when the fires burn in me

What can one say in response to such utter devastation?

Thinking about what humans can do to each other terrifies me. It's why Countrycide is the single Torchwood episode which I could not sleep after, and Toshiko's words in Greeks Bearing Gifts resonate so much:

“What's most amazing are the similarities with our own culture. But that can be horrible because we find lots of weapons, and it just makes you think, My God, everything wages war. It's not just a trait of ours, but a trait of existence.”

I doubt the “Black Saturday” fires were caused by a careless motorist throwing a cigarette out of a window, or a child playing with matches. Rather, they were the result of someone (a terribly sick someone) deliberately setting out to wreak havoc.

And it's not just the disgusting act of arson – but what some people want to do to the arsonists too. I know that it's anger that makes people say things like, “He (the arsonist) should be tortured, hung and quartered,” but I still find it chilling. I can only hope that they don't mean what they're saying. (Locked up “to rot” in jail, as Kevin Rudd said, I am all right with – I can understand that if this person is such a danger to society and themselves, the safest place for them is indoors, but I cannot condone downright cruelty.)

It all makes for extremely bleak reflections. Why the hell are we all alive if our only purpose on earth is to slowly and painfully destroy each other? Our lives are little but a constant cycle of creation and devastation. What kind of sadistic god created tsunamis, AIDS, and people with the capacity to commit murder on such a huge scale? Or even if you say there's no god, and that human beings are at the top of the animal kingdom, what kind of animals are we?

But now, my love of Harry Potter has come to put things all into perspective. Our capacity to feel compassion, empathy and love is not what makes us human. It is having both this incredible “good magic”, if you will, and at the same time, cruel, cowardly, “dark magic” within us. In my opinion, the human predicament is about the tension between our “good” and “evil” sides (Yes, I read too much Blake. If you hate him, you can leave now.)

“And you know, again, there's this thread running through the books, what Love does, and it raises people to the heights of absolute heroism, as in Lily, Harry, Neville. And it also leads them into acts of foolishness and even evil, which is Bellatrix and also Dumbledore.” (JK Rowling, 2007)

Arsonists are, literally, very sick people - a lot of them have serious psychiatric illnesses that lead them to their deeds, rather than some kind of “innate evil”. Notice, however, I'm not trying to lessen the wrong that they did (in my opinion, you shouldn't be acquitted of murder just because you were mentally ill at the time – you need TREATMENT if that is the case). A person with a mental illness is always experiencing great suffering, and the right thing to do is relieve this suffering.

But one of the points made about arsonists is they light fires because they misguidedly LOVE the chance to be “heroes” in the aftermath. (One of the people recently convicted of arson was a volunteer in the Rural Fire Service!) Is this much different from the mentally unstable Bellatrix Lextrange being driven to “burn and destroy” by her love for Voldemort?

And now, as much as a “bitch” as Bellatrix was, I wouldn't like to see her soul sucked out by a Dementor. Or tortured. I think that'd make us no better than Voldemort et al – killing to teach other people a lesson, to make an example that people will be frightened to follow? Not right. And I'm sure it's been proven that death isn't much of a deterrent for some people (why do people continue to smuggle drugs into south-east Asia even though it's an offence punishable by execution?)

I probably could support the death penalty in last-resort situations though, in the same way I support euthanasia in certain situations (allowing someone with end-stage cancer to die with dignity, and without pain, for example). My mum often says that she doesn't like the idea of criminals sitting in their cells watching TV and being fed nice, hot meals – being treated better than a bum on the street – and so she wishes they were disposed of in such a way that they wouldn't be a burden on society (if that's so, prisons need to change - I'm not advocating a return of the Victorian prisons where people died of cholera and spent all day either locked up in their cells or walking on those wheel things like in Wilde, but maybe they should be sent out to do community service?) But I would only say that a criminal should be put to death if he/she is so “terminally ill” that keeping them alive and in prison is extending their own suffering, and that of everyone around them. This should only happen in very, very few cases – because 99% of the time there is an alternative! (Yes, I'm generally quite optimistic about the human race, and about modern medicine – how else could I be a doctor?)

Anyway – this little dissertation has digressed severely. What I initially wanted to say is – I have nothing but sympathy for people whose lives have been marred by the fires.

But I also want to put a message out to others that I think the best way we can help everyone is not by channelling all our energy into anger and hatred for the culprits, but by being generous and thoughtful.

Yes, the arsonists need to be caught – but not because we are going to resort to medieval punishments. As many of the great teachers of history – Gautama Buddha and Jesus Christ, for example – have told us, love thine enemy. While love isn't perfect, hatred is never constructive – it is always destructive. Although Christian from Moulin Rouge! was a little extreme, I think he was on the right track.

