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I disagree that maximizing the chance for survival is the only ultimate objective function, or that it's somehow the only one that can escape "why is this desir

I disagree that maximizing the chance for survival is the only ultimate objective function, or that it's somehow the only one that can escape "why is this desirable?" questioning, or that it is even coherent as an objective function in the long run (I see no reason to think the we'll run into technological limits that prevent us from deviating from natural evolution in the future for much, if perhaps not most of life). Evolutionary mechanisms do not bestow some "ultimate" or unquestionable truth/goal of which all others are subservient or branched from, it is merely an explanatory framework for biological continuation we've observed in the world, and like other similar explanatory frameworks we generally would do well to avoid attributing "purpose" where all we can see (if we can even see that) is "is." It certainly is likely an attributable factor for much of what we value as we are products of said process, but we do not owe it primacy any more than a computer off the assembly line owes the assembly line its purpose. To be honest I'm now a bit confused on your position, as you explicitly brought up points in your previous post that elucidated some of the cracks in attempting to treat survival as the "one true goal": > But when you think about it, there are "good" things that aren't advantageous (or even are harmful) to survival, and there are things advantageous to survival that are considered "bad" by most people. Many examples would be highly controversial, so I'd pick a less controversial example, but probably not the best one: eugenics. And I could posit other thought experiments or examples or such, but perhaps first I should ask how this line of questioning doesn't lead you away from survival as the ultimate objective function.

beltsazar 3y ago
First of all, thanks for the compelling discussion so far. > To be honest I'm now a bit confused on your position, as you explicitly brought up points in your previous post that elucidated some of the cracks in attempting to treat survival as the "one true goal": > ... > perhaps first I should ask how this line of questioning doesn't lead you away from survival as the ultimate objective function. To be clear, I don't hold any strong position. All my previous comments are based on the assumption that the three premises I wrote in the very beginning of the first post are true, but I'm not arguing that those premises are true. I was just elaborating the implications if they were true: 1) To survive and to reproduce would be the closest thing to the ultimate purpose of life. 2) What traits we consider "good" or "bad" would actually be just what traits are beneficial for survival or not. When at the end of the first post I brought up the fact that morality doesn't always align with beneficialness for survival, I was trying to do reductio ad absurdum. Maybe the three premises were not all true after all. Maybe there's something beyond the physical universe*, from which some higher being impulsively created the universe out of boredom, in which case there would still be no ultimate purpose. Or the higher being created it intentionally and with some purpose. This might also elucidate the common argument, originated by C. S. Lewis, that all human beings know something good or bad because God imbued humans that ability. A common misconception interpreting this argument is to say only theists can do something good. Knowing is not the same as doing. All humans have the ability to distinguish good from bad, regardless of what they believe in, or whether they want to do something good or not. --- * We don't even know if the observable universe is all physical. No one knows what dark energy is, maybe it's not energy after all. In fact, dark energy is just a placeholder—we might as well name it XYZ.
- deleted 3y ago
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- chronofar 3y ago
  > First of all, thanks for the compelling discussion so far. Likewise thank you for the compelling discussion and clarifications. > To be clear, I don't hold any strong position. All my previous comments are based on the assumption that the three premises I wrote in the very beginning of the first post are true, but I'm not arguing that those premises are true. I was just elaborating the implications if they were true: 1) To survive and to reproduce would be the closest thing to the ultimate purpose of life. 2) What traits we consider "good" or "bad" would actually be just what traits are beneficial for survival or not. I think you need a few extra steps to get you from those premises to these conclusions. In fact, I'd suggest you may not even really be able to get from those premises to those conclusions, in particular I think you'd need to invoke "designers" (or "higher beings") imbuing purpose into the functional specifics of evolution to arrive there (thus contradicting one of those premises). The premises as stated don't tell you much in the way of ascribing "purpose" to life, only how the mechanisms behind how it propagates and changes over time, just as Maxwell's equations do not define some "purpose" to electromagnetism but rather describe its evolution across time. And further the emergent systems that arise from these underlying processes, of primary importance for our conversation here consciousness and emergent from that society and civilization, need not owe all their properties to the mechanisms of the underlying systems (indeed this is what we often mean by emergence). So ultimately I think that not only is survival not the "ultimate purpose," I think it's difficult to argue there is any intrinsic purpose there at all.
  - beltsazar 3y ago
    > So ultimately I think that not only is survival not the "ultimate purpose," I think it's difficult to argue there is any intrinsic purpose there at all. Maybe I was not explaining it clearly enough, but I agreed with this. Similarly to what you said here, I said in the original post that to survive and to reproduce is more of a tautology than a purpose. What I meant is that if there must be a purpose of life, survival would be the closest thing to it, but in some strict senses of "purpose", it is not a purpose. What's more interesting is the second implication, which suggests that there would be no objective morality if the three premises were true. I wonder if you agree that there's an objective morality. Or, to put it into a question, how do you think humans, almost universally, can distinguish good from bad?

