John G. Messerly's Blog, page 4

Cosmic Death and The Meaning of Life

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Thomas Moynihan, a research affiliate at the University of Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, recently penned a thoughtful essay in Aeon magazine, “The bookends of time: Nothing lasts forever: not humanity, not Earth, not the Universe. But finitude confers an indelible meaning to our lives.”

Moynihan argues that our death, the death of the Earth and ultimately the universe should cause us to realize the importance of our actions, for there is no eternity to undo the mistakes we make. Furthermore, if we are the only intelligent species in the universe then everything we do takes on unimaginable significance. (This reminds me of the dilemma posed in the novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.“)

Moynihan concludes his essay,

Up until recently, thinkers took deep time as indication of the present’s triviality. Within such magnitudes, ‘now’ seemingly shrinks to nullity, with its legacies being laundered away in the longer term.

But such a view is wrong. What’s currently unfolding might leave legacies that cannot be taken back, and were not inevitable, but still will be felt aeons hence. Time isn’t just deep; it’s deeply fragile. This dizzying knowledge needs, urgently, to sink in. Either we apply it now, just in time, and secure our future, or there might not be one. We don’t have the luxury of infinite retries.

Some may find it depressing to consider that, inevitably, everything dies. But they are missing one truth: it is only in a mortal world that consequences can resonate indelibly … Selecting one action over any others possible, therefore, leaves an indelible cosmic legacy, regardless of how trifling. Because, though legacies can be reversed, this itself also expends effort, and energy isn’t infinite.

So, though the first lesson is that existence itself is bookended, the second – more profound – lesson is that this makes actions enduring in a newly cosmical sense. It is the dying of the world that secures the immortality of our influence.

While I agree with much of what Moynihan writes I can’t accept his conclusion. Perhaps I don’t fully understand his argument but I just can’t feel in my bones how the final annihilation of the universe adds anything to the meaning of our lives. As I’ve written previously,

… cosmic death seemingly eliminates both the meaning in and of life. The meaning we find in life might have had some small significance while we were living but cosmic death largely if not completely undermines that meaning. As for the meaning of life, it’s impossible to see how there can be one if everything fades into nothingness.

Now we might avoid our cosmic descent into nothingness and its implications if, for example, one of these conjectures is true: the death of our universe brings about the birth of another one; the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is true; other universes exist in a multiverse; or, if all descend into nothingness, a quantum fluctuation brings about something from this nothing. Or maybe nothingness is impossible as Parmenides argued long ago.

Such speculative scenarios lead us back to the idea that something must be eternal for there to be a meaning of life. For if nothingness is our fate—no space, no time, nothing for all eternity—then all seems futile. We may have experienced meaning while we lived, and the cosmos may have been slightly meaningful while it existed, but if everything vanishes for eternity isn’t it all pointless?

On Solitude

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If these times endure, I shall become a hermit,
For I see nothing here but grief and torment;

Evils reign, good folk are held in scorn,
And the wicked seize the seats of government.

Eustache Deschamps (14th century French poet)

Human life may destroy itself. With so many existential risks confronting the species it seems likely that we will self-destruct now that we have sufficient power to do so. At any moment the immoral or the incompetent or the ignorant might launch the nuclear weapons—or enslave, deport, dehumanize, or imprison us. We are mere afterthoughs in the psypathologies of most of the rich and powerful. Our world is, in many ways, a cold, harsh, hostile, and unforgiving place. Follow the news or sleep in the street and this fact will become apparent.

As I said in my last post, it’s hard not to be infected by what’s happening around you—extremism, political dsyfunction, meanness, cruelty, misinformation, bullshit, etc. But how should we respond to all this?

It seems we have to go on living. We should try to appreciate the beauty and goodness that surrounds us (yes, it’s there too) and avoid, reject and not be stained by the stupidity and vice encircling us. This entails retreating somewhat from world, finding peace in solitude. It doesn’t imply moving to a cave, but rather to carving out spots to be alone in perilous times. Even in a city you can be something of an “urban hermit.”

The world has always been a dangerous and perilous place but our ancestors perservered and so can we. But we’ll need a lot of luck.

How To Stay Sane In An Insane World

[image error]Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic Roman emperor.

I watched a fine Youtube video on Stoicism (see below) the other day titled “How To Stay Sane In An Insane World (12 Stoic Practices That Actually Work)” It’s a bit long so I thought I’d summarize its main points.

