Sean Carroll, How Science Shows Us the Real Meaning of Life

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Re: Sean Carroll, How Science Shows Us the Real Meaning of L

Post by _Analytics »

Symmachus wrote:
MrStakhanovite wrote:This is something I don't think I can believe anymore; that the fictive narrative of a human life imbues that life with meaning.

I can't claim any deep philosophical reading on any of this, but I'm always nagged by a persistent "so what?" whenever I hear/read things like "We create purpose and meaning in the world." The problem for me is not the "meaninglessness." I am not entirely clear what "meaning" means, for one thing—presumably, that everything we're doing points to some larger purpose, but that can go on forever. Suppose we all win the celestial lottery—so what? What larger purpose does a celestial existence have? And what larger purpose does that larger purpose have? And on and on. If a celestial existence is our goal because of some sense of bliss, then how's that different from just getting high? It seem like a pretty pointless existence all the way down, as far as meaning goes. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

The problem I've always had, as I say, is not the lack of some elusive meaning in life but the fact of just being in life. Most of the time, even when I'm happy and enjoying my family or any of the good things in this life, I still feel like Theognis:

As for earthlings,
the best of all things
is never to have been born,
never to have seen the light of day.
But once born, best to cross
the gates of Hades
as soon as possible
and rest under a heap of earth.

MrStakhanovite wrote:Reading Nietzsche is probably what made me skeptical of human intention and how it plays right into nihilism.

Could you elaborate a bit, or point me where I should go to understand this point?


I kind of feel the same way. One of the reasons I monitor a certain apologist's blog is because I can sense that deep in his heart of hearts, he knows the atheists are right. He certainly hopes that as part of His mysterious ways, God stacked the evidence so it only appears that the atheists are right. He has faith. But he fears that in reality, the atheists are right.

So the dilemma is which is worse for somebody who desperately wants to have a meaningful life: is it worse to have an illusion of an eternal purpose that entails glorifying God and eternal progression (as if that had any real purpose in the really big scheme of things), or is it worse to be a temporary being in a temporary universe who is responsible for figuring out his purpose for himself?

I get the sense that he struggles with this question, and to justify his choices he juxtaposes the grandeur of his fantasies with the meagerness of his life when viewed from a cosmic scale, and decides that if the naturalists are right, nothing is lost because nothing really matters anyway.

The question isn't unlike the question raised in Don Juan DeMarco with Johnny Depp. Is it better to live in a fantasy world where you are the greatest lover the world has ever known, or is it better to take your meds and realize you are a sick kid from a broken home?

Anyway, huge thanks to Philo Sofee for bringing Sean Carroll to my attention. I recently started reading The Big Picture, and so far, am thoroughly enjoying it. I love atheists who personally demonstrate that you can have a genuine great life with your eyes wide open.
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Re: Sean Carroll, How Science Shows Us the Real Meaning of L

Post by _Philo Sofee »

My good pleasure Analytics. Yes Carroll's book "The Big Picture" is seriously a terrific read.
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Re: Sean Carroll, How Science Shows Us the Real Meaning of L

Post by _EAllusion »

Gadianton wrote:I don't really buy the way Carroll puts it but I generally agree. Practically speaking, a person who is too hot can't will herself into cooling down, and neither can she just decide on the fly that her friends and pets don't mean anything to her. We're as built to find meaning in life as we are to climb mountains or go to sleep when we're tired. The way Carroll put it is typical, but it has that ring of: we're going to make a decision and go out there and build meaning. It's an undertaking of harrowing agents. That makes for an easy alternative reading of fooling ourselves into thinking we have meaning.

The only way to avoid making life meaningful is to fall into depression etc. Normal operation is to make life meaningful.


This is my view as well. I would add to this that people's despair and desire over having meaning in their lives - a second-order meaning to meaning - is itself evidence that people just are naturally built to seek out meaning. I'm content to define meaning in terms of people's innate drives, but someone like Stak might take the nihilist view that this isn't what really is meant by meaning when people talk about it, and that meaning doesn't really exist.

My counter to that always has been when people talk about other kinds of meaning - most significantly teleological meaning where the universe or some being has created you for some purpose - people don't actually care about that when you poke around the concept. That isn't what second-order meaning is really aimed at. If a person finds out they were created with the purpose to be tortured for all eternity, almost no one rejoices at that fact because there is now meaning in their lives. People only want meaning if it promises that their drives will be fulfilled. Meaning only seems meaningful when it lines up with their desires in life. The only kind of meaning that is meaningful is the boring, non-transcendent, subjective fulfillment of desires.
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Re: Sean Carroll, How Science Shows Us the Real Meaning of L

Post by _MrStakhanovite »

Symmachus wrote:The problem I've always had, as I say, is not the lack of some elusive meaning in life but the fact of just being in life. Most of the time, even when I'm happy and enjoying my family or any of the good things in this life, I still feel like Theognis...


As it happens Nietzsche brings up the story of King Midas hunting down the crafty Silenus in his first book ‘The Birth of Tragedy’ (p.22):

Nietzsche wrote:When Silenus had finally fallen into his clutches, the king asked him what was the best and most desirable thing of all for mankind. The daemon stood silent, stiff and motionless, until at last, forced by the king, he gave a shrill laugh and spoke these words: ‘Miserable, ephemeral race, children of hazard and hardship, why do you force me to say what it would be much more fruitful for you not to hear? The best of all things is something entirely outside your grasp: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best thing for you is to die soon.
(Nietzsche’s italics)


To link the wisdom of Silenus to the Greek pantheon Nietzsche says (ibid):

Nietzsche wrote:Now that the Olympian magic mountain opens up before us, revealing all its roots. The Greeks knew and felt the fears and horrors of existence: in order to be able to live at all they had to interpose the radiant dream-birth of the Olympians between themselves and those horrors.


