I sometimes think that the universe is a work of art, that we (im)mortals have been allowed to help sculpt. Other times, I see it as a dance, with patterns that we must learn to follow in order to create beauty and harmony. Sometimes I think it's a game, one in which you try to compete with your fellow players for rewards and profit (all in good fun, of course!). Sometimes I see it as a never-ending cosmic rushing outwardness, a thermodynamic spiral towards death. Sometimes I think that our purpose is to discover what our purpose is.
Is this an important question? Not in itself, no. We can't really prove that the universe has any particular purpose or meaning. What we can do, however, is choose a set of axioms (as in "We hold these truths to be self-evident") which work for us and make us happy. And the choice of origin-myth will, I think, affect the shaping of those axioms.
I have long wanted to create a "Declaration of Universal Meta-purpose" which attempts to define a generic, non-cultural-specific set of axioms which could be the basis of a moral/ethical system.
I feel a little shy about starting a new topic after only my second day here, but I couldn't find any other place which seemed appropriate to discuss this, and I feel I could learn so much from all of you...
The joy of limits.
I think that one of the purposes of the universe is to provide limits.
In the infinite, anything is possible, so nothing ever gets done. The universe limits us and acts as a kind of framework for meaningful interaction. We are constrained to act within a field of sequential time, and within a coordinate system of euclidean-like space. Our spirits are restricted to a limited set of viewpoints, residing within a cohesive material shell. Bodily interaction is constrained by "surfaces" which define boundaries between conceptual volumes and curtail interaction between their contents.
Igor Stravinksy said something profound about limits defining our creativity (I don't know the exact quote.) Certainly some of his most brilliant work was done under some of the most stringent self-imposed limitations.
Our limitations give our actions meaning.
Without gravity, the ability to leap over buildings in a single bound is a meaningless act (the concept of "over" is meaningless).
Without air, the sound barrier is indistinguishable from any other speed.
Without death, birth is a pointless nuisance.
Nested moral contexts
I had a realization last night. It's probably nothing new to you smart people out there. But first, a little background.
I've never been comfortable with the theory of moral and cultural relativism. At first, this was on a purely gut level: There are some acts so atrocious that I have to consider them wrong, even if they are "moral" for that culture. Of course, I can always say that it's just me not having a broad enough view, that I simply am not enlightened enough to appreciate the other culture's values.
The second thing is, that it doesn't seem to accomplish it's own purpose. Why shouldn't I impose my culture on others? According to cultural relativism, my culture is just as good as theirs and it's a hell of a lot more convenient for me.
Thirdly, it doesn't provide much in the way of guidance when more than two cultures are involved. If culture A is committing cultural imperialism on culture B, and I, a member of culture C, am observing this, should I interfere? After all, both culture A and B are equally valid according to CR.
At the same time, however, I'm not willing (yet) to recognize the existence of an "absolute" moral code that applies everywhere and always to everybody. This sounds too close to tyranny for me.
Let's generalize the problem. Instead of talking about "culture" let's talk about "context". Morality can only have meaning within a given context. (Please, let's leave aside the issue of morality vs. ethics, that's a very contentious issue.)
Two men standing in a desert. One pulls out a knife and stabs the other. Is this act good, or evil? Cowardly, or heroic? Aggressive, or compassionate?
We don't know, because we don't know the context in which these actions take place. Morality is a relationship between an action and it's context.
Everybody exists within a moral context, be it family, western civilization, or the roman catholic church. My realization of last night was that everyone exists within more than one moral context. A roman catholic priest who is also a U.S. citizen exists within those two (and many more) contexts.
So, is there an "absolute" moral context? No...but there are contexts so large and sweeping that they can be considered for all intents and purposes absolute. The commandment "Thou shall not destroy the human race" might not be relevant to a god, or even a galactic empire, but it is certainly relevant to every human being.
So cultural relativism is seen as merely a special case of this idea of moral contexts. A Dogon tribesman has a responsibility to abide by the rules of their tribe, but at the same time they are human beings, passengers on spaceship earth, and have responsibilities in that realm as well. Fortunately for most pre-industrial humans, the duties to their tribe and to the human race as a whole are pretty much in agreement, since it's to the benefit of all humans to maintain a diversity of cultures.
A different cosmology
How did the universe begin? How was "something" created from "nothing"?
Well, if there's nothing, then that means that there are no rules. And if there's no rules, then what's to prevent a universe from suddenly and spontaneously springing into existence?
"Nothingness" is a paradox so profound that only the creation of a universe can resolve it.
Nothingness is unstable.