Intro – It’s hard not to be infected by what’s happening around you—extremism, political dsyfunction, meanness, cruelty, misinformation, nonsense, etc. This has always been the case and the stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius reminded us not to lose our humanity and to remain calm in response.

#1 Hold On To Truth – When people think about propaganda they often think about top-down censorship where the government censurs what you can read and hear. But in the modern world autocrats overwhelm us with disinformation so that you become confused and disoriented about what’s true. In other words, it becomes hard to seperate the signal from the noise. In response you must maintain control of your own mind so as not to be controlled by the noise.

#2 – This Is Your Duty – At a time when the system is falling apart your job is not to let it infect you; don’t let crazy people make you crazy; don’t get sucked in, don’t let it break you. You can’t control the external world but you can control your response to it.

#3 They Are Who They Are – When you encounter bad people remember they probably won’t change no matter what you do or say because that is who they are. You must accept that there will always be selfish, cruel, entitled, aggressive, stupid people. Try not to let such people make you frustrated or mad at the world. Instead, try not to be like them. And don’t waste your time trying to change them.

#4 Focus On What You Control – We have almost no control over the world which causes many people anxiety, fear, and worry. A good day is one where we disregard anxiety and fear. Don’t let it infect you.

#5 Keep An Even Keel – Be stead amidst the chaos. Marcus Aurelius says “To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.”

#6 Turn Off The News (Do This Instead) –  Being an informed citizen is a good thing but you will go crazy if you follow every bit of breaking news. To remain sane turn off all the forces (social media) that are trying to make you insane. Instead read an old book dealing withe timeless themes from which you can learn about yourself and human nature rather than engaging all the fleeting, ephemeral noise scrolling across our screens. Reading substantive books about history, philosophy, biography, or science that deal with timeless themes tells you much more about what’s happening than the latest “news.”

#7 Ask Yourself This Question – Is a world without dishonest or annoying people possible? No. So when your meet someone like that don’t be surprised. And don’t be surprised that you’re stuck in traffic or your plane is delayed or someone doesn’t like you. All these things will happen.

#8 Choose Not To Be Harmed – Bad things will happen. But such things only harm you if they change who you are, if they change your character. Remember, things only harm you if they harm your character.

#9 See The Opportunity – All the jerks we meet in life provide the opportunity to practice virtues such as courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom. In response to such people we can be patient, creative, kind, etc.

#10 Don’t Follow The Mob – It’s demoralizing to live in a world where the worst people are rewarded for being who they are. It makes you wonder it you should be like that. No. The Stoics tell us to maintain our cognitive and ethical virtue because that’s a better way to live.  You wouldn’t actually want to be like those who seek only power and money because that’s a hellish way of life. You might want some of the things they have you wouldn’t want to be them.

#11 Don’t Let It Stop You – Your worry and fears about all the bad things happening or that will happen don’t stop you from acting with courage and wisdom and justice. The world you live in isn’t fair or good or just but it still provides the opportunity for you to act with virtue.

#12 Have Fewer Opinions – You don’t have to have an opinion about everything. You can just try to see the world as objectively as possible. Don’t add opinions or judgments about things. This leads to peace and wisdom and to doing what need to do—our duty.

On Writing This Post – Given that you can watch the video below causes me to wonder why I go through the video and its transcript slowly and then physically type my summary. One reason is habit. For many years as a college professor I would hand out summaries of assigned readings after giving students reading quizzes on the material.

The other reason I have for doing the actual reading and typing is that it helps me absorb the material. The process of actively writing better impacts the old brain than simply passsively watching the video. So doing this is as much for me as for my readers. Naturally one can ask what is the point of trying to really understand the video or the point of learning anything at all. A big question I’ll ignore for now. You learn early on in philosophy that the answer to any why question leads to another why question.

Here’s the full video.

Summary of Sean Carroll’s “Purpose, Freedom, and the Laws of Nature”

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Sean Carroll (1966-) is an American theoretical physicist who specializes in quantum mechanics, cosmology, and the philosophy of science. He is the Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He was formerly a research professor at the Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology department of physics. He also is currently an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

Carroll’s essay “Purpose, Freedom, and the Laws of Nature” appears in Neuroexistentialism: meaning, morals, & purpose in the age of neuroscience, edited by Gregg Caruso and Owen Flanagan. I have found his article to be the best one I’ve ever read about the implications of modern physics for the existential issues of freedom and meaning. Here is a brief summary.

