatic justification of it sufficient? Or is hope the last temptation as Kazantzakis thought? We will turn to such questions in our next post.

1. http://www.openculture.com/2013/06/wh...

2. http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/sci_rel...

 

 

 

 

Should We Believe in Progressive Cosmic Evolution?

We now ask whether we should believe grand cosmic visions like those of Teilhard, Huxley or Wilson. Should we believe that cosmic evolution is moving in a progressive direction? Should we believe in orthogenesis? Probably not. For when we look to the past we see that evolution has produced meaning, but it has also produced pain, fear, genocide, extinction, war, loneliness, anguish, envy, slavery, despair, futility, guilt, anxiety, depression, alienation, ignorance, torture, inequality, superstition, poverty, heartache, death, and meaninglessness. Surely serious reflection on this misery is sobering. Turning to the future our optimism must be similarly restrained. Fantasies about where evolution is headed should be tempered, if for no other reason than that our increased powers can be used for evil as well as for good. Our wishes may never be fulfilled.

Moreover, it is not merely that we cannot know if our splendid speculations are true—which we cannot—it is that we have a strong reason to reject our flights of fancy. And that is that humans are notorious pattern-seekers, story-tellers, and meaning-makers who invariably weave narratives around these patterns and stories to give meaning to their lives. The patterns of progress we glimpse likely exist only in our minds! There is no face of a man on Mars or of Jesus on grilled cheese sandwiches. Finding patterns of progress in evolution, we may be victims of simple confirmation bias.

After all progress is hardly the whole story of evolution. Most species and cultures have gone extinct, a fate that may soon befall us. Furthermore, since this immense universe (or multiverse) is largely incomprehensible to us, we should hesitate to substitute an evolutionary-like religion for our frustrated metaphysical longings. We should be more reticent in advancing cosmic visions, and less credulous about believing in them. Humility should temper our grandiose metaphysical speculations. In short, if reflection on a scientific theory supposedly reveals that our deepest wishes are true, our skeptical alarm bell should go off. If our searching easily finds precisely what we are looking for, we are likely moved by our wishes, not the implications of our science. We need to be braver than that, for we want to know, not just to believe. In our job as serious seekers of the truth, the credulous need not apply.

In the end cosmic and biological evolution—and later the emergence of intelligence, science, and technology—leave us awestruck. The arrival of intelligence and the meaning it creates is important, an idea echoed by the physicist Paul Davies: “the existence of mind in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here.”[i] Similar ideas reverberate in the work of the Cambridge evolutionary palaeobiologist and evangelical Christian, Simon Conway Morris. Morris argues that if intelligence had not developed in humans, it would have done so in another species—in other words, the emergence of intelligence on our planet was inevitable. [ii]

We agree with both Davies and Morris that mind and its attendant phenomena inspire awe, but it does not follow that we are therefore meant to be here or that intelligence was inevitable. It is only because we value our life and intelligence that we succumb to such anthropocentrism. Homo sapiens might easily have never been, as countless events could have led to their downfall. This fact alone should give us pause when we imbue our existence with undue significance. We were not inevitable, we were not meant to be here—we are serendipitous. The trillions and trillions of evolutionary machinations that led to us might easily have led to different results—and ones that didn’t include us. As for the inevitability of intelligence, are we really to suppose that dinosaurs, had they not been felled by an asteroid, were on their way to human-like intelligence? Of course not, and such a view strains credulity. Dinosaurs were around for millions of years without developing greater intelligence. We want to believe evolution had us and our minds as it goal or central concern—but it did not—and we were not meant to be. We should forgo our penchant for detecting patters and accept our radical contingency. Like the dinosaurs, we too could be felled by an asteroid.[iii]

Thus we cannot confidently answer all of the questions. We can say that there has been some progress in evolution and that meaning has emerged in the process, but we cannot say these trends will continue or that they were good. And we certainly must guard against speculative metaphysical fantasies, inasmuch as there are good reasons to think we are not special. We do not know that a fully meaningful eschatology will gradually unfold as we evolve, much less that we could articulate a cosmic vision to describe it. We don’t even know if a truly meaningful reality is possible. We are moving, but we might be moving toward our own extinction, toward universal death, or toward eternal hell. And none of those offer much comfort.

We long to dream but always our skepticism awakens us from our Pollyannaish imaginings. The evolution of the cosmos, our species, and our intelligence gives us some grounds for believing that life might become more meaningful, but not enough to satisfy our longings. For we want to really believe that tomorrow will be better than yesterday and today. We want to believe with Kurzweil and Moravec, with Teilhard and Huxley, that a glorious future awaits but, detached from our romanticism, we know that the Monod may be right—there may be no salvation, there may be nothing over the rainbow, there may be no comfort to be found for our harassed souls.

