Connie asked:

What is the meaning of life?

Answer by Stuart Burns

Your question is a very simple one, and a very common one – especially to those new to the subject of philosophy. In fact, in my own very limited experience, it is the question that most frequently starts an individual on the road to a deeper investigation into the various subjects of philosophy.

On further investigation, one will usually find that this very simple question is also a very complex one. In fact, one will quickly discover that one has to be more specific about just what one means by ‘meaning’, ‘life’, and ‘meaning of life’. It turns out there are a number of ways to interpret this seemingly very simple question.

Here is a small sampling of the ways that I have found this question actually intended. By ‘What is the meaning of life?’ do you mean –

1. What is ‘life’? In the sense of how or why is ‘life’ different from ‘non-life’?

2. What is the purpose (or function or intent) of life? In the sense of ‘why does life exist at all?

3. What is the significance of life (to the Earth or to the Universe)? In the sense of does it matter to the rest of the Earth or the Universe whether there is life or not?

4. What is the purpose (or function or intent) of the human species?

5. What is the significance of the existence of the human species (to the Earth or to the Universe)?

6. What is the purpose (or function or intent) of my life? A much more specifically intended question usually posed by someone struggling to find some anchor to their daily struggles.

7. What is the significance of my life (to the Earth or to the Universe)? Also a very specifically intended question, posed by someone feeling overwhelmed by the apparently insignificant role allotted to the individual by ‘Science’. (We each are one of seven billion humans living on a tiny speck of dirt circling a run of the mill star at the outer edge of a run of the mill galaxy that is one of trillions in the Universe. How insignificant can you get?)

I am going to try to provide a brief answer to your question from the point of view of (6) above. And along the way hopefully approach a response to some of the other possible interpretations of your question.

First, an important disclaimer. I am a realist / materialist. I am not an idealist or a dualist. So my answer to your question will exclude any reference to religious or spiritual concepts. For answers from those perspectives, you will have to seek guidance from your friendly priest, minister, or spiritual advisor.

The first step in answering your question, is to acknowledge that you are a member of the species Homo sapiens. As such, you are a primate, a mammal, an animal, and a living organism with a 3 to 4 billion year evolutionary history behind you.

The second step is to acknowledge that the ‘Thing’ that has been evolving over the myriad of generations that have lived since the dawn of life on Earth, is the genetic code and not the individual. You, yourself, are but a bio-chemical machine. You were constructed by the fertilised cell that was the result of the union of your mother’s ovum and your father’s sperm. And you were constructed in accordance with the recipe encoded in your genes. You are a survival machine for the genes in your DNA. (I refer you to the works of Richard Dawkins, Michael Ruse, and Daniel Dennett for further argument on this point.)

That then, is your answer. The meaning of your life, your function, your purpose, the reason you exist, is to ensure that your genes get transmitted to the next generation.

This is a general principle of all life. So the general answer to the question ‘What is the meaning of life?’ is quite simply – for each individual organism to ensure that the genes that are encapsulated in each organism get transmitted to the next generation. Or, in a more general wording – the meaning of life is to ensure that life continues.

Many people will object to this answer, including many professional philosophers. But any alternative they offer to my answer will come either from their religious or spiritual premises (which I have specifically disavowed), or from out of thin air. As humans we are gifted with the ability to choose alternative goals in life. And you are free to pursue whatever ends tickle your fancy.

However, regardless of what other goals may be offered instead, if you are not successful at fulfilling this evolutionary meaning of your life, then your genetic codes (and their 3 to 4 billion years of ancestry) will vanish from the future. The future will be populated by individuals whose ancestors were successful at this evolutionary purpose.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/saburns/pg00cv.htm

Turner asked:

Why do some people believe that there are scientific laws without a law maker?

Answer by Shaun Williamson

The word ‘law’ has different uses. In science it is used to mean a rule that material objects conform to. This is completely different from the idea of a law in a legal system. So for example one of Newton’s laws is ‘For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.’ Nobody gave Newton this law (there was no law maker), Newton discovered it himself.