Carroll begins by noting the obvious connection between existentialism—which is primarily concerned with freedom and meaning—and sciences like biology and neuroscience. But Carroll is quick to point out that physics and cosmology are also relevant. For instance, quantum mechanics surely has something to tell us about human behavior and cosmology is important for understanding meaning and purpose. The purpose of the essay, Carroll writes, is to explain how “physics and cosmology have an impact on the foundations of both neuroscience and existentialism.”

1. Patterns and Determinism

Carroll starts by describing the change brought about by classical Newtonian mechanics. First, the idea of conservation of momentum: “every object in a state of uniform motion continue in that state unless acted upon by an external force.” This contrasts with Aristotle’s view that the natural state of things is to be at rest. Therefore while Aristotle’s world is one of causes and teleology (things are goal-oriented), in Newton’s world things just keep moving without any goal. This change in perspective calls into question the idea of purpose in human lives.

Second is the principle of conservation of information: if we knew the position and momentum of every particle and had infinite calculational ability we could predict the future and retrodict the past. The idea that the universe operates like a giant clock erodes belief in cosmic purpose. “If we are physical beings, obeying impersonal laws of nature … it’s not hard to conclude that life itself is purposeless.”

Carroll concludes this section by explaining how chaos theory does not undermine determinism. Chaos theory states that “small deviations between two possible states at one moment in time can develop into large deviations at later times.” Note how this is completely compatible with determinism. Chaos theory reminds us that we don’t have all the information necessary to predict the future, not that the future isn’t predictable in principle.

2. Quantum Mechanics

QM threatens classical determinism; it seems the best we can do when observing at the quantum levels is to predict probabilistically not definitively. Questions immediately arise. Is the universe fundamentally nondeterministic? Does this leave room for human freedom? Does observation imply that consciousness or human agency is of paramount importance?

The question of whether QM “is deterministic or not is up for debate.” Some theories (hidden-variable and many-worlds) maintain that the underlying physics is still deterministic, while others such as “dynamical collapse” disagree. The issue of human freedom remains unaffected. Nothing about QM implies “that human volition brings reality into being by the act of observation.” In fact, “consciousness plays no role in quantume mechanics.” QM is very different from classsical mechanics it doesn’t mcuh change our thinking about human agency and freedom

3. The Arrow Of Time

Time’s arrow refers to “the fact that the past and the future seem like very different things.” Yet none “of these features is inherent in the underlying laws of physics whcih treat the past and future on equal footing.” Carroll’s explanation of this discrpency entails an understanding of abstract physics but, to summarize, the “distinction between past and future arises from special conditions near the beginning of the universe.” The state of the universe has been evolving from a low entropy state at its beginning to one of higher entropy as it evolves.

4. Emergence

So the arrow of time is a true feature of our universe not found in fundamental physics. Levels above the fundamental microscopic level are said to be emergent. The idea is that we hav some system (a person, a box of gas) that can be describe as a bunch of atom at the microscopic level but described in simpler terms at the microscopic level. If we’re talking about weak emergence we refer to our using a macroscopic language about something that, with enough information and processing power, we could just as well describe using the microscopic language. Strong emergence is when “somthing truly new manifests at the macroscopic level, in behavior that cannot even in principle be described by microscopic consituents and fundamental laws.” The problem, states Carroll “is that there is no good evidence it [strong emergence] ever occurs in nature.”

Still weak emergence is enough to invoke different ontological concepts. At one level we may be particles and waves but at another level we can talk of values, consciousness, and decision making. Even are these emergent properties aren’t truly new; they are effectively new.

5. Existential Implications

How then do existential worries about freedom and meaning comport with modern physics and cosmology?  After all, “There is little doubt that modern science has thoroughly undermined any hopes for a higher purpose or meaning inherent in the universe itself.” Moreover, there isn’t anything special about our constituative components. So existentialist generally claim we must accept absurdity and freely choose to make our own meaning while modern science “seems to reaffirm the absurdity while denying the freedom”

Carroll responds that while freedom and meaning have no place in the microscopic world they do have a place in the macroscopic. So the concept of choice is compatible with our macroscopic information about someone. When we say that we are free to the extent that we have “the ability to have acted otherwise” we aren’t referring to the microscopic quantum world where we can predict with a high degree of probabiltiy. There the idea of freedom isn’t useful. However at the macroscopic level then people can act otherwise; they can choose differently. Consider “that it is impossible to talk coherently about human beings without using a vocabulary of actions defined by choices.”

