Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.
More to the point [mine], without God and religion, mere mortals must either come up with a secular equivalent [at least on this side of the grave] or accept that there may well not be a teleoglogical component underlying either human existence or existence itself.
Just ask yourself: How important is it that your own existence not be essentially meaningless and purposeless, that you do have access to a universal morality, and that oblivion is just a myth. The part where â click â human philosophy may well be far more a component of human psychology. Itâs less what you believe and more that what you believe comforts and consoles you.
Still, how do we wrap our minds around the reality that 1] âsomehowâ matter came into existence, 2] that âsomehowâ it evolved into biological life, and 3] that âsomehowâ biological life acquired consciounsess capable of autonomy.
We. Just. Dont. Know.
On the other hand, what could possibly be more fascinating to philosophers than in exploring questions of this nature? Itâs like thereâs a part of us that knows we will almost certainly go to grave failing to grasp the answers, but that in no way makes the questions themselves any less engrossing, captivating or mysterious.
One way or another we exist. Why?
Cue the pantheists among us? Though, admittedly, I have never been able to quite grasp how someone can bring herself to believe that in a No God universe, the universe itself as an entity isâŚDivine? Though given what might be called âacts of the universeâ, hardly benign. So, instead of God being the sadistic monster, it is the cosmos itself?
Well, unless, of course, in regard to those things, there are things âthat we donât [even] know we donât know.â
Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.
Though not unimaginable to God, perhaps? And yet when we move away from religion here and imagine that âall there isâ has either 1] simply always existed or 2] came into existence â out of what? â in the Big Bang, how can that not even be more astonishing â ineffable? â still?
Yes, some are able to connect the dots in their heads between the human condition and a Divine universe. Though â click â Iâm not one of them. And I always come back to this:
In other words, God or No God, if there is a teleological purpose behind the existence of existence itself then, here on Earth, it would certainly seem to be manifesting itself rather sadistically.
Here things get tricky as well, however, because even scientists embody Rummyâs Rule. They speculate about things like dark matter and dark energy, but are still at a loss to explain them. In fact, on a Nova documentary a few years back, some astrophysicists speculated that what dark energy and dark matter really reflect is what we still donât grasp about gravity itself.
As for this partâŚ
âŚmost of us are in the same boat: if they [the scientists] say so.
In the interim what might philosophers be able to contribute here in regard to the mystery of biological matter itself?
Cosmos or cosmic can be loosely called as Brahmand as per the sanatan dharma / ancient religion, popularly known as Hindu. The ultimate objective of the religious practices and spiritual exercises is to realize that I am the cosmos - Aham Brhmasmi
Nature can, indeed, be devastating. I wouldnât use the term cruel because I think cruelty implies a conscious intent to hurt, but it can nevertheless certainly seem that way. Nature has no conscious intent to hurt, since it has no conscious intent at all, its workings are, to coin a phrase, completely blind.
Nature is also notoriously wasteful. Most animals produce far more offspring than will survive, because this strategy maximises the likelihood that at least some will survive, while at the same time condemning most to death. Historically, of course, for humans it was no different. With plants itâs far, far worse, since most will produce thousands and thousands of seeds, only a tiny proportion of which, if any, will somehow reach fertile ground.
And there are many, many more things one could say to highlight the violence and unpleasantness of nature.
But at the same time, nature is life, and has provided us with literally everything we have. It cannot be any other way, because nature is all that there is. Everything we love, everything that makes us happy, and everything that gives us hope, exists because of nature. Indeed, to state the obvious, we ourselves are nature, and everything we do and create is part of it, including our entire civilisation, with all its technological wonders.
The ancients felt no sense of contradiction in worshipping, or propitiating, deities that could be both kind and cruel, not to mention indifferent, and in this they were simply personifying how the world really works. They knew they were part of nature, part of something infinitely bigger than themselves, and also knew, from long experience, that it was far better to work with nature, than to try and work against it. Some might call this taming nature, but itâs really just going with the flow, because nothing else is ultimately possible.