Love is like oxygen – love lift us up where we belong! - all you need is love...

How can you spread the love? One of my awesome friends has created a list of all the ways we can help those affected by the fires. To add to the list:

• This Friday, every Coles store in Australia will donate its profits to the Red Cross – so if you can, save up your grocery shopping till then!
• Rumour has it that Friday the 20th, Woolworths is doing a similar thing!
• If you're in South Australia, you can donate a variety of goods to Sarah's Bushfire Appeal, including food, toiletries and bedding
• You can donate money at any NAB, ANZ, Westpac or Commonwealth Bank branch, or Bunnings store.
  
  
• Westfield Shopping Centre, South Morang, is taking donations of clothing, non-perishables, pet products etc.

Gender and the Self

I've been meaning to upload this for ages. This essay, which I wrote about two years ago, is what totally changed my view on the world with regard to gender and sexuality. Unfortunately I can't find the version which has my in-text references in, so bear with me, please!

So...what is gender?

Historically, humans have categorised themselves by assigning “gender”, defined as a social construction, to bodies “sexed” by biology. I believe that the self is not only a fragile entity, but a constantly changing one – a “fluctuating identity” – and sex and gender function like any other variable in the way they affect us. We are aware of the physiological differences between men and women, just as we are aware of the physiological differences between people of African or Asian race, and so I think that assigning gender to selves is similar to assigning race. Both have foundations in nature, then are built up by society. Gender strengthens selves, firstly by allowing them to exist under the guise of permanence, secondly by creating the sense of community. Paradoxically nevertheless, it can potentially take power from selves, since “community” implies superior status for those within it, and inferior status for those excluded. Any category creates restrictions upon the self, limiting the ways we can move about within it, and thus we are at risk of becoming trapped by unjust assumptions generated by the gender stereotype. Although to say that gender is an inherent property of the self is to discount our transience and individuality, to say that gender does not affect the self at all is to suggest that the self is disconnected from the body altogether.

Our body is “the locus of a disassociated self” which has merely “the illusion of a substantial unity”. For this reason, separating human beings based on the sex of their bodies is nothing more than an attempt to make the self appear coherent and enduring. Most people remain either male or female throughout their whole lives, which allows them to find constancy in their self-concept by clinging to a gender definition. April Ashley was distraught because he felt that his self was fragmented, a female mind in a male body. When he was able to reconcile gender and sex, he was content, because he had found the semblance of stability. It is not until puberty that male and female bodies begin to change to become sharply distinct; we become aware of our gender, identifying ourselves as men and women, labels which seem more permanent, in response to those changes. This is why Greer’s “stereotype” has lasted; it is proven through the continuing success of Mills and Boon novels. Embracing the generic stereotype of the romantic heroine can help women come to terms with the disharmony and discord in their lives and selves. Moreover, Oakley in Sex, Gender and Society describes how our feeling of security as adults, indeed, our “mental health” can only be preserved by “staying within the boundaries” of gender, which proves that gender is similar to ethnicity, which is also based on genetic variation. In Looking for Alibrandi, a popular modern novel, Josie’s Italian heritage becomes a rock for her to hang onto during her tumultuous adolescence, because it has been “nailed” into her. Therefore, our selves may find permanence, forgetting the temporality and malleability of our existence, in linking physical appearance and gender, just as they do by linking it with ethnicity.

Gender is part of the matrix of beliefs within which we construct our selves. We exist in “a field of overlapping social and cultural identities”, one of which is whether we are male or female, and through “intersubjective recognition” we make our selves whole. Identification with others was the reason why April Ashley “longed to be a woman”. He shared the trappings of gender – “jewels, fur, make-up” – with the group sectioned off by society as “women”. Once he could belong, he felt “resplendent” from the sense of fellowship and completeness of self. Men are renowned for their “old boys’ clubs”, while women in mainstream media such as Sex and the City also form cliques, finding safety in numbers. Although concepts such as the “Byronic Hero” seem to undermine this, as women find security in a domineering male figure, I believe this is dependence, rather than companionship. We can see that gender behaves like race, another social construction based on biology, as people who share a similar racial background tend to gravitate towards each other, forming mini-communities within a large one. Even in multicultural Sydney, areas such as Leichhardt and Cabramatta are famous for a particular culture. We also observe Josie finding fellowship “with other confused beings” as an Italian. Greer claims that this movement towards others of our own kind is based on “narcissism”, and works to bolster our self-esteem. We can make our selves feel strong and stable by linking them with others, through common threads such as gender.

