Metaphysics and Meaningful Existence

We know too well what can destroy meaning. Holocaust, the slaughter of war, social and economic collapse, starvation, torture -- all these and too many more can render life meaningless. Meaninglessness itself can add to the casualties, by sapping the will to live. A few may endure the worst, their faith and hope intact; many more cannot. You and I, comfortable in some belief in the meanings of our lives, may think those who lost faith could not have had a very strong one; their failure was somehow a moral failure as well. To this there is the survivor's unanswerable reply: you were not there, you cannot know what it was like, you too would have succumbed. All your beliefs, all your vaunted theories, metaphysical or otherwise, could not have saved you.

Metaphysical theories, like religious beliefs, are sometimes powerless to buoy us through cruel extremes, meanings intact. Moreover, some varieties of metaphysics can themselves destroy meaning. They work on us more gently, if insidiously, not by physical force but by ideas, often in slow degrees over long periods of time. We remain free, in our capacity as rational, autonomous individuals, to weigh and accept or reject the ideas as we see fit. True, certain philosophies are sometimes wielded by the unscrupulous to justify questionable use of force. But philosophy's guiding spirit is to accord equal respect to one's fellow human beings in the weighing of opinion and action. It's just that some philosophers think that when opinion is properly weighed, we must conclude that existence is meaningless.

Their idea is that objectively speaking, the world contains no meaning because it contains no value. What we call value and meaning are but projections of our subjective moods and passions onto what in fact is value-neutral, inert, or dead. Because "the will itself, taking the inner view, craves objective reasons" for the meaningfulness of existence, and because there are no objective reasons, existence is meaningless. There are no objective reasons because there are no objective values, and there are no objective values because values cannot be reduced to or derived from what does have objective existence. If the world is the totality of fact, and if there are no normative facts, there is no value in the world but only in us. As regards value and meaning, "This world is but canvas to our imagination," if we may use Thoreau's words to this effect.

A related line of thought accompanied the rise of modern science, as we saw in §6.3.3. The new physics in particular led many to think that what really or primarily exist are extension, mass, force, impact. Any properties or qualities of a thing that cannot be reduced to these have only a derivative or secondary existence. This emphatically includes values, which often came to be thought of as even more subjective than such secondary qualities as a thing's color, sound and taste. Values, purpose and meaning seemed to form no part of the real world. The real world appeared to be value-neutral, inert, no longer enchanted.

This attitude remains very much alive. Thus we hear from a distinguished contemporary physicist that "the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless." A distinguished philosopher asks, "Science has helped us to know and understand this world, but what purpose or meaning can it find in it?" He answers that the scientific world picture robs us of meaning in the sense of a purpose given us by some nonhuman source. And another contemporary philosopher suggests that in a naturalistic metaphysics, human endeavor viewed objectively must seem to shrivel, and to be vilified. He asks, "Can the vocabulary of life as `meaningful' or `meaningless' still play a role in a naturalistic interpretation of things?"

What underlies this skepticism about value and therefore about meaningfulness and enchantment is of course the Argument from Queerness (AQ), as we learned to call it in §6.3.2. Because any alleged objective values are neither derivable from nor reducible to the descriptive or natural properties, their relation to what does have objective existence is decidedly mysterious. They must be very queer sorts of things. Better by far to replace them with some sort of subjective response that can be causally related to stimulation by the objective features on which the alleged objective values are said to depend. What we call objective values are but our subjective responses spread by imagination on the clean canvas of the world. Such enchantment as the world enjoys we must summon from within and project outward.

But we saw how AQ overlooks the possibility of a relation of nonreductive determination between the descriptive features and objective values. Even when AQ is broadened to take account of nonreductive determination, it remains unconvincing. It neglects a number of theories that connect value to various objective features in such a way as to imply nonreductive determination of the former by the latter. Furthermore, the defeat of AQ makes room for a positive argument for the determinacy of valuation, as explained in §6.3.5. The objective features of things in the world, ourselves and our histories included, can nonreductively determine the values. There may be an objective truth of the matter as regards value, even when the truth is so complex or emotional that we cannot ascertain what it is.

So too for the meaningfulness of existence, insofar as this is a matter of how existence is to be valued. The world contains value and meaning after all, not because value and meaning prove reducible to or derivable from objective features, but because they are nonreductively determined by them. This world may be but canvas to our imagination, in the sense that no value or meaning of things is reducible to or derivable from any description, so that none can thereby be read off from the description. Yet thanks to the nonreductive determinacy of valuation, there are objectively better and worse ways of spreading our emotions on the canvas, in the sense that some are determined as correct and others are not.

