Prioritize Through Purpose
belowwaterlevel.com
belowwaterlevel.com
It’s surprisingly well done, in that it’s more like audio theatre with different voice actors, sound effects, and so on, as opposed to a single voice actor doing different characters.
As a result, our actions are either for the sake of this good as determined by human nature, or deviate from it. Ask what the ultimate end of human beings is and you will begin to put your life in order. A failure to do so means you serve some other end, perhaps one you do not realize you are serving.
This problem is a more fundamental one and it’s only going to get more complex as genetic engineering, cyborgization, etc. continue to develop. In general I think it’s more fruitful to find purpose in change, even if that means singular fleeting moments, for example, mono no aware in Japanese aesthetics.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-aesthetics/#Mono...
I understand the perspective and the rationale is certainly sound on a long timeline (millions of years), but on the timeline of known human history and civilization "human nature" can be observed and defined much more easily.
Even reading the Old Testament and other very old books that give us a picture into a range of a few thousand years, it becomes clear that human nature has not changed in at least that time period. Because of that, observing human nature within the range of a few millennia is perfectly reasonable.
If evolution turns us into something else, then Human 2.0 Nature will become a thing.
From that perspective, the "human" has definitely changed since a few thousand years ago.
The first thing to note is that evolution does not necessary contradict telos. The metaphysical position called evolutionism does by definition, but evolution as biological subject matter does not.
Second, the question about the stability or reality of human nature is separate from the question of telos. Even if we suppose that there is no such thing as human nature, we would still need to admit kinds, each with some telos, but more importantly, the very notion of efficient causality already presupposes telos. Without telos, you cannot explain the regularity of the effects of efficient causes. The effects of efficient causes are not arbitrary, or else science would be impossible. And biology, per my observations, is showing signs of slowly moving toward open acknowledgement of telos. The notion of "function" is teleological, after all!
Third, it is odd to speak of human nature changing. For if there is such a thing, then it is predicable, and predicates do not change. You seem to be making a nominalist sort of claim, i.e., the collection of beings, over time, that we have, for whatever reason, classified as "human" do not actually share the same nature. I cannot make heads or tails of nominalism, nobody can, because I cannot determine why the label "human" was used in the first place and why a mislabeling should be regarded as something significant, as something more than a mislabeling. Nominalism renders the word unintelligible. You might say "Oh, well, we have adaptation!", and I would agree, that human beings have adapted and continue to adapt, but the nature of a thing concerns what is essential or substantial about something. Everything else is either a proper consequence of that (speech), or an accidental adaptation or variation (eye color). As a metaphysician would say, intelligent beings on other planets are, ontologically speaking, also human by virtue of their intellects, even if phylogenetically there is a difference. So, the nominalist claim doesn't even rise to the level of being wrong. I claim that there were humans thousands of years ago, and there are human beings today, and because both instantiate the same human nature.
In any case, Etienne Gilson has written a book[0] on this subject. I wouldn't call it a magisterial or exhaustive philosophical work on the subject (others have produced better [1] if you want more heft), but as an introduction to some basic ideas, IIRC, it isn't bad.
It seemed like you had a particular concept of telos and human nature in mind, so I’m not sure why you’ve gone meta and abstract here in the reply. I made a simple point about the human organism changing, and you’ve made this into an abstract discussion about nominalism. Very much not my intention or interest.
Similar criticisms can be wielded against scientism. Scientism is often characterized by an open disdain for metaphysics and philosophical inquiry, but in doing so, it necessarily takes up the mantle of philosophy and necessarily makes metaphysical claims and presuppositions that support their claims, and do so very poorly.
And telos is a metaphysical topic. The "simple" point that the "human organism changes" is not so simple. It makes certain presuppositions that are either trivial or incoherent, and yet your point relies on them. Hence, the necessity of my remarks.
Also, the only substantive remark I made about human nature is that what is most definitive is the possession of intellect, that is, the ability to abstract from particulars. But that doesn't matter here, as the discussion is about the very existence of human nature, or really any nature as such, not a particular definition, and how nature determines the telos of a thing. Furthermore, the notion of telos I make use of is the "usual" (which is to say, the correct one; the popular misconception common among materialists that involves conscious intent is crude, as conscious intent is only a special case, whereas telos is a broader concept that is needed to explains any change whatever).
Having a philosophical discussion requires one to communicate ideas in an understandable way. If you can't do that, there is no conversation to have here. And before you ramble into another jargon-laded comment, let me stop you: I have a degree in philosophy, these terms aren't unfamiliar to me, and yet this is very much not how professionals have philosophical discussions about complex issues.
I really can't make heads or tails of what you're trying to say here, because you aren't communicating your ideas in a direct manner. From what I understand, it seems like you're saying that the concept of human nature cannot change, because it's inherent in the definition of a thing's nature that it doesn't change.
You might say "Oh, well, we have adaptation!", and I would agree, that human beings have adapted and continue to adapt, but the nature of a thing concerns what is essential or substantial about something.