Similarly with purpose and meaning. They aren’t found in the fundamental laws of physics but they are useful in describing the macroscopic world we live in. Particles don’t have meaning, but we can; the universe doesn’t have meaning, but we can create meaning. As Carroll concludes, “What we bring to the world remains up to us.”

 

Virtual Alienation

[image error]Daedalus and Icarus, c. 1645, by Charles Le Brun (1619–1690)
This essay by Katalin Balog first appeared at 3 Quarks Daily. Reprinted with permission.

In the past, when I asked students if they would want to enter the Experience Machine – a fictional contraption thought up by the philosopher Robert Nozick – they would generally say no. In the Experience Machine, one would have virtual experiences: for example, of a life blessed with mountains of pleasure, great love, monumental achievements. But one would lose touch with one’s actual life. My students did not want to leave their actual lives behind. In the last few years, things have changed. Most of them now proclaim their readiness to ditch it all for the virtual pleasures of the Experience Machine.

My students’ recent eagerness for the virtual is a symptom of our culture’s alienation from the world. During my life, I have witnessed the slow but unstoppable advance of commodification and technology, which has brought us to the threshold of escape from the world – certainly in fantasy, but perhaps in reality, sometime soon.

1 Consuming Experiences

When I was young in my native Budapest, we – my family and friends – didn’t think of life in consumerist terms. We couldn’t, as it was communism, and there was not much to consume – but in any case, the idea of collecting pleasant experiences seemed frivolous and alien. Beautiful Budapest was run down, its buildings still showing bullet holes decades after the war. Tourists didn’t crowd around its “attractions”. It was our city. Sure, we listened to music and attended plays, there were parties where everyone wanted to be, we bought ice cream and cakes, but we didn’t make a habit of maximizing pleasurable, beautiful, or edifying experiences; we didn’t have a plan that would ensure the best results. Much was left to chance and improvisation, as life in those days was hard-scrabble, and things could – and often would – go wrong. Everyday necessities were sometimes hard to obtain, and we had to stand in line a lot. People were generally rude and wielding whatever little power they had in a hostile manner. Our goal was just… to live our life and have the experience that comes with it. But we were also not fazed or annoyed by unexpected obstacles in the way a more committed consumer or tourist would be. Of course, some people I knew went skiing and climbing in remote and beautiful places; that was a thing one could do as well. But most of the time, normal people did normal things, and that was our life. Communism, for a while at least, constrained the consumer in us. I am not idealizing this state of affairs – I was in the underground resisting the oppression that maintained it; just pointing out the difference it made in our attitude to life.

I noticed the contrast between this and what was normal in the West especially clearly when, after moving to New York, I was already between worlds. My mentality was not quite like the communist-era girl I used to be, but still, I haven’t fully acculturated to Western ways either. A friend of mine visited from Holland while I was back home. We decided to go to one of the baths, one that I often went to as a child and later as a young adult. I didn’t quite remember which tram stop to get off at but thought we would work it out as we go. I missed the stop, and my friend was shocked that I didn’t have a plan ahead of time and that, as a result, we “wasted our time,” having to retrace our steps. I was confused. Weren’t we together, living our life? Is that really time wasted? But I understood her point of view: only certain things count as bona fide life: the worthwhile moments one plans ahead to have. Being a consumer, which I had already started becoming, one is encouraged to view only the moments of fruition, the consummation of one’s goals as really part of one’s life; the rest is mere getting there, with all the annoying friction that entails. I started to live more like this, though I could still see that something was not quite right about it. In Out of the Silent Planet, C.S. Lewis cautions about this attitude: choosing one good or pleasure over another, or hoarding pleasures is not a good thing, it is a temptation from the Evil One…

Seeking out worthwhile experiences has its use. But there is a heavy price to pay. These days, Budapest is absolutely overrun by tourists, like every beautiful city in the world. The world now resembles prepackaged slices of cake that everyone is encouraged to gorge on. Precious art is hard to see from hoards of selfie-taking tourists seemingly not very moved by the sights on offer. Nature itself is commodified. I recently visited Plitvice National Park, a picture-perfect tourist attraction. Though it was really beautiful, there were swarming crowds, and everything was manicured. I felt the world veiled, distant, inaccessible. It brought to mind a short story by Géza Ottlik about a famous conductor in a midlife crisis visiting his hometown. After much struggle and malaise, he finally takes a long, aimless walk and suddenly sees shards of light reflecting on a familiar building, thinking: “I have been in many places, I have seen the light reflected on the wall on …. street, I have lived.” Visiting Plitvice does not give one this sense of deep life.