I have faith that the universal purposes are comprehensible and knowable by humans, because if they are not then what's the point? In this case "faith" is not wishful thinking. (One of my criticisms of the "new age" movement is that it seems to operate on the principle: "If it feels good, it must be true".) Rather, it's a decision to believe in something because not believing in it destroys any basis for reasoning.
Pascal's wager states that believing in God is a good bet, because if you believed in God and he did exist, you won the bet, and if God didn't exist, then it didn't matter anyway.
Pascal was wrong, for several reasons. (I highly recommend the Atheism web page for a thorough discussion of the problems with Pascal's wager). An example is the fact that the social cost of belief in God is much higher than non-belief in God.
However, belief that the universe has some sort of net meaning, whether that meaning is anthropomorphised into some sort of "creator-being" is probably still a good bet.
I have often entertained a scenario which I call "The richest man in hell." I don't mean literally hell, but rather a hellish earth. The rich man lives in an air-tight, armored mansion, while the poison air and rioters are kept out. Water, food, and other consumables are carefully filtered to eliminate all toxins; News feeds, if any, are similarly treated. Of course, he can never go outside.
The question is: Is he happy?
Axiom #1:
The universe exists.
Rationale: If we want to establish a basis for behavior, we have to dispose of solipsism.
One of my favorite books of all time is Olaf Stapleton's Star Maker. This is a science fiction novel, written in the 1930s, which attempts to describe the evolution of life and mind through the entire history of the cosmos. A rather epic task, and one that Stapleton, a British philosopher, carries off well.
The protagonist, a human who has gained the power of astral projection, sets off on a journey through time and space, and as a disembodied observer he witnesses the entire life of the universe from the beginning to the end. There are lots of little science-fictional vignettes here, with Stapelton's wondrously varied descriptions of possible ways live could have evolved. (I especially likes the sentient sailing ships -- mollusk-like creatures which had evolved sail power to a degree far more sophisticated than our own sailboats). I also liked the idea that creatures far beyond our level of intellectual and spiritual development could be just as mentally sick as we are, that there are many wrong turns on the way to enlightenment. (Wars of the super-races!)
The cosmos eventually becomes a single organism, with individuals like you and me participating not only in our own small lives, but also partaking in the rich life of the galactic consciousness.
The goal of the cosmic mind is, of course, to perceive and understand the Star Maker, the creator. In order to do this, the cosmic mind needs to bring in to being new life forms. Even the cores of burnt-out stars are populated with specially designed creatures so that sentience can be spread as widely as possible.
And eventually, at the pinnacle of it's development, before the long, slow slide into entropic decay, for a single instant the cosmic mind can perceive the creator's thoughts and experience it's life. Our earthly protagonist is of course unable to comprehend more than a glimpse of this union, and discovers (somewhat to his disappointment) that the creator is a dispassionate artist, and that this is neither the first or the last cosmos it will make.
Because the Star Maker itself goes through stages of development, getting "better" at creating universes. Some of the universes are horrific to our earthly observer, and some are painfully beautiful. But paradoxically, the Star Maker is also timeless, and can experience it's whole development simultaneously.
So, there are two kinds of "construction" going on here. The first is the construction of what I would call Hyper-Gaia, in other words a self-aware universe which is capable of understanding it's own origins and purpose. This is the construction that I am most interested in exploring in this topic, the idea that either we or some descendant of ours will be capable of comprehending what it's all about, and how we can help make that happen, and how we can be relatively happy while we're working on the problem.
The second construction is that of a being outside the universe, whose development is engendered by the creation and unfolding of universes, just as an artist learns both in the act of creation, as well as by the effects of the work after creation. That lies more in the realm of faith, which is something I avoid whenever I can.
(One of my favorite .sigs: "Belief is a technology too powerful for the human race to handle right now.")
[Side note to readers: Despite the high-sounding talk about faith and spirit and such, plus the fact that I'm fascinated by religion, I'm quite anti-theist in my views. I believe in materialism and strict scientific rationalism, but I interpret the word "material" as something more than what is seen. More on that subject later.]
A few more axioms, not in any particular order.
Not that these are not "beliefs". I would put them more in the category of "comforting fantasies", i.e. I'm going to behave as though they were true regardless of whether I believe them or not.
The universe has a net semantic content. In other words, the universe as a whole has meaning. If it doesn't, then what's the point of anything?
The universe's purposes is comprehensible to those within it. This is not to imply that every sentient being can comprehend the universe's purpose, but rather than the purpose can be understood by a beings of less than godlike stature. If the universe has a purpose, but we are incapable of understanding it, then there's nothing we can do about it. (And don't think that we can carry out a purpose that we don't understand. We're a perverse enough race that we will almost certainly get it wrong if we carry out orders blindly.) [Author's note: Sloppy reasoning here!]
