Last Week... Part 1
with gratitude for Massimo Pigliucci
There were a lot of big stories last week that I was paying some attention to:
the Russia-Ukraine War 28-point Peace Plan.
the G20 Summit in South Africa.
the COP30 Climate Summit in Belém, Brazil.
the ongoing Gaza Conflict.
the Epstein Files.
the fragmentation of the MAGA movement.
the resignation of Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress.
However, I will not be commenting on any of these stories.
Although I self-identify as an agnostic rather than an atheist, after my retirement in 2012 I was paying some attention to the Four Horsemen - Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. At that time one of their crititics caught my eye, the philosopher Massimo Pigliucci. He now writes on Substack and I want to comment on his recent article, Ten existential questions for empirical naturalists.
So, as an exercise in empirical naturalism, I asked my AI assistant, Claude, to list the ten most consequential existential philosophical questions it could think of, to which I’m going to provide what I think is the answer that comes out of an empirical naturalist stance.
1. What is the meaning of life?
Everything we know about the universe suggests that there is no cosmic meaning, which implies that life itself has no inherent meaning… Of course, this doesn’t imply that individual human beings cannot develop personalized meanings for their existence…
I agree.
2. Why is there something rather than nothing?
We just don’t know, and anyone who pretends to have the answer to this particular question is either fooling you or fooling themselves.
I agree.
For the few people who may find this question interesting, in my essay About Robert Lawrence Kuhn I reference two of his articles.
There Are Multiple Answers to the Question of Why the Universe Exists
Toward a Taxonomy of Possible Explanations
3. Do we have free will?
…the answer is no. We live in a deterministic universe governed by cause and effect, to which there seem to be no exceptions…
I strongly disagree.
There is much about free will that is mysterious. We do not know how the human brain generates our minds nor do we know how that mind acquires free will. I discuss this in greater detail in my essay About Free Will.
4. How should we live?
The answer is: in agreement with nature…
I disagree.
Nature is beautiful but nature is also brutal. We humans are animals but we should not behave as animals. And we have a little bit of free will that enables us to transcend our animalistic nature.
5. What is authentic existence?
I’m not sure the question actually makes sense, because I don’t think there is any essence that is the self that could then be said to be authentic or inauthentic. If there is no self, then there is no point in asking what the authentic version of that self might be like. But more on this in response to question #7 below.
I generally agree.
6. How do we find meaning in the face of suffering and death?
Suffering and death are just part and parcel of life. Want to be alive? Then you’ll suffer, one way or another. Also, you will die. I know, it sucks…
I agree.
7. What is the nature of the self?
…the self is an ever-changing, dynamic, bundle of memories and sensations… not a permanent, unchanging essence that could be described as a “soul.”
I generally agree but have lots to add and hope to write an essay About the SELF.
The Self is a mysterious complex system that constructs itself, a new self emerging each day anew while also maintaining continuity.
8. Is there objective moral truth?
The answer here is yes and no. No, there are no universal, cosmic, moral truths, contra to the approach known in philosophy as moral realism, and perhaps best exemplified by Kant’s categorical imperative. But yes, there are objective “moral” truths pertaining to human affairs.
I agree.
9. What is our relationship to others and to society?
…at the very least, the establishment of cooperative societies where we help each other because we understand that our own survival and wellbeing depends on it. Ideally, it implies cosmopolitanism, which is the application of the same attitude to the whole of humanity, on the grounds that the planet is becoming smaller and smaller, and our collective flourishing is increasingly affected by what happens on the other side of it.
I agree.
10. Can we live meaningfully without certainty?
Hell yes! In fact, that’s the only sensible way of living, because human reason is fallible, so we never really know whether we got things right or not.
I strongly agree. In fact, I think we should celebrate uncertainty. I tried to do that with my other Substack, UNKNOWINGS.
UNKNOWINGS…
is about the joys and sorrows of fessing up to how little we really know.
Strange man that I am, writing this post is my idea of fun.