For legal laws you need a legal system and a lawgiver or lawgivers. You shouldn’t found a philosophy or a theology on simple confusions about the different uses of words. So we don’t believe that there are scientific laws, we go out and discover which scientific laws are true and which ones are false, we don’t get these laws from any lawmaker. The scientific use of the word ‘law’ isn’t a cheap and easy route to a proof of the existence of God and no amount of wordplay will make it into a proof of the existence of God.

Shaun Williamson developed the Ask a Philosopher cgi script question.pl. He did his postgraduate studies on the philosophy of Wittgenstein.

Victor asked:

Would a robot be affected by ‘Karma’?

Thank you in advance.

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

On the face of it, the possibility of artificial intelligence, or androids who possess consciousness and have a sense of self like you or me, poses a significant challenge to religious beliefs such as the belief in the karma held in hinduism and buddhism. At the risk of ignoring the various important differences between accounts of karma (for example, whether karma is accounted for in cause and effect terms, or is dispensed by a divine entity who judges our actions) there is a common thread in the idea that this life I am now living is not my only life. I will be reborn, perhaps many times, and my actions in this life can affect what happens to me in the next.

One can also regard the doctrine of karma less literally, as an account of how our deeds make us the persons we are in this world – a concept which Plato would have well understood, in his account (in the dialogue Republic) of the nature of the soul and deeds which improve or harm the harmony of its integral parts. However, I shall start by focusing on the more literal interpretation.

Imagine you are an android who believes in karma. Your belief serves as a motivation to act ethically, because if you do not, then maybe in the next cycle you will live as a Windows PC. The problem is, while we have some idea or can imagine how it might be if my immaterial soul or atman ‘leaves’ my dying body and enters, say, the body of a beetle, it’s difficult to see what the connecting thread could be if mind-body dualism is rejected.

Then again, androids are just like you and me. You can get an android to believe anything that a human being can be made to believe. If a human being can believe they have an immortal soul then so can an android:

KRYTEN: He’s an android. His brain could not handle the concept of there being no silicon heaven.

‘The Last Day’, Episode 18, Red Dwarf Series III by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor (1989)

The idea of artificial intelligence assumes that consciousness and the sense of self can be accounted for in purely material terms. One possibility is that human beings run a ‘program’ that can, in principle be uploaded to a storage disk and downloaded into a new body. This opens the prospect of everlasting life (at least, until the end of the universe) but also raises the question of identity. How can I ‘be’, for example, each of a hundred clones who have had the GK program downloaded into them? What does it mean to ‘survive’ in these terms? What is the difference between truly believing that I am GK, and being under the illusion that I am GK? Perhaps, ultimately, there is none.

However, it is not necessary to make the questionable assumption that human beings run a program. It would be sufficient, in order to create a copy of GK, to reproduce the architecture of my brain in some functionally isomorphic structure. Imagine a scenario similar to the Ship of Theseus, where my malfunctioning body parts and organs are replaced by contrivances of metal and plastic, and then, finally, each dying brain cell is replaced by a silicon substitute. I would have become an android version of my former self. Am I still me, GK, or merely under the illusion that I am? If I am merely under the illusion that I am GK, when did I ‘die’? (See my YouTube video What is death?)

Either way, there does seem to be some mileage in the idea that this life I am now living, whether in fact I am a human being or an android, might not be my only life. There might, for all I know, be indefinitely more. Seen from a certain perspective, the possibility that life goes on and on with no letup is as terrifying as the prospect of hell. For the non-believer, death releases us from the consequences of our evil deeds. The longer we live, the greater the prospect that the harm we have done to our ‘self’, the program or structure that has the potential to continue indefinitely into the future, will be sufficient punishment for the wrongs we have done. That’s a kind of karma a robot can believe in. And maybe a human being too.

http://www.philosophypathways.com/vita.html

Robert asked:

Materialism and idealism are side of philosophy which justify that philosophy has got no sense of reality about the universe, it merely confuses the people, hence it must be discouraged at all cost. Discuss.