However, the sense of community also paradoxically implies exclusion, because a community is not only defined by who is in it, but who is not in it. In this way, gender can empower or disempower individual selves. The feminism movement emerged because of indignation at the separation and oppression of the female sex and accused the patriarchy of attempting to use gender as a tool to turn women into inferior selves. The self-images of men had been reinforced, while the self-esteems of women were fairly dismal, as shown by de Beauvoir’s sad reflection on the subjugation of women. Even an ordinary man “behaves at home like a minor god”, empowered by the gender rift. Greer goes even further, to suggest that women have been “castrated”, turned into “eunuchs”, the mere property of men, by the social expectations placed up on them by the gender stereotype. However, I think that men are as victimised by gender as much as women are; they are forced to conform to their own stereotype of the “castrator”. Part of gender’s darker side is that it brings into existence a universal battle, because dichotomy creates a “power struggle” between the two sides. This is just like when we separate humans from the rest of nature, such as through the notion of “stewardship”, and “domination and destruction” of nature then occurs. Gender therefore delegates different powers to selves – de Beauvoir names them “masculine logic” and feminine “magic”, as any form of separation creates conflict between different sides.

These expectations compel both men and women to conform to stereotypes and maintain social order. Gender therefore defines what selves can and cannot do – whatever is deemed detrimental to the peace of the community can be restrained. Whenever men or women rebel against the roles set out for them, there is a disturbance in the community. For example, in Elizabethan England, when Queen Elizabeth rebelled against the gender paradigm by refusing to marry and bear children, this forced people to think that their contemporary view of women could be wrong. Pamphlets with oxymoronic names such as “Haec Vir” (the Womanish-Man) infiltrated the community, and assisted the emergence of a society in which “no rigid pre-existing doctrines dictated what the roles of the sexes should be”. The physical constrictions which gender has a reputation for enforcing reflect the ones placed on the psychological self; women wore corsets in Victorian society and Bantu women elongate their necks with brass rings, while Women’s Lib in the sixties often told their contemporaries to “burn their bras”. Elizabeth Gross was concerned about the “phallocentrism” which, through the “regimes of knowledge”, submerged women. Nationalism has in the past been used to “justify aggression”, being the catalyst and fuel for wars. By re-creating their own history through burying fake artefacts and uncovering them, claiming they were the remnants of an advanced Aryan race, the Nazis succeeded in not only supporting German struggles but moulding the German people to fit their specific regime. People believed their country had laid out a grand part for them to play, and in turn laid down their own lives fighting to maintain their country’s greatness. Gender, like nationality, is indeed a “conservative ideological force” because encourages the “retention” of the original mores by conditioning us.

The essentialists believe that what biology has bestowed upon us, sex, and the psychological paradigm, gender, are equivalent and superior to mundane variables such as hair or eye colour. Someone who is of the female sex will automatically be of the feminine gender, and a self will be created in the image of masculinity or femininity, because of the dichotomy of nature. But these people are neglecting to recognise that the categories based on chromosomes, XY and XX, cannot encompass all human beings, for there are people who possess the genetic codes XXY, XYY or XO. Although every society uses sex to ascribe gender, the composition of gender differs between communities. For example, William Davenport noted that in a certain Southwest Pacific society, “only men wear flowers in their hair”, and familiar gender roles were reversed. Furthermore, these definitions are not even stable themselves within one society; throughout the ages, “woman” has fluctuated. Today, April Ashley, despite being born possessing the genetic makeup of a man, is considered female, as “our sister” by Greer, who also notices that there is no “single face of the year”. Gender clearly cannot form the entire basis for the foundation of the self, since it is inadequate in describing all people. Moreover, we cannot forget that all men and women themselves are unique individuals in unique situations – “no originary, neutral and inert ‘woman’ lies there like a base”.

Those who hold the radical view that “woman is fictional” are those who hope for a postgendered world, because the intrinsic “self” behind a human being exists independently of gender or ethnic identities. They would classify “female” or “male” as socially constructed adjectives, like “left-handed” or “right-handed” (hand preference in particular, since most of the population only shows preference for one hand, yet the small ambidextrous percentage is largely ignored). But the whole reason the men differed from the women in the case of the Pacific society way was caused by a genetic difference which the community discovered and enhanced. The combination of biological variables, such as eye colour, hand preference or sex, is what, according to materialist philosophy, constitutes the whole self and gives us our unique identity. Even in dualistic terms, we cannot deny that our physical selves in some ways constitute who we are. For example, Locke proposed the self being a “single seat of consciousness”, but we now know that conscious thoughts are generated by chemical reactions in the brain, and may be manipulated physically. Evidently it is not possible to have a self which is totally unaffected by sex and gender. As Greer concludes her first chapter, “whatever else we are or may pretend to be, we are certainly our bodies”.

