RCSaunders wrote: ↑Tue Oct 29, 2019 6:05 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2019 3:31 am
RCSaunders wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2019 2:12 am
Nothing matters that does not matter to some individual human being, and no individual is responsible for anything but one's own life and is only responsible for that life to one's self. There is no other responsibility
Then there IS no responsibility. You can't "owe yourself" anything, especially if you are merely the accidental byproduct of a random universe. In that case, it's all a blank.
Why do you make everything so difficult?
Because
justifying the claim that you have any responsibility at all is very difficult. You may never have realized how difficult it is, but it really is -- if the universe is a place of merely impersonal forces.
I suggest it's actually quite impossible, in fact.
The idea of responsibility is very simple...It means simply that whatever you have the ability to do, if you want it done, you must do it or go without.
Well, I can see I have to make my responses a little more curt and direct, in order to get across the essential points. Put more gently, their real import is being lost. So at the risk of seeming unfriendly, but not intending to be, I'm going to frame my responses with an indecorous directness. Please pardon that, for the sake of a bit more clarity, if you would be so good.
Back to "responsibility." I have to say that that's actually not responsibility. That's mere cause and effect. To be "responsible," one has to be "responsible TO" someone or something. But who's the candidate for that? It's not ourselves, because that's merely tautological: the phrase "I owe myself" makes no sense, unless you are somehow intrinsically valuable in some way, which in an indifferent universe, you simply cannot be. You're a contingent byproduct of an accidental and uncaring universe: you have no intrinsic worth. In actual fact, a fragment of a comet has exactly the same dignity that you have...which is to say, none in particular.
But who else could I be "responsible" to? My society? But they are just a bunch of undignified shards of an uncaring universe like I am. To the universe itself? It does not care. So to whom am I "responding" when I am being "responsible"? And why do I owe them to "respond" in particular ways -- such as granting them property rights, or working for them to earn my own keep? Why not just do whatever gets me the most of what I want, the fastest? Usually, that means some form of freeloading or stealing. And if the government will be my tool in this, so much the better; it will work for me far better than working for myself.
So I don't need to go without, even if I behave "irresponsibly." I can win by cheating. But actually, it's not
cheating...it's survival of the craftiest.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2019 3:31 am
Things matter only to the living, conscious, and of course to human beings.
This, it seems to me, confuses the claim, "People
feel that they want to matter," with the claim, "Human beings
do matter." Human beings "feel" a great many things that are not at all true.
I can see why you'd be confused. You apparently confuse, "feelings," with knowledge and beliefs.
Not at all. I was suggesting that this confusion was on
you part, not mine. I certainly don't think it. But you have several times jumped from the claim that people value things, or people feel meaning exists, or people act morally, to the sort of conclusion that implies that values imply the LEGITIMACY of objective value, that there IS meaning in the universe, or that the fact that people hold particular "moral" opinions means that those opinions have STANDING in the real world.
And there's no way that line of logic connects.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2019 3:31 am
All value, all meaning, and all purpose exist only as values, meaning, and purpose to individual human beings.
Then they are nothing at all but delusions imaginatively overlaid on an objectively uncaring universe. There's nothing to those feelings.
Nothing would matter in this universe if I weren't alive and conscious of it.
I'm sorry to say, but it STILL doesn't matter.
You are conscious? So what? So's a cat or dog. And a rock is not; but nothing makes the rock less important in this uncaring universe than you are. Living is not more interesting to the universe than dead stuff is: indeed, the universe produces vastly more dead stuff than living stuff. And conscious stuff...well, that's so rare that the universe can hardly be said to bother with it at all.
You keep talking about an, "uncaring universe," but only part of the universe is uncaring. Only those parts of the universe that are not living are uncaring.
THAT we care does not actually matter one whit, if we can't show
why it does. It could easily be nothing more than an odd side-effect of merely material forces in the universe, undeserving entirely of any special consideration or status. Why would the universe care about it? And you, you might care, but you are a very temporary and vanishing quantity in this universe...as are we all.
