This seems to be a great day for e-sports fans. The great commentators, Michu Kaku, Richard Dawkins, and colleagues have created a e-sports-like summit to debate whether the universe has a meaning or a purpose. As we know, the universe might not have a purpose. It might be blown up or it might fail for some other reason.
In any case, it is not only the subject matter that interests me. It is the format and mode of debate. This serious question is placed in a serious context--one that closely resembles the British Parliament famous for such commentators as John Stuart Mill. This Parliament has been the most successful drug-running operation in history--as many critics joke, nothing other than sugar could really have conquered the world.
The British Parliament was statistically, mathematically, scientifically, and politically, the most powerful force in the world for many centuries. No superior form of government has ever been democratically demonstrated. Even the United States congress, for its many virtues and positive manifestations, seems to pale in comparison to the House of Lords and the House of Commons. There is little doubt, in my mind, as an economist, speaking from my area of expertise, that the British government is as famous as it was for the export of sugar. Even the United States government of modern times seems to fail in retrospect--whatever high regard I must currently profess for the Trump administration.
We cannot export democracy. This much is clear from experiments in the Iraq and Afghanistan scenario. I feel that so long as the United States government cannot export anything people actually want at a primitive level we will always fail as a nation in the world. The concept of democracy is not powerful--as we see in Russia, India, and even the people's Republic of China. For its continued salience as a nation, the United States of America must export love. It must show what it is to be loved is to have a purpose in the world.
Nowhere is this more clear than in Japan, with the creation of Nintendo. There is perhaps no single economic entity that has done more for the world than the Nintendo company. Without Nintendo we would have nothing. The United States must rise to the occasion, exporting love without bound for those things worth having. Like the great British Empire and the sugar which was its call sign, the United States too must overcome the trepidation of youth. The United States must show love to a world desperately without love. We must rescue democracies and Republics from a government of fear. We must show a better side to ourselves, and love it the rationale.
This is a failure of a blog post. The subject material was full of comprehensible ideas. The points of satire were both identifiable and understandable. Overall, I left this post with a clear intelligible message.
Michio Kaku is a caricature. These people aren't insightful in the least.
If you're a naturalist, the "universe" has no purpose, whatever that means. It's an extremely basic logical outworking of the naturalist world view. The nonsense about having an "individual" purpose is just to appeal to solipsism. If purpose is just "individual" then anybody's purpose is just as good as anybody else's. Kaku's just refusing to face the logical outworkings of his world view because it doesn't sound nice to say there's no purpose. Why would anybody respect somebody who won't admit that his world view boils down to purposelessness?
But my comment wasn't about the video, so much as it was about the accompanying commentary which drifts between topics and points and Nintendo.
Michio Kaku is a HACK FRAUD. I don't know why people take this guy seriously. Actually, no, that's a bit of hyperbole. Like if I said, "Over-fishing will turn the sea to blood." which it won't literally do, but over-fishing is becoming such a problem now that many species are going extinct, etc., and these idiots have the nerve to ask, "Why do I need a fishing license? Why does the government regulate me using a pole?" and that's exactly the kind of over-simplified logic I expect from AnCap morons. These people actually believe if corporations ran the world, that we'd be better off. With no anti-trust laws, what's to stop them from crushing all small businesses and competition and basically becoming the state? People need to realize that, without Indonesia's rubber, there would be no pencil erasers. This is a fundamental problem that highlights the very real possibility of a pencil shortage, which we need to prepare for in case a meteor or some large natural disaster knocks out the infrastructure of society. People ask, "Can't we just destroy the meteor with a laser?" No, we can't. If a legit asteroid were heading towards the earth, it would take thousands of nuclear missiles to destroy it, and a dinky little laser ain't gonna do shit.
On May 27 2017 00:35 Arrian wrote: Michio Kaku is a caricature. These people aren't insightful in the least.
If you're a naturalist, the "universe" has no purpose, whatever that means. It's an extremely basic logical outworking of the naturalist world view. The nonsense about having an "individual" purpose is just to appeal to solipsism. If purpose is just "individual" then anybody's purpose is just as good as anybody else's. Kaku's just refusing to face the logical outworkings of his world view because it doesn't sound nice to say there's no purpose. Why would anybody respect somebody who won't admit that his world view boils down to purposelessness?