Confronted with such meager prospects and the anguish that accompanies them, we are lost, and the most we can do, once again, is hope. That doesn’t give us what we want or need, but it does give us something we don’t have to be ashamed of. There is nothing irrational about the kind of hope that is elicited by, and best expressed from, an evolutionary perspective. Julian Huxley, scientist and poet, best conveyed these hopes.

I turn the handle and the story starts:

Reel after reel is all astronomy,

Till life, enkindled in a niche of sky,

Leaps on the stage to play a million parts.

Life leaves the slime and through the oceans darts;

She conquers earth, and raises wings to fly;

Then spirit blooms, and learns how not to die,

Nesting beyond the grave in others’ hearts.

I turn the handle; other men like me

Have made the film; and now I sit and look

In quiet, privileged like Divinity

To read the roaring world as in a book.

If this thy past, where shall thy future climb,

O Spirit, built of Elements and Time![iv]

[i] Paul Davies, The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 232.

[ii] Simon Conway Morris, Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

[iii] Had the course of the asteroid 2005 YU55 that passed the earth on November 8, 2011 been slightly altered, millions might have died and this book not finished.

[iv] Julian Huxley, ‘Evolution: At the Mind’s Cinema’ (1922), in The Captive Shrew and Other Poems of a Biologist (London: Basil Blackwell, 1932), 55.

 

Chap 10

 

Evolutionary Visions

Now that we have examined grand evolutionary visions in previous posts about Teilhard, Huxley and Wilson we can draw some tentative conclusions.

We affirm that a study of cosmic evolution supports the claim that life has become increasingly meaningful, a claim buttressed primarily by the emergence of beings with conscious purposes and meanings. Where there once was no meaning or purpose—in a universe without mind—there now are meanings and purposes. These meanings have their origin in the matter which coalesced into stars and planets, and which in turn supported organisms that evolved bodies with brains and their attributes—behavior, consciousness, personal identity, freedom, value, and meaning. Meaning has emerged in the evolutionary process. It came into being when complexly organized brains, consisting of constitutive parts and the interactive relationships between those parts, intermingled with physical and then cultural environments. This relationship was reciprocal—brains effected biological and cognitive environments which in turn affected those brains. The result of this interaction between organisms and environments was a reality that became, among other things, infused with meaning.

But will meaning continue to emerge as evolution moves forward? Will progressive evolutionary trends persevere to complete or final meaning, or to approaching meaning as a limit? Will the momentum of cognitive development make such progress nearly inevitable? These are different questions—ones which we cannot answer confidently. We could construct an inductive argument, that the past will resemble the future in this regard, but such an argument is not convincing. For who knows what will happen in the future? The human species might bring about its own ruin tomorrow or go extinct due to some biological, geophysical, or astronomical phenomenon. We cannot bridge the gap between what has happened and what will happen.

And this leads naturally to another question. Is the emergence of meaning a good thing? It is easy enough to say that conscious beings create meaning, but it is altogether different to say that this is a good thing. Before consciousness no one derived meaning from torturing others, but now they sometimes do. Although we can establish the emergence of meaning, we cannot establish that this is good.

Still, we fantasize that our scientific knowledge will improve both the quality and quantity of life. We will make ourselves immortal, build ourselves better brains, and transform our moral natures—making life better and more meaningful, perhaps fully meaningful. We will become pilots worthy of steering evolution to fantastic heights, toward creating a heaven on earth or in simulated realities of our design. If meaning and value continue to emerge we may find meaning by partaking in, and hastening along, that meaningful process. As the result of past meanings and as the conduit for the emergence of future ones, we could be the protagonists of a great epic that ascends higher, as Huxley and Teilhard had hoped.

In our imagination we exist as links in a golden chain leading onward and upward toward greater levels of being, consciousness, joy, beauty, goodness, and meaning—perhaps even to their apex. As part of such a glorious process we would find meaning instilled into our lives from previously created meaning, and we would reciprocate by emanating meaning back into a universe with which we are ultimately one. Evolutionary thought, extended beyond its normal bounds, is an extraordinarily speculative, quasi-religious metaphysics in which a naturalistic heaven appears on the horizon.

In my next post I will consider whether such optimism is warranted.

E. O. Wilson and the Evolutionary Epic

Edward O. Wilson (1929 – ) is a biologist, theorist, naturalist, and two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author for general non-fiction. He is the father of sociobiology and as of 2007 was the Pellegrino University Research Professor in Entomology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He is also a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism, and one of the world’s most famous living scientists.