The biological differences between the sexes are “no more significant than those between individuals” – belonging to the male or female sex is merely another variation in the human genetic code. This is because our gender is no different to socially constructed divisions such as ethnicity, in that it assists the self to gain stability and fellowship, empowers it and at the same time, disempowers and restricts it. To say that gender is something more than ethnicity, which is also rooted in anatomy, is to overlook gender’s connectedness to history and subjective experience. But neither can we take the opposite stance to this, deconstructing the self, since it fails to notice that every “self” is different because of its uniqueness, which begins with our DNA and is polished off by our social networking. Like Josie Alibrandi who initially ran away from her culture, we cannot escape our gender. But, through introspection with an open mind, we can understand how they make us the people we are.

Bibliography

Board of Studies (1993) Philosophy: Self, Humanity and the World, Armidale: Teaching and Learning Centre, University of New England.

Greer, G (1971) The Female Eunuch, MacGibbon & Kee, London

Marchetta, M (2000) Looking for Alibrandi, Penguin Books, Australia

Oakley, A (1972) Sex, Gender and Society, Sun Books, Australia

Poole, M (1986) Idols-Ideals-Identities – Women in Society, AE Press, Melbourne

Smith, J (1998) Different for Girls, Vintage, UK

meaning of life

What is the meaning of "the meaning" of life?

In the final chapter of his book, What Does It All Mean?, Thomas Nagel explores the meaning of life, defining a “meaningful” life as one that makes a difference to the world around us, and debunking the plausibility of this. But significance has not always been thought to fulfil the requirements of a meaningful life; philosophers such as Cicero, and later, Kant, considered morality to be the key. What these interpretations of meaning both demonstrate is the desire for absolute reality, the feeling that what we hold to be true is the ultimate truth. However, I believe that none of these three systems – significance, morality or objective reality – are necessary to lead a meaningful life, as the answer to the meaning of life is ultimately subjective.

When Nagel discusses “the meaning of life”, he interprets “meaningful” in the sense of being significant, not just in a solipsistic sense to oneself, but to one’s surroundings. He opens the chapter by opening his readers to the possibility that their lives are meaningless, using the nearly clichéd axiom that soon “we’ll all be dead”. He describes how science has shown the human lifespan to be insignificant when compared against the timeline of the universe, and how we cannot therefore be of importance to the world outside our own selves. Nagel next shows that while we are perfectly capable of justifying the day-to-day things that we do “within life”, we cannot find a reason behind our existences as a whole. Whenever we observe our thoughts and actions from outside our own selves, it is as if they take place pointlessly. (Nagel, 1987) Evidently, if we are to have meaning in life, we will not find it by appealing to the universe or to eternity.

Nagel then deals with two well-known challenges to his reasoning. But the most common claim – that one’s life is of concern to other people – is easily refuted, because it begs the question of why other people’s lives in turn are so significant. If we continue trying to find meaning as a part of a whole, we sink into a pit of infinite regress, as we continue to ask, “What is the point of it?” Others use religious justification to invalidate Nagel’s starting point that our lives are insignificant to the world around us. If God is the world around us, and our lives matter to Him, then there can be no doubt that our lives are meaningful. God requires no explanation for Himself. Unfortunately, the idea that we cannot question this seems “incomprehensible” to many people, including Nagel. Nagel therefore argues that our lives cannot be significant and therefore meaningful, although he does soften his opinion on religious justification, saying perhaps that it is meant as an admission that the universe may not be able to be understood by us. Nevertheless, being a part of a whole cannot justify significance as the key to a meaningful life, and God is not easy to accept either. (Nagel, 1987)

As with all of Nagel’s chapters, his discussion about the meaningfulness of our lives is less of an argument for one particular point than a discussion, as he moves on to challenge his previous challenges, reverting to the point that meaning in life will not stem from significance; we can only be significant to ourselves. The way this group, whom Nagel appears to sympathise with, resolves the meaning and significance issue is by embracing the belief that “there is no point at all”. It echoes Albert Camus’ existentialist idea of “the Absurd”, the word Nagel chooses to end on. The conclusion, that we can lead satisfying lives by accepting that our lives are meaningless, is difficult to fault. The only problem is that many people feel disempowered by the idea that their lives do not matter in the grand scheme of things. (Nagel, 1987) In this way, Nagel reverts to his first conclusion: that we cannot use external recognition to give meaning to our lives.

