John G. Messerly's Blog, page 28

Mind Uploading

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Many thinkers believe that we will eventually be able to preserve our consciousness indefinitely. There are a number of scenarios by which this might be accomplished but so-called mind uploading is one of the most prominent. 

Mind uploading refers to a hypothetical process of copying the contents of consciousness from a brain to a computational device. This could be done by copying and transferring the entire contents into a computer or by piecemeal replacement with parts of the brain gradually replaced by hardware. Either way, consciousness would no longer be running on a biological brain.

I am in no position to judge the feasibility of mind uploading; experts have both praised and pilloried its viability. Nor can I judge what it would be like to live in a virtual reality—I don’t even know what it’s like to be another person. In fact, we don’t exactly know exactly;u how the brain gives rise to subjective experiences, so we certainly don’t know what it would be like to exist as a simulated mind inside a virtual reality or a robotic body. 

But does it make sense to think a mind program could run on something other than a brain? Isn’t our subjective consciousness rooted in the biological brain? Yes, for now, our mental software runs on the brain’s hardware. But there is no necessary reason that this must be the case. If I told you a hundred years ago that some integrated silicon circuits will soon play chess better than grandmasters, model future climate change, recognize faces and voices, solve famous mathematical problems, and write poetry, you would be astonished. Today you might reply, “but computers still can’t feel emotions or taste a strawberry.” And you are right they can’t—for now. But what about a thousand years from now? What about ten thousand or a million years from now? Do you really think that in a million years the best minds will run on carbon-based brains?

If you still find it astounding that minds could run on silicon chips, consider how remarkable it is that our minds run on meat! Imagine beings from another planet with cybernetic brains discovering that humans have meat brains. These aliens have encountered many sentient beings in their travels but never ones like us. That we are conscious and communicate by means of such brains would amaze them. They might find this as implausible as we do the idea that minds could run on silicon or some other substrate. 

To understand how mental software could run on non-biological hardware, think of mental states not in terms of their physical implementation but in terms of their functions. For instance, one of the functions of the pancreas is to produce insulin which maintains the balance of sugar and salt in the body. It is easy to see that something else could perform this function, say a mechanical pancreas. Now consider an hourglass or an atomic clock. The function of both is to keep time yet they do this quite differently.

Analogously, if mental states are identified by their functional role then they too could be realized on other substrates, as long as the system performs the appropriate functions. Once you have jettisoned the idea that your mind is a ghostly soul or some other mysterious, impenetrable, non-physical substance, it is relatively easy to see that your mind program could run on something besides a biological brain. Now there’s no way for us to know what it would be like to exist without a brain and body, but there’s no convincing reason to think that one couldn’t have subjective experiences without physicality. Perhaps our experiences would be even richer without a brain and body.

We have so far ignored important philosophical questions about whether a consciousness transferred to a computer is you or just a copy of you. However, I doubt that such existential worries will stop people from using technology to preserve their consciousness when oblivion is the alternative. We are changing every moment and few worry that we are only a copy of ourselves from ten years ago. We wake up every day as a copy of what we were yesterday and few fret about that.

We might also ask what one does inside a simulated reality for an indefinitely long time. The Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano agrees that the question is not whether we will be able to upload our consciousness into a computer—he says we will—but what we will do afterward. He suggests we may get bored. 

I suppose that some may get bored with being conscious for eons of time and prefer annihilation instead. Some would get bored with the heaven they supposedly desire. Some are bored now. So who wants to extend their consciousness so that they can love better and know more? Who wants to live long enough to have experiences that surpass our current ones in unimaginable ways? The answer is … many of us do. Some of us aren’t bored easily. And if we get bored we should make sure that we can always delete the program.

The Myth of Closure

[image error]A friend alerted me to a new book, The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change. Its author, Dr. Pauline Boss, is an emeritus professor at the University of Minnesota, a family therapist and researcher best known for her work on “ambiguous loss,” i.e., unresolved physical or emotional losses. The 87-year-old Boss, who has lived through many upheavals including World War II, says “When the pandemic subsides, things will not go back to ‘normal’.”

Let me be upfront. I haven’t read the entire book only a few summaries of it. Given that caveat, here are a few of her ideas that I gleaned from my reading.