But my comment wasn't about the video, so much as it was about the accompanying commentary which drifts between topics and points and Nintendo.
Well I think they are both right (sort of) on one point but wrong on the other. Dawkins is perfectly happy to trumpet "purposelessness", but he doesn't seem to understand the Pandora's Box that that opens. He's not what you would call a Great Soul.
I suspect Kaku intuits that on some level, even if he doesn't fully understand why, and tries to avert disaster by not completing the step.
On May 27 2017 00:35 Arrian wrote: Michio Kaku is a caricature. These people aren't insightful in the least.
If you're a naturalist, the "universe" has no purpose, whatever that means. It's an extremely basic logical outworking of the naturalist world view. The nonsense about having an "individual" purpose is just to appeal to solipsism. If purpose is just "individual" then anybody's purpose is just as good as anybody else's. Kaku's just refusing to face the logical outworkings of his world view because it doesn't sound nice to say there's no purpose. Why would anybody respect somebody who won't admit that his world view boils down to purposelessness?
But my comment wasn't about the video, so much as it was about the accompanying commentary which drifts between topics and points and Nintendo.
Well I think they are both right (sort of) on one point but wrong on the other. Dawkins is perfectly happy to trumpet "purposelessness", but he doesn't seem to understand the Pandora's Box that that opens. He's not what you would call a Great Soul.
What are you even talking about? A 'purpose' is a human term for something that has utility, and was either created or is commandeered to serve that utility. It's like asking what the purpose of a rock is. It doesn't have a purpose. It's just sitting there because it is. A person could say, "Hey, this is my rock." and paint a smiley face on it and take it home, and then it would be serving a purpose, but before that, there was no inherent purpose because purpose is something that takes place in our own imaginations. To say the very least, we have not even begun to use a vast majority of the entire universe.
lol Michio Kaku is not a fraud. when he was in high school in Japan he got so high on ACII that he built a nuclear reactor in his parents' garage. He talks about his experiences building the reactor. in some of his interviews. If he hadn't completed the project it is possible no one would care who he is and he might never have been a student of Harvard. He is brave enough to talk with philosophers of identity about the philosophy of identity. Kaku is one of the most powerful figures of our time.
On May 28 2017 01:33 FiveHundred wrote: lol Michio Kaku is not a fraud. when he was in high school in Japan he got so high on ACII that he built a nuclear reactor in his parents' garage. He talks about his experiences building the reactor. in some of his interviews. If he hadn't completed the project it is possible no one would care who he is and he might never have been a student of Harvard. He is brave enough to talk with philosophers of identity about the philosophy of identity. Kaku is one of the most powerful figures of our time.
He was in American high school when he did the project, was not high, and basically made a cathode ray tube -- which you can easily do with a wine bottle.
On May 28 2017 01:33 FiveHundred wrote: lol Michio Kaku is not a fraud. when he was in high school in Japan he got so high on ACII that he built a nuclear reactor in his parents' garage. He talks about his experiences building the reactor. in some of his interviews. If he hadn't completed the project it is possible no one would care who he is and he might never have been a student of Harvard. He is brave enough to talk with philosophers of identity about the philosophy of identity. Kaku is one of the most powerful figures of our time.
He was in American high school when he did the project, was not high, and basically made a cathode ray tube -- which you can easily do with a wine bottle.
well whatever you're probably right, but my account provides a lot more purpose than cathode ray tube, america and not high
how about Kevin Sullivan driving up to Calgary and murdering Chris Benoit, his wife Nancy, his 2 kids and then making it look like it was a triple-murder-suicide and hanging the whole thing on Chris Benoit and getting away scot-free? Sullivan tortured all of them for hours before finally killing them all.
That's important drama.
They've always said Sullivan books heat... now that is what i call one hell of a main event heel win
On May 27 2017 00:35 Arrian wrote: Michio Kaku is a caricature. These people aren't insightful in the least.
If you're a naturalist, the "universe" has no purpose, whatever that means. It's an extremely basic logical outworking of the naturalist world view. The nonsense about having an "individual" purpose is just to appeal to solipsism. If purpose is just "individual" then anybody's purpose is just as good as anybody else's. Kaku's just refusing to face the logical outworkings of his world view because it doesn't sound nice to say there's no purpose. Why would anybody respect somebody who won't admit that his world view boils down to purposelessness?