Although Nagel characterised meaningfulness as significance, others have thought that a meaningful life is not so much “significant”, but morally upright. Cicero captured the idea with his concept of the “beata vita” or “blessed life”, based on a school of thought known as Stoicism (Wilson, 2002). In keeping with a virtue-based system of ethics, “living well” required a person to act with a “morally perfect frame of mind” (Sedley, 2005). Virtue was to be pursued for the sake of itself, so in order to live meaningfully, one would focus on having good qualities such as dignity, honesty and piety. In contrast to Nagel’s “religious justification scenario”, Cicero uses the Gods as moral exemplars for humans to follow, instead of the answer to everything. He claims that by acquiring “the virtues from where the blessed life comes into existence”, humans can equal the Gods “in every way except immortality”, which he feels has nothing to do with living meaningfully (Wilson, 2002). Kant concurs, saying that all the things we can do to make our lives worthwhile are morally right (Burnham, 2006). Thus, by living in accordance with virtue, Cicero and Kant thought we could make our lives meaningful.

However, the view of morality being equivalent to meaning is just easily countered as any argument for significance. Naturally, it invites opposition when the metal-ethical nature of moral value is considered. For life’s meaning to be based on virtue, these virtues must be universal throughout the whole human race. But many people would argue that morality is ultimately a subjective matter (Metz, 2007). Secondly, Cicero, with his “beata vita”, is putting forth an ideal impossible for us to live up to. Since nobody could be wholly moral for his or her entire life; would this not mean it is possible for nobody to live a fully meaningful life? Finally, Kant’s view in particular makes a mistake in treating humans as perfectly rational, without “human needs and feelings”. As Richard Taylor points out, all this virtuous behaviour “must not be done from any motive of compassion or sentiment of love.” (Taylor, 2000) Clearly, morality is too narrow a lens to value our lives through; the vision we get is just as bleak as Nagel’s use of external significance, which showed that life is meaningless.

These two visions of a meaningful life – external recognition and virtue – both display our yearning for something independent of us. In the first case, we have our existence validated by the world around us – friends, family or God; in the second case, we have our actions validated by an independent moral reality – the Virtues. They mean that our quotidian actions, such as earning money, eating and sleeping, which Nagel raises in his chapter, are either in response to a valid cause, or done with morally valid intentions. In short, we would like there to be some sort of objective reality that underlies everything we do. Most people would agree that life in a “virtual reality machine”, à la Neo in the film The Matrix, would be a meaningless existence, because the day-to-day “reality” which Neo acts on is not actually real. Conversely, we are repulsed by Cypher, who chooses to return to “the Matrix” from the real world (Wachowski & Wachowski, 1999). Our search for a “Theory of Everything” also reflects our deep-rooted faith in reality. We think that there is something “out there” to be found which explains everything about our existence. Essentially, it is a question of the branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, the search for something beyond the physical realm that can only be reached through reasoning (Mautner, 2005). Metaphysics is greatly concerned with “ultimate” explanations (Conee & Sider, 2005). In comparison to the random and chaotic world which we live in, these facts can impart greater meaning to our lives.

However, the case for an objective meaning of life is riddled with flaws, even if we ignore sceptical arguments against absolute reality, which were discussed in Nagel’s first chapter (Nagel, 1987). Objectivism in the context of metaphysics and the meaning of life holds that there are “certain inherently worthwhile or finally valuable conditions that confer meaning for anyone”, and are independent of us and our minds, as well as any God-figure. (Metz, 2007). Pure objectivism ignores subjective, but essential factors such as our attitudes towards our actions. We would question the meaningfulness of someone’s charity work if it bored them because they did it solely to raise their public image. Even if we adopt a more lenient view, allowing our emotions to interact with the objective conditions, we do not address the way these conditions can be universal and work with the vast plethora of human emotions. Most importantly, all objectivist theories only allow segments of our lives to impart meaning with their contents, even though we know that the way the parts come together should be important too (Metz, 2007). The mythological Sisyphus was punished by the Gods for disobedience, forced to push a giant boulder up a mountain. The difficulty of his labour should have made it meaningful. But, because the rock rolled back down the slope at the end of every day, he had to repeat this ad infinitum, whereby it became meaningless. No matter how we attempt to appeal to an objective reality, we will be unsuccessful in finding meaning in our lives.

Like Douglas Adams, who turned the solemn idea of a deep “meaning of life” on its head with the number forty-two, I do not believe we need an objective reality to lead meaningful lives; our lives are meaningful if they are meaningful to us. As David Schmidtz says,

“Life is a house. Meaning is what you do to make it home…if our walls are bare, the solution is not to spend our days stoically staring at bare walls, or philosophizing about their meaning, or lack thereof, but to put up a few photographs…we need not fear bare walls. We need not deceive ourselves about their bareness. We need not dwell on the ‘fundamental underlying’ bareness of walls we have filled with pictures.” (2001).

