On the feeling that life is meaningful

Time for Monday morning philosophizing!

Here's Sarah Perry (that is, the antinatalist* Sarah Perry, not the novelist Sarah Perry), writing in Every Cradle Is a Grave, making a point worth consideration about the role one's concept of "the meaning of life" plays in providing existential stability beyond the sum of its intellectual parts:

Subjectively, the feeling that life is meaningful - that there are ultimate values, that life has a purpose - tends to point to a source of meaning, something higher than and external to the mere feeling or intuition of meaning. While sources of meaning vary greatly (and often contradict each other), the sense and expectation of meaning itself is surprisingly universal - so universal that the intuition is almost never challenged. This very universality should motivate us to be cautious about taking meaning’s claims at face value. One should be suspicious of any claim that is defended for contradictory reasons, and most people who agree that life is meaningful disagree as to what makes it so. The belief that life is meaningful tends to take the form of a strong feeling rather than a reasoned conclusion; indeed, one of the functions of meaning is to shield a person from the harmful effects of reasoning by providing a value that is justified for its own sake, a foundational rock for cognition below which no “whys” need be answered. (p.31)

(h/t http://blackestdespondency.tk/post/120379137389/subjectively-the-feeling-that-life-is-meaningful)

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I rather appreciate that she begins with the acknowledgment that the feeling there is a meaning to life waiting to be discovered or articulated is just that: a feeling, rather than an empirically observable fact about the universe. It's a widespread feeling, to be sure, but even so I suspect no one here** or anywhere else has ever come across that big eff-off stone tablet, ten hundred feet tall, covered with big eff-off graven letters, spelling out the text of the cosmic meaning of life Mad Libs? "The meaning of life is __________ (insert noun) and to live one's life __________ (adverb). The best tips for this meaning of life can be found in __________ (book title)."

The publisher of Every Cradle Is a Grave has made a PDF of the entire book available for free download, here.

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* The antinatalist is sometimes referred to as 'the wisdom of Silenus': "For he lives with the least worry who knows not his misfortune; but for humans, the best for them is not to be born at all, not to partake of nature’s excellence; not to be is best, for both sexes."

** If you HAVE found such a tablet, feel free to spill the details. We may be skeptics, but in view of such evidence, I don't think we're so proud that we wouldn't revise our worldview as needed to admit the existence of some great eff-off cosmic Mad Libs publisher out there somewhere, leaving tablets around willy-nilly to remind us that there is a meaning to life waiting for us to fill in the right answer.

Louie's believies

In his feature-length stand-up show "Live at the Beacon Theater," comedian Louis CK makes a frank epistemic confession:

I have a lot of beliefs, and I live by none of them. That's just the way I am. They're just my beliefs. I just like believing them. They're my little believies.

This strikes me as a great way to phrase the universal mismatch between belief and behavior, and needs to be turned into a meme graphic post-haste.

The full show is available on Netflix (the part I quote starts at around 6 minutes in) and may well be on YouTube, too. For more on this subject, see also The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on epistemology, and William Clifford's 1877 essay, "The Ethics of Belief," and my own blogger's teasing-out of a corollary of CK and Clifford's observations.

A corollary from Oscar Wilde: “The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.” Contrast this to the wisdom theme of H.P. Lovecraft's tale, “The Call of Cthulhu”: “ he most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.” If there were a divinity of perfect rationality, would we not have to call this being either insensate as a stone, or wholly mad? (See also Borges' story "Funes the Memorious" for a case example of how a perfect omnimnemonic could not in practice survive with his reason intact, free to live a life we could call human.) --  ZWB

Video from "An Ethic of Truth"

Spurred by his lifelong interest in and study of philosophy, BA member Josiah Van Vliet recently committed himself to the work of developing a secular ethics toolkit, in the form of workshops, essays, heuristics, and mnemonics devised for adult and youth audiences. On Thursday, October 4th, he accepted an invitation from the Humanists of Boston University to present his first workshop dealing with these subjects.

Speaking to an audience of about twenty participants, Josiah began by referencing a noteworthy principle that Enlightenment philosophe Denis Diderot found in the writings of Horace: "Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulce," 'Supreme merit to him who combines the agreeable with the useful'. Josiah's challenge to us was to figure out how the two concepts of "agreeable" (or, pleasurable) and "useful" can substitute for the somewhat more problematic concept of "ethical" when dealing with questions of moral goodness. In other words, when we're asked why we think it is true that something is morally good, we might answer by explaining that something is morally good if it brings about an increase in both pleasure and usefulness. A neat sleight-of-hand, this trick, since it changes the terms of moral consideration from "good vs. bad" (which as concepts are opaque, subjective, and private) to "useful vs. impeding" and "pleasurable vs. painful" -- terms that much more transparent, and negotiable, than the usual vocabulary of ethical value.

