I found the following in my mailbox this morning …

You know, I’m wondering if we’re completely hardwired to believe in determinism. Our obsession with “why” implies a cause and effect relationship. From “why” comes science, religion, politics, art.

Where does “why” come from? Perhaps the perception of time has to do with it. I dunno.

— Peat

I believe it was Kant who dispelled the myth of “cause and effect”, but said that we had to believe in it otherwise we couldn’t act. I can believe that.

Quantum Mechanics and Kant have effectively buried the Newtonian notion that if we knew all of the variables, everything in the universe could be accurately predicted. So without determinism (and its religious counterpart, pre-destination), what are we left with?

Technically, we are left with a foundation of sand… of probability, where nothing is sure, and everything we observe is there based solely on a better statistical chance (see this recent podcast interview with Michio Kaku for a better overview). This form of randomness leads many to state that the universe is meaningless.

As Steve Weinberg wrote in his book, The First Three Minutes, “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.” Stephen Jay Gould comes to a similar conclusion after noting that evolution isn’t about progress as much as it is about favoring blind successes.

But how people, even cosmologists, hate this. It was this entire concept that prompted Albert Einstein’s famous rebuke, “God does not play dice with the universe.” While I don’t necessarily agree with his conclusion, Paul Davies, described a debate on this subject:

Cosmic pointlessness has also been argued on philosophical grounds on the basis that the very concept of a “point” or “purpose” cannot be applied to a system like the universe because it makes sense only in the context of human activity.

Some years ago, I took part in a BBC television debate with Hugh Montefiore, then Bishop of Birmingham, and the atheist Oxford philosopher AJ Ayer. Montefiore declared that without God all human life would be meaningless. Ayer countered that humans alone imbue their lives with meaning. “But then life would have no ultimate meaning,” objected the bishop. “I don’t know what ultimate meaning means!” cried Ayer. His objection, of course, is that such concepts as meaning, purpose and having a point are human categories that make good sense in the context of human society, but are, at best, metaphors when applied to non-living systems.

In discussing this age-old debate with Peat, we came up the idea that the reason why people are afraid of a meaningless universe is that since they equate meaning with value, the opposite must be true… That is, if the universe doesn’t have a meaning or purpose or what-have-you, then it has no value… no quality.

But that statement isn’t true, for Meaning has no correlation with Quality. Quality, as Pirsig has demonstrated, exists without human intervention, but Meaning, on the other hand, is nothing more than a human projection on the world. I love this quote from this website:

We are not accidental beings so much as the product of accumulated accidents; the universe is not meaningless because we impart to it all the meaning we’ll ever need.

And that, boys and girls, theists and non, is how lives can be filled with wonderment and magic, science and reason, love and vitality.

Exactly.

Po commented:

Oh yeah, “meaning” as a concept is quite different than “value” or “quality” or even “idea” and “purpose.”

I’d argue that we, as humans, tend to project ideas where there are no latent ones and work very hard to control our cognition lest we be exposed to something that would force us to have to reevaluate everything to our birth.

That’s a lot of work. And we are, if nothing else, lazy organisims. Also, people don’t like chaos.

Or entropy.

Or any number of things that make it hard to grant some kind of probability to events.

Peter Marzolf said:

Life is just a game. The questions we ask about, really, the meaning of life are only scratching the surface of what is it all about? or does the universe have meaning? And today is but the best part of that game because today has meaning.

My five year old and my child on the way tell me that there is tremendous meaning in the universe; love, laughter, learning and living. We all start with these instincts, needs and wants. The simplist people who get the most of life live this. There questions, like mine, are not whether there is meaning rather they ask, “What am I doing to help define its meaning?”

The game is one and the definition made by saying, “The universe, while I was aware of it, had meaning because I added value. I loved, I lived, I learned, I laughed and so did all around me.”

Brett said:

Good stuff about determinism/meaning. We can learn and wonder about the randomness of the universe, but at a personal, day-to-day level, we have to create order and meaning. Otherwise (as you/Kant mentioned) we wouldn’t get anything done. We have the unique ability to compartmentalize our thoughts and actions. I used to think that was a sign of weakness… the inability to live and act holistically. But maybe it’s necessary. It’s how we can live, work and avoid the loony bin.

BTW: I like you’re new picture too.

Darol said:

I see it all simply as enjoying our perception of time and space being the meaning of existence.

“Why?”

Because I (try to) enjoy being. I consciously stop, pretend that I won’t exist in a moment, and look at my surroundings. I always find that I am smiling, even in unpleasant moments because I can interract with my surroundings. That is enough!

I do agree with the basic concept of determinisim, but the variables are too many to predict.