...which is not a very interesting point, frankly. So let me put it this way, again:
1. The organism which comprises the thing we call "human" has changed, over time, and will continue to change. This seems...scientifically uncontroversial to me.
2. And therefore, my argument is that trying to derive some sort of ultimate teleological purpose from this clearly changing thing is fruitless, and one's effort is better used toward accepting change.
3. Additionally, this way of talking about telos is also quite embedded in a worldview that was pre-evolutionary, which IMO makes it suspect from the start.
What precisely do you agree or disagree with above?
Edit: I just clicked on the books you mentioned, and it seems to me that 1) there is some deeper argument at work here, and 2) you are just repeating the argument from the book, or at least not explaining its argument in a more coherent form amenable to a HN discussion.
If that's the case, I obviously cannot read and reply to a book-length argument in a HN comment. However, I'll definitely give these a read – and thanks for the suggestion.
I have made the point. In fact, several points about the erroneous presuppositions your original claim makes. If you want a one liner tl;dr, well, here it is: evolution does not contradict telos or the existence of human nature.
Now, explaining what your presuppositions are and why they are wrong (or as genteel academics like to say, "problematic") is a longer discussion, one that I tried to outline. Why do you expect that a simple explanation is always possible? It is true that you will need a certain measure of philosophical maturity to appreciate the arguments, but this is unavoidable.
> It's really quite unclear how any of this has anything to do with the original question of what one should prioritize, or what your specific teleological answer to that question is.
My original answer isn't intended to tell you what the point of human life is. I could give an answer, but that wasn't the intent. The only point was to indicate that human nature, its telos, determines the inherent ends of an organism. In fact, the nature of an organism is ultimately a matter of telos. Its form and matter, anatomy and physiology, are downstream from telos.
> From what I understand, it seems like you're saying that the concept of human nature cannot change, because it's inherent in the definition of a thing's nature that it doesn't change.
By analogy, if the nature of triangles is triangularity, i.e., to be a geometric figure with three sides, then what it means to be a triangle is fixed. Now, if you take a triangle and start hammering at it to give it a fourth side, then you've changed the given triangle into a quadrilateral, but you haven't changed triangularity. It's just that triangularity is a predicate that doesn't apply to your quadrilateral, because you have something else now, a quadrilateral. But if, instead, your triangle is red and you paint it green, then it is still a triangle, but it has changed. It simply hasn't changed in any essential manner.
Human beings can adapt in the latter manner. We can develop darker skin in sunnier climates, lighter eyes where pigment isn't needed, sickle cells where malaria is rampant, or whatever. Still human. And I maintain that this has been true for a long time (I would make a stronger claim here, but it is not necessary for the present discussion). If, however, some change analogous to the triangle-to-quadrilateral transition were to occur, then we simply have a new species. Humans haven't changed in this sense, that would be absurd, as such a change is a negation of human nature. Instead, we just have some new, post-human species. That doesn't undermine the notion of telos. It just means that maybe the essential telos is different for these post-humans. It would have to be, or else they wouldn't be a different species.
> I just clicked on the books you mentioned, and it seems to me that 1) there is some deeper argument at work here, and 2) you are just repeating the argument from the book, or at least not explaining its argument in a more coherent form amenable to a HN discussion.
I wasn't actually using arguments directly from those books. I don't recall, for example, what the first book says, as I haven't touched it in over a decade. I only mention those books as resources for those who wish to better grasp some of what I've said. I hope you find them informative and enlightening.
As for your questions...
> 1. The organism which comprises the thing we call "human" has changed, over time, and will continue to change. This seems...scientifically uncontroversial to me.
See above. If you continue to classify your quadrilateral as a "triangle", then that is a failure to account for the substantial change in your language, hence the confusion. This is what I meant when I spoke of the errors of nominalism.
> 2. And therefore, my argument is that trying to derive some sort of ultimate teleological purpose from this clearly changing thing is fruitless, and one's effort is better used toward accepting change.
Also see above. A change can be accidental (like refinishing your triangle with green paint) or substantial (like hammering the triangle into a quadrilateral). The first preserves the essential identity of the kind of thing it is, the second changes the nature of the thing. So it's not fruitless. Different species will each have a different telos.
> 3. Additionally, this way of talking about telos is also quite embedded in a worldview that was pre-evolutionary, which IMO makes it suspect from the start.
That's your hangup, but it is an uninteresting one that poses no threat to telos. Science and the very viability of science rests on many philosophical presuppositions that predate whatever scientific developments have occurred since, and that includes telos. And in fact, any ostensibly "scientific" claim that contradicts those presuppositions cannot be admissible even in principle, as it could not be scientific by definition, as it would refute the very methods of scientific justification that the claim is supposed to rely on. Indeed, it becomes a philosophical claim and must enter the ring of philosophical debate.
What do you mean here?
https://web.archive.org/web/20200606231402/https://www.svese...