Subjectivism permits meaning to vary from person to person, depending on our unique circumstances and mental states (Metz, 2007), thus encompassing infinite possibilities. Hence, the idea that our lives are meaningful while we do what we think is important to us, which is the opposite of objectivism, has great appeal.

But the way in which subjectivism is applied is controversial. While it is easy to conclude that subjectivism is a matter of trying to fully engage ourselves in some activity or experience (Schmidtz, 2001), this implies there must be some objective element to the way we value our activities. Taylor refers to Sisyphus, showing how even if he enjoyed rolling boulders up mountains, his life would not be meaningful. It would only show that “like most mortals, he has been rendered content with a meaningless existence” (Taylor, 1999). The usual defence is that no one actually desires to do trivial things, at least not after “some sort of reflective thought” (Metz, 2007). A more convincing interpretation comes from Albert Camus, who imagines Sisyphus as “happy” because he retains his “conscious” freedom of thought, and can see that his fate was “created by him” (Camus, 1942). The Gods can punish Sisyphus for eternity, but they cannot alter his contempt for them. We can give our lives meaning by embracing this freedom, “making our own assessments of value” and “living accordingly in the situations where we find ourselves” (Blackford, 2003). I believe that by interpreting subjectivism in this light, that we are masters of our destinies, it is less easily refuted. It is both emotionally attractive, and intellectually convincing.

The meaning of “the meaning” of life has undergone a wide variety of interpretations. Some people will only be satisfied if their actions leave a permanent mark on the universe, others will be content if their actions are morally immaculate. Still others have thought that it hinges on the authenticity of an external world, but evidently, all we need to be sure of is our freedom to defy “absurdity” with our minds. In this respect, Nagel was not completely right in searching for meaning “in some larger sense”. As God says in the film Bruce Almighty, “That's everybody's problem. You keep looking up.” We should not be looking up for answers – we should be looking inside ourselves.

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• Adams, D. (1992). The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. London: Pan Books.
• Blackford, R. (2003, October). Volume XLVII Number 10 - October 2003: Sisyphus and the Meaning of Life . Retrieved February 14, 2008, from Quadrant Magazine: http://quadrant.org.au/php/archive_details_list.php?article_id=469
• Burnham, D. (2006). Kant, Immanuel. Retrieved February 14, 2008, from The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.iep.utm.edu/k/kantaest.htm
• Camus, A. (1942). The Myth of Sisyphus. Retrieved February 15, 2008, from The History Department: http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111camus.html
• Conee, E., & Sider, T. (2005). Riddles of Existence: A Guided Tour of Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Mautner, T. (2005). The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy. Camberwell: Penguin Books.
• Metz, T. (2007, May 15). The Meaning of Life. Retrieved February 8, 2008, from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/life-meaning/
• Nagel, T. (1987). What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Schmidtz, D. (2001). David Schmidtz - The Meanings of Life. Retrieved February 16, 2008, from Philosophy Department: http://web.arizona.edu/~phil/faculty/extra/dschmidtz/dschmidtz_meanings_of_life.htm
• Sedley, D. (2005). Stoicism. Retrieved February 11, 2008, from Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/A112SECT16
• Shadyac, T. (Director). (2003). Bruce Almighty [Motion Picture].
• Taylor, R. (2000). Good and Evil . Prometheus Books .
• Taylor, R. (1999). The Meaning of Life. Retrieved February 7, 2008, from Philosophy Now: http://www.philosophynow.org/archive/articles/24taylor.htm
• Wachowski, A., & Wachowski, L. (Directors). (1999). The Matrix [Motion Picture].
• Wilson, S. (2002). The Thought of Cicero. London: Bristol Classical Press.

I can't believe it's been a year

Can any sense be made of teleology in a world where life emerges through gradual evolution and natural selection?

Darwin’s theory was drastically different to his contemporaries’ in his proposition that complex organisms can evolve via a process of random mutation and natural selection, thus rendering redundant the intelligent designer, the invisible hand which gradually perfected life on earth. But in order to answer the question as to whether teleology is denied by concepts of gradual evolution and natural selection, we first need to establish a definition of these very complex ideas.

The dictionary definition of teleology is “the explanation of phenomena by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated causes”, derived from the Greek word telos which means “end”. When this is applied to the world, particularly by theists, it is often associated with the doctrine that God created the world to be of service to human beings. It was particularly favoured by classical philosophers – such as Cicero, in De Natura Deorum (about the nature of the gods).

“I seem to have explained enough, by how much human nature surpasses all other living creatures. From this it must be understood that neither the structure and design of our limbs nor such strength of intellect and reason could have been brought about by chance. It remains for me to explain and at some point to conclude, that everything which exists in this world, which human beings use, has been created and prepared for the sake of man.”