When confronting loss, adversity, or stress the key is resilience which allows us to adapt and maintain one’s equilibrium. For example, during a pandemic, you might cope well by baking bread, doing jigsaw puzzles, listening to music, or reading books. However, if you can’t or don’t adapt you might claim the virus and pandemic are hoaxes. (For most people, the pandemic hasn’t created a great loss such as losing a spouse or family member. Still, we lost other things—activities, events, face-to-face contact, etc.)

To begin to explain how to increase your resilience and overcome adversity she quotes        Viktor Frankl,  who wrote “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are      challenged to change ourselves.” How do we do that? In response, Boss recommends a few guidelines.

Find meaning. Try to find meaning in loss and if that fails, act. For instance, when Dr. Boss’s brother died from polio, she and her family collected for the March of Dimes which raised money to fund research for a vaccine. (How the world has benefitted from vaccines.)

Adjust your sense of mastery. We can’t completely control the pain of loss, or even the virus itself. Instead, focus on what you can influence and change yourself.

Rebuild identity. Adopt a new identity consistent with your circumstances. If you can’t go out, become an inside music or literature lover. If your spouse becomes ill, adopt the
identity of a caregiver.

Normalize ambivalence. Unclear about your loss, accept ambivalence. Don’t wait for
perfect clarity before you act.

Revise attachment. Don’t sever your connections with those you can no longer see, keep them present in your heart. But build a new life with new friends and projects too.

Discover new hope. “What we need to hope for is not to go back to what we had, but to see what we can create now and in the future.” “Hope for something new and purposeful that will sustain you and give you joy for the rest of your life.”1

Now I’d like to turn her salient idea—the myth of closure. I think she’s right about this. In fact, I find it to be a truism, although evidently, it’s not so obvious to others. People want closure. Here’s my “off the top of my head take” on this. We seem almost wired to want a beginning and end, like in books, movies, or on tv. There’s some problem—a murder
mystery, will boy meet girl, etc.— and we want it resolved.

But we are deceiving ourselves. Crimes often go unresolved or, if supposedly resolved, the wrong person is convicted. Most criminal defendants never go trial as 95%  of cases are plea-bargained contrary to the courtroom dramas we watch. Or, once boy meets girl,
everything is fine, happily ever after as they say. But in reality, the hard part isn’t finding a partner but living with them afterward! Life isn’t like the movies as they say. In real life, things don’t tidily line up with a beginning, middle, and end. Lives may have terrible
beginnings, no middle, or come to a sudden end.  Or the end may come on gradually over a period of many years due to illness or dementia; resulting in an ambiguous loss. Real-life is an ever-changing challenge of your adaptation skills.

Perhaps I can relate this to my long career as a philosophy professor. I was often
approached by students who wanted closure in order to deal with cognitive ambiguity. They would be frustrated by my “here are the arguments for abortion, euthanasia, genetic engineering, etc., and here are the argument against” approach. They wanted an answer.  A  few even thought that if the answer wasn’t in the back of the book then all the talk was pointless. They just couldn’t tolerate ambiguity. They wanted closure.

Now if you don’t like ambiguity and want intellectual closure then you probably won’t like philosophy. Now I’m wired differently. I’m obsessive-compulsive about nuances and shades of grey regarding philosophical issues. I accepted long ago that I’d have to live not being sure of many things, and that the challenge of life is to live and die in a world that we do not fully understand. But then again we’re all different and I don’t expect others to be like me.

To reiterate, these are just my “at first glance” thoughts. But as I think about it I wonder if the desire for closure isn’t almost identical to the desire for meaning. If I close the
discussion with “Jesus is the answer” or “The Koran is the truth” then I can hold on to the meaning this gives me. I can put an end to all the ambiguity. I do understand the appeal of this, and that others don’t want to live with all the philosophical uncertainty.

But I can’t deny who I am. I try to be open to new ideas and adjust my thoughts
accordingly. Emerson best expressed my thoughts about all this in a passage that I first read as a teenager,
 

[Life] offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please,—you can never have both. Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets,—most likely his father’s. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth. He in whom the love of truth predominates will keep himself aloof from all moorings, and afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize all the opposite negations, between which, as walls, his being is swung. He submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion, but he is a candidate for truth, as the other is not, and respects the highest law of his being.2

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1 Material above this footnote relies heavily on “How to Build Resilience in Hard Times.”
2Ralph Waldo Emerson. Essays: First Series (Originally published 1841.)