I said, above, that nature is not conscious, but this, in fact, is untrue. It may once have been true, as far as we can tell, and may have been true for a very, very long time, but it is obviously no longer the case. Humans are part of nature, and humans are conscious, therefore nature is conscious, and any meaning we imbue it with is ours to do so, not in any arbitrary sense, but in a genuinely fundamental sense.
I would agree with you that cruelty is more of a conscious intent to hurt, but I wouldnât see nature as blind. The wastefulness you see is the innate intention to survive and spread, which all life has. Humans have also produced more offspring in the knowledge that some will not survive. In some cultures, where the family work together, more children mean more outcomes and, consequently, a better provision for the family group. It also made the family more resilient against others once the clan grew.
You can deem producing seed to spread waste or generous, but I prefer the latter because waste suggests leftovers that could be used better. The same is valid with flowers, whose abundance seems only pleasant to the eye, but to what productive end? The bees and other insects seem glad of the splendour, but not for aesthetic reasons - flowersâ primary role is attracting pollinators. Could the seeds that do not sprout have another purpose?
Even seeds that do not germinate can play essential roles in the ecosystem. Seeds that do not sprout often become a vital food source for wildlife, including birds, rodents, and insects. In this way, they contribute to sustaining other life forms, supporting the food web. Secondly, as seeds decompose, they return organic matter to the soil, enhancing its fertility and structure. This organic matter is crucial for maintaining soil health, supporting microbial communities, and promoting future plant growth. And finally, seeds that remain dormant in the soil act as a genetic reserve for the plant species. They can remain viable for many years, waiting for the right conditions to sprout.
We have lost this interactive view of nature that may not appeal to our preferences, but there is little waste in nature.
Because nature is insensitive to our preferences, we may feel it is working against us. There is a competition for primacy. As soon as conditions are right, fungi, plants and animals will spread, operating with indifferent efficiency, where each species competes for resources, space, and survival, regardless of the presence of others. Human beings are the species that surveys this and makes choices, preferring one species over another, perhaps even temporarily, but mostly, our intentions are practical or aesthetic.
Humans occupy a unique position in the natural world. We are both participants in and modifiers of ecosystems. This dual role means we often act as stewards, consciously choosing which species to support or suppress to maintain ecological balance or enhance biodiversity. However, it also means we can disrupt natural processes when our interventions are not well-considered or sustainable.
This is a profound insight into the ancient worldview and its relationship with nature. The ancients understood and respected the complexities and dualities of the natural world. They personified these forces in their deities, who embodied natureâs nurturing and destructive aspects. This understanding led them to a philosophy emphasising harmony with the natural world rather than attempting to dominate or control it.
What the ancients practised was not so much taming as understanding and adapting. They worked with natureâs rhythms and cycles, recognising that these were far larger and more powerful than themselves. This wasnât about asserting control but finding a way to live sustainably within the natural worldâs bounds. In many ways, this approach is about âgoing with the flowââacknowledging the forces at play and finding ways to move harmoniously within them. This aligns closely with the concept of following the Tao in Taoist philosophy.
The idea of âgoing with the flowâ is closely related to the Taoist concept of Wu Wei, which is often translated as ânon-actionâ or âeffortless action.â Wu Wei is not about inactivity but about taking action that is in complete harmony with the natural flow of events. It is the practice of aligning oneself with the Tao and acting spontaneously, naturally, and unforced.
If humans are nature that becomes conscious, then nature has achieved a form of self-awareness through us. This means that our ability to reflect, think, and imbue the world meaningfully also expresses natureâs potential. In this sense, human consciousness is not something outside or apart from nature but an emergent propertyâa way that nature has come to know itself. (Alan Watts)
It emphasises the deep interconnectedness between humans and the natural world. Our thoughts, actions, and values are all part of a broader ecological and cosmic web. If human consciousness is an aspect of nature, then we bear a responsibility to ourselves and the natural world that birthed us. It encourages a holistic understanding of the world, where the division between mind and matter, or human and nature, is seen as an artificial construct.
This implies that we can find purpose and meaning in our existence that is not imposed from outside but arises naturally from our participation in the universeâs ongoing story.