But my comment wasn't about the video, so much as it was about the accompanying commentary which drifts between topics and points and Nintendo.
Well I think they are both right (sort of) on one point but wrong on the other. Dawkins is perfectly happy to trumpet "purposelessness", but he doesn't seem to understand the Pandora's Box that that opens. He's not what you would call a Great Soul.
What are you even talking about? A 'purpose' is a human term for something that has utility, and was either created or is commandeered to serve that utility. It's like asking what the purpose of a rock is. It doesn't have a purpose. It's just sitting there because it is. A person could say, "Hey, this is my rock." and paint a smiley face on it and take it home, and then it would be serving a purpose, but before that, there was no inherent purpose because purpose is something that takes place in our own imaginations. To say the very least, we have not even begun to use a vast majority of the entire universe.
If you are a naturalist you can absolutely believe that beings can be teleological centers, and in fact philosophers do posit that quite regularly in philosophy of environment and even outside of applied ethics - like in Epistemology (look at Elgin's True Enough or Sosa's Virtue Epistemology). A purpose doesn't have to mean a grandiose calling like Plantinga argues for in his point about the basicness of beliefs in god like the way Velleman describes adopted children having for parent's they've never met. Not taking Kaku's point charitably is the first mistake here, the second one is thinking that you can get to purposelessness by simple logic so easily - tell me where the steps in your logic are that get to purposelessness and why they allow you to elude or abstract away the living of a life (just look at your own, its right there). It isn't just a pandora's box, it is an opaque argument, one that was made by some a while ago but has come under fire numerous times. Even more seriously, if you look at work by people like Franz De Waal you have naturalists arguing against the purposelessness posited by Dawkins and Dennett and are more on the side of Kaku even if they disagree upon the reasons for holding that position.
It troubles me here that people are tossing around terms that don't fit. A purpose is not just something of utility, a purpose is that which all utility derives from - a purpose like following the good for example would be where Socrates or Plato derive all moral action. So the second post has it backwards. Furthermore that a teleological reason for existence is a socially constructed thing - like a smiley face on a rock - is hardly an argument that doesn't need more justification. That we have not used the vast majority of the universe has little to do with that previous statement. If we use virtue ethics for a moment, Aristotle points out that an animal can be a good animal if it espouses virtues that show excellence in that animal: a snail doesn't need to visit mars to be a good snail, nor does a human need to leave earth to be an excellent human. If excellence, flourishing, or the like are what we might consider a teleological goal of humans (which is not held by everyone of course, but we're talking about Virtue Ethics here) doesn't require necessarily that one ever leave their home city.
But the most troubling part of these posts is that they assume something like a purpose is so easily culturally constructed, so obviously relative and that we should agree to nihilism. It might be interesting then to recognize that those arguments are the ones with the uphill battle, not those of the environmentalist naturalist, Elginian epistemologist, or neo-aristotelian. How do you justify the connection between a system not having a purpose and the individual agents within a system not having a purpose - metaphysics is going to tell you its gonna be really difficult.
i talked with Christine Korsgaard about this while she was a visiting scholar. although surely i came off as something of a fool in our conversation, you can read a summary of Korsgaard heree
I watched Kaku's comments and a bit of Dawkins from that video. I think the title of the video is a bit misleading as they spend very little time talking about what a purpose or meaning actually is or could be. Dawkins spent all of his time deifying science and Kaku apparently wants to believe in God without it being God. It's very telling then that the old Aquinian gambit is as powerful as ever:In order to believe in a law, you have to have a lawmaker. Thus, it's critical to attack this idea from both sides.
I think the point that Kaku is making is that the discussion can't be scientifically solved, because you can't prove the non-existance of anything. Hence people will just bring the same claims forth and everyone will believe what they want, which isn't scientific.
@dovoc: I think you misunderstood what ninazerg wrote, in that he didn't say that purpose was the utility, but that utility follows purpose, hence if the universe had a purpose, it's components would be created with a certain utility, constructed to fulfill the purpose. Which isn't the case for said stone until people actually give him purpose or utility.
Btw I fail to understand how the ones who claim that all is a construct have to go to less of a length than the people saying that all is random. You can't prove randomness, but you can construct a thesis about the purpose and prove for a large number of objects that that is the case. Then people can try to disprove said thesis with counter-examples and we are getting close to a scientific theory.
EPT