I would like to thank my friend and Dr. Boss for introducing me to this material.

Euthanasia

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I believe that it should be up to individuals to determine when and how they die. For instance, if I am diagnosed with dementia, I would rather die (almost immediately) than subject my family and myself to that fate. When one’s consciousness has been severely compromised and will become increasingly impaired, life has lost its meaning. 

Ideally, science and technology will defeat death and suffering, but in the meantime, I hope others respect my autonomy and allow me to die when I deem life no longer worth living—assuming this doesn’t put them in legal jeopardy. If I can no longer voice my preferences, I want my family to respect the wishes set out in my advanced directives for healthcare. Yes, death is a tragedy, one of the worst ones that can befall us, but there are fates worse than death. 

On the contrary, some philosophers argue that death can never be a good thing for a person, that all lives are worth living, that there is no right to die, or that we are never “better off dead.” 

However, I and many others disagree. We applaud the advanced directives for health care, sign our living wills, and ask our spouses, friends, sons, or daughters to act as our surrogates when we can’t speak for ourselves. We choose to forgo the remainder of lives deprived of those things that make life valuable—the ability to love, think, touch, reflect, and remember—for the uncertainty of death. We prefer not to debase human life or glorify suffering but to exercise human autonomy.

So for those who believe there is meaning in the most excruciating forms of physical pain and dementia, who believe that we are never “better off dead”—let them be free to suffer or carry on if they so choose. But for those of us who believe that, at least sometimes, we are “worse off alive”—let others respect our autonomy as well.1

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1There is no tension between my views here and my transhumanism. I want the option to live indefinitely but also the option to end my life if I find it no longer worth living. 

Philosophical Meditation

“Philosopher in Meditation” Rembrandt, 1632, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

It is hard to control our minds. Obsessive, unclear, unwanted, and destructive thoughts continually invade our minds causing fear, anxiety, indecision, anger, and depression. Sometimes we seem powerless to prevent this invasion.

In response, the practice of meditation has become increasingly popular in the West as a way of dealing with this problem. These practices, which have their origins in Buddhism, take many forms, but generally refer to the attempt to get beyond the thinking, discursive or logical mind into a more attentive, aware, and relaxed state.1, 2 By sitting quietly we can learn to empty our minds of its confusing, anxiety, anger, and depressive-inducing content, leaving behind a serene state of mind. Many people have found this practice successful, and scientific research supports its causal efficacy. 3

But there is another path to peace of mind that derives from the Western philosophical tradition—what we might call philosophical meditation. The goal of philosophical meditation is also to minimize the troubling effects of unwanted thoughts and to bring inner peace, but the method is not so much an emptying or ridding the mind of its negative content as much as clarifying and understanding the mind.

To do this the School of Life has proposed instructions for philosophical meditation, just as there are instructions for Buddhist Meditation.  The basic idea is to set aside some time each day to write about our troubles, anxieties, regrets, fears, desires, etc. The idea is to then intellectually reflect on these things in order to understand them and thereby remove much of the anxiety that accompanies them. This process of sorting out the mind can be comforting in itself. Furthermore, it keeps us from making mistakes. For example, we might be excited by something that upon reflection we can’t achieve; or we might be anxious about something that really doesn’t matter much. Countless psychic pain results from not analyzing and organizing the contents of our minds. 

This isn’t to say that clarifying the content of our minds is necessarily better than emptying the mind of turbulent thoughts; this isn’t to say the Western approach is better than the Eastern approach. It is to say that sometimes our problem is one of too little thinking rather than too much thinking. Sometimes we have not thought deeply enough about the causes of agitated minds.  These thoughts swirling in our minds are not useless clutter but deserve to be examined in the hope that clarity of mind may bring peace of mind.

( If I had to choose a group of Western philosophers to emulate in this regard it would be the Stoics. I have written about them many times on this blog.)