That in fact is the argument from design; the theory which Darwin sought to debunk, since he felt that the appearance of design in the world was an illusion. Darwin’s explanation, on the other hand, is based on the following basic principles:

1. Species are comprised of individual organisms which vary slightly from one another with respect to their many features. For example, a random mutation in a creature may produce a patch of photosensitive cells.
2. Over time, populations increase. But the environment has a limit (based on resources, disease, predation) to how many organisms it can support – thus there is a constant struggle for survival among members of a species.
3. Some organisms will have variations which give them an advantage in this struggle. The creature with the special cells could detect the direction a light or shadow was coming from – allowing it to detect and escape predators better.
4. The organisms with these favourable variations tend to survive better, and go on to reproduce.
5. Offspring inherit the variations of their parents. Therefore they the favourable variations will be passed on more frequently than others; Darwin labelled this tendency “Natural Selection”. The creature will produce offspring which also have the ability to detect light.
6. The character of the whole species changes. Given enough time, enough differences may be produced, and a new species altogether may emerge. Our light-detecting creature would have been the ancestor of an organism possessing an eye.

“It’s something unpredictable but in the end it’s right”

~ Green Day

I believe that we should not immediately dismiss teleological notions in biology, as there are several ways the world can still be explained in terms of ends and purposes. Darwin described natural selection as a process that worked “for the good of each species”, so perhaps he himself was trying to revive, rather than eliminate, teleology from natural science. Moreover, we must not forget that many scientists today still see no contradiction between Darwin’s theory and God, believing that He works through and guides evolution. Yet another modern view is that everything directs itself to meet a certain fate; after being catalysed by an initial cause, it moves itself to a final, teleological “cause”. On the surface, at least, “purposiveness” in our world still remains, although each form is fraught with certain flaws.

“I was dying – to save my own life I changed my body – every single cell – ”

~ The Doctor, Doctor Who: Children in Need

It must be noted, however, that The Doctor, is proposing a Lamarckian approach, similar to saying that a giraffe’s neck lengthened through its need to eat leaves at the top of a tree. The first teleological approach, the notion of survival as the common goal, is summed up in Darwin’s words – nature demonstrates “a prodigality of resources for gaining the very same end”.

Those who defend this particular explanation of evolution, such as Dr Francisco Ayala, ask us to distinguish between “external” and “internal” teleology. External teleology is the result of an agent – a blade has external teleology, as humans have fashioned it for the purpose of cutting. Internal teleology reflects immanent or inherent purposes and is present in the features of living things. The eye exists for the purpose of seeing, although not due to the conscious actions of a designer. In this sense, we can talk of teleology, because natural selection has created a structure which serves a purpose – to contribute to survival.

This approach also harmonises with Thompson, who concludes that there are “optimal solutions for common problems”. This is why natural selection appears to favour certain designs, such as hexagons in honeycombs and the plates of turtle shells; they “approximate a circle and maximise area”, or fish and clams display “nearly identical artifices”. And as Gould says, “natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments”. A species’ improving and attempting to perfect its relationship with nature thus appears to be an intrinsic goal, instinctively teleological.

Unfortunately, some complications emerge, firstly because reverse causation starts to interfere – our logic is disturbed because we do not like to explain a cause by proffering a future outcome. Secondly, if we consider the eye again, when we providing a teleological explanation, we are saying that the eye has photosensitive cells in order that a creature can see and survive (need for survival has caused this feature). However, according to evolutionary theory, the photosensitive cells have caused sight and survival, because they have allowed the creature outlives its peers (the feature has ensured the creature’s survival). If we follow through carefully, we realise that the ultimate cause is whatever caused the genetic mutation in the first place. This is random – Chaos Theory is the reason for individualism – and it seems ludicrous to say that a random event happens for a reason. Hence, we cannot build a foundation for teleology in biology by postulating survival as the fundamental purpose of evolution.

“If God, who is all powerful, and who is not limited by space and time, chose to use the mechanism of evolution to create you and me, who are we to say that wasn’t an absolutely elegant plan?

~ Francis Collins, Director, National Human Genome Research Institute

This approach simply suggests that evolution is a “tool”, a means for God to carry out his work. God, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient, has great goals in mind for us, and is guiding the growth and progress of the world. The teleology then is obvious; the final end which the universe approaches is God’s plan. God initially created, and is currently controlling, the entire course of evolution. Here we have neither the paradox nor the conflict between chance and reason associated with survival, and yet we have a fully teleologically explained world.