Life, perhaps even by definition, does indeed have an innate propensity to survive and spread, but I would hesitate to call this an intention, since intent implies consciousness. Life can be very simple, without anything resembling consciousness. Many may say, and I would too, that dogs, for example, are conscious, though not exactly in the same way that we are, but it would be far more of a stretch to say that a microbe is conscious, and such micro-organisms make up the vast bulk of living things. To do so I think we would have to redefine what we mean by consciousness.
I agree that very little, perhaps nothing at all, is ever really wasted in nature, and you make some very good points about that. Its apparent wastefulness is just that, apparent, and everything is recycled. Although, with regard to wastefulness, if life only exists on earth, then having an entire universe of countless billions of galaxies, each with countless billions of stars, seems a bit wasteful, although it neednât be, if one day, the life that started on earth spreads to the whole universe. And thatâs just assuming that life only exists on earth at the moment.
Iâm not very familiar with Taoism, to be honest, but the way you describe it, it sounds very much like my own way of thinking. Perhaps not so much in the âeffortlessâ sense, if thatâs a good translation, as a lot of things do indeed take a lot off effort, and this is a good thing, too, because by working for something, we value it.
Iâve never really had any doubt that meaning exists in nature, in life, but putting that meaning into words is another matter entirely. Itâs like when you try and describe a dream that seemed so meaningful to you, but it comes out like a trivial bunch of nonsense when you put it into words. And the reason for that is clear, I think, in that the most important thing about dreams is their emotional signature, which imbues them with meaning, sometimes in a very powerful way.
If we think of intention in a more abstract or cosmological sense, we might say that the universe has a kind of âintentionâ in the way it is structured. The laws of natureâgravity, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, etc.âcreate conditions under which life can emerge and evolve. These laws also dictate the biochemical processes that drive lifeâs basic functions, including survival and reproduction. From this perspective, one could argue that these processes are âintendedâ because they are inevitable outcomes of the universeâs physical constants and laws. Itâs as if the universe is set up in such a way that life, once it appears, naturally follows a path toward survival and complexity.
Obviously, this doesnât imply conscious intention in the way humans understand it. You could say that it is a poetic way of recognizing that lifeâs drive to survive is not just a fluke but an integrated part of the cosmos. It seems that the universeâs structure allows and perhaps encourages the emergence and persistence of life when the conditions are right. By the look of it, these conditions are rare in comparison to the vastness of space.
I was recently reading about the discovery of particles on the International Space Station (ISS) that contain organic compounds or even microorganisms potentially capable of supporting life under the right conditions adds weight to the panspermia hypothesis. If these particles are indeed viable for life or carry the basic ingredients needed for life to develop, it suggests that the universe could be teeming with the precursors to life, if not life itself. The possibility that life could spread throughout the universe this way could mean the universeâs vastness is not wasteful if life has the potential to expand and propagate across different planets and star systems.
Just one small correction to your thoughts on Taoism and the concept of âWu Wei,â often translated as âeffortless action.â This doesnât necessarily mean that things happen without effort but rather that actions are taken in alignment with the natural flow of life, without unnecessary resistance or force. This could mean acting with ease when ease is appropriate and exerting effort when effort is needed. In this sense, valuing effort as a path to appreciating what we achieve fits quite well with Taoist philosophy.
Panspermia is definitely an interesting idea and makes a lot of intuitive sense. After all, thatâs how life, especially plant life, spreads on earth, by casting its seeds to the wind in the hope that they will find somewhere to grow. If panspermia is real, then life surely exists everywhere that it can gain a foothold, just as it does on earth.
There are lots of people, of course, who would say that the question of whether life exists elsewhere has already been answered, in the form of aliens. Once weâve stripped away all the rubbish, we are left with a pretty profound mystery, I think. But itâs worth pointing out that stories of alien encounters have some very interesting parallels with folklore about elves and other similar creatures, even down to specific details such as abductions. So either the aliens have always been with us, interpreted in past centuries as otherworldly creatures, or the otherworldly creatures are now masquerading as aliens. Iâm more inclined to think of creatures like this from myth and legend as nature spirits, whatever that might mean in practice, but itâs a truly fascinating subject, nevertheless.
Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.
On the other hand, the gap between suggesting something like this given the existence of God seems very, very different [to me] than arguing that âby chanceâ in a No God universe matter and energy just, well, happened?!