As a result of consuming the world, experience is becoming more shallow. The more you manage experience, the more you lose connection to it, which seems like a paradox. Here is Dostoevsky, in Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, in a particularly sardonic passage:

The bourgeois’s other legitimate and equally strong need is to se rouler dans l’herbe. The fact is that as soon as a Parisian leaves town, he loves, and even considers it his duty, to lie on the grass for a bit; he does it with dignity and the feeling that he thereby communes avec la nature, and is particularly delighted if someone watches him at it.

Consumption now is the default experience of the world. I remember the first day the Oculus opened at World Trade Center. I was able to walk through it; it was scarcely populated, with no commerce, just a glorious commuter station. It was uplifting, wonderful, its pristine white spaces splashed generously with light. Now I often cringe walking through. It has become just another mall, made even more obvious by the  “artistic experiences” offered to the commuting public.  There is nothing wrong with business itself; it just feels there is nothing anymore that is not under its regime. In the process, we’ve sacrificed silence and a direct connection to the world.

2 Technology and the Vivid Unknown

The commodification of the world is just one cause of our alienation from it. Another is technology which ever more rapidly changes both the natural and man-made environment. In Koyaanisqatsi, Godfrey Reggio documents this change: the film opens with slow motion and time-lapse footage of majestic, vast, unspoiled landscapes. It invites loving attention to the experience of cloud, water and mountain. The rest of the movie is filled with skyscrapers, the mad rush of the city (in quick motion), airplanes, demolitions, urban decay, and a mushroom cloud. Jarring scenes of giant machines and environmental degradation are set to an ever-accelerating soundtrack by Philip Glass.

Alienation from nature is painful. I once visited a technology museum in Munich. It had many engaging and fun exhibits. But the overall impression I carried away from it was the relief when we finally left. Inside the museum everything was plastic, metal and glass, everything shaped to be useful and organized efficiently. As we walked through the exhibit, it dawned on me that there is nothing organic here except human beings. I was imagining hell to be furnished like that.

Koyaanisqatsi has been recreated by John Fitzgerald. His project, The Vivid Unknown, was recently shown at TECHNE at BAM. It is an AI-assisted video installation trained on the original images and soundtrack. The difference is, this time, the magnificient – digitally rendered – landscapes are very quickly giving way to scenes of the human technological environment. Even when nature returns, the cuts are too fast and jerky for the eye to linger on anything. It is as if the film suggested that in the intervening 40 years, our alienation from nature has become irreversible. What’s more, as it also demonstrates, our attention now is not even on the man-made physical environment; we are absorbed in the digital. The Vivid Unknown offers interaction to spectators. When they stand in front of the screens, their shape sometimes appears as a shadow in the landscape, sometimes as an outline filled with jumbled, Dadaist fragments of the landscape while the landscape itself disappears. Spectators don’t just spectate; they can force themselves on the landscape. Some people recorded the video screens to create digital memories of their encounter with the digital.

People are warming to this new world, judging from the phenomenal success of the recent ABBA concert in London, where digital avatars of the four young singers from 50 years ago “perform” for an audience reportedly brought to tears from the experience.

Technology doesn’t just alienate people from nature. Digital technology, in particular, though wonderful in many ways and has the potential to feed the soul and deepen inner life, has actually made quiet attention to anything very difficult. There is a nadir of contemplation in contemporary life. The commercial interests behind digital media – especially in the case of social media, but also probably soon AI and virtual reality – ensure that we are ever more enmeshed in and dependent on digital media, and our attention is ever more fully captured by them. The commodification of experience and the digital saturation of daily life reinforce each other in a feedback loop. The resulting forms of life make serious contemplation of one’s experience – without which not much seriousness can be expected on any front – very difficult. Without contemplation, our connection to reality becomes tenuous. This prepares the way for the great escape. Having lost our grounding in terra firma, we are ready for – as the creators of The Vivid Unknown put it – “terra techno firma”.

3 The lure of the virtual

Ready or not, AI is here, and possibly life-like VR is also on the horizon. The Experience Machine, which used to be considered entirely hypothetical and not really serious, like invisibility rings and the like, has become a matter of practical concern. Techno optimists like Andy Clark and Dave Chalmers think all these technologies are a good thing; though there is also much hysteria, fear, and trepidation about the dangers and drawbacks. I will talk about these in a different post.

