I don't think Nagel has a problem with the idea that we may have good reasons for taking seriously the particular things we take seriously. His claim is not that taking life seriously is absurd.

His claim is that absurdity arises when there is a "conspicuous discrepancy" between the seriousness with which we take our lives, and the fact that we can always understand that ultimately which things we take seriously is arbitrary.

You think we don't have that ability?

Not in an experiential sense. And since meaningfulness and meaninglessness are things we experience, I don't think the terms should be employed when we're speaking in a non-experiential sense. In that sense, human existence is neither meaningful nor meaningless.

The Ultimate is not in an imagined eternity which doesn't exist. The Ultimate is in the Now that does.


PairTheBoard

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy." - Tagore

"You're not at all absurd? That's absurd!"

I’m not sure what you mean when you say “meaningfulness and meaninglessness are things we experience.” I assume you’re not saying that meaningfulness is literally a type of conscious experience, like an emotion or sensation.

I think Nagel is just pointing out that we have the capacity for self-conscious reflection about our choices, goals, pursuits, etc., and that this allows us to understand those choices from a broader perspective than the factors in our personal lives and subjective constitutions on which those choices are necessarily based.

From this broader perspective we can understand that the particular choices we make—the particular things that we take seriously—are arbitrary, i.e., that there is no independent and ultimate justification for those choices.

It is the contrast between these two that gives rise to the absurdity in human lives, according to Nagel.

Simone De Beavouir on ethics.

Claims it's not enough to know that it's all arbitrary.

You must will the freedom of others.

She does a bit of a Kant. But we ought forgive her. Her ethics are easily the best of all.

Where's the independent and ultimate justification for that understanding? Why should we take that understanding seriously? Isn't it just an arbitrary understanding?

I think life is meaningful because we make our own way in it. I can't think of a more meaningless existence than one that just follows a recipe of ultimately justified rules.


PairTheBoard

It's true that many things in human life are "arbitrary". I think what happened in the development of the modern mind is that as we dropped dogmatism in favor of science and came to a more global perspective of culture and religion we were flooded with the realization of how many things we had taken for granted as just being "how things are", were in fact provincial and unquestioned hand me downs. Arbitrary, in other words.

This blew our minds, almost like a religious experience. Unfortunately, as often happens when jerked off our pony, some became fanatical about it, promoting the proposition that everything human is arbitrary. This self refuting proposition is simply not true. There is a serious difference between a kind word and a slap in the face. And it's not arbitrary.


PairTheBoard

It’s always meaningful or meaningless to whom.

Arbitrary to whom? A fictional, transcendent, cosmic whom? Fine. But so what, that’s neither real nor me.

I know. But if one perspective is real and the other fictional, there’s really no contrast. Lacking genuine contrast (a contrast between equally valid perspectives), there’s no absurdity, either.

He's just claiming that it's true, not that we need to take it seriously.

I don't know what you mean by an "arbitrary understanding." Nagel is not claiming that all of our beliefs are arbitrary, just that our choice of which things to care about/take seriously in our lives is arbitrary, from a broader point of view (i.e., from a point of view not attached to our personal lives/subjective constitutions).

Again, I don't think Nagel would disagree that life can be meaningful in that sense. The absurdity he is talking about does not go away just because you find certain things meaningful though.

He points out that the life of a mouse is not absurd, because a mouse is not capable of self-consciously reflecting on its choices, but that doesn't mean that we should prefer the life of a mouse to ours.

I think Nagel has a good point for those who insist the situation is "absurd". But imo "absurd" or wildly unreasonable, illogical, inappropriate, preposterous, ridiculous, ludicrous, farcical, laughable, risible, idiotic, stupid, foolish, silly, inane, imbecilic, insane, harebrained, cockamamie (per google definition) is an extreme judgement of the situation. At most, my judgement would be "puzzling". For those who insist on the judgement "absurd" I suggest they consider the possibility that they are looking at the so called "true situation" in the wrong way and/or judging it by questionable criteria.



I don't think "we can always understand" that as being a "fact". If the Ultimate is in the here and now of our lives rather than some imagined "out there" place then the fact for understanding is quite different. It's also quite different if "Ultimate" is just a nonsense word.


As others have pointed out itt, we can imagine taking this broader point of view but what we see there when we do so is inescapably attached to our personal lives/subjective constitutions. That's why we're having this discussion. We don't all see the same "truth".

I find this word "arbitrary" puzzling. Google defines it as; based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system. We have good reasons here and now, on the ground so to speak. Why would we expect reasons for what we take seriously here and now on the ground to be up in the air someplace?


Existentialists ask us to step back from ourselves and look at what we take seriously in life from a broader objective viewpoint. They say that if we do so we will realize the absurdity of the situation. I claim that the absurdity goes away if we step back again and consider the subjectivity involved in our first step back and the possibility that we're looking at the situation in the wrong way and judging it based on the wrong criteria.


