How does extra scope (like an afterlife) solve the problem of purpose? Now you have two problems of purpose. If I remember rightly, C.S. Lewis in his sci-fi made heaven into an endless series of adventures, which is the minimum necessary to make it attractive. But this still doesn't resolve to an ultimate purpose any more than a finite life does.
Often the question "what is the purpose of my existence?" is a proxy for some less abstract question, I think. Consider Young Frankenstein, and the gag where characters sing "Oh, sweet mystery of life at last I've found you! At last, I know the secret of it all!" because they got sex. Less cynically, it may simply be a matter of identifying comfortable values, in terms of the possible values available in the human condition in the present day. I mean you're unlikely to be honestly asking a question with a giant universal scope, if you claim that it bothers you personally.
I don't find it contradictory to subscribe to both an individual Destiny and an "universal scope" Destiny of which the individual Destiny is a component.
This Destiny is in tension with Free Will (in my telling).
In retirement, my hope is to produce a lengthy, pretentious exploration of a few ideas that will doubtless help someone's insomnia.
"Evolitionary" implies some direction and execution scope, does it not?
Possibly I'm guilty of over-reading the word.
How does extra scope (like an afterlife) solve the problem of purpose? Now you have two problems of purpose. If I remember rightly, C.S. Lewis in his sci-fi made heaven into an endless series of adventures, which is the minimum necessary to make it attractive. But this still doesn't resolve to an ultimate purpose any more than a finite life does.
Often the question "what is the purpose of my existence?" is a proxy for some less abstract question, I think. Consider Young Frankenstein, and the gag where characters sing "Oh, sweet mystery of life at last I've found you! At last, I know the secret of it all!" because they got sex. Less cynically, it may simply be a matter of identifying comfortable values, in terms of the possible values available in the human condition in the present day. I mean you're unlikely to be honestly asking a question with a giant universal scope, if you claim that it bothers you personally.
I don't find it contradictory to subscribe to both an individual Destiny and an "universal scope" Destiny of which the individual Destiny is a component.
This Destiny is in tension with Free Will (in my telling).
In retirement, my hope is to produce a lengthy, pretentious exploration of a few ideas that will doubtless help someone's insomnia.
4 replies →
Possibly you're over-reading, but definitely you didn't answer my question.
More explicitly, then, "evolutionary" implies some grasp of a direction toward which things evolve.
Otherwise, it's just so many chemical reactions.
2 replies →