[lit-ideas] Re: Happiness or Meaning?

I think it's hubristic to think that little human ants with life spans the 
length of a quark in relation to an unimaginably vast and virtually timeless 
cosmos can have any meaning.  Or even in relation to nothing at all, especially 
given that society takes away what little there is, giving humans a couple of 
decades before they're "over the hill".
 
But, meaning aside, let's try intelligence.  I'm reading a book on bacteria 
called Good Germs Bad Germs by Jessica Sachs.  She doesn't say it, at least not 
so far, but I'm coming away from this thinking that bacteria are unbelievably 
intelligent.  Chances are they can't discuss Kant (but then neither can I), but 
in the 70 or years that we've been battling them, they've thwarted us at every 
turn, and they do it with unbelievable cleverness and unbelievable speed.  If 
one has an opponent that can outwit one literally at every turn, often 
overnight, and do it consistently for 70 years, and ultimately win the war, 
which bacteria are definitely doing, that's intelligence.  Based on this book I 
understand why pharma gave up on developing antibiotics.
 
Bacteria are part and parcel of our human package.  There are at least ten 
bacteria to every human cell, and we have many trillions of cells.  They 
evolved into the system along with our cells, and like it or not, bacteria are 
as much a part of us as our cells.  In fact, they exist so synergistically with 
us that they often tell our cells what to do.  Without them, we die.  
 
The problem isn't with bacteria.  It's with population density, otherwise known 
as civilization.  At the densities at which we evolved, bacteria, even disease 
causing bacteria, are absolutely harmless.  (In fact, Jared Diamond makes that 
point about malaria, that malaria wasn't a problem in Africa until the 
Europeans changed the demographics at which point malaria became a problem, 
including for the Europeans.)  
 
At any rate, reading this book I really think our definition of intelligence 
needs to be broadened significantly.  Nature is intelligent and nature is wise, 
and far longer lived than the geological seconds of our existence to which we 
may in the not too distant future no longer be a party to.  
 
Our big brains make us merely miserable and destructive.  We are driven 
arguably almost exclusively by basest instincts and desires (greed, power, sex 
as end all and be all, etc. etc.).  Whence, then, comes this idea that humans 
are so intelligent?  Where is the proof?  
 


--- On Sun, 9/21/08, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Happiness or Meaning?
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sunday, September 21, 2008, 1:05 AM

Here's something that just bopped into my mailbox—a cfp from the journal 
MONIST. Their quarterly issues are devoted to papers on a theme. The 
next one is

The Meaning of Life!

Deadline: January 2009

Advisory Editor: Quentin Smith (Western Michigan University) 
<quentin.smith@xxxxxxxxx>

The vagueness and ambiguity of the question ‘Is there a meaning of human 
life?’ is standardly resolved by reformulations using more precise 
categories from the philosophy of religion or from moral realism. But 
are there alternatives to such reformulations? Consider:

(1) Biology: the meaning of human life is to survive and reproduce; 
because we no longer have to struggle to survive and reproduce, we are 
no longer in a position to experience this meaning.

(2) Physics: Hawking has argued that the meaning is in principle 
expressible in terms of a ‘complete unified theory’, which will throw 
light inter alia on‘the question of why it is that we and the universe 
exist.’

(3) Psychology: People talk of sensing ‘emptiness’ in depression and 
‘fullness’ in joy. Can these metaphors be justified as referring to 
modes of epistemic access to some mind-independent meaning of human life 
that is neither religious nor ethical in nature?

(4) Art: Some hold that there are artistic symbols which somehow express 
the meaning of human life but in a way that is not expressible in 
linguistic form. Can such a linguistic ineffability theory be 
philosophically defended?

Are there other approaches to defending a theory of the meaning of human 
life? Is it possible to articulate a formal structure or account of 
meaning which all such theories must share? Articles are invited 
addressing these and related questions in an analytical spirit.

Robert Paul
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