We exist within the universe's purpose. If this body I wear were actually a teleoperated surrogate, and my true spirit were somewhere "outside" the moral context of the universe, then it would be possible for me to escape the moral consequences of my actions. If I indeed have a soul which is somehow "seperate" from my body, then that soul must also exist within a space which is included in the overall moral context. Only when I reach a state from which I can no longer transmit information back to humanity am I outside of the system.
The universe's purpose is relevant at all observable points. You can't "step outside" of the moral context of the universe by going to some special place. (This is similar to the omnipresence of God in traditional religious beliefs: There's no place in the universe where you can commit evil acts and not have God see you.) The mechanism for this is simple: You, as the observer, carry the universe's purpose with you. Any actions which you take leave a mark on the consciousness of yourself, which affects the actions which you may take in the future. (I suppose if you fell into a black hole, you could "escape" from the overall purpose, since at that point no action that you take can ever affect anything in the outside universe again, since no information can be emitted from a black hole.)
I call myself a materialist in the sense that I don't think that there is anything that cannot or should not be analyzed rationally and scientifically. Mysteries are to be solved, but that doesn't mean that there won't always be more mysteries beyond them, or that an unsolved mystery shouldn't be savored.
I once had a belief that my internal creative drive was all that I needed to provide a foundation for behavior. I've always loved building things, and I thought, what could be more natural than to extend my love of aesthetically pleasing structure throughout my whole life? Why do I need ten commandments where there's already this powerful built-in instinct "Make the universe beautiful!"
Well, I was having lunch one day with Jerry Pournelle at the Tools of the Trade show in Pasadena, whereby I put forth to him this little theory of mine. And his response efficiently and succinctly destroyed my entire premise:
"Well, my Saxon ancestors thought that the smell of burning cities in the morning was wonderfully aesthetic."
Primitive tribes often believed that anybody outside the tribe was not human and therefore could be killed out of hand. Even in modern times, we've had all kinds of atrocities simply because it was convenient to define a certain segment of the population as "not human". I once worked for a man who's motto was "Anything I do to support my family is OK." I call this "limited scope ethics" and it seems to me that the major element of all moral evolution over the past ten thousand years has been the gradual broadening of our definitions of who we are morally responsible to.
Or, as I like to say: "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of everyone."
I think that if there is no universal thing we can cling to, then it's all worthless. Civilization, as a system, simply does not work without it. But at the same time, I don't want to shove my idea of "universal" down anyone's throat. Nor do I think that "universal" implies "theist". So, like any good programmer, I'm treating it as an optimization problem -- what is the smallest possible set of universalities that can still get the job done?
Additionally, I find the idea of a meaningless universe deeply unsatisfying.
Taoism in a nutshell:
"First, there was the void, and the void was boring, so it divided into yin and yang (the first 'bit'), which proceeded then to subdivide into everything we see around us now."
Boxing the spirit.
Since this topic is, in fact, "Cosmology of the week", I feel a responsibility to present new and different (and certainly contradictory with my previous posts) worldviews at fairly frequent intervals.
I've been thinking about the word "spirit". It's a very attractive word, seeming to imply that there's something more to life than just atoms knocking around. That there's some indefinable "juice" in life that's worth savoring, beyond mere titillation of the senses.
Now, our monotheist friends would probably view spirit as a kind of illumination from God. God is the light source which casts "spirit rays" onto our atoms and gives them an eternal existence. I would call this the "broadcasting" model.
Our pagan friends would probably prefer a more distributed model, sort of like the way oxygen is produced from plants.
That's almost where I'm at.
I'd like to borrow a parable from Marvin Minsky (for a purpose of which I know he would heartily disapprove.) Minsky, in his book "Society of Mind" talks about how intelligence can be created out of non-intelligent parts, just as a box can be created out of non-box parts.
A box has "boxness", it encloses things. But if you study the individual flat pieces of wood which make up the box, you'll find no boxness there, no property of enclosure. It's only when you put those pieces together in a certain way do they gain the ability to enclose things.
I see "spirit" as a kind of box. When you put together a bunch of atoms into a world with plants and animals and people on it, you have spirit. Study the atoms all you want, and you won't find it, because it's in the relationships. Even studying the individual people or animals might not do it. It's only when you step back and watch the whole thing, while it's working (and you have to watch a very long time, because it's full of rich complexity) that you might gain a sense of it. (I'm only guessing this, I have not been watching long enough to know for sure.)
