Re:A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning
by chronofar on Saturday July 15, 2023 @08:25PM
(#36742204)
> First of all, thanks for the compelling discussion so far.
Likewise thank you for the compelling discussion and clarifications.
> All my previous comments are based on the assumption that the three premises I wrote in the very beginning of the first post are true, but I'm not arguing that those premises are true. I was just elaborating the implications if they were true:
1) To survive and to reproduce would be the closest thing to the ultimate purpose of life.
2) What traits we consider "good" or "bad" would actually be just what traits are beneficial for survival or not.
I’m following better now, but I think you’re missing a step or two to get from the premises to the proposed implications. I think the furthest you could conclude from those is that the creatures bourn of such a process are likely to harbor some proclivities shaped by said process. I don’t think you could say that evolution bestows “purpose” (outside of a bit of poetic license) or “objective”, much less that it is the ultimate objective from which all others must derive. Indeed to characterize such functionally as purpose or an objective you would have to evoke “designers” who are seeking to accomplish something with that functionality (which of course violates one of the premises here).
That we owe many if not all of our present valuations to the evolutionary process is without doubt, but my quibble is with the suggestion that this process can be the only true objective, and other emergent systems can only draw from it. We, and further other hypothetical biological systems, are capable of developing valuation systems that are at least detached if not directly opposed to evolutionary drivers, and the only way to claim evolution’s “objectives” are more principled is to again suppose nature has something behind the scenes ascribing purpose to the function (higher beings or whathaveyou, somehow you have to get nature to be more than functional, you have to argue it’s intentional).
Likewise thank you for the compelling discussion and clarifications.
> All my previous comments are based on the assumption that the three premises I wrote in the very beginning of the first post are true, but I'm not arguing that those premises are true. I was just elaborating the implications if they were true: 1) To survive and to reproduce would be the closest thing to the ultimate purpose of life. 2) What traits we consider "good" or "bad" would actually be just what traits are beneficial for survival or not.
I’m following better now, but I think you’re missing a step or two to get from the premises to the proposed implications. I think the furthest you could conclude from those is that the creatures bourn of such a process are likely to harbor some proclivities shaped by said process. I don’t think you could say that evolution bestows “purpose” (outside of a bit of poetic license) or “objective”, much less that it is the ultimate objective from which all others must derive. Indeed to characterize such functionally as purpose or an objective you would have to evoke “designers” who are seeking to accomplish something with that functionality (which of course violates one of the premises here).
That we owe many if not all of our present valuations to the evolutionary process is without doubt, but my quibble is with the suggestion that this process can be the only true objective, and other emergent systems can only draw from it. We, and further other hypothetical biological systems, are capable of developing valuation systems that are at least detached if not directly opposed to evolutionary drivers, and the only way to claim evolution’s “objectives” are more principled is to again suppose nature has something behind the scenes ascribing purpose to the function (higher beings or whathaveyou, somehow you have to get nature to be more than functional, you have to argue it’s intentional).