How wide are your eyes popping? And what pops mine are not general descriptions like this [cosmogony], but the actual mind-boggling reality of numbers like this:
Light travels at approximately 186,000 miles a second. That is about 6,000,000,000,000 miles a year.
The closest star to us is Alpha Centauri. It is 4.75 light-years away. 28,500,000,000,000 miles.
So, traveling at 186,000 miles a second, it would take us 4.75 years to reach it. The voyager spacecraft [just now exiting our solar system] will take 70,000 years to reach it.
To reach the center of the Milky Way galaxy it would take 100,000 light-years.
*Or consider this: *
âTo get to the closest galaxy to ours, the Canis Major Dwarf, at Voyagerâs speed, it would take approximately 749,000,000 years to travel the distance of 25,000 light years! If we could travel at the speed of light, it would still take 25,000 years!â
The Andromeda galaxy is 2.537 million light years away.
How about this:
Those here who connect the dots between meaning in their own individual lives and one or another rendition of Pantheism� How exactly do you go about connecting the dots between one and the other?
Also, one suspects that when it comes to interpreting even cosmological facts, astrophysicists reach the point where [in regard to the very, very large and the very, very small] itâs a crapshoot. Just one derived from the âscientific methodâ rather than encompassed in a âworld of wordsâ.
Okay, letâs bring that down to Earth. Over the centuries, we have had an endless succession of moral, political and spiritual paths from which to choose. And, in fact, itâs not conflict over cosmological constants that pummel us. Whenâs the last time an actual war broke out over dark energy or dark matter. Or, for that matter, the Big Bang, Inflation, Deflation, Black Holes, Event Horizons, etc,.
And [of course?] presuming that one day science is able to pin this down â click â the part where it is either in sync with your own One True Path or it isnât?
Yes, the universe is truly vast. What pops my eyes, though, is that it might actually be infinite, according to some people. If so, how did it allegedly start from a single point? Something seems not quite right, here.
As to whether the universe was somehow designed, by an outside entity, to make life possible, I donât think this is at all necessary for it to have meaning, and may even, in the unlikely event that it were true, deny it any real meaning of its own.
Iâm tempted to say, give it time. Weâve only known (if thatâs the right word) about those things for a few decades at most, so thereâs still plenty of time for religions to incorporate those ideas and start killing each other over minor details.
One-true-pathism is the bane of human existence. But each to their own, of course.
Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.
Okay, the universe exists for a reason. For a purpose. God or No God. Which would then only bring those like me back around to this:
You tell me why, given the above, that purpose doesnât revolve aroundâŚsadism? Or, perhaps, cue Harold Kushner?
For other theistic thinkers, however, this licenses Godâs to go on doing anything â anything â that He or She or It deems is necessary to sustain whatever mere mortals may or may not know about this Divine Plan. Besides, if a Supreme Being does in fact exist, thereâs not much we can do about whatever unfolds.
Of course, unless and until a God, the God chooses to manifest a Divine presence in our day to day lives, we can think ourselves into believing whatever we want to believe.
Whatever, for instance, comforts and consoles us?
And for most religionists what they want to believe is that if they follow the righteous path of their own God here and now, they will be rewarded with a continuation of that path for all the rest of eternity.
And Iâll bet he has tons of hard evidence to back all this up. An âomni-mere mortalâ, perhaps?
And, as well, the profoundly enigmatic manner in which those like Bryan Magee grappled with it:
"Time
For a period of two to three years between the ages of nine and twelve I was in thrall to puzzlement about time. I would lie awake in bed at night in the dark thinking something along the following lines. I know there was a day before yesterday, and a day before that and a day before that and so onâŚBefore everyday there must have been a day before. So it must be possible to go back like that for ever and ever and everâŚYet is it? The idea of going back for ever and ever was something I could not get hold of: it seemed impossible. So perhaps, after all, there must have been a beginning somewhere. But if there was a beginning, what had been going on before that? Well, obviously, nothingânothing at allâotherwise it could not be the beginning. But if there was nothing, how could anything have got started? What could it have come from? Time wouldnât just pop into existenceâbingo!âout of nothing, and start going, all by itself. Nothing is nothing, not anything. So the idea of a beginning was unimaginable, which somehow made it seem impossible too. The upshot was that it seemed to be impossible for time to have had a beginning and impossible not for it to have had a beginning.