People, like my students, who feel ready to leave their actual lives behind, might well be alienated – as I have argued we all are to some degree. But there is another impetus behind it, too – and this one is as old as human culture. It is the desire to transcend human limitation. Humans have dreamt of acquiring extra senses – to be able to sense like a bat, a bird, an octopus, or like a god. They have dreamt of immortality – which some techno-optimists think will come soon, and various religions have sanctioned as fact. Sudden breakthroughs in AI  promise transcendence in all these ways. But there is a warning, too, that runs through history. Icarus wanted to fly away from captivity, and his unfortunate father Daedalus assisted him, but Icarus’ wings were melted by the sun, and he only succeeded in crashing into the sea.

Summary of Gödel’s Argument for Immortality

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Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) was the foremost logician of the twentieth-century. He is best known for his incompleteness theorems and contributions to set theory, changing the course of mathematics, logic and computer science. In addition he advanced an argument for personal immortality which I reconstruct—in order to give it the best chance of success—as follows:

1) If the world is rationally organized, then human life must also be rational (since humans are a part of the world);
2) Science gives us reason to believe the world is rationally organized;
thus
3) Human life must be rationally organized.
4) But without personal immortality, human life wouldn’t be rational (since our potential for personal development and interpersonal relationships would be thwarted by death); thus
5) Humans must be personally immortal so that they can fulfill their potential (in the afterlife).

Or to put it somewhat differently,

1)We have good reasons to think the world makes sense (is intelligible);
2)Human life is part of the world; thus
3)We have good reasons to think human life makes sense (is intelligible);
4)But human life only makes sense if there is personal immortality; thus
5)We have good reasons to believe in personal immortality.

Here is some of this in Gödel’s own words,

If the world is rationally organised and has meaning, then it [personal immortality] must be the case. For what sort of a meaning would it have to bring about a being (the human being) with such a wide field of possibilities for personal development and relationships to others, only then to let him achieve not even 1/1,000th of it?

So, among other things, it is the world’s shortcomings—including pain and suffering—that demands immortality for life to be rational and meaningful. For Gödel, it is the next world that liberates us from our earthly limitations. Otherwise we cannot actualize the potentials that a rational existence demands.

My Reflections

First let me say that it is always easier to tear down arguments instead of building them up. A professor in graduate school once told me that philosophers make arguments and then other philosophers, like vultures, swoop in and destroy them—a good way to get published.

Next Gödel’s phrase below “rationally organized and has meaning” is problematic. It seems that human lives and the world may be scientifically rational or intelligible but that doesn’t imply that their lives are meaningful. It seems easy enough to imagine a scientifically intelligible world in which human lives are meaningless. So I’m not sure about the relationship between the rational and the meaningful.

Surprisingly though I agree with a lot of Gödel’s argument. I have argued elsewhere that either personal or universal immortality is necessary for complete meaning. So I agree that a fully rational/meaningful individual life and cosmic life demand that something is eternal. The problem is that we have good reasons to think that both the individual and cosmic life are not eternal. For this and many other reasons reality may just not be rationally or meaningfully organized.

Finally, let me just say that the idea that we survive death, broadly speaking, is highly unlikely,

Modern science generally ignores this supposed evidence for an afterlife for multiple reasons. First, the idea of an immortal soul plays no explanatory or predictive role in the scientific study of human beings. Second, overwhelming evidence supports the view that consciousness ceases when brain functioning does. If ghosts, souls, or disembodied spirits exist, then some of the most basic ideas of modern science are mistaken—which is very unlikely.

So while personal immortality based on supernatural considerations is logically possible, it’s easy to see that it isn’t very plausible. In the end, wishful thinking best explains belief in immortality, not reason and evidence. Therefore, I live under the assumption that my consciousness depends on a functioning brain, and when my brain ceases to functions so will I. When I die, I doubt that I’ll move to a better neighborhood.

But as always, I could be mistaken.

Why Do We Live In A World With Dementia?

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A friend’s wife has been suffering from dementia for a long time. He recently shared the following post:

Robin Williams took his own life because he was diagnosed with Lewy
Body Dementia. Bruce Willis learned that his illness is Frontotemporal
Dementia (FTD) and Lewy Body Dementia. One of the hardest things to
process is the slow change in the one you love. Becoming a completely
different person. Everything changes. Just so you know, it’s called the
long goodbye. Rapidly shrinking brain is how a doctor described it. As the
patient’s brain slowly dies, they change physically and eventually forget
who their loved ones are and become less themselves. Patients can
eventually become bedridden, unable to move and unable to eat or drink or
talk to their loved ones. There will be people who will scroll by this
message because Dementia, Alzheimer or Parkinson’s has not touched
them. They may not know what it’s like to have a loved one who has
fought or is fighting a battle.