Notes

“[M]editation refers to a family of self-regulation practices that focus on training attention and awareness in order to bring mental processes under greater voluntary control and thereby foster general mental well-being and development and/or specific capacities such as calm, clarity, and concentration.“ Roger Walsh & Shauna L. Shapiro (2006). “The meeting of meditative disciplines and western psychology: A mutually enriching dialogue”. American Psychologist (American Psychological Association) 61 (3): 227–239. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.61.3.227.ISSN 0003-066X. PMID 16594839.“[M]editation is used to describe practices that self-regulate the body and mind, thereby affecting mental events by engaging a specific attentional set…. regulation of attention is the central commonality across the many divergent methods.” B. Rael Cahn & John Polich (2006). “Meditation states and traits: EEG, ERP, and neuroimaging studies”. Psychological Bulletin(American Psychological Association) 132 (2): 180–211.doi:10.1037/0033-2909.132.2.180. ISSN 0033-2909.PMID 16536641 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Researc...

 

 

Carl Sagan & Human Survival

In the final episode of Cosmos (Who Speaks for Earth?) Carl Sagan wonders whether our species will survive. (Cosmos had a tremendous influence on me when I first saw it about 40 years ago.) Here are the opening lines,

In our tenure on this planet we’ve accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage: Propensities for aggression and ritual submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders. All of which puts our survival in some doubt. But we’ve also acquired compassion for others, love for our children, a desire to learn from history and experience and a great, soaring, passionate intelligence. The clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity. Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain.

Sagan argues that the problem arises because our vision is too small. We lack a cosmic perspective from which national, ethnic and religious fanaticism would be difficult to maintain. Perhaps such fanaticism has destroyed the civilizations of other worlds, as the Spanish destroyed those of the new world. Perhaps other civilizations have destroyed themselves with their technology, as we will do to our own in the near future. Or perhaps we will poison our air, earth, and water, fall victim to viruses and bacteria, or change our fragile climate so as to bring out our extinction. Then “There would be no more big questions. No more answers. Never again a love or a child. No descendants to remember us and be proud. No more voyages to the stars. No more songs from the Earth.” We would have ceased to listen to our compassion and reason, heeding instead to the reptilian voice of fear, territoriality, and aggression.

From an extraterrestrial perspective, our global civilization is clearly on the edge of failure in the most important task it faces: Preserving the lives and well-being of its citizens and the future habitability of the planet …  Shouldn’t we consider … A fundamental restructuring of economic, political, social and religious institutions?

And while change is often labeled impractical, Sagan reminds us that change is possible. We have reduced significantly slavery since ancient times, women have been partially liberated, aggression has been somewhat curtailed, and we have begun to see the earth as an organism in need of our stewardship. We can now see the earth from a cosmic perspective “finite and lonely somehow vulnerable, bearing the entire human species through the oceans of space and time.” We can change, and we have survived. After a 14 billion year cosmic journey carbon has become people, starstuff has been animated, and the cosmos is becoming conscious of itself.

Still, we do not know our place in the vastness of space and time. It will be found only after a long and arduous journey made by sojourners unafraid of the truth when they encounter it. As the video above so movingly concludes.

And we who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos we’ve begun, at last, to wonder about our origins. Starstuff, contemplating the stars, organized collections of 10 billion-billion-billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps, throughout the cosmos. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos, ancient and vast from which we spring.

If only our vision could be as large as Carl Sagan’s.ll tradrks mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

Many Worlds vs. The Multiverse

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Sean Carroll is a cosmologist and physicist specializing in dark energy and general relativity. He is a research professor in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. A post on his blog caught my attention: “Are Many Worlds and the Multiverse the Same Idea?“

When talking about “parallel worlds” Carroll distinguishes between: a)the “multiverse” of inflationary cosmology; b) the “many worlds” or “branches of the wave function” of quantum mechanics; and c) “parallel branes” of string theory.” While branes represent a distinct idea, Carroll thinks that the multiverse and many worlds ideas might capture the same basic idea. Here’s how he explains the differences between those two ideas:

When cosmologists talk about “the multiverse,” it’s a slightly poetic term. We really just mean different regions of spacetime, far away so that we can’t observe them, but nevertheless still part of what one might reasonably want to call “the universe.” In inflationary cosmology, however, these different regions can be relatively self-contained — “pocket universes,” as Alan Guth calls them. When you combine this with string theory, the emergent local laws of physics in the different pocket universes can be very different; they can have different particles, different forces, even different numbers of dimensions. So there is a good reason to think about them as separate universes, even if they’re all part of the same underlying spacetime.