Complexity theory: We know that all systems can self-complexify, self-organize, evolve over time, if they meet certain constraints:
1. The system has to have enough parts.
2. The parts have to have enough relationships between them -- not to many and not too few.
3. There has to be an external source of energy.
This is as true of atoms as it is of bits in the computer. It's true of microbes, pool tables, and genetic algorithms. It's true of all systems which meet the requirements.
So, do these systems "want" to evolve, to grow and become richer? (Only by stretching the definition of the word "want" way beyond it's tensile strength). Is there an invisible "hand" guiding the molecules, saying "come together, form complex and beautiful structures, find symmetries and patterns"? I don't know, but it's certainly not required.
Equally, then, there's no reason to suppose that "spirit" is some supernatural quality. Instead, I see it as a natural property of matter and the way it's put together.
So that's my cosmology for this week. What's yours?
(To those of you who note the fact that I haven't actually defined spirit, my response is: Yes.)
In the beginning the universe was undivided.
There was nothing to refer to, except the universe.
And so the universe self-referenced.
But, in order to reference itself, it had to play two roles, one of referencing, and one of being referenced.
And the two roles became two parts, and thus the universe divided.
I see morals as kind of like Euclidean geometry. It takes on the order of 5 assumptions to make a euclidean space (such as the assumptions that parallel lines never meet.) That's a nice, clean, satisfying system. Everything else is derived from that. There's no need for mathematicians to argue about whether the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees or not, since any of them can simply re-derive the behavior of a triangle from the basic axioms.
The exact opposite is the current body of U.S. Law. There is no pattern, rhyme or reason to the law, merely accretions of what seemed right at any given moment.
My thought is to come up with a set of very simple, easily understood axioms which can be used to generate a rich set of moral guidelines. It would be best if these axioms could be stated with clarity and rigorous mathematical preciseness. Then other, secondary principles could be derived from that.
I have reason to believe this is possible, because I've been studying systems modeling (specifically the Unified Modeling Language by Booch and Rumbaugh) and I can see how the same simple set of defined terms can be used to describe the structure of a software program, a battleship, or a government. Of course, morals aren't the same kind of system as programs or battleships. So new rules have to be invented.
The axioms themselves are completely made up, of course, just as the axioms of Euclidean geometry are. (No-one has ever proved that mathematics and the real world have anything to do with each other. And if space is curved, then we know that our own universe is in fact non-Euclidean.)
For example, I don't know that the universe has a purpose. I have no scientific evidence. However, I'm going to assume it has one, because it's necessary to my design. It's as you said -- there is no justification. So, I'm going to pretend that there is a justification, because that seems to make the system work.
However, the axioms of Euclidean geometry work so well that they gain a kind of "eternal" and "universal" existence on their own, beyond being just a simple thought experiment. They start to resemble a cosmology, even though we know they aren't. The utility of the made-up system itself becomes a kind of eternal truth.
So in a sense, we can make our "pretend" axioms become "real".
(I've always liked declarative statements, which are sentences which become true the instant you utter them, such as "You're fired!")
Once upon a time, the universe was an uncollapsed quantum wave function. Like Shroedinger's Cat, both dead and alive, the universe was an infinite number of possibilities, but none of those possibilities were realized because there were no observers to collapse the wave function.
But, some of the potential states of the wave function contained physical laws which would allow for the evolution and development of Observers.
Thus, the possibility that an Observer might one day exist was enough to collapse the wave function, and thus the universe transformed from a infinite number of possibilities to a single actuality.
And they lived happily ever after.
I finished the book I was reading, "Basic teachings of the great philosophers."
Basically, I think that I agree with a lot of Kant's basic approach, that in order to live a moral life, one must construct an idea of a world of moral laws and act as though that world actually existed.
However, I would add what I feel is a very important corollary:
We musn't take these idealistic worlds too seriously.
Failure to do this results, I believe, in the worst excesses of religious fanaticism.
My current model for living a moral life is somewhat like playing a D&D character. You have certain rules you have follow, partly because it helps you, partly because it makes life more enjoyable. It's even worth spending the effort to make conformance to these rules a habit, so that breaking them requires a conscious act of will.
But at the same time, you don't want to get so wrapped up in the rules that you lose your identity. You have to realize that these rules, while they may be have broad and sweeping relevance, are not absolute. And of course, there are nested sets of rules, some of which are easier to break than others. The most basic ones look a lot like fundamental principles. All of which are constructed by ourselves. As I implied earlier in my "Joy of limits" posting, sometimes putting chains on ourselves is the greatest freedom.
I intend to construct my own Ideal world, and in my case it probably won't be based on religious motifs but on mythology and all of that Joseph Campbell stuff.