In such a place, what boots it that you
feel "caring"? Feelings, as you said, are simply not to be trusted.
I'm beginning to understand what you are saying. You do not regard yourself as part of the universe,
Perhaps. But that depends on what you mean. I do regard myself as, at least in part, a material being. In that sense, you could say I'm "part of the universe." But I also know I'm not JUST "part of the universe," not a mere accidental shard of the Big Bang or some such material event.
I am, and you are, the deliberate creation of the eternal God. We are not here by mere accident, and the universe is not a place that has no teleology, no moral objectivity, and no value other than mere human beings may deludedly imagine it to have. It has real meaning -- meaning that can be investigated and discovered. Objective meaning. And you, RC, you have objective value too.
God wanted there to be a you.
...the fact you are part of the universe means the universe is not indifferent, because you are not indifferent....
Well, that's merely contingent. If the universe itself (outside of human beings) is indifferent, then we could say that there happen to be entities in this universe that, for some inexplicable reason, have an evolutionary quirk that gives them a sensation of not being indifferent. But they will die eventually, and so will their planet and their race and the universe itself; so that's of no particular concern to whatever process is at work in the universe generally.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2019 3:31 am
If something is not demonstrably beneficial to an individual's own present life, it either has no value or is pernicious.
The problem with a claim like this is that it's just LOADED with moral claims that have no justification in an indifferent universe. ...
But I do not live in an indifferent universe. It is swarming with human beings who are anything but indifferent.
However, you've not shown why their values should count for anything.
Think of it this way. At one time, the old monkey-evolutionists used to insist, mankind had a tail. Now we have a tailbone. The tailbone, they say, has a kind of bump that was is the vestige of the old tail...it's a vestigial tail. The tail was a kind of evolutionary piece of dross...it had a temporary utility when men were monkeys, but became inconvenient as man evolved. It's actually a good thing that it's gone now, they say, as a tail is an impediment to a biped of the kind we are (they never precisely explained this claim, but there it is).
How do you know that these human attitudes...the longing for meaning...the belief in property...the valuing of certain things, and not of others...morality...are not "vestigial tails" of a psychological sort? Maybe they're all things that need to be "gotten past," because they're no longer adaptive.
Now, I don't at all believe that's true. But how, given the rest of the universe has no opinion about these things, do you prove to yourself that your values, your morals, your sense of meaning, and so forth are anything but a "vestigial tail" to which you would do well to become less attached? How do you prove they have objective quality?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2019 3:31 am
What is this "unless" bit? What is it about "producing it oneself" or "trading what one has produced" that creates "a right"?
Is this really a problem for you? You really don't know the difference between producing what one needs to survive and stealing it from someone who has produced it.
I know the difference because I'm a Theist.
In other words you believe it because someone else told you.
No. I know it because of the kind of reasoning John Locke used to get the right to property established in the first place. You can deduce it directly from our relation to the Creator.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2019 3:31 am
You could be just as happy knowing your existence depended on others productive efforts, because you were incompetent (or unwilling) to live by your own effort as you could be knowing everything you are, have, and enjoy were the result of your own intellectually guided effort?
"Happy"? When did the universe tell you that mattered?
Well, I might understand how someone might not be able to figure our what is right and wrong without someone else telling them, but I cannot imagine being so out of touch with oneself that they could not tell whether or not they were happy without someone else telling them, or whether or not it mattered to them.
Again THAT it matters TO ME does not imply for a second that it matters
objectively, or to the universe in which I live. It's just my own peculiarity, perhaps. There's nothing in the rest of the indifferent universe that guarantees it dignity. Not even other people...who often disagree with me about what should matter.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2019 3:31 am
Oh? So you DO believe humans have a teleology? What is it?