The situation in quantum mechanics is superficially entirely different. Think of Schrödinger’s Cat. Quantum mechanics describes reality in terms of wave functions, which assign numbers (amplitudes) to all the various possibilities of what we can see when we make an observation. The cat is neither alive nor dead; it is in a superposition of alive + dead. At least, until we observe it. In the simplistic Copenhagen interpretation, at the moment of observation the wave function “collapses” onto one actual possibility. We see either an alive cat or a dead cat; the other possibility has simply ceased to exist. In the Many Worlds or Everett interpretation, both possibilities continue to exist, but “we” (the macroscopic observers) are split into two, one that observes a live cat and one that observes a dead one. There are now two of us, both equally real, never to come back into contact.

Now clearly these ideas differ. Most notably, in the multiverse, the other universes are far away whereas, in quantum mechanics, they’re right here in different possibility spaces. (technically different parts of Hilbert space.) Still, some physicists have been wondering about the connection between the two ideas. And, after reading the recent literature, Carroll has “gone from a confused skeptic to a tentative believer.”

Carroll has changed his mind because of two ideas that fit together to make this crazy-sounding proposal plausible—quantum vacuum decay and horizon complementarity. Roughly quantum vacuum decay implies that “at any point in space you are in a quantum superposition of different vacuum states.” But horizon complementarity means that “you can talk about what’s inside your cosmological horizon, but not what’s outside.” Carroll concludes:

The result is: multiverse-in-a-box. Or at least, multiverse-in-an-horizon. On the one hand, complementarity says that we shouldn’t think about what’s outside our observable universe; every question that it is sensible to ask can be answered in terms of what’s happening inside a single horizon. On the other, quantum mechanics says that a complete description of what’s actually inside our observable universe includes an amplitude for being in various possible states. So we’ve replaced the cosmological multiverse, where different states are located in widely separated regions of spacetime, with a localized multiverse, where the different states are all right here, just in different branches of the wave function.

Carroll admits not knowing if any of this is true, although he is “inclined to think that it has a good chance of actually being true.” As for the implications for physics and for us, I’m in the dark. I’m simply don’t know what to do with the idea of a multiverse and parallel universes. Try as I may, our mysterious reality confounds me.

Moritz Schlick on The Meaning of Life

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Moritz Schlick (1882– 1936) was a German philosopher and the founding father of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle. He was shot to death at the University of Vienna by a former student. In 1927 he penned an essay entitled “On the Meaning of Life.”

According to Schlick the innocent or childlike never ask the question of the meaning of life; others, the weary, no longer ask the question because they have concluded that there is none. “In between are ourselves, the seekers.” While some lament that they have not fulfilled the goals of youth and accept that their lives are meaningless, they nevertheless believe that life is meaningful for those who have fulfilled their goals. Others achieve their goals, only to find that this achievement has not provided meaning. So it is hard to see the meaning of life. We set goals and head toward them with hope, but their achievement does not bring meaning. The goals are reached but the desire for new goals follows. There is never satisfaction, and all this longing ends in death. How then to escape all this?

Nietzsche sought to escape this pessimism thru art and then through knowledge, but neither led to meaning. He concluded that if we think of the meaning of life as a purpose, we will never find meaning. If we ask people about their purpose, most persons would say that they are working to maintain life or to stay alive, but pure existence is valueless without content. So we are caught in a circle, working to stay alive, and staying alive to keep working. Work is generally a means to an end, never an end in itself; and though some activities are intrinsically meaningful, like pleasurable ones, they are too fleeting to give life meaning.

