Here is a brief description of the philosopher Phillip Goff’s new book Why? The Purpose of the Universe (Oxford University Press) with criticisms of Goff’s main ideas in the book by the theoretical physicist Jochen Szanolies.
The book’s OUP description states:
Why are we here? What’s the point of existence? On the ‘big questions’ of meaning and purpose, Western thought has been dominated by the dichotomy of traditional religion and secular atheism. In this pioneering work, Philip Goff argues that it is time to move on from both God and atheism. Through an exploration of contemporary cosmology and cutting-edge philosophical research on consciousness, Goff argues for cosmic purpose: the idea that the universe is directed towards certain goals, such as the emergence of life.
In contrast to religious thinkers, Goff argues that the traditional God is a bad explanation of cosmic purpose. Instead, he explores a range of alternative possibilities for accounting for cosmic purpose, from the speculation that we live in a computer simulation to the hypothesis that the universe itself is a conscious mind. Goff scrutinizes these options with analytical rigour, laying the foundations for a new paradigm of philosophical enquiry into the middle ground between God and atheism. Ultimately, Goff outlines a way of living in hope that cosmic purpose is still unfolding, involving political engagement and a non-literalist interpretation of traditional religion.
In a two-part detailed review of the book (Part 1, Part 2) Szanolies makes many detailed critiques. Here is a sampling.
I’m inherently suspicious of overt declarations of having arrived at a certain position only through the strength of the arguments in its favor, even against one’s own prior commitments. If that were typically how things happen, then either there ought to be much more agreement than there is, or the vast majority of people are just irredeemably irrational.
There are several junctures in Philip Goff’s most recent book, Why? The Purpose of the Universe, at which we are treated to a description of the author’s intellectual journey, detailing how the force of argument necessitated course corrections. Now, changing your mind in the face of new information is generally a good thing: nobody gets it right on the first try, so everybody who’s held fast to their views probably just hasn’t examined them deeply. But still, very few people arrive at their position solely thanks to rational forces.
[I admit to being receptive to this argument. I know for example that despite my lifelong attempt to be rational and impartial the fact is that most if not all of what I believe emanates from all sorts of contingencies: what books I read, classes I took, genome I possess, family and era I was born into, etc.]
Summarizing Goff’s main arguments Szanolies writes:
Goff’s main contention is that the best available evidence, filtered through the understanding bestowed to us by our best current theories, does not paint a picture of a meaningless cosmos, as is usually claimed …
He marshals two main arguments in support of his conclusion. One is the fact that the universe seems implausibly fine-tuned: that is, the parameters that define its properties fall within a very narrow range that allow for the existence of complex structures, and hence, life. The other and, to me, more compelling one is sometimes known as the Darwinian argument against materialism: since natural selection is only sensitive to behaviors, there is nothing that compels our internal states to track the affective valence of our stimuli—that is, evolution doesn’t need pain to feel bad, it just needs us to avoid it. So where does this psycho-physical harmony, as Goff calls it, come from?
While skeptical of Goff’s arguments, Szanolies certainly understands the appeal of their ultimate conclusion that “the reality of conscious experience implies a larger purpose to, well, everything.” As he writes,
Goff’s ultimate conclusion should be attractive to many: rather than being thrown by mere random chance into the cold and uncaring void of the universe, to live out a brief, confused existence and then wink out into the nothingness whence we came, the existence of complex life in the world is due to a larger purpose, an overall arc that bends into the direction of greater objective value. Moreover, rather than going the traditional route and appealing to some omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent creator God that sees to it that everything unfolds according to His divine (and commonly, unfathomable) design, he proposes a way to reap those benefits without all the boring Sunday prayer sessions!
[Author’s note. I am in no position to comment intelligently on Goff’s book, which I haven’t yet read, but as I’ve written previously “If reflection reveals that our deepest wishes may come true, our skeptical alarm bell should go off. For we want to know, not just to believe.” So in this sense, I’m aligned with Szanolies.
