Philip Goff’s Why? lays out the case for cosmic purpose built into the universe from the very beginning, thereby showing our own lives to be imbued with meaning. It’s a bold work, touching on heady ideas like fine-tuning of the universe, the nature of probability, consciousness, and more. But the main idea remains – we can derive deep meaning and value in our lives, as we’re a part of a purposive universe.
The value thesis is what’s of interest here, which I’ll focus on even at the risk of giving the exotic aspects short shrift. The first and last chapters of the book focus on the prospects for meaning and value. Every chapter in between, and therefore the bulk of the book, outlines and illuminates the evidence Goff believes points to a (non-theistic) purpose of the whole.
Goff is among a growing minority of serious philosophers who advocate panpsychism, the belief that consciousness is fundamental. This fundamental importance comes either as a property of particles all the way down, or perhaps as an all-pervasive field. It is not a personal god that underwrites the purpose of the universe, but consciousness, which isn’t necessarily a mind as fully self-aware as yours or mine but nevertheless possesses enough experience and metaphysical primacy to “breathe fire into the equations” of physics.
We can suss out that there is purpose to the universe by looking at its beginnings. This is where the fine-tuning argument comes in. Again, it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a creator god behind it all, but it does mean that the initial conditions of the universe had to fall within a staggeringly small range in order to emerge as we know it. A little tick in the numbers this or that way, and a radically different universe emerges. The vast majority of the other possibilities aren’t hospital to life, to put it mildly.
One possibility would have meant only hydrogen existed. Another is that the universe would have collapsed in on itself. Based on computer simulations scientists have conducted using the constants of fundamental physics, the chance that a universe can support any sort of life, and therefore value, is infinitesimally small. Goff says rather than believing that the numbers (and therefore the conditions) supporting our existence are there out of “wild coincidence,” we should believe that value is the best explanation for why the universe has the conditions necessary to support life, higher consciousness as we experience it, and the pursuit of meaning.
The logic is that we take part in the cosmic purpose of the whole. Becoming self-conscious of this fact unlocks enrichment and edification in our lives. It’s not that Goff thinks no one could experience a subjective sense of value in the absence of cosmic purpose, but that we can experience even more meaning in view of contributing to the purpose of the universe.
Goff does think, however, in a philosophical sense, that his strong value realism, dubbed “value fundamentalism,” is the only option aside from value nihilism. Without a purpose, and therefore value behind it all, maybe we could chug along in our local contexts, with family, friends, hobbies, and vocations. But value nihilism would mean there’s nothing intrinsically valuable and nothing to root our subjective feeling of value. A sense of existential angst and despair would have no philosophical remedy.
Goff challenges the 18th century philosopher David Hume’s prohibition on deriving an “ought” from an “is,” noting that despite his own principle, Hume counseled, “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any office than to serve and obey them.” The is/ought prohibition tells us there is a marked difference between the descriptive and the moral. This seems to forbid any grounded moral reason or at least banishes morality to the non-factual realm with fictions and tastes. This is, to put it mildly, disturbing. In Goff’s rendering, by deriving an “ought” from an “is” regarding the relationship between reason and passion, Hume seemed to avoid his own advice, and in so doing cracked the door open a bit for us.
But when you consider a seminal metaethical point or two made over the years, it’s not clear Hume violated his own principle. For example, Bernard Williams expounded on the difference between internal and external reasons, the former lining up with our motivations, the latter residing outside our hitherto motivational set but conferring legitimate reasons for action all the same. Moral skeptics, many of whom are the successors to Hume, tend to accept internal but not external reasons. Hume could simply say that he was coming from the internal perspective (which we often share, inter-subjectively) when he gave that advice.
It’s also not clear that having an internal reason alone is sufficient for categorical moral goodness. That is, doing something for the intrinsic goodness of the state of affairs alone, not merely for instrumental (means-end) value or self-serving purpose. Nearly everyone already agrees that you can have an internal, instrumental reason for doing things, and advising others on the vision gained from that perspective isn’t a violation of the is/ought prohibition in any deep sense.
The argument of Why? is more consistent with the is/ought prohibition than one might think at first glance, because it uses the logic of the instrumental while arming it with an especially robust and overriding form of reason-giving. In other words, it locates the font of all value in the most fundamental constituents of the universe. If it all comes from that far back and with that kind of pedigree, we’re all in its path and under its influence, whether we like it or not. Even God would be, in this telling. Hume wasn’t working from this premise, and neither are most philosophers who wish to challenge the is/ought prohibition. It’s an honor to Hume, in my view, that all these years later one has to go to such lengths to work around the is/ought problem.
No matter if Goff’s attempt is successful, it’s the kind of effort it would take to establish value realism at the strength Goff seeks in value fundamentalism. Aside from Hume, even if the effort works preliminarily, one still might worry that the only way to avoid slipping into value nihilism is for confidence to hold in quasi esoteric lines of argument about the origins of the universe. These lines of argument are metaphysical in the good old-fashioned sense of the word.
In any case, the message of Goff’s Why? should be given an airing. No matter what one thinks of the arguments, it’s a fun book, which by itself is an achievement. The book handles forbidding content in philosophy and science not only with high competence, but with a sense of adventure and ingenuity. It’s a read well worth it.
Many thanks for drawing my attention to this book.