In response, Schlick argues that meaning is to be found in activities that are intrinsically valuable—where the means and the ends are united; where the means is the end. He quotes Schiller that play is an activity that carries its own purpose. Only when we have no purpose except to play will there be meaning. Work can be play if it is doing what you want to do; that is, play and creative work may coincide. Creative play is found clearly in the work of the artist or in the search for scientific or philosophical knowledge. Almost any activity can be turned into creative play and Schlick wants work to become artistic; he longs for a world in which individuals engage in meaningful, joyful, playful, work. But would such an idyllic life reduce humans to animal existence, since humans would be living for the moment rather than contemplating eternity as self-conscious beings should? Schlick says we don’t sacrifice by playing; life becomes meaningful if we do what we want to do. The result is joy, which is more than mere pleasure.

We should then be like children who are capable of joy in play (work). This passionate enthusiasm of youth, unconcerned with goals, devoted to the intrinsic nature of the play is true play. But does it seems strange that youth, the preparation for adulthood, is where the meaning of life is found? Not at all, says Schlick. Humans tend to think of every imperfect state as the mere prelude to another state, in the same way, they often think of this life as having completion in another. But the meaning of life, if it is to be found at all, must be found in this world. Meaning may be found in youth or adulthood or old age if one is engaged in creative play. “The more youth is realized in life, the more valuable it is, and if a person dies young, however long he may have lived, his life has had meaning.”

Summary – The meaning of life is found in joyful play, in doing what one really wants to do.

____________________________________________________________________________________ 

Mortiz Schlick, “On the Meaning of Life” in The Meaning of Life, ed. E.D. Klemke and Cahn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 62.
Mortiz Schlick, “On the Meaning of Life,” 71.

Mortiz Schlick on The Meaning of Life

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Mortiz Schlick (1882– 1936) was a German philosopher and the founding father of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle. He was shot to death at the University of Vienna by a former student. In 1927 he penned an essay entitled “On the Meaning of Life.”

According to Schlick the innocent or childlike never ask the question of the meaning of life; others, the weary, no longer ask the question because they have concluded that there is none. “In between are ourselves, the seekers.” While some lament that they have not fulfilled the goals of youth and accept that their lives are meaningless, they nevertheless believe that life is meaningful for those who have fulfilled their goals. Others achieve their goals, only to find that this achievement has not provided meaning. So it is hard to see the meaning of life. We set goals and head toward them with hope, but their achievement does not bring meaning. The goals are reached but the desire for new goals follows. There is never satisfaction, and all this longing ends in death. How then to escape all this?

Nietzsche sought to escape this pessimism thru art and then through knowledge, but neither led to meaning. He concluded that if we think of the meaning of life as a purpose, we will never find meaning. If we ask people about their purpose, most persons would say that they are working to maintain life or to stay alive, but pure existence is valueless without content. So we are caught in a circle, working to stay alive, and staying alive to keep working. Work is generally a means to an end, never an end in itself; and though some activities are intrinsically meaningful, like pleasurable ones, they are too fleeting to give life meaning.

In response, Schlick argues that meaning is to be found in activities that are intrinsically valuable—where the means and the ends are united; where the means is the end. He quotes Schiller that play is an activity that carries its own purpose. Only when we have no purpose except to play will there be meaning. Work can be play if it is doing what you want to do; that is, play and creative work may coincide. Creative play is found clearly in the work of the artist or in the search for scientific or philosophical knowledge. Almost any activity can be turned into creative play and Schlick wants work to become artistic; he longs for a world in which individuals engage in meaningful, joyful, playful, work. But would such an idyllic life reduce humans to animal existence, since humans would be living for the moment rather than contemplating eternity as self-conscious beings should? Schlick says we don’t sacrifice by playing; life becomes meaningful if we do what we want to do. The result is joy, which is more than mere pleasure.

We should then be like children who are capable of joy in play (work). This passionate enthusiasm of youth, unconcerned with goals, devoted to the intrinsic nature of the play is true play. But does it seems strange that youth, the preparation for adulthood, is where the meaning of life is found? Not at all, says Schlick. Humans tend to think of every imperfect state as the mere prelude to another state, in the same way, they often think of this life as having completion in another. But the meaning of life, if it is to be found at all, must be found in this world. Meaning may be found in youth or adulthood or old age if one is engaged in creative play. “The more youth is realized in life, the more valuable it is, and if a person dies young, however long he may have lived, his life has had meaning.”

Summary – The meaning of life is found in joyful play, in doing what one really wants to do.