In an effort to raise awareness of this cruel disease, I would like to see at
least 5 of my friends put this on their timeline. I’ll settle for at least one.

A Facebook post by Dennis Eamon

It is hard to know what to say about such a cruel disease. But it makes one wonder why we live in a world with so much pain. I suppose the amor fati advocated by the Stoics and Nietzsche might provide some small comfort as a coping mechanism, but it hardly explains why things have to go so wrong. I wish I knew the answer but I realized long ago that I live and die in a world I’ll never truly understand.

Of course on a non-theistic view this affliction is relatively easy to understand. We have bodies formed by a long evolutionary process of random genetic mutations and environmental selection after the fact; our bodies were not designed and are plagued with problems. On a theistic view however it requires almost impossible mental gymnastics to account for the point of such misery. I’ll accept the former view and leave it to science and technology to hopefully find a solution.

Afterword – After this post was written another friend was recently his good friend when he (the friend of the friend) agonizingly drew his last breathe. My friend told me what a terrible end it was to a life that had once had such promise. Recalling the story filled him with irredeemable sadness. No wonder we strive so hard and invent such spurious reasons to explain and justify evil.

Is Life Absurd If There Are No Gods?

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William Lane Craig (1949 – ) is an American Evangelical Christian apologist known primarily for his work in the philosophy of religion. He is a critic of evolution, atheism, metaphysical naturalism, logical positivism, postmodernism, moral relativism, Catholicism, Mormonism, Islam, homosexuality, and non-fundamentalist Christian theology. What does he like?) He is a fellow of the Discovery Institute, whose goal is to force public high schools in the United States to teach creationist ideas in their science classes alongside accepted scientific theories. (Ok. He’s for make-believe stories! But why not teach other stories besides your preferred one? And who would give this guy a job in an intellectual institution?) He is currently a Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, an evangelical Christian university. (Oh, they would.)

Craig’s piece “The Absurdity of Life Without God”[i] argues that life is absurd without a god. The fundamental reason for this is that without a god both the individual and the entire universe will end without a proper resolution. In that case there would be no hope of escaping our fate and life would lack significance, value, or purpose.

Craig argues that there is no ultimate meaning without immortality because if everything dies it does not matter that previously the universe, the human race, or any individual had existed. Still, immortality is not enough for meaning, since an unending life could be meaningless. For full meaning, we need a god, without which humans must accept the view of Beckett, Sartre, and Camus—that life is meaningless. In addition, without gods there is no objective morality, and moral relativism reigns.

Craig claims that if we really think about the universe as rushing toward oblivion we should realize that there is no hope or purpose without a god. Without a god, we are accidents of nature, and there is no reason or purpose for our existence. With a god there is hope; without a god there is only death and despair. The implications of atheism are strong indeed. The basic problem with an atheistic response is that one cannot live happily with such a view. Either the atheist is consistent and recognizes life is meaningless, or is inconsistent and assumes there can be meaning without gods.

All of this leads Craig to the conclusion that it is a practical impossibility to live as an atheist. Without a god, life is objectively meaningless, so atheists pretend that life has meaning by saying it has subjective meaning. Without a god, there is no morality and everything is permissible, so atheists assume there is some other ground for an objective ethics. Without a god, there is no immortality where justice will reign, where the wicked will be punished and the virtuous rewarded. Without a god there is no purpose in life, so atheists make up some purpose for it.

The despair of the atheistic view contrasts sharply with the Christian worldview. In that view a god exists, we are eternal, and we can be with this god. Christianity thus provides the conditions for a meaningful, valuable, and purposeful life. We can thus live happily.

Rejoinder – Craig seems unaware that science and technology will probably give us the immortality he seeks—assuming his followers don’t take us back into the dark ages. They are trying their best though by making sure that children don’t learn modern biology. And if he’s troubled by evolutionary biology, just wait until he realizes what the computer scientists are up to. Eventually, when science defeats death, religion will end. For religion is based primarily on a fear of death. Craig would have been right at home in the Dark Ages. He is a true enemy of the Enlightenment, and of the future.

