The Purpose of the Universe
[image error]
Here is a brief description of the philosopher Phillip Goff’s new book Why? The Purpose of the Universe (Oxford University Press) with criticisms of Goff’s main ideas in the book by the theoretical physicist Jochen Szanolies.
The book’s OUP description states:
Why are we here? What’s the point of existence? On the ‘big questions’ of meaning and purpose, Western thought has been dominated by the dichotomy of traditional religion and secular atheism. In this pioneering work, Philip Goff argues that it is time to move on from both God and atheism. Through an exploration of contemporary cosmology and cutting-edge philosophical research on consciousness, Goff argues for cosmic purpose: the idea that the universe is directed towards certain goals, such as the emergence of life.
In contrast to religious thinkers, Goff argues that the traditional God is a bad explanation of cosmic purpose. Instead, he explores a range of alternative possibilities for accounting for cosmic purpose, from the speculation that we live in a computer simulation to the hypothesis that the universe itself is a conscious mind. Goff scrutinizes these options with analytical rigour, laying the foundations for a new paradigm of philosophical enquiry into the middle ground between God and atheism. Ultimately, Goff outlines a way of living in hope that cosmic purpose is still unfolding, involving political engagement and a non-literalist interpretation of traditional religion.
In a two-part detailed review of the book (Part 1, Part 2) Szanolies makes many detailed critiques. Here is a sampling.
I’m inherently suspicious of overt declarations of having arrived at a certain position only through the strength of the arguments in its favor, even against one’s own prior commitments. If that were typically how things happen, then either there ought to be much more agreement than there is, or the vast majority of people are just irredeemably irrational.
There are several junctures in Philip Goff’s most recent book, Why? The Purpose of the Universe, at which we are treated to a description of the author’s intellectual journey, detailing how the force of argument necessitated course corrections. Now, changing your mind in the face of new information is generally a good thing: nobody gets it right on the first try, so everybody who’s held fast to their views probably just hasn’t examined them deeply. But still, very few people arrive at their position solely thanks to rational forces.
[I admit to being receptive to this argument. I know for example that despite my lifelong attempt to be rational and impartial the fact is that most if not all of what I believe emanates from all sorts of contingencies: what books I read, classes I took, genome I possess, family and era I was born into, etc.]
Summarizing Goff’s main arguments Szanolies writes:
Goff’s main contention is that the best available evidence, filtered through the understanding bestowed to us by our best current theories, does not paint a picture of a meaningless cosmos, as is usually claimed …
He marshals two main arguments in support of his conclusion. One is the fact that the universe seems implausibly fine-tuned: that is, the parameters that define its properties fall within a very narrow range that allow for the existence of complex structures, and hence, life. The other and, to me, more compelling one is sometimes known as the Darwinian argument against materialism: since natural selection is only sensitive to behaviors, there is nothing that compels our internal states to track the affective valence of our stimuli—that is, evolution doesn’t need pain to feel bad, it just needs us to avoid it. So where does this psycho-physical harmony, as Goff calls it, come from?
While skeptical of Goff’s arguments, Szanolies certainly understands the appeal of their ultimate conclusion that “the reality of conscious experience implies a larger purpose to, well, everything.” As he writes,
Goff’s ultimate conclusion should be attractive to many: rather than being thrown by mere random chance into the cold and uncaring void of the universe, to live out a brief, confused existence and then wink out into the nothingness whence we came, the existence of complex life in the world is due to a larger purpose, an overall arc that bends into the direction of greater objective value. Moreover, rather than going the traditional route and appealing to some omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent creator God that sees to it that everything unfolds according to His divine (and commonly, unfathomable) design, he proposes a way to reap those benefits without all the boring Sunday prayer sessions!
[Author’s note. I am in no position to comment intelligently on Goff’s book, which I haven’t yet read, but as I’ve written previously “If reflection reveals that our deepest wishes may come true, our skeptical alarm bell should go off. For we want to know, not just to believe.” So in this sense, I’m aligned with Szanolies.
Nevertheless, I am also receptive to Shakespeare “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”]
