Does that problem reside with us or with the universe?
Us, and though I'm not sure, I think the immateriality of purpose results from elevating purpose above other concepts. Identity, experience, and role are other concepts which could organize a life and its activities equally effectively -- just imagine the implications of the questions "Who am I?", "What should I experience?" or "What is my role?" -- but instead those concepts are subordinated to that of purpose. At present a human being has the blessing to ask what his purpose is, but he is not blessed to ask whether or not purpose itself should matter to him. The question "What is the meaning of life?" is a common preoccupation, but the question "Why should meaning be asked of life?" goes unexplored.
You already know that the creation of hierarchy is a pernicious human weakness, and the same tendency appears here. Rather than respecting the metaphysics of the concepts, and deciding that no direct comparison of importance can be made between ontologically unlike things, concepts are grouped into hierarchies of importance, with what is lower in the hierarchy forcibly put in terms of what is at the top of the hierarchy. So questions of, say, experience (and the ethics thereof) are subordinated to questions of purpose, and "What should I experience?" is taken to mean "What purposes should my experiences serve?"
These words come back to how human beings become less than animal, by emphasizing only one aspect of the many that go into being animal. An animal has no capacity to set up such a hierarchy, and so it cannot subordinate everything to purpose. The animal has its purpose or purposes, but it cannot, in the terms I used in the original conversation, be reduced to a purpose. As for us human beings (heh, in the varying senses in which we are human), I know that we can, with effort, create an alternative hierarchy of concepts, but I wonder whether any of us can train himself to have no hierarchy among ontologically distinct concepts.
Animals (and perhaps some of my creatures) simply have their purpose defined for them.
I'm not sure about this. They may lack the aforementioned blessing, but it doesn't follow that the purpose is defined for them, whether by some outside agency, fact or condition, or by something internal called instinct... there is some variation (for instance, a vixen may establish her own den and family, or remain to help raise her mother's new kits), and there is the possibility of purposelessness (say, that of a cage-bred animal released into the wild). There are also the familiar pitfalls of anthropomorphization.
I think the reason that questions of purpose become either trivial or problematic when applied to animals is because our hierarchy of concepts (with purpose on top) does not translate to their behavior. For instance, if you switch to the concept of role, rather than purpose, suddenly the behavior of animals becomes considerably more comprehensible. (Parenthetically: It is easy to reduce role to purpose, but it's also easy to reduce purpose to role, particularly for animals. You can imagine an alternative conceptual hierarchy in which purpose is below role in importance, and you can make a case that such a hierarchy once prevailed over women, slaves and children.)
Unfortunately, there's a subtle problem when it comes to animals: refusing to apply a human concept to animals may be just as much an act of anthropomorphization as applying it would be, when the concept itself is illustrative, but its implications for human beings render it inapplicable. If our concept of purpose were less important to us, and thus less problematic, it would be easier to apply.
While I'm here, what do you mean by a "false purpose"?
Finally, to return to the earliest question: what can give purpose its needed weight? I do not know, but I think the question has an empirical answer.
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branchandroot
Purpose
Date: 2009-10-27 02:16 am (UTC)Us, and though I'm not sure, I think the immateriality of purpose results from elevating purpose above other concepts. Identity, experience, and role are other concepts which could organize a life and its activities equally effectively -- just imagine the implications of the questions "Who am I?", "What should I experience?" or "What is my role?" -- but instead those concepts are subordinated to that of purpose. At present a human being has the blessing to ask what his purpose is, but he is not blessed to ask whether or not purpose itself should matter to him. The question "What is the meaning of life?" is a common preoccupation, but the question "Why should meaning be asked of life?" goes unexplored.
You already know that the creation of hierarchy is a pernicious human weakness, and the same tendency appears here. Rather than respecting the metaphysics of the concepts, and deciding that no direct comparison of importance can be made between ontologically unlike things, concepts are grouped into hierarchies of importance, with what is lower in the hierarchy forcibly put in terms of what is at the top of the hierarchy. So questions of, say, experience (and the ethics thereof) are subordinated to questions of purpose, and "What should I experience?" is taken to mean "What purposes should my experiences serve?"
These words come back to how human beings become less than animal, by emphasizing only one aspect of the many that go into being animal. An animal has no capacity to set up such a hierarchy, and so it cannot subordinate everything to purpose. The animal has its purpose or purposes, but it cannot, in the terms I used in the original conversation, be reduced to a purpose. As for us human beings (heh, in the varying senses in which we are human), I know that we can, with effort, create an alternative hierarchy of concepts, but I wonder whether any of us can train himself to have no hierarchy among ontologically distinct concepts.
Animals (and perhaps some of my creatures) simply have their purpose defined for them.
I'm not sure about this. They may lack the aforementioned blessing, but it doesn't follow that the purpose is defined for them, whether by some outside agency, fact or condition, or by something internal called instinct... there is some variation (for instance, a vixen may establish her own den and family, or remain to help raise her mother's new kits), and there is the possibility of purposelessness (say, that of a cage-bred animal released into the wild). There are also the familiar pitfalls of anthropomorphization.
I think the reason that questions of purpose become either trivial or problematic when applied to animals is because our hierarchy of concepts (with purpose on top) does not translate to their behavior. For instance, if you switch to the concept of role, rather than purpose, suddenly the behavior of animals becomes considerably more comprehensible. (Parenthetically: It is easy to reduce role to purpose, but it's also easy to reduce purpose to role, particularly for animals. You can imagine an alternative conceptual hierarchy in which purpose is below role in importance, and you can make a case that such a hierarchy once prevailed over women, slaves and children.)
Unfortunately, there's a subtle problem when it comes to animals: refusing to apply a human concept to animals may be just as much an act of anthropomorphization as applying it would be, when the concept itself is illustrative, but its implications for human beings render it inapplicable. If our concept of purpose were less important to us, and thus less problematic, it would be easier to apply.
While I'm here, what do you mean by a "false purpose"?
Finally, to return to the earliest question: what can give purpose its needed weight? I do not know, but I think the question has an empirical answer.