Nevertheless, I am also receptive to Shakespeare “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”]
Pretty interesting stuff here, probably a good read whether one believes it or not. I have not subscribed to the broad sense of there being cosmic consciousness and/or purpose.
The God explanation is attractive to believers because that is what they want to believe, and, as Davidson suggested, belief and desire are propositional attitudes. These attributes are mutually supportive. I still hold that what we call consciousness is a property of animate beings, not an encompassing cosmos: the cosmos, seems to me, emerged(?) from inanimate forces. Life came about, somehow, a long time later…evidence we can point to supports that much. As I said, people will believe what they want to believe. Philosophy thrives on doubt and uncertainty and asks unanswerable questions. Physics, as a science, looks for proofs. My inclination is to look to science. And, I am not even from Missouri.
The Purpose of the Universe
I think that searching for the Meaning and Purpose of those things that can never really be known is an an intellectual game we play together as we meet to discuss esoteric subjects like; What is the meaning of Life? and that other old favorite, Why are we here?
We are speculating about something the Scientific consensus has not as yet pronounced upon, so, as Speculators we are free to explore any ideas and to go in any direction we may be drawn to!
Reason, Meaning, Life and the purpose there of, are solely the pursuits of Human consciousness , that part of every-man that is a seamless part of the web of life has no need for reason or meaning, it simply is, but the part of us that is conscious, the abode of our named and described selves with all our contradictions and curiosity, wants and fears, is full of questions about ourselves and the World we inhabit!
Can we definitively answer all of our questions? Any of our questions? I don’t hold much hope that we can, but if we can discover some explanations that allow us to think about these things from new perspectives? Well we certainly have the right to try!
There is somewhat of a consensus that life on Earth began in the primordial sea, that seems to be a reasonably good starting point, so, for the sake of today’s conversation I will assume that that is where it all began.
Cellular Life is guided by Instinct, the first cell (On Earth}was a physical object guided by instinct, so, what is instinct? Perhaps we could call it an Ephemeral something that pervades and attempts to guide all life on Earth, except that part of Human minds that consciousness seeks to control. consciousness can over ride instinct, humans can do what they ‘want’ to do even when ‘something’ is telling them ‘not’ to do it. We can only deduce that it exists because of the way it makes us feel when we live in harmony with it or, how we feel when we don’t. We humans spend our conscious lives interacting with the world and the other humans in the collectively conscious world, a place where we try to use Rationality to guide our decisions, do we make mistakes from time to time, yes for certain, does the life solely guided by instinct sometimes make mistakes? Of course it does, all life lives a precarious existence in a dangerous world.
Instinct is not Religion it demands no sacrifices, rituals or incantations, it promises no Heaven for the Righteous, it pervades everything yet everything it pervades eventually dies, individually and collectively, surely it guided the Dinosaurs and the Trilobites and where are they now?
The science of DNA tells us much about life, and where we really fit in the hierarchy of life on Earth.
All life on Earth shares some DNA including the grass on the lawn and the Tube worms and the blind Crab like creatures who live at the bottom of the Marianas Trench forty-thousand feet below the surface! Sharing DNA means a common ancestor!
Jelly Fish share 6o% of their DNA with us, Chimpanzees share 98.8 of theirs, I was surprised by that, but my purpose is not to say that we are Monkeys, we assuredly are not. But. They are cousins, perhaps from that part of the family we don’t like to talk about ?
The point I am attempting to make is that ‘Instinct’ an essential part of life on Earth, is ‘without substance’ and that life is opportunistic, it exhibits it’s self where ever it can in whatever form it can survive in!
The ‘without substance’ instinct may permeate the universe creating life where ever and in what ever form the local conditions will sustain!
This obviously doesn’t answer the question of why we are here and what is our purpose, Those are great questions but I wouldn’t know where to start, we will have to create an old man with a beard to do justice to that subject!