I think I also reject the premise, but for a different reason from Kenny. I just think that there is no reason to think that my importance has anything to do with things a long way away from me, in distance or in time. The fact that I can't affect things happening in Brazil doesn't make me less valid.
So, for example, there are probably a few hundred/thousand people in China whose actions can affect Brazil, and on some level those people are "more important" than me. One obvious such person would be President Xi, and there are lots of senses in which he is a bigger/more important person than I am. But we have lots of ways of thinking about people that also makes me his equal. I'm quite comfortable believing that I have equal worth as a human being; I'm equal in the eyes of most Chinese law (I'm a permanent resident, not a citizen, so there are some differences). I have social and emotional authority within my own family that Xi does not have...
Similarly, the fact that I can't affect people in the past or the far future doesn't trouble me much. I would only be troubled by it if I had the arrogance to declare "look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair" or "so long as men have breath...so long lives this".
But most of our teloses (teloi?) are bounded. I'm engaging in some homeschooling at this very moment [sidenote: my sons are both displaying an interest in philosophy, and you can take a chunk of credit for that! Older son was attracted by the title of Jerks, and is working his way through it. Thank you!], and this activity is telic, but bounded - quite sharply - by my son's autonomy: I expect to give him the best intellectual start to life that I can, but I aspire to take only a very limited role in the direction of his life once he's an adult, because I want him to be in control of his own decisions. That is to say, this telos is self-limiting.
I think there are lots of factors like that. Something doesn't have to be eternally worth it to be worth it. In the intellectual sphere, you can have a bounded goal of fully working out a theory X (think Ptolemaic geocentrism). Geocentrism was swept away, and all of the work that went into those epicycles was meaningless. And yet I still think the project had value, in part because it laid the foundations for the proofs that geocentrism doesn't work. Seeing as most science is going to prove to be wrong in the long run, that same logic will end up applying across the board, I imagine.
This is perhaps a slightly different idea to sandcastles, because the digging of a sandcastle is a pleasure in itself (I think I regard sandcastles as more atelic than telic, though I recognise the telic element to the process). I just think that there are lots of goals which can be worthy objectives, while still being non-eternal. And that can still be true even if the process contains no atelic pleasures at all.
Yes, I think I pretty much agree with all of that. Sandcastles is one way of pushing back against Weinberg’s worry. But one can also just more simply assert that we can reasonably no more care about future dissolution than about past nonexistence or one’s effects in Brazil (not to mention the Andromeda galaxy).
I think your analogy to sandcastles is interesting and generative, but I agree with Paul that, ideally, we will simply shrug off the misguided feeling that our lives are meaningless if not eternal. Frankly, I have always thought this to be a facile and absurd claim, and I still do. But perhaps we ought to recommend the sandcastle mindset to those who can't shake the idea that meaning requires eternity?
“ in a thousand years it will (probably) be as though you had never lived”
This premise seems quite wrong! Even just the butterfly flapping its wings isn’t ineffective on the weather thousands of miles away! In a thousand years, my life will have had impacts and echoes and chaotic interventions in almost everything anywhere near earth (and perhaps quite a bit farther).
Now it’s true that in a thousand years, it will likely be very difficult to look at all those effects and infer what my life must have been like, or how any of those things depended on my life. But I don’t see why that takes away from their meaning.
I especially don't see why this should take meaning away from telic acts like the civil rights movement, since those are likely to have some stable effects for a very long part of that time.
Right, good point. The "as if" here will have to blend the chaotic effects. I suspect that can be managed if they really are chaotic, since as-if-you-twitched-this-direction and as-if-you-twitched-that-direction will have very different consequences, which might overlap a lot with the set of consequences that would have arisen if someone else had lived instead of you, or if you had died early.
This doesn't apply to stable directional effects, like the good effects of civil rights, of course. Weinberg's point, I take it, is that even for such long-enduring effects, there is still a time horizon after which they will have washed out -- and that (she seems to argue) reduces meaning. But maybe not if the sandcastles response works!
Hi Eric, this is quite thought-provoking. I really enjoyed reading your reviewing the book presenting session. I have a small question about your offer towards the end. If I did not mistakenly understand, your thesis would be interpreted as follow:
If one decrease the level of his/her expectation about the world, with parallel to the facts of world (i.e. building a sandcast near to sea waves may result most probably destruction); there is more chance to be happier and feeling fulfilled. However, would'nt this be a justificatory reason for being in a state of inertia? Expecting less from what I do (although it may result that I get more and so will be happier more) might cause me to intend less. Retrieving gradually from the world and becoming happy just like desert fathers or mystical thinkers.
Thanks for the kind words. Maybe it would have that effect. That's an empirical question. I don't think it *needs* to have that effect, unless some illusion of permanence is necessary as motivation. Maybe that varies person to person?