Which ones are correct is another matter, often dauntingly complex, requiring subtle forms of argument and evidence scarcely touched on in this book. For example, how would one argue for or against the correctness of a vision of the universe not as inert or dead -- and not as a place of reptilian indifference to us and our fate -- but as an enchanted place of belonging, wondrous and alive? How would one argue for or against the correctness of various other religious visions of existence?

But even though questions like these would require at least another book, note that we have reached the point in this one at which they may be taken seriously. The presupposition on which they are based -- that there is objective correctness here, however difficult to ascertain -- not only is compatible with doing metaphysics, there are arguments any metaphysician might use on its behalf. Theorists of being qua being need not hold that to be is to be value-neutral, inert or dead, and need not speak of what there is only in the indicative. Instead, they may speak in the rich tapestry of other moods needed to express the values and meanings of what there is.

A physicalist theory of being qua being, of all things, affords an illustration. Nonreductive physicalists hold that to be is to be composed of entities of the sort physics studies, and that all truth is nonreductively determined by physical truth. But this not to say, as seen, that everything is nothing but a physical thing. Far from it. The view is compatible with there being many diverse and equally privileged ways things are, including religious ways, some of which often take a kind of priority over the physical. It is compatible also with the objective correctness of value and meaning, including the correctness (assuming it is correct) of a vision of the universe as enchanted and wondrous. We need not be but physical objects sailing in a physical sea.

It is true that physicalism by itself does not entail that there is an objective correctness about these matters, let alone that this vision of meaningful existence in particular is correct. The point, rather, is that when these further claims are conjoined with physicalism proper, the result is a coherent synthesis of physicalism and enchantment which affords an intelligible overall view of a kind of meaning and unity of what there is and our place in it. And if a physicalist metaphysics can lend itself to this sort of synthesis, think how much more easily a number of other varieties of metaphysics can too.

In Chapter 1, we asked whether there could be a coherent metaphysics that not only affords an intelligible view of meaning and unity, but simultaneously rejects all of the presuppositions characteristic of traditional metaphysics. Could there be a coherent metaphysics that (i) rejects essentialism and the very idea of the way the world is, together with the idea of a privileged vocabulary to express it; (ii) consists of principles that are contingent, a posteriori, fallible and revisable; (iii)involves no commitment to self-evident or other givens, and none to the subject as known immediately and fully to itself, or as autonomous and disengaged; (iv) avoids not only problematic notions of truth, goodness and reality, but all talk of foundations; and (v) is not about some noumenal thing-in-itself beyond the appearances available to common sense and science?

Many philosophers today reject the traditional presuppositions. If they are right to do so, and if no coherent metaphysics is possible that rejects them all, metaphysics would be at an end. On the other hand, suppose we were to concede the worst, by conceding (if only for the sake of argument) that the presuppositions should all be rejected. If nevertheless some variety of metaphysics is possible that rejects them all, what would be at an end would be contemporary anti-metaphysics. Purified of the objectionable presuppositions, metaphysics could get on with its legitimate perennial tasks.

Again physicalism affords an illustration. There are versions of physicalism, as a review of earlier chapters will confirm, that reject essentialism, privileged vocabularies and unities, claims to necessity, givenness, Platonic and other problematic notions of truth and goodness, foundations, and noumenal things-in-themselves. And once more, if a physicalist metaphysics can thus do without any of the traditional presuppositions, surely there are nonphysicalist varieties that can do so as well. Much contemporary anti-metaphysics therefore seems guilty of setting up a scarecrow.

In Chapter 1, we also asked whether there is a constructive variety of metaphysics that meets the challenge of coming to terms with physicalism, either to reject it or somehow to accommodate it. Physicalism meets the challenge, obviously, by way of accommodation, but again there are nonphysicalist varieties that could also meet this challenge. A further challenge was to give a plausible account of the relation between scientific truth and other sorts of truth. A relation of nonreductive determination does the job, according to some physicalists, but not at the expense of other relations in terms of which nonscientific truths can often take priority, as can the varieties of unification they may suggest or support. So too did we see how nonphysicalist metaphysicians could make use of nonreductive determination to much the same effect.

Needless to say, much remains to be done to clarify these and many related matters, and to articulate and defend a vision of meaningful existence that is relevant to our perilous situation on this planet. Metaphysical storytellers need have no fear that there is little left for them to do. For the moment, however, it is enough to know that metaphysicians are not just seeing peach blossoms on a mesquite tree in January.