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[i] William Lane Craig, “The Absurdity of Life without God,” in The Meaning of Life, ed. E.D Klemke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Great Books On Writing

The two most important books that influenced my writing are Strunk & White’s classic, The Elements of Style, and William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. I have also been influenced by reading wonderful prose stylists like Bertrand Russell and Will Durant, as well as by a graduate school mentor William Charron, who forced me to rewrite my master’s thesis about ten times. I sometimes think he overdid it—seeking perfection in one’s writing causes paralysis—but he taught me the invaluable lesson of rewriting, which is the single best secret to good writing that I know of.

Unfortunately, the time constraints of researching and writing a blog make it impossible to continuously rewrite. I certainly reread my posts and make quick changes before publication, but I don’t have the time for the five or ten rewrites that are necessary for really good prose. So it’s a tradeoff. I substitute quantity for quality, but I think there is value in not over-analyzing a topic too. Stream of consciousness writing, being less constrained than obsessive rewriting, allows one to proceed without undue delay and is more revelatory of one’s true feelings.

Recently I read the interview about writing with psychologist Steven Pinker at edge.org. Pinker reasons that writing is a psychological phenomenon, “a way that one mind can cause ideas to happen in another mind.” But writing is also “cognitively unnatural,” according to Pinker. For almost the entire time there have been modern human beings, no one wrote anything until the last few millennia. In fact, it is an odd way to communicate. You don’t see your audience, you don’t know who they are or what they know, and they don’t ask you questions. It is so different from face-to-face conversation.

Pinker thinks we write to draw another’s attention to something. “When you write … you should pretend that you, the writer, see something in the world that’s interesting, and that you’re directing the attention of your reader to that thing.” This may seem obvious but consider how much writing is done to impress others or to protect oneself. So while we write for ourselves—to learn and understand—we write for our audience too. Not to impress them, protect ourselves, or shove dogma down their throat—but to see new things with them. To point out things that both the writer and the reader may have missed.

Leaving a small part of myself after I am gone—a legacy of the best of me—motivates my writing. It’s not as good as real immortality, and I may still get a cryonics policy, but it is something. To leave a small part of yourself in this electronic cloud. To leave your soft whisper in the air that someone might hear.

Thagard’s The Brain and the Meaning of Life

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Paul Thagard is professor of philosophy, psychology, and computer science and director of the cognitive science program at the University of Waterloo in Canada. His recent book, The Brain and the Meaning of Life, is the first book length study of the implications of brain science for the philosophical question of the meaning of life.

Thagard admits that he long ago lost faith in his childhood Catholicism, but that he still finds life meaningful. Like most of us, love, work, and play provide him with reasons to live. Moreover, he supports the claim that persons find meaning this way with evidence from psychology and neuroscience. (He is our first writer to do this explicitly.) Thus his approach is naturalistic and empirical as opposed to a priori and rationalistic. He defends his approach by noting that thousands of years of philosophizing have not yielded undisputed rational truths, and thus we must seek empirical evidence to ground our beliefs.

While neurophysiology does not tell us what to value, it does explain how we value—we value things if our brains associate them with positive feelings. Love, work, and play fit this bill because they are the source of the goals that give us satisfaction and meaning. To support these claims, Thagard notes that evidence supports the claim that personal relationships are a major source of well-being and are also brain changing. Similarly work also provides satisfaction for many, not merely because of income and status, but for reasons related to the neural activity of problem solving. Finally, play arouses the pleasures centers of the brain thereby providing immense psychological satisfaction. Sports, reading, humor, exercise, and music all stimulate the brain in positive ways and provide meaning.

Thagard summarizes his findings as follows: “People’s lives have meaning to the extent that love, work, and play provide coherent and valuable goals that they can strive for and at least partially accomplish, yielding brain-based emotional consciousness of satisfaction and happiness.”[i]

To further explain why love, work, and play provide meaning, Thagard shows how they are connected with psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Our need for competence explains why work provides meaning, and why menial work generally provides less of it. It also explains why skillful playing gives meaning. The love of friends and family is the major way to satisfy our need for relatedness, but play and work may do so as well. As for autonomy, work, play, and relationships are more satisfying when self-chosen. Thus our most vital psychological needs are fulfilled by precisely the things that give us the most meaning—precisely what we would expect.

Thagard believes he has connected his empirical claim the people do value love, work, and play with the normative claim that people should value them because these activities fulfill basic psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Our psychological needs when fulfilled are experienced as meaning.

[i] Paul Thagard, The Brain and the Meaning of Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 165.