Josiah spent 20 minutes laying out his rubric (see the video of his talk appears above), and then broke the audience into groups that were assigned the task of figuring out whether his example scenarios -- e.g., a mother who for the sake of his son's health denies him candy, though it makes him miserable to go without! -- would fall into one of four quadrants: useful and pleasant, useful and painful, impeding and pleasant, and impeding and painful. The conversation in our group (and for all I could tell, in each of the groups) was probing, engaged, and fun.

If last night's workshop is representative of what we can expect in the other two sessions to take place this year, and of the ambition of Josiah's larger project, we have a lot to look forward to.

To learn more about his work with secular ethics, visit Josiah's blog at metabelief.blogspot.com.

Boston Nonsense Watch: New Acropolis Boston

There are signs throughout town for an outfit called  Acropolis Boston; they make regular appearances on the T and on bulletin boards in places like Porter Square. These ads invite you to discover ‘the secret to happiness’ or ‘the meaning of life’, via free seminars based on the wisdom of ancient philosophy. Looks like this is a local chapter of a larger organization, called New Acropolis. According to the website,

New Acropolis embraces and promotes principles of union inspired by such philosophies as Pythagoreanism, Neoplatonism, Theosophy and others, which in their time brought about real progress in civilization.

The mascot used in these ads is an inoffensive and amusingly pensive orange fish. Fun! The descriptions of their seminar topics are appealingly eclectic: Confucius, Aristotle, Buddha, Pythagoras, Bruno, Plato. My interest piqued, I decided to look into the history and activities of the group, and see if the information I could find would square with the benign, inviting tone of their ads. What I discovered is that the educational activities of this independent school are only a portion of their mission, and that New Acropolis Boston is part of a worldwide network. Similar facilities can be found in cities and countries around the globe. I also learned that New Acropolis has been labeled a cult by some governments and scholarly researchers.

If you’re thinking about popping by their center in Porter Square, and seeing what they’re all about, it’s a good idea to start with some questions. I thought of a few, which you’re welcome to use:

1. TITLES. Why did the founder of the organization, Jorge Ángel Livraga Rizzi, title himself Supreme Commander of the worldwide New Acropolis organization? Are the opportunities good for new members to be promoted quickly?
2. SPIRITS. Were the “Masters” that spoke with Mr. Livraga, to guide his spiritual development, real or imaginary, and in either case, why did they have the same names and personal histories as the spiritual beings that inspired Madame Blavatsky to found the esoteric religion of Theosophy? Is New Acropolis really just New Theosophy? Were Confucius and Pythagoras Ancient Theosophists?
3. MONEY. After the free seminars are over, what financial obligations do members of New Acropolis have to the organization? Are members still the primary source of funding for the World Commander’s private collection of ancient artifacts?
4. PROTOCOL. Is it preferable to be an “Axe-Bearer” or a representative of “the 3 Living Forces,” if we are to follow the instructions the World Commander left in his will to be followed during his official funeral ceremony?
5. MARTYRS. When Mr. Livarga said to a group of New Acropolis officers, “We too need martyrs! I want Acropolitan martyrs!”, what sort of martyrdom did he have in mind? Do the staff teaching philosophy at the Cambridge or Boston Centers for Adult Education, also want martyrs for their cause? Is martyrdom a more important part of understanding the meaning of life, or the secret to happiness?
6. LABOR. When Mr. Livarga said, “I make people work and make Acropolis until they are too tired to think of anything else,” what kind of work was he referring to – solicitation of funds, or manual labor of some kind?

The facts I refer to above – the founder’s weirdness; the Theosophy hidden behind a front of mainstream philosophy; the claims the group makes on members’ time and money – can all be verified with a little straightforward Googling. For that reason, I haven’t hot-linked to any of the sources I referred to myself when putting together this short article. My purpose here is to provoke your curiosity, and to gently challenge the benevolent, “normal” image the group projects through its advertising campaign. Without speaking to the motivation or beliefs of any given member, I can state with conviction that the organization started by Mr. Livarga in 1957 has a deeply weird and often malevolent history: shades of L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology, certainly. That doesn't mean that Acropolis Boston isn't chockful of folks who are just interested in expanding their knowledge, and exploring the history of ideas and of ideas in action.

If you’d like to learn more, do your searches and you’ll find lots of information to consider. And if you’re just interested in learning about ancient philosophy, renew your library card -- for free! Though I can't promise you won't run afoul of the secret esoteric cult that runs the BPL system. 

Boston Nonsense Watch, a free service of the Boston Atheists, examines woo-woo, pseudoscience, and dangerous religion.