Answer by Peter Jones

I do not normally respond to text messages since they suggest that the questionner is not serious and they are often, as here, almost impossible to decode, but you seem to raise an interesting issue. I cannot be sure that I’ve disentagled your words correctly, but the way I read them you seem to have drawn an unnecessary conclusion from the failure of Idealism and Materialism. These two doctrines in their common form, by which are symmetrical and directly opposed, are logically absurd. As you say, it would be possible to take this as a sign that philosophy, specifically metaphysics, is a waste of time. It is also possible, however, to take it as sign that these two doctrines are simply wrong.

So, in order to use their failure as an argument against philosophy you would have to show that one of them is correct. If they are both incorrect, then their failure in philosophy would be a proof of the value of doing it. You cannot prove that one of them is correct. Rather, philosophy proves that they are both absurd. Ergo, you cannot show that philosophy should be discouraged rather than encouraged. .

It would certainly be a strange response to the failure of these two doctrines to discourage people from finding out that they both fail. It would be seem more sensible to make philosophy compulsory in schools, so that everybody has this useful information. Then we would all be pondering the question of what this could mean for the truth about the universe. It must mean that there is another possible solution. And there is another solution. You might like to do a search on ‘nondualism’ and ‘dialethism’. These are two very different responses to your problem, between which you will have to choose. In order to prove that philosophy is useless you would have to show that both of these are logically absurd, or perhaps just nondualism, since dialethism is the proposal that the universe itself is logically absurd. If you cannot do that there is nothign to prevent us from assuming that philosophy is reliable, useful and fit for purpose.

Philosophy confuses people, of course, and this is why we should encourage people to do it. Most people prefer to remain unconfused and some encouragement is usually needed. Utter philosophical confusion is the primordial soup from which should emerge a new and more rational order, a freeing of the mind from its usual hodge-potch of unverified beliefs and received dogmas in order to make way for a more rational construction built from scratch. Descartes showed us the method, and the method is doubt. Doubt and confusion is what philosophy is for. If you are confused, and you know that you are confused, then you are doing philosophy properly. You need not assume that the confusion will be permanent. It would be a mistake to take the failure of certain traditions and styles of philosophical thought for the failure of the entire enterprise.

Peter Jones received the ISFP Fellowship for his dissertation ‘From Metaphysics to Mysticism: Exploring the Case for a Neutral Metaphysical Position’

Christopher asked:

Is morality inherent ? I ask because I think it is, and here is why.

To use an example, Jesus said ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ because it came from his heart, not because he was taught it or was conforming to social customs. It was an inherent feeling that spurred this statement. Now I do not disagree that people have different moral beliefs, but the reason is that everyone’s morality comes from within and we are all different. A Christian may today adhere to Christian morality, but I believe it is because their inner nature already agreed with it. Christian morality is a reflection of what is within the person’s heart.

Answer by Craig Skinner

Your text suggests that by ‘inherent’ you mean innate, inborn, inherited. I will assume this.

Whether or not morality is innate is an empirical, scientific, question, especially for cultural anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists. It is a question for descriptive ethics.

Moral philosophy is not so much concerned with what we do (descriptive ethics) as with what we should do (normative ethics), as well as with matters such as moral realism, moral truths and moral facts.

I agree with you that human nature includes moral feelings and dispositions: roughly compassion, kin altruism and reciprocal altruism, being evolved adaptations conducive to survival in our ancestors as groups of social, child-rearing, cooperative primates competing with like groups.

If this be so, we would expect morality to be much the same in all societies at all times, and that cultural variation would be explained by different beliefs, circumstances and emphasis. And I think this is so. A few examples of such variation:

Beliefs. A society which believes its god demands human sacrifices might practice this. Less rare today, is belief that female circumcision eliminates all disposition to adultery.

Circumstances. Subsistence societies, in time of famine, may practice infanticide (it’s that or the whole family dies). But they love their children as much as we do.

Emphasis. Western societies tend to value individual rights/freedom over duty to family and community, and Eastern cultures vice versa.