beltsazar 3y ago

First of all, thanks for the compelling discussion so far. > To be honest I'm now a bit confused on your position, as you explicitly brought up points in your previous post that elucidated some of the cracks in attempting to treat survival as the "one true goal": > ... > perhaps first I should ask how this line of questioning doesn't lead you away from survival as the ultimate objective function. To be clear, I don't hold any strong position. All my previous comments are based on the assumption that the three premises I wrote in the very beginning of the first post are true, but I'm not arguing that those premises are true. I was just elaborating the implications if they were true: 1) To survive and to reproduce would be the closest thing to the ultimate purpose of life. 2) What traits we consider "good" or "bad" would actually be just what traits are beneficial for survival or not. When at the end of the first post I brought up the fact that morality doesn't always align with beneficialness for survival, I was trying to do reductio ad absurdum. Maybe the three premises were not all true after all. Maybe there's something beyond the physical universe*, from which some higher being impulsively created the universe out of boredom, in which case there would still be no ultimate purpose. Or the higher being created it intentionally and with some purpose. This might also elucidate the common argument, originated by C. S. Lewis, that all human beings know something good or bad because God imbued humans that ability. A common misconception interpreting this argument is to say only theists can do something good. Knowing is not the same as doing. All humans have the ability to distinguish good from bad, regardless of what they believe in, or whether they want to do something good or not. --- * We don't even know if the observable universe is all physical. No one knows what dark energy is, maybe it's not energy after all. In fact, dark energy is just a placeholder—we might as well name it XYZ.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
chronofar 3y ago
> First of all, thanks for the compelling discussion so far. Likewise thank you for the compelling discussion and clarifications. > To be clear, I don't hold any strong position. All my previous comments are based on the assumption that the three premises I wrote in the very beginning of the first post are true, but I'm not arguing that those premises are true. I was just elaborating the implications if they were true: 1) To survive and to reproduce would be the closest thing to the ultimate purpose of life. 2) What traits we consider "good" or "bad" would actually be just what traits are beneficial for survival or not. I think you need a few extra steps to get you from those premises to these conclusions. In fact, I'd suggest you may not even really be able to get from those premises to those conclusions, in particular I think you'd need to invoke "designers" (or "higher beings") imbuing purpose into the functional specifics of evolution to arrive there (thus contradicting one of those premises). The premises as stated don't tell you much in the way of ascribing "purpose" to life, only how the mechanisms behind how it propagates and changes over time, just as Maxwell's equations do not define some "purpose" to electromagnetism but rather describe its evolution across time. And further the emergent systems that arise from these underlying processes, of primary importance for our conversation here consciousness and emergent from that society and civilization, need not owe all their properties to the mechanisms of the underlying systems (indeed this is what we often mean by emergence). So ultimately I think that not only is survival not the "ultimate purpose," I think it's difficult to argue there is any intrinsic purpose there at all.
- beltsazar 3y ago
  > So ultimately I think that not only is survival not the "ultimate purpose," I think it's difficult to argue there is any intrinsic purpose there at all. Maybe I was not explaining it clearly enough, but I agreed with this. Similarly to what you said here, I said in the original post that to survive and to reproduce is more of a tautology than a purpose. What I meant is that if there must be a purpose of life, survival would be the closest thing to it, but in some strict senses of "purpose", it is not a purpose. What's more interesting is the second implication, which suggests that there would be no objective morality if the three premises were true. I wonder if you agree that there's an objective morality. Or, to put it into a question, how do you think humans, almost universally, can distinguish good from bad?