The chief objection to this is that it is merely intelligent design masquerading under a fresh disguise, for two main reasons. There are those who reject the concept of any external intelligence altogether, based on physical imperfections in nature. The “Panda’s Thumb” is inefficient, “clumsy and built from an odd part”, while the “goose bumps” which form on human skin make abject attempts to fluff up absent fur. God’s creatures have not been modelled via evolution to reflect His beauty, wisdom and power, because everything has been “jury-rigged” and improvised, sometimes demonstrating engineering incompetency, from the components of ancestors. Furthermore, even if He is using Evolution as a tool to engineer us, the presence of viruses and parasites that do nothing but cause suffering to trillions of creatures proves that God is far from omnibenevolent, but extremely sadistic. Why would He want to be remembered for the misery he caused? How can this be propelling us towards a good and purposeful end? In no way is this the objective, scientific theory of evolution that we have come to respect.

But there are still counter-arguments. The complainers posing their pandas are not considering us to be anything but a completely finished product. Perhaps we and the pandas are still works in progress. Or, perhaps God develops us with other reasons in mind; after all, “goose bumps” are yet another means for humans to communicate emotions such as fear. The second group is looking purely from a human point of view; we ourselves have brought death and destruction to many animals, such as the Dodo and the Tasmanian Tiger. God, on the other hand, is impartial. We ourselves are not omniscient like God is – since we are biased by our perspective, and we cannot hope to understand God – and so we cannot critically evaluate his actions, nor reach a conclusion on their teleological validity.

“Others think he set up the universe to unfold from the Big Bang to unfold like a computer program.”

~ Michael Behe, Biochemistry professor, Lehigh University; Senior fellow, Discovery Institute

Perhaps God kick-started the whole process, created life and conditions necessary for it to evolve and then stepped back. He has of course a final idea fixed in His mind, which we aren’t informed about, but the journey we take to get there is not his concern. Paul Davies steers away from Cicero’s almighty Deus, and focuses on the “fine-tuned laws” of nature, and “initial cosmological conditions”, which he believes could not have been put into place through the elimination of competitors. These result in a “cosmic blueprint”. According to Davies, the universe “emerged from primeval chaos in a sequence of self-organising processes”. The natural progression, given this catalyst, would be towards the evolution of conscious life. He represents this on a “sausage machine”, which is fed basic material, processes the material, and spits out a finished product:

All we have to do to adapt Davies’ tool to our concerns is to replace “Laws of Physics” with “Laws of Evolution”, and “organised complexity” with “final plan” and we have a diagram representing the last teleological model. The Agent (Davies sees it as “qualities” with a “genuine transcendent reality”) puts the necessary initiation ingredients into the top, winds up the machine of evolution, and random mutation and natural selection then progress out of external control. The Agent has a goal – “sausages” – but doesn’t know how the “meat” they put in will combine to form them. Out of all three considered; teleology of survival, teleology of God the guide and teleology of the catalyst, this is the most complex. This is because it manages to integrate the causality without the contradictions, and the agent without the risk of sympathising with intelligent design.

The main error in this diagram or system is that it is not the evolution part that is actually teleological, since it is driving itself. Things could well happen which were never intended to happen; a bacterium may evolve, which goes on to cause an epidemic. Only some aspects of the system, those controlled by the agent and performed for the sake of an end, are so. You could possibly take a hard deterministic line of reasoning, that there is a chain of actions and reactions starting with the Agent, saying that even the mutations which drive evolution are not random, just unexplainable at the present (even the minute particle the “muon” has a reason for existence). But then, everything is indiscriminately teleological, not evolution in particular, making the term “teleology” useless. So we can conclude that the “computer program”, coded and left to run, cannot be spoken of as “teleological” by us.

“The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed…”

~ Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

As shown above, none of the theories are perfect. It is certainly interesting to explore teleological notions in our world – the goal of survival, the divine director, the cosmic computer – they force us to consider our world in a very different light, and each has its own merits. But Teleology itself suffers from problems starting with reverse causation (since an “end” can explain a beginning). When we try to combine it with evolution and natural selection, we encounter confrontations ranging from the incompatibility of chance and reason, debates on what evolution truly entails and systems that look partly teleological and partly not. These highlight the gaps in our scientific accounts of the workings of the world – into which it is tempting to shove reassurances like an intelligent creator figure, or a teleological theory that makes us believe we are definitely on a path towards something good. Teleology therefore plays no part in our modern-day, naturalistic accounts of the world based on evolutionary theory.

If anything, I think this proves how complex the gathering of knowledge is, particularly about the invisible, whether it is cloaked by our perspective (Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Theory says that you cannot observe an electron’s path without interfering with that path) or the march of time (wiping out the past, forcing us to make inferences). Forrest challenges us, “Shouldn’t the fact that the entities in question cannot in principle be observed give us at least some pause?” Perhaps we should at least think twice.