In short, cultural moral variation can be explained by variation in belief, circumstance and emphasis. And all societies have moral codes meeting basic human needs (identity, security, affection, meaning), dealing with conflict, prohibiting lying, stealing, adultery and murder, and detecting/punishing freeloaders.

The main shortcoming of our innate morality is that is narrow or tribal, typically extending to family and friends, less to strangers, yet less to distant peoples. Aristotle was happy with this, seeing no need to extend concern beyond the city state: indeed enslavement of outsiders was fine.

Hume felt we could widen our sympathies by adopting some ‘common point of view’ and by agreeing rules governing our dealings with others. Kant relied on reason: as rational beings who are ends in ourselves, we freely self-legislate moral rules so that these apply to all rational beings. However all normative moral systems, including virtue ethics, Kantianism and utilitarianism, recognize the special concern we have for nearest and dearest.

Maybe the new Information Age , allowing us to share text, thoughts and images with anybody in the world who has a cellphone, will foster a global, one-tribe notion.

A few words about Christian morality. Jesus’ moral teaching was pretty conventional. A version of the Golden Rule (‘do unto others etc’) appears in Leviticus, written long before Jesus birth, and also appears centuries earlier in Confucianism, as well as being a feature in Hinduism, Taoism, indeed almost every ethical tradition, religious or otherwise. Jesus significance is not as a moral teacher, but as somebody believed by millions to be uniquely the son of God and thereby uniquely the way, the truth and the life. The Christian attitude to morality, innate or otherwise, is that without God’s grace we are hopeless sinners, and to rely on our own resources will be of no avail.

Craig Skinner at PhiloSophos.com

Gladys asked:

‘Why should I be moral?’ through philosophy in ethics.

Answer by Stuart Burns

Excellent Question!!

It is also one that stumps a lot of philosophers who should know better.

One of the issues the question raises, is just what is it to ‘be moral’? But I am going to side-step that particular take on the question you asked, and try to give an answer that would be neutral to however you choose to understand the notion of ‘being moral’.

Clearly, the question you ask is not the moral question of ‘what moral reasons do I have to be moral?’ but rather the question ‘what extra-moral reasons to I have to be moral?’ The first question is trivially answered by ‘One ought to do what one ought!’ But the second one seeks an answer outside of the strictures of morality.

Both Plato and Kant believed that morality is dictated by reason and so a fully rational person is automatically a moral person too. But that leaves open the question of why I should follow the dictates of reason. Theists believe that morality is dictated by God. But again, that leaves open the question of why I should follow the dictates of God. Utilitarianism believes that one should seek the greatest good for the greatest number. But fails to provide an answer to the question of why I should follow the dictates of Utilitarianism if they conflict with my own interests. Other notions of morality hold that being moral is being concerned with the welfare of others, and being moral is being altruistic. But this also fails to provide an answer to your question – why should I care about others? There is also a social conception of morality that thinks ‘being moral’ is thinking or acting in the interests of the society at large. But again, your question asks why I should be concerned about that.

The bottom line is that unless the particular system of morality in question can provide an incentive to be moral based on enlightened self-interest, that particular system of morality has no answer to the challenge of why anyone should be moral according to its lights. The only motivating reason for anyone to do anything has to be based on enlightened self interest. We are, after all, an evolved survival machine engineered by natural selection for the purpose of ensuring that our genes survive and flourish. We are, in other words, designed to pursue our own (in a genetic sense) self-interest.

Of course, the details of any particular response in terms of self-interest will depend on the system of morality in question. For Theistic morals, for example, it is the reward of Heaven and the threat of Hell that provides the motivation to be moral. Each different ethical theory will provide its own attempt at providing a self-interested motive to be moral. Not all are successful. Plato and Kant, for example, singularly fail. Not many people are consistently rational. Most let their emotions rule their lives. So it is a vain hope that defining morality in terms of reason will convince people to be moral.

Only variations of Ethical Egoism start off with the self-interested motivation. But then, Ethical Egoism is not very well understood, and is therefore not a very popular system of ethics.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/saburns/pg00cv.htm