I must be missing something here, I came to think. There are only these two alternatives so one of them must be right. They canât both be impossible. So I would switch my concentration from one to the other, and then when it had exhausted itself, back again, trying to figure out where I had gone wrong; but I never discovered.
space:
I realized a similar problem existed with regard to space. I remember myself as a London evacuee in Market HarboroughâI must have been ten or eleven at the timeâlying on my back in the grass in a park and trying to penetrate a cloudless blue sky with my eyes and thinking something like this" "If I went straight up into the sky, and kept on going in a straight line, why wouldnât I be able to just keep on going for ever and ever and ever? But thatâs impossible. Why isnât it possible? Surely, eventually, Iâd have to come to some sort of end. But why? If I bumped up against something eventually, wouldnât that have to be something in space? And if it was in space wouldnât there have to be something on the other side of it if only more space? On the other hand, if there was no limit, endless space couldnât just be, anymore than endless time could.â
Flip a coin?
Maia
Here, however, is where âthose like meâ make that crucial distinction between essential meaning rooted in the either/or world, or from religion, ideology, deontology, biological imperatives etc., and existential meaning rooted historically, culturally, individually, subjectively in dasein.
The part where, in my view, itâs not what you believe âin your headâ about abortion or nihilism or sexuality, but what you are able to demonstrate that all rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn.
Then [for me] back to, well, at least the possibility that one of us might be able to persuade the other to come up out of or go down into âthe holeâ. Me inside you, you inside me or neither one of us ever able to break down the âfailure to communicateâ about things like religion or spiritually.
On the other hand, why should you and I be any different from all the others who, down through time, have struggled to grasp why there is something instead of nothing at allâŚand why this something and not something else? Let alone those we call philosophers conjecturing about these things given The Gap and Rummyâs Rule and Bejamin Button such that they might venture to suggest not only what they believe the human condition came out of but what they believe it is obligated morally must evolve into. In order to truly invent or discover the âbest of all possible worldsâ.
Maia:
Still, why on Earth do some mere mortals come to embrace one set of details rather than another. You know my own conjectures here. Then the part where some are insistent: our details [all of them] or else!
Maia:
Here we do seem to be more or less on the same page. Individually, we have both come to connect the dots between âIâ and âweâ interacting in the world around us in such a way that âhere and nowâ we are able to convince ourselves that our thinking is reasonableâŚbut not to the point where we confront those who donât share our own set of assumptions and insist that they must be wrong because we must be right.
Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.
Panâs Purposes
Goff mobilises his panpsychist views to support his argument in favour of a cosmic purpose. The universe, he tells us, is made of fundamental particles, each blessed with a rudimentary consciousness and proto-agency, such that they are âdisposed from their own nature, to respond rationally to their experience.â
Iâm sorry, but it always boggles my mind how others are able to think up things like this. In other words, given The Gap and Rummyâs Rule. Itâs like those who argue, in turn, that rocks or trees have consciousness. Yeah, maybe they do. But, please, give me something more than just an argument.
On the other hand, some will insist, this is no less applicable to my own intellectual contraptions here. True enough. Which is why it is all that more important to bring the arguments down to Earth.
The irony or quandary or conundrum here [for me] is that all we really have to pin down the brain is the brain itself. And if human brains do in fact have intrinsic properties, how on Earth does one explain the terrible conflicts that every now and then catapult us into calamitous world wars.
And, of course, without an accumulation of hard evidence, lots and lots of things can be inferred academically in a âworld of wordsâ.
Iâm not entirely sure what this means âfor all practical purposesâ but how far back can we take consciousness in regard to ourselves. Does each individual atom in our body/brain have a consciousness?
How about these guys: Subatomic particle - Wikipedia
Then back to the part where in regard to the either/or world, we have been able with extraordinary precision to describe the world around us objectively, while consciousness in the world of conflicting goods is still grappling toâŚto do what?
