Thank you to Aleta for taking up the opposing view of the nature of meaning in my Gotta Serve Somebody post. I started to write a response to his comment 34 and quickly realized that any response would be OP-sized and decided to start a new OP.
Some Definitions
“disagreement is not an easy thing to reach. Rather, we move into confusion.” John Courtney Murray
Part of the problem in the debate between Aleta and myself is that we use the word “meaning” in at least three different senses, (1) linguistic intention, (2) ultimate purpose, and (3) culturally-adapted belief system.
In an effort to see if we can actually reach disagreement as opposed to confusion, I propose to dispense with the word “meaning” altogether and to use in its stead the following:
- Linguistic intention. Instead of “this word has the following meaning” I will use “this word has the following definition.”
- Ultimate purpose. Instead of “the theist believes there is an ultimate meaning in the universe and the atheist denies that there is,” I will say “the theist believes there is Ultimate Purpose/Significance in the universe and the atheist denies that there is.”
- Culturally adapted belief system. Aleta says that human belief and meaning systems are human inventions that are inculcated into members of a culture. Fair enough. I will use the phrase “Culturally Adopted Belief System” to refer to this type of “meaning.”
Barry’s Argument
The materialist believes there is no Ultimate Purpose/Significance. As Richard Dawkins says in the following famous quotation:
[In the universe there] is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
In my previous post I argued that the idea that our life is completely meaningless, that the universe is indifferent to our existence, that literally nothing we say, think or do has any ultimate significance, is unbearable. No one is able to stare into the abyss without flinching. I noted that even those that insist there is no Ultimate Purpose/Significance feel compelled to seek a kind of meaning as a substitute for Ultimate Purpose/Significance. Dawkins again:
The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.
In the first quote Dawkins stares into the abyss, and in the second he flinches away. Why? Because an intense longing for Ultimate Purpose/Significance is at the bottom of every human heart. Everyone, from fundamentalist Bible thumpers to militant atheists, searches for a greater context in which to situate their lives. For theists the explanation for this longing is easy:
You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.
Confessions, Augustine of Hippo
The honest materialist does not deny the longing. At that same time he cannot admit that when we long for Ultimate Purpose/Significance we are longing for something that actually exists. So how does the materialist explain a near universal longing for something that does not exist? He explains it like he explains a lot of things (consciousness, the overwhelming appearance of design in nature, libertarian free will) — the near universal human impulse to place our lives within the context of some Ultimate Purpose/Significance is an illusion foisted on us by our genes, which in turn resulted from some evolutionary adaptation.
Aleta’s Argument
Aleta disagrees that the universe’s indifference is unbearable and that no one is able to stare into the abyss without flinching. He does not agree that even those who insist there is no Ultimate Purpose/Significance feel compelled to seek Ultimate Purpose/Significance. He writes:
I do believe that humans do engage, and have engaged in “make believe” about some things that we really don’t know much, if anything about: I think most metaphysical religious beliefs fall into this category. But we have all sorts of other beliefs about how to treat our fellow man (or at least those that we include in our understanding of our community/society), about how to contribute to the well being of our society, how to spend our time in what various human activities are possible, and so on. Many of these beliefs are cultural: the fact that many people are brought up in them as children and that most of society supports them gives those beliefs a sense of being bigger than the individual. Human belief and meaning systems are human inventions. They are based on a mixture of empirical knowledge (confirmed beliefs) and agreements within the culture to see the world a certain way (affirmed beliefs). Calling then “make believe” devalues both them and the human beings for whom they are important.
Barry’s Response
Just like Dawkins Aleta wants to have it both ways. Consider again Dawkins’ first comment, which I will call the “Materialist Prime Directive.”
[In the universe there] is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Now consider again Dawkins’ second statement:
The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.
Dawkin’s second statement is radically irreconcilable with the Materialist Prime Directive, because if the Materialist Prime Directive is true, the words “meaningful,” “full,” and “wonderful” in the second statement are empty. Similarly, Aleta affirms the Materialist Prime Directive.* Then he says that “we have all sorts of other beliefs about how to treat our fellow man . . .” But if the Materialist Prime Directive is true, those beliefs about how to treat our fellow man are empty, mere evolutionary adaptations foisted upon us by our genes. Aleta chides me for calling them “make believe,” but they are indeed make believe in a very real sense of that phrase. If the Materialist Prime Directive is true, those beliefs are empty and arbitrary impulses that evolution “makes” us “believe.”
I argue that the human longing for “meaning” (i.e., Ultimate Purpose/Significance) is a very real phenomenon, and that longing is directed at something real. Aleta agrees there is a longing, but he dismisses that longing as a mere cultural adaptation. Here’s the problem with that. Once one realizes that “meaning” in Aleta’s sense of the word is empty and arbitrary, a mere evolutionary adaptation foisted upon us by our genes, the game is up. Because it is a truism that a meaning (cultural adaptation) that is meaningless (arbitrary/random) can have no meaning (ultimate significance).
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*Though he quibbles with whether he is actually a materialist. I think he prefers to consider himself an agnostic who accepts materialism provisionally. He can explain what he believes if I a wrong.