In his Pulitzer Prize winning book On Human Nature (1978), Wilson extended sociobiology, the study of the biological basis of human social behavior, into the realms of human sexuality, aggression, morality, and religion. Deploying sociobiology to dissect religious myths and practices, led him to affirm: “The predisposition to religious belief is the most complex and powerful force in the human mind and in all probability an ineradicable part of human nature.”[i]Religion is a universal of social behavior, recognizable in every society in history and prehistory, and skeptical dreams that religion will vanish are futile. Scientific humanists, consisting mostly of scholars and scientists, organize into small groups which try to discredit superstition and fundamentalism but “Their crisply logical salvos, endorsed by whole arrogances of Nobel Laureates, pass like steel-jacketed bullets through fog. The humanists are vastly outnumbered by true believers … Men, it appears, would rather believe than know. They would rather have the void as purpose … than be void of purpose.”[ii]

Other scholars have tried to compartmentalize science and religion—one reads the book of nature, the other the book of scripture. However, with the advance of science, the gods are now to be found below sub-atomic particles or beyond the farthest stars. This situation has led to process theology where the gods emerge alongside molecules, organisms and mind, but, as Wilson points out, this is a long way from ancient religion. Elementary religion sought the supernatural for mundane rewards like long life, land, food, avoiding disasters and conquering enemies; whereas advanced religions make more grandiose promises. This is what we would expect after a Darwinian competition between more advanced religions, with competition between sects for adherents who promotes the religion’s survival. This leads to the notorious hostility between religions where, “The conqueror’s religion becomes a sword, that of the conquered a shield.”[iii]

The clash between science and religion will continue as science dismantles the ancient myths that gave religion its power. Religion can always maintain that gods are the source of the universe or defend esoteric arguments, but Wilson doubts the strategy will ultimately succeed, due to the power of science.

It [science] presents the human mind with an alternative mythology that until now has always, point for point in zones of conflict, defeated traditional religion … the final decisive edge enjoyed by scientific naturalism will come from its capacity to explain traditional religion, its chief competitor, as a wholly material phenomenon. Theology is not likely to survive as an independent intellectual discipline.[iv]

Still, religion will endure because it possesses a primal power that science lacks. Science may explain religion, but it has no apparent place for the immortality and objective meaning that people crave and religion claims to provide. To fully address this situation, humanity needs a way to divert the power and appeal of religion belief into the service of scientific rationality.

However, this new naturalism leads to a series of dilemmas. The first is that our species has no “purpose beyond the imperatives created by its genetic history.”[v]In other words, we have no pre-arranged destiny.This suggests the difficulty human society will have in organizing its energy toward goals without new myths and new moralities. This leads to a second dilemma “which is the choice that must be made among the ethical premises inherent in man’s biological nature.”[vi]Ethical tendencies are hard-wired, so how do we choose between them? A possible resolution to the dilemmas combines the powerful appeal of religion and mythology with scientific knowledge. One reason to do this is that science provides a firmer base for our mythological desires because of:

Its repeated triumphs in explaining and controlling the physical world; its self-correcting nature open to all competent to devise and conduct tests; its readiness to examine all subjects sacred and profane; and now the possibility of explaining traditional religion by the mechanistic models of evolutionary biology.[vii]

When the latter has been achieved religion will be explained as a product of evolution, and its power as an external source of morality will wane. This will leave us with the evolutionary epic, and an understanding that life, mind and universe are all obedient to the same physical laws. “What I am suggesting … is that the evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have.”[viii]  (Myth here means grand narrative.) None of this implies that religion will be fully eradicated, for rationality and progressive evolutionism hold little affection for most, and the tendency for religious belief is hard-wired into the brain by evolution. Still, the pull of knowledge is strong—technologically skilled people and societies have tremendous advantages and they tend to win out in the struggle for existence.

Our burgeoning knowledge of human nature will lead in time to a third dilemma: should we change our nature? Wilson leaves the question open, counseling us to remain hopeful.

The true Promethean spirit of science means to liberate man by giving him knowledge and some measure of dominion over the physical environment. But at another level, and in a new age, it also constructs the mythology of scientific materialism, guided by the corrective devices of the scientific method, addressed with precise and deliberately affective appeal to the deepest needs of human nature, and kept strong by the blind hopes that the journey on which we are now embarked will be farther and better than the one just completed.[ix]

[i] Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979) 169.

[ii] Wilson, On Human Nature, 170-71.

[iii] Wilson, On Human Nature, 175.

[iv] Wilson, On Human Nature, 192.

[v] Wilson, On Human Nature, 2.

[vi] Wilson, On Human Nature 4-5.

[vii] Wilson, On Human Nature, 201.

[viii] Wilson, On Human Nature, 201.

[ix] Wilson, On Human Nature, 209.