I think I also reject the premise, but for a different reason from Kenny. I just think that there is no reason to think that my importance has anything to do with things a long way away from me, in distance or in time. The fact that I can't affect things happening in Brazil doesn't make me less valid.
So, for example, there are probably a few hundred/thousand people in China whose actions can affect Brazil, and on some level those people are "more important" than me. One obvious such person would be President Xi, and there are lots of senses in which he is a bigger/more important person than I am. But we have lots of ways of thinking about people that also makes me his equal. I'm quite comfortable believing that I have equal worth as a human being; I'm equal in the eyes of most Chinese law (I'm a permanent resident, not a citizen, so there are some differences). I have social and emotional authority within my own family that Xi does not have...
Similarly, the fact that I can't affect people in the past or the far future doesn't trouble me much. I would only be troubled by it if I had the arrogance to declare "look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair" or "so long as men have breath...so long lives this".
But most of our teloses (teloi?) are bounded. I'm engaging in some homeschooling at this very moment [sidenote: my sons are both displaying an interest in philosophy, and you can take a chunk of credit for that! Older son was attracted by the title of Jerks, and is working his way through it. Thank you!], and this activity is telic, but bounded - quite sharply - by my son's autonomy: I expect to give him the best intellectual start to life that I can, but I aspire to take only a very limited role in the direction of his life once he's an adult, because I want him to be in control of his own decisions. That is to say, this telos is self-limiting.
I think there are lots of factors like that. Something doesn't have to be eternally worth it to be worth it. In the intellectual sphere, you can have a bounded goal of fully working out a theory X (think Ptolemaic geocentrism). Geocentrism was swept away, and all of the work that went into those epicycles was meaningless. And yet I still think the project had value, in part because it laid the foundations for the proofs that geocentrism doesn't work. Seeing as most science is going to prove to be wrong in the long run, that same logic will end up applying across the board, I imagine.
This is perhaps a slightly different idea to sandcastles, because the digging of a sandcastle is a pleasure in itself (I think I regard sandcastles as more atelic than telic, though I recognise the telic element to the process). I just think that there are lots of goals which can be worthy objectives, while still being non-eternal. And that can still be true even if the process contains no atelic pleasures at all.
Yes, I think I pretty much agree with all of that. Sandcastles is one way of pushing back against Weinberg’s worry. But one can also just more simply assert that we can reasonably no more care about future dissolution than about past nonexistence or one’s effects in Brazil (not to mention the Andromeda galaxy).
I think your analogy to sandcastles is interesting and generative, but I agree with Paul that, ideally, we will simply shrug off the misguided feeling that our lives are meaningless if not eternal. Frankly, I have always thought this to be a facile and absurd claim, and I still do. But perhaps we ought to recommend the sandcastle mindset to those who can't shake the idea that meaning requires eternity?
“ in a thousand years it will (probably) be as though you had never lived”
This premise seems quite wrong! Even just the butterfly flapping its wings isn’t ineffective on the weather thousands of miles away! In a thousand years, my life will have had impacts and echoes and chaotic interventions in almost everything anywhere near earth (and perhaps quite a bit farther).
Now it’s true that in a thousand years, it will likely be very difficult to look at all those effects and infer what my life must have been like, or how any of those things depended on my life. But I don’t see why that takes away from their meaning.
I especially don't see why this should take meaning away from telic acts like the civil rights movement, since those are likely to have some stable effects for a very long part of that time.
Right, good point. The "as if" here will have to blend the chaotic effects. I suspect that can be managed if they really are chaotic, since as-if-you-twitched-this-direction and as-if-you-twitched-that-direction will have very different consequences, which might overlap a lot with the set of consequences that would have arisen if someone else had lived instead of you, or if you had died early.
This doesn't apply to stable directional effects, like the good effects of civil rights, of course. Weinberg's point, I take it, is that even for such long-enduring effects, there is still a time horizon after which they will have washed out -- and that (she seems to argue) reduces meaning. But maybe not if the sandcastles response works!
Hi Eric, this is quite thought-provoking. I really enjoyed reading your reviewing the book presenting session. I have a small question about your offer towards the end. If I did not mistakenly understand, your thesis would be interpreted as follow:
If one decrease the level of his/her expectation about the world, with parallel to the facts of world (i.e. building a sandcast near to sea waves may result most probably destruction); there is more chance to be happier and feeling fulfilled. However, would'nt this be a justificatory reason for being in a state of inertia? Expecting less from what I do (although it may result that I get more and so will be happier more) might cause me to intend less. Retrieving gradually from the world and becoming happy just like desert fathers or mystical thinkers.
Thanks for the kind words. Maybe it would have that effect. That's an empirical question. I don't think it *needs* to have that effect, unless some illusion of permanence is necessary as motivation. Maybe that varies person to person?