Excellent anticipation. It is certainly fair to ask Goff on what grounds he reached his conclusion, especially if Goff expects others to be convinced. But, yes, precisely, the same holds true for all ontological positions. That matter (whatever that means) is primarily non-conscious and that consciousness (rather than specific cognitive functions) is the radical exception also needs justification. There are many conjectures about what leads to consciousness and why, for those who believe so, it is only in humans, or only in mammals or only in animals, or definitely not in plants, when 1) we donât have any way to detect consciousness, though we can see reactions and behavior 2) we have a long standing bias to see ourselves as radical exceptions and we can track all sorts of instances where this bias has created tremendous resistence to scientists who were finding that animals (and now plants) could do things that were supposedly only the terrain of humans. Let alone how non-scientists who believed, in fact actually experienced such things, were treated, often with contempt or at least condescension.
In that context, it seems ironic that the assumptions about who/what has consciousness and what consciousness is and what definitely does not have consciousness are not expected to be justified.
That boggles my mind.
well, there is plenty of evidence that trees engage in things that directly parallel cognitve based behavior: communication, sharing water with damaged fellow trees, taking defensive measures (often after being communicated with by other trees, in the face of threatsâŚthere are stuidies indicating that trees remember things. That experiences affect future tree behavior. Thereâs also adaptive growth.
Since we lack a test for consciousness - regarding anything and anyone - we canât know if these behaviors that show cognitive, though perhaps consciousnessless, intelligence, we canât prove this to people who generally come from their (unjustified) assumption that only these species or humans or whatever is conscious. On the other hand there is really no good reason for the animist to leave his or her sense that trees and animals and more are conscious and take on the itâs a mostly dead, unaware universe and we are special ontological position.
For most people, itâs the other guy who has the extra assumption.
Itâs certainly terrible that we are the way we are but I donât understand that assumption that brains having intrinsic properties (and everything has intrinsic properties) should prevent wars.
Here are some examples of intrinsic properties:
Mass
Shape
Atomic Structure
I donât know what the connection is that rules out being assholes, say, if one/something has intrinsic properties.
For most ontological positions. But we tend to notice the other cultureâs, the other personâs assumptions more often than our own. And considering other peopleâs ontological assumptions or positions, less justified or not even noticing we have oneâs also and these are in need of and generally lacking justification has been part of the confidence in activities like colonialization, removal of people from lands they considered a connection to, forced conversion, slavery and so on. Itâs certainly not the only thing that caused it, but smugness around ontology has certainly contributed and been used to justify such things. and this continues to this day.
I think, in general, that one needs to see if oneâs own ontology has been justified before assuming others have to justify theirs as if we have already done that with our own. Of course many people think they have no ontological assumptions. So, they arenât even at the starting point yet.
Or perhaps what âintrinsic propertiesâ means. Or perhaps a read of Ship of Thebes dicussions - though thatâs really tangential to what I was talking about. Or you could compare it to weight, which changes due to relationships. Your weight depends on distance from other objects and their masses. Your mass however⌠isnât relational. Yes, your mass could change over time, but thatâs not the issue, thatâs a different, though interesting issue. Anyway, do you agree with Iambiguous that the brain having intrinsic properties is an odd fit with humans having wars and if you agree how so?
It sounds like you are taking intrinsic property to mean essential trait or defining feature or necessary trait. And a specific amount of said quality/trait/feature being necessary.
Humans are not the only warring/gaming species. For all we know, the only reason brains are configured the way they are is so that we communicate in the physical world. Weâre like conscious CB radios. It doesnât have to be about war. If it was about war, weâd already be out of bodiesâno more CB radios. Must be about ⌠having good conversations. Happy conflict resolutions. Problem solving. Together. Because if you were all by yourself there would be no one to play with.
Well, I agree. Though Iâm not quite sure how this relates to what Iambiguous wrote or what I wrote. I donât think either one of us asserted that we were the only warring/gaming species, though perhaps you understood him better than me. I did find that part of his post, about brains having intrinsic properties should rule out war, very confusing. And it didnât seem to matter what intrinsic properties human brains had, just that given they had them itâs weird there is war. Hopefully heâll clarify, and also explain which intrinsic properties brains have that âshouldâ have prevented war. What the contradiction is.