The result is, according to Nietzsche, a kind of Greek theodicy (p.23):

Nietzsche wrote:In order to live, the Greeks were profoundly compelled to create those gods. We might imagine their origin as follows; the Apolline impulse to beauty led, in gradual stages, from the original Titanic order of the gods of fear to the Olympian order of the gods of joy, just as roses sprout on thorn bushes. How else could life have been borne by a race so sensitive, so impetuous in its desires, so uniquely capable of suffering, if it had not been revealed to them, haloed in a higher existence, the complement and apotheosis of existence, also created the Olympian world with which the Hellenic ‘will’ held up a transfiguring mirror to itself. Thus the gods provide a justification for the life of man by living it themselves -- the only satisfactory form of theodicy!


I always found that amusing.

Symmachus wrote:Could you elaborate a bit, or point me where I should go to understand this point?


Sure, I'll just try to summarize as best I can.

There are two basic modalities (or ways of being) in modernity: Master/Nobleman and Slave/Serf. Each modality also has its won schema of valuation, the Master evaluates with Good and Bad, while the Slave evaluates with Good and Evil. The Master modality is exemplified by spontaneity and the Slave modality is exemplified by deliberation. When it comes to morality the Master modality leaps into action without going into any sort deliberation or "ponderizing" about the action, the result is either Good (the course of action was brave/successful/appropriate/etc) or it is Bad (the course of action cowardly/failure/inappropriate/etc). The Slave modality asses actions by classifying them as Good (moral/right/etc) and Evil (immoral/wrong/etc). The Slave modality makes a conscious effort to be moral while the Master modality makes no such effort.

Now when Nietzsche is giving his account of how the Master modality was replaced by the Slave modality, he more or less credits the Priest class as performing this "doubling up" of the human will. This was his way of basically saying that the Slave modality wrongly introduced the concept of what we call libertarian free will, that humans have a conscious control over their actions and beliefs. Here is a particular passage from the first essay in 'On the Genealogy of Morals' that shows Nietzsche's contempt for the Slave modality (section 14):

Nietzsche wrote:They are miserable, there is no doubt about it, all these whisperers and counterfeiters in the corners, although they try to get warm by crouching close to each other, but they tell me that their misery is a favor and distinction give to them by God, just as one beats the dogs one likes best: that perhaps this misery is also a preparation, a probation, a training; that perhaps it is still more something which will one day be compensated and paid back with a tremendous interest in gold, nay in happiness. This they call 'Blessedness'.


Now compare that with the eight beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew (5:3-12) or later in the Sermon when Jesus remarks:

Matthew 6:19-21 wrote:Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.


What I take from all this is the notion that conditional intentionality (e.g. If I do X I will get W) ends up creating a kind of feedback loop that is vulnerable to the nihilism we see in fat old Silenus:
Image
('Triumph of Silenus' by Gerard van Opstal)
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Re: Sean Carroll, How Science Shows Us the Real Meaning of L

Post by _Chap »

EAllusion wrote:This is my view as well. I would add to this that people's despair and desire over having meaning in their lives - a second-order meaning to meaning - is itself evidence that people just are naturally built to seek out meaning. I'm content to define meaning in terms of people's innate drives, but someone like Stak might take the nihilist view that this isn't what really is meant by meaning when people talk about it, and that meaning doesn't really exist.


What is this thing called 'meaning' that we are getting so concerned about?

What fraction of human beings, when found weeping in a corner and asked 'what is the matter' by a friendly person will answer 'My life has no meaning', or phrases equivalent thereunto in languages other than English? Very few of us, I suspect. People weep and need the comfort of others because the person they loved has died or abandoned them, or because their way of making a living has just collapsed and they do not know how to feed their children.

Suppose that the word 'meaning' was taken off the board. What would you no longer be able to say about the great majority of the sadnesses that afflict humanity that you can say if you are allowed to talk about 'meaning'?

I wonder whether this kind of talk is not just a cover for the sense amongst some atheists that something good was lost with the loss of belief in an Abrahamic deity, obedience to whose will was the only way to happiness, and who was imagined to be the ultimate source of all the potential goodness and power that really resides in human beings? And yet without him we are still all that we were before we gave ourselves over to such delusory imaginings. When he vanished, he took nothing of real value with him.
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Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
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Re: Sean Carroll, How Science Shows Us the Real Meaning of L

Post by _MrStakhanovite »

Chap wrote:What fraction of human beings, when found weeping in a corner and asked 'what is the matter' by a friendly person will answer 'My life has no meaning', or phrases equivalent thereunto in languages other than English? Very few of us, I suspect.


Image
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Re: Sean Carroll, How Science Shows Us the Real Meaning of L

Post by _MrStakhanovite »

Chap wrote:Suppose that the word 'meaning' was taken off the board. What would you no longer be able to say about the great majority of the sadnesses that afflict humanity that you can say if you are allowed to talk about 'meaning'?


this also made me think of the 'Suicide is Painless' song:
Johnny Mandel wrote:The game of life is hard to play
I'm gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I'll someday lay
so this is all I have to say.
suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
and I can take or leave it if I please.
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Re: Sean Carroll, How Science Shows Us the Real Meaning of L

Post by _Chap »

Gadianton wrote:
Nightlion wrote: I need to be treasured above all else


Most people who feel this way have a difficult time making friends. ...


I think you may be being a little unjust to NL. He is not saying that he, personally, wants to be treasured, in the sense of being valued and admired by others. Rather, his point is that the explanation of his somewhat unhappy state is that God wants him to be kept apart, and denied the friendship that he wants, so that NL can serve God's purposes. Or have I misunderstood you?
Zadok:
I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis.
Maksutov:
That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
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