Well I wouldn't say I, "believe humans have a teleology," like it were some kind of ideology. Otherwise I've already answered that question, about four times:
Only a universe devoid of life, consciousness, and human minds is indifferent. Nothing matters to rocks, rivers, mountains, planets, stars, or galaxies. Things matter only to the living, conscious, and of course to human beings. The teleological begins with life, and is complete in human minds." Without human beings the universe does not matter or have any purpose.
If there were no human beings nothing would matter at all, anywhere at all. It is only because individual human beings exist, are conscious of the universe, must live by conscious choice, and care about their own life that anything has any meaning or purpose. All value, all meaning, and all purpose exist only as values, meaning, and purpose to individual human beings.
Even if there were a God, it wouldn't matter if there were no human beings for it to matter to.
Well, I'm going to stop saying it, because I don't want to become exceedingly repetitive. But THAT something induces a feeling in you that something "matters" to you does not imply that the universe cares. It might be no more than an illusory feeling, that old psychological "vestigial tail" back again.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2019 3:31 am
And how did the indifferent universe confirm it to you?
I'm sorry for anyone who cannot know anything unless someone or something else, "confirms," it for them.
I did not say "someone." I asked how you get that confirmation
from the universe. What
facts count in showing that it is
true? That's
rational confirmation, not
human confirmation.
I'm sure you see the difference.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2019 3:31 am
Every organism has a specific nature that determines how it must live, including human beings.
"Must"? We don't even have a confirmation THAT it should live. The universe certainly doesn't care if it does. And it cares no more about human beings than about other organisms.
Even taken out of context, it is still true. An organisms nature determines what it does and how it does it. A fish must live in water and cannot choose otherwise. A cow must graze and chew its cud and cannot choose otherwise. A human being must consciously choose all one does, and cannot choose otherwise.
These are only contingent things, though. Cows eat grass. That doesn't mean they get "meaning" from eating grass. It doesn't mean it's "moral" for them to eat grass. It doesn't even mean they "value" grass...I'm not sure you can ask them. All that is just a claim about how things work...but it's an IS with no power to create any OUGHT. But your word, "should" is a moral word. Should cows eat grass? Why not thistles, or grain, or oats or dandelions, if those work...or even if they don't? There's no reason.
How do you know that when humans imagine all this stuff about meaning, morality, property rights...they're not just chewing their mental cuds? And why couldn't they "chew" a completely different way?
Justify to whom?
To reason.
Rational justification, such that you can explain to yourself and to any doubting others why you believe what you believe, and why they ought to as well, perhaps...unless you're content to believe irrational things.
I'm sure you aren't going to start doubting your own views because I question them.
Actually, I'd like to use your comments to refine them. And if refinement becomes to slight an improvement, to change them as well. But a man who changes his mind with little questioning probably never had an opinion worth holding in the first place, right? So it's par for the course that we should debate things.
There is not a language in this world that does not have words for concepts like meaning, purpose, and values to describe the relationship between chosen behavior and consequences.
Very true. But if the rest of the universe is impersonal, what does that matter? It's another human foible, maybe: but it's of no ultimate consequence. The rest of the universe does not care.
The religions (and some social ideologies) have usurped those words and given them mystical meanings having nothing to do with the original concepts. Since the religious meanings of those words have no basis in reality, there can be no argument for them.
It's possible to think so. But let me offer an alternate interpretation.
What if the intuition that meaning, values and morality refer to something is not just a quirk of the human race. Suppose that the reason it was universally experienced by human beings, including you, is that it actually referred to some real thing you were intuiting. Suppose the universe was not an indifferent place, but a deliberately created stage for human decision, coloured by real moral values that human beings do not actually create, but rather discover.
What if your feelings that, say, property rights are important wasn't just your personal quirk. What if it were true? And what if people who didn't get that were actually wrong about that?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2019 3:31 am
As far as I can tell, you regard the basis of all meaning, purpose, and value as something outside yourself. I regard the basis of all meaning, purpose, and value my own life and nature as a conscious, rational, volitional being.
