06-Oct-2012, 09:01 AM
(05-Oct-2012, 04:20 PM)Soorya Sriram Wrote: I am not attempting to judge anything as worthwhile/worthless. But how can the purpose of life be made up in similar terms?
In short, what is the motivation to live at all?
Doesn't an acknowledgment of possible worth in human endeavour assume value in human life and a stake in human welfare?
To the question, "Why live at all?", an answer is, "To figure out the answer to that question!"
It is oft-quoted that "The purpose of life is a life of purpose." The epigrammatic nature of such response in fact exposes the rhetorical nature of questions like "What is the purpose of the Universe?", which to Prof. Dawkins are of as much value as asking "What is the colour of jealousy?". Belief in a single purpose that is a property of the Universe, from which our lives' purposes maybe derived, is based on a teleological myth which is argued against in a spirited fashion by Prof. Dawkins' team in this debate, and elaborated at length both in this 2009 lecture and this 1991 lecture.
To ask "What is the purpose of life?" instead of "How can purpose be found in life?" is a false start due to two faulty assumptions of teleology and exceptionalism. Any philosophical or practical progress on this question first requires dropping the 'the' before 'purpose'.The humorous extract from Michael Sandel cited here exposes how primitive and indefensible teleological arguments are. How the notion of exceptionalism can be similarly risible can be seen in this light-hearted exchange in Episode 257 of Real Time with Bill Maher:
Quote:Bill Maher: I am as patriotic as the next guy, but who started the flag-on-the-lapel thing and when is it going to stop?
Ron Christie: I've been wearing a flag on my lapel for 20 years and I love my country and I love the fact that we are in the greatest country in world and I express that by wearing a lapel pin.
Bill Maher: Have you been to all the others?
Ron Christie: I have been to a lot of them. I have traveled around the world and I think this is the greatest place in the world and I like to show that everyday.
...
Bill Maher: But why do we have to? I always say... I love America too and I don't want to leave. But it seems childish to always say "We are the best". It is like saying "I have the best wife"...
She is the best wife for you. Is she the best wife in the world?
What is called for is to find a purpose for you rather than submit to some supposedly enjoined purpose in the world. The purpose of human life according to the Quran is worship of the creator of the universe, and according to the Bhagavad Gita is performance of the duty of the varna one is born into. Religion is the enterprise of answers and science is the enterprise of questions, as Babu Gogineni says here, and the answers religion provides about what is the purpose of life, are affronts to Reason and Compassion.
To address the question of "How can you find your purpose in life?", we must first recognize that since beliefs have consequences, the answer which will be a prescription of priorities and conduct, will depend to a significant degree on our description of who we are, our place in the world and how the world operates. Accepting a description of ourselves as 'creatures born to worship' or as 'members of a caste' and a results in obeying a prescription of submission and segregation.
Attempting to make our description of the world and ourselves more correct and complete, requires first of all the acknowledgment that our abilities are limited like that of the inhabitants of Plato's Cave, and that the tools we have to promote understanding are models of which all are wrong and some are useful, and experiments which can only falsify and not verify. Notwithstanding these apparent limitations, this attitude of epistemic humility is sufficient to reject on grounds of insufficient evidence such descriptions of ourselves as products of a creator or members or congenital members of a caste, or for that matter, as beings endowed with contra-causal free will.
Evidence supplies a criterion for examining our stance on such factual claims about such as whether there is a creator or whether there is free. As for choosing our stances on questions which are not factual claims, such as whether we ought to value human rights or ought to accord sanctity to human life, a recognition that we are fully caused beings means that our stances on what we ought to do are themselves not of our choosing! Our values or how well we are able to live up to them may well not be of our choosing, and this absence of choosing does not in anyway dilute the distinction that humanistic values make between a criminal psychopath and a conscientious pediatrician. These distinctions matter, as Sam Harris explains in this recent blog post, and continues that whether or not these behaviors were willed or fully caused, "Diligence and wisdom still yield better results than sloth and stupidity."
Due diligence and an avoidance of sloth in standing up for and working for what matters to us, unchosen by us though it maybe, first of all requires us to be fully present, at the very least to be there. To find our purpose in life, we must be fully alive to possibilities; and every effort to fulfil the purpose that has become ours, is itself an affirmation of life.