Richardthughes
Posts: 11178
Joined: Jan. 2006
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eigenstateAugust 12, 2015 at 12:53 pm
@Barry,
I will boil eigenstate’s lengthy comment down for a readers:
There really is no essential difference between what Hitler did and what Mother Teresa did. For our own idiosyncratic reasons we just happen to value one and not the other because for pragmatic reasons we think one “works” and the other does not. And just like the value of gold rises and falls, if we decide to reassess our judgment of value, our reassessed judgment will be just as valid as our prior judgment.
This doesn’t reflect my comments at all. The psychology of meaning (and similarly our psychology of value) is not idiosyncratic, or to whatever extent it is irrelevant to the point being made. It’s subjective, which is just to say, “human”.
The price of gold rises and falls based on the market dynamics for it, the “combined psychology” concerning it. It doesn’t just go up and don’t arbitrarily, but functions as a rough index of the equilibrium of supply and demand.
Similarly, our understanding of self, others, and the relationship and values between all parties is subjective, but not arbitrary or random. It’s based on evolved human nature (and objective set of facts that forms and informs the basis for our subjective psychology), and our experiences/interactions with other and the world around us. It’s a subjective position, like value of money, grounded in, and inextricably tied to our nature, and the environment we live in.
Yes, eigenstate, that is exactly correct on materialist premises. The fact that your logic leads to horror and despair should at least give you pause (though I doubt it will). It may really be the case that horror and despair is the appropriate response to a meaningless universe. That is certainly the case if God does not exist. I’m betting you are wrong.
I was raised a Christian, unfortunately. So I know the burden you are laboring under. I also understand the “horror-based reaction” you are advocating here, because of that.
The consequences don’t change the truth of the facts, Barry. if there is no “cosmic meaning”for you or me, as I can well understand from the the narcissism that passes for evangelical Christianity (“so humbled to be a Christian — God has a perfect plan for me, and has counted every hair on my head, and has prepared a mansion for me to convalesce in for eternity!”) I grew up in, it definitely require some growing up, and that is difficult indeed.
There is no “cosmic justice” coming for Hitler, or Mother Teresa (not anywhere near such an execrable figure, but not someone to elevate as an admirable human in my view, btw). Martin Luther King, Jr. doesn’t get to “walk the streets of gold”, either, as some kind of compensation(???) for being murdered in what should have been the middle of his life.
That’s the real world, Barry. Wake up. It has lots of features that aren’t comfortable or happy or easily reconcilable with our tender psychology. But fantasizing about your cosmic value, you as the “real objective gold” of all the universe doesn’t make it so.
Even if God does exist, your whole point is wrong: meaning is just as subjective even and especially if God is real. Your “meaning” is then, idiosyncratic in the most thoroughgoing sense of the word. Why does God choosing that your life has meaning give it any objective meaning? It can’t by definition. It’s just meaning imputed to you by another mind, and act of will.
That’s another subject, but even on your own understanding, your point is confused and incorrect, once again. |
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