Well, to sum up: this is your fundamental rational mistake, so far as I can tell. You mistake the claim, "Humans like to believe in valuing things," with the claim, "Things are actually valuable."
How can you possibly conclude that? I think most human beings would prefer a world without absolute values.
That's a two-edged sword, though. A world with no objective values is a world in which one is free to imagine value for anything (Yaaaay
). But a world with no objective values is a world in which none of those values have any objective worth or status (Boooo
). So that position gives with one hand, and takes with another.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2019 3:31 am
I don't think you are going to change your premise and I know I'm not going to change mine.
It's not your premise I'm having trouble with: I understand it fully. I'm just not able to see any rational connection between your premise "The universe is indifferent to us," ...
But that is not my premise, it is yours. The universe is
all there is and that includes that which is,
not at all indifferent, human beings.
Oh, I see. Your premise is
inconsistent. That's the problem.
The universe, of which you say we are a mere part, has no values, meanings or morals. You can tell, because almost all of the stuff in it is not even capable of these things. And, of course, there's no Creator. Within this massively uncaring universe, we find humans. They are just a part of that meaningless, valueless, moralless matrix, but for some bizarre reason, they have a quirk which makes them think they're different. They think that their perceptions or choices of meanings, values, morals and so on, give them special status within this larger universe. But the truth is that they don't. These poor creatures are simply deluded. And soon, in the universe's timescale, they will be gone anyway.
You've accorded special status to human beings, which they have no reason to have, since the universe in general does not promise, guarantee, care about, or ultimately secure their values, their morals or their sense of meaning.
The question is, what is, "living." What exactly is that attribute (or thing, if you think it is) that is called, "life," that differentiates between those things that have life, (called "living,") and those things that do not have life, (called, "non-living")?
Oh, I see.
Yes, I misunderstood your question. Well, we have scientific definitions of "life" of course...a combination definition including things like ability to move, to reproduce, to respirate, to circulate, and so on. But what do you want to make of that?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2019 3:31 am
But on a morbid note, it's been tough this week. As I was poignantly reminded, it must end. And often when we think it won't.
I'm sorry you had that unpleasant experience. We lost a son when he was only 26 to cardiac myopathy.
I have no hesitation in saying I have no idea how hard that must be. I stood agog, watching the parents of the dead girl sink into a level of sadness and pain about which I have never known. But you would know more about what they were feeling than I possibly could.
Nothing lasts for ever and everything changes.
Yes; that's what the funeral orator said. I can't say I think it was terribly comforting to anyone.
I no longer participate in the empty (and morbid) rituals of death, like wakes and funerals.
This is going to sound strange, but I actually
like Christian funerals. They are more a kind of "graduation ceremony" than anything morbid. They're a chance to say something about what life has amounted to, and to contemplate what it will be hereafter.
But I don't like the kind I went to last week, because I don't like to see my non-Christian friends in pain. Still, one goes because it is not about one; it is about those who are in pain, and whether there's anything, if only by standing witness, one can do to lift a modicum of that. Sometimes, too, one gets an idea for later. I've often thought that the funeral itself may be a blur for the bereaved; but about three weeks after the funeral, when all the relatives have gone home, friends have left, and life goes on with the bereaved expected henceforth to "be over it," it can be very kind to show concern and friendship at that point -- because that's when the worst pain can hit.
I am totally satisfied with the life I am living which I have fully enjoyed living to the limit of my ability and am totally fulfilled as a human being, and having known the ecstasy of this life, I could not possibly want another.
Well, how many people can say that? I'm glad for you.
If God wants to meet me he better do it soon. I don't think my death is imminent, though realistically it could be, (I'm in my eightieth year), but after I'm dead He will have lost the opportunity to meet me, since after I'm dead I'll be exactly what I was before I was born, i.e., nonexistent. I have nothing to lose.
He who created us in the first place will not have any trouble locating us afterward, I'm thinking.