____________________________________________________________________________________ 

Mortiz Schlick, “On the Meaning of Life” in The Meaning of Life, ed. E.D. Klemke and Cahn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 62.
Mortiz Schlick, “On the Meaning of Life,” 71.

David Hume On Thinking Too Much

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David Hume is one of my intellectual heroes. Let me briefly explain with an amusing anecdote. Years ago I was cornered by a graduate student who wanted to discuss his dissertation—wheat production in post-war Albania. Well, I’m interested in many things but this wasn’t one of them. After a few minutes feigning interest with a frozen smile on my face … I kindly excused myself. I wish this guy had read the following paragraph by Hume,

Man is a reasonable being; and as such, receives from science his proper food and nourishment: But so narrow are the bounds of human understanding, that little satisfaction can be hoped for in this particular, either from the extent of security or his acquisitions. Man is a sociable, no less than a reasonable being: but neither can he always enjoy company agreeable and amusing, or preserve the proper relish for them. Man is also an active being; and from that disposition, as well as from the various necessities of human life, must submit to business and occupation: but the mind requires some relaxation, and cannot always support its bent to care and industry. It seems, then, that nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most suitable to the human race, and secretly admonished them to allow none of these biases to draw too much, so as to incapacitate them for other occupations and entertainments. Indulge your passion for science, says she, but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy which they introduce, by the endless uncertainty in which they involve you, and by the cold reception which your pretended discoveries shall meet with, when communicated. Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.

Hume’s phrase “the cold reception which your pretended discoveries shall meet with, when communicated” always reminds me not to preach to anyone about some intellectual interest of mine. I may find sociobiology and the possibility of ethical naturalism or  Gauthier‘s argument for constrained maximization fascinating but most people do not. So I don’t corner people proclaiming “I have a Ph.D. in philosophy so listen up!” (I write on my blog but my readers aren’t coerced into reading. At least I hope they aren’t!) 

But what do you do if your own “abstruse thought and profound researches” introduce
“pensive melancholy” and “endless uncertainty?” Hume answers with some of the best and most quoted lines in the history of Western philosophy, 

Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have, I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, invironed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.

Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours’ amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.

Thus Hume advocates joy and play. A topic we just discussed in the previous post.

The Importance of Play

[image error]Playfulness by Paul Manship

I love to play. As a kid, I played organized baseball, soccer, basketball, and a lot of sandlot football in the rain, snow, mud, and freezing cold. Those are some of my best memories. To hit, kick, throw, or catch a ball gives me great pleasure to this day and I can’t pass kids or teenagers playing a ballgame without wanting to join in—and I often still do. I always carry a ball with me when I play with my grandchildren. Engaging in joyful play is one of life’s greatest gifts and playing any silly game with my grandchildren gives me that joy.

I mention this so that my readers know that I’m not constantly thinking about the meaning of life. (Assuming you thought that:) Yes, I am passionate about philosophical questions but I don’t believe they should not be the only thing one thinks about. Many people have lived good and happy lives without thinking deeply about philosophy. In fact, one can think too much about deep questions. Socrates said that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” but surely the over-examined life is not worth living either. Life is too short to spend too much of one’s life thinking about life. (The proverb “primum vivere deinde philosophare,” in English reads, “First live, later philosophize.”) 

I believe that joyful play, which includes engaging in art, music, or literature, is essential to a meaningful life. This is a lesson that Will Durant taught me long ago, 

The simplest meaning of life then is joy—the exhilaration of experience itself, of physical well-being; sheer satisfaction of muscle and sense, of palate and ear and eye. If the child is happier than the man it is because it has more body and less soul, and understands that nature comes before philosophy; it asks for no further meaning to its arms and legs than their abounding use … Even if life had no meaning except for its moments of beauty … that would be enough; this plodding thru the rain, or fighting the wind, or tramping the snow under sun, or watching the twilight turn into night, is reason a-plenty for loving life.

…

I note that those who are cooperating parts of a whole do not despond; the despised “yokel” playing ball with his fellows in the lot is happier than these isolated thinkers, who stand aside from the game of life and degenerate through the separation … 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.

Thinking is essential to a meaningful life, but so too is playing. So paint, garden, read, write, make music or play ball and contentment will often follow.