Neo,
On the subject of an ultimate grounding for the cosmos, I think that would be counterproductive, and delusional. Any attempt to project meaning on a universe that simply Exists is to fall back into anthropomorphic hubris. The universe is not a machine, as machine connotes purpose, nor is it evolutionary in the biological sense (ala Spencer) as life connotes purposefullness (replication of life). In the end, philosophy must come to grips with the fact that any teleological justification of the yawning purposelessness of the universe is self-deception. In our desire to project meaning upon our own existence, we feel the need to project meaning upon the universe, because the universe ultimately reflects our own selves.
Let me give some explanation, as a lot of my own conviction is in that paragraph. The human dilemma is that we are creatures born with the capacity to reason, and hence grasp our own existence in the universe. The universe itself is a cold, meaningless, reality... life itself is a mysterious growth out of the futility of this reality. The meaning of life can be summed up in one word: replication. The entire purpose of life is to recreate itself, immortality of the DNA. Human beings are the freaks of the universe, in that we are unleashed from mere reaction, and have the capacity for, indeed our very nature is, reflection and reasoning. So we are in an odd spot, having grown beyond the bounds of our biological imperatives, and able to project our own imperatives, our own reality, upon the world, and ourselves. So we have the situation where our existence is fundamentally, from the point of view of the *creative* animal, absurd. The question for the human animal is not, what is the meaning of the universe, but what meaning should we create for ourselves? We are in the unique position of being the *self-defining* organism, and this, I believe, is the challenge of philosophy.
Derek |