PairTheBoard

Im trying to think of an example of why the situation we find ourselves in is characterised as absurd. The best I can do, and it's a terrible example really, is being born a shipwright (/shipbuilder) who loves building ships and sailing them into the sea. Yet being born into a world without seas.

Being humans, we reflect on things, reason about them, care and act with purpose. We expect to find reason and purpose in the universe. Instead, when we ask these questions of the universe we're met with silence. In times of suffering, we're met with indifference. No one's showed up to work at the call centre. No one's there to answer your questions. The universe doesn't care.

Your argument, as far as I see it, is just because we're born shipwrights into a world without seas, isn't really a problem. That's fine. That's not the same however as claiming that this situation is not absurd.

In my view the analogy would be the shipbuilder who thinks it's absurd the world is not all sea.

We are the reason and purpose in the universe we are expecting to find.

We do not meet suffering with indifference. We are the caring in the universe.

My argument is that in a world with both land and sea the shipwright should appreciate the land as well as the sea.


PairTheBoard

Yes we are all these things that the universe isn't.

That is why the situation is absurd. You're thrown into a universe, a shipwright. There's no seas. What do you make of it?

Your answer: appreciate both the land (our reason, caring and purpose-seeking attributes) and the seas (the unknown, purposeless, silence of the universe).

I get behind this.

On most days.

Alan Watts uses the thought experiment of being an entity that whenever they go to sleep they live out/dream an entire life of 75 years over the 8 hour sleep period. The entity, however, can have complete control over what kind of dream it has each night and control over every aspect of that dream-life. Initially, it has dreams of billionaire lifestyles, with no suffering and no unlucky events. Quickly it bores of that and introduces elements of randomness into the dream - things they have no control over. Eventually it bores of that, and introduces the element of not knowing that it's in a dream. And lastly, it introduces suffering to bolster the difference between good and bad moments.

My thought is it's not true that "the universe isn't" because we are part of the universe. The universe contains meaning and the meaning is us.

My thought is there are seas. The shipwright and the seas are inseparable. What puzzles the shipwright is why there is land.

Right. For the seas you describe above I would say, appreciate their mystery. Although in the analogy of the shipwright it would be the other way around.

The only response to suffering I find fruitful is to meet it with compassion and action to alleviate it.

PairTheBoard

Just because your cells and your muscles are both a part of you doesn't mean there aren't differences between them. Same with the humans and the universe. You really can draw a line between what a human is and what the universe is. And this is what Camus invites us to indulge. You can also draw a thicker line between what the subjective and objective are.

I doubt there would be any absurdity in a truly objective view.


PairTheBoard

I love it when people use the thesaurus. Kind of absurd that one word has so many other words which can mean the same or similar thing in a common language. Probably poets' fault, acting all absurdly creative about words and experience.

When it's used in a philosophical context I think reductio ad absurdum, i.e. a contradiction. I don't see a contradiction at all. The two views aren't mutually exclusive; they're just different because we're looking at the same thing from different vantage points and with different lenses. Like my house looking different from the inside (subjective perspective) when I'm in it, than it does from a satellite map (objective perspective) from the outside. Maybe the existentialists are inside looking at the satellite view on their computers and it freaks them out.

With his conclusion being that we would eventually choose to dream a dream that is similar to the lives that we live now. I don't accept the conclusion but it was an interesting though experiment.

Watts also likes to say that we weren't thrown into the universe, or more accurately that we didn't come into it, but rather that we came out of it.
I don't see the advantage in conceptualizing reality either way. Perhaps he did, I forget.

I think Watts' dream scenario amounts to a godless version of theology's "best possible world" justification for evil/suffering in a world created by a good God. I reject such justifications for evil/suffering as distractions from the only response to suffering I find fruitful. To meet it with compassion and action to alleviate it.


PairTheBoard

They're not mutually exclusive in all cases. In Watts' case, he also hammers the point that God, being every subjective experiencer, is both you and me. Harm onto you is harm onto me.

Also, there may be better possible worlds. The thought experiment merely shows that this may be one world of God's creation; one dream in one type of world. Not necessarily the best world or even the best dream.

Thats not the conclusion as I see it. The conclusion is that it is possible that this is one of God's dream worlds. Not necessarily the best one. It's not like God or some higher being (maybe even aliens, maybe even humans in the future) arrives at all the right conditions for the best dream world and just lives that eternally. Eternity is a long time. Unfathomable, the kind of variety there would be in God's dreams.

Consider it this way: if it exists it's conceivable. If it's conceivable it's dream-able.

I could phrase that better but I'm feeling lazy.