Rational Imperative

‘Twas a good run.

In our last post we discussed how not caring about anything or caring about things other than Seneca’s Question is necessarily problematic. Seneca’s Question, to reiterate, deals directly with our purpose; Where are we headed? In which direction shall we move? For many, this question seems to have an obvious answer. As with Puer Stultus, whom we discussed in the previous post, many people take the question of purpose for granted or assume an easy, seemingly obvious, but deeply flawed solution.

A common trend in modern culture is to use emotional goals as ends in themselves. This is shown evident merely by the myriad of common adages and maxims that are commonly culturally promoted; “Do what feels right,” “Go with your gut,” “Live for the moment,” “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we will die.” While these sayings all promote slightly different ideals, the common bond between all of these sayings is their sincere acceptance of emotional and instinctual urges as both ends in and of themselves and as the best means for making decisions to reach ones goals.

In order to understand how using emotional goals as ends in and of themselves is a self-contradiction and not justifiable, we should first understand the role that emotion plays in our life. A good start is to look at where emotion originally came from, evolutionarily speaking. While we don’t have a complete understanding of  the current role that emotion plays, neural imaging has provided some insight as to emotion and instinctual functions. As far as we can tell, emotion and instinct is rooted in the limbic system of the brain. The limbic system is one of the earlier developments in the mammalian brain and evidence suggests this is where the ’fight or flight’ instinct evolved from. So, what significance did emotion have? What advantages did it grant to early animals that allowed it to carry on and become a biological necessity in future generations?

Imagine early human life, or even early animal life for that matter. As a general principle, animals evolve to function as efficiently as possible. As such, a typical animal conducts itself so it preserves a low energy level throughout the course of normal events. However, life often necessitates a break from the normal slow rhythm of life. It becomes advantageous for an animal to exert extra energy in the short run for long term gains. A animal might need to chase it’s prey to eat, resulting in a positive calorie trade, or an animal might have to defend their mate against rival suitors in order to ensure reproductive success.  This is where the ’lower level functions’ (this can be a blanket term for emotion and instinctual urges stemming from the limbic system) step in. Emotion plays the role of motivator, so to speak, influencing one to act in a way that is different than the baseline, energy efficient norm. Low level functions, in this sense, acted as a means to the end of survival.

From lower level functions place as a means in human life, we can see how using them as a final end is a self contradiction.  Lower level functions evolved as a means to the end of survival. While a means to an end could also be a short term end in itself, it cannot be the final end since itself is working toward a ’higher’ goal, so to speak. Imagine you’re climbing a mountain with your goal to get to the summit. The mountain is a several day climb so you’ll have to rest at the end of every hard day of climbing.

Luckily for you, there are several camps set up all the way to the summit that will provide you a safe place to sleep. Each base camp, although it is a short term end in itself, is not the final end; the summit is still higher. If your goal is to get to the summit, why would you stop your hike for good at one of the camps that was created to assist you in this task? Emotion is the same as one of these camps, with its goal to get you to survive. As we stressed in our introductory post, we don’t know exactly where the summit is. While survival might be our last stop on our climb, there may be further camps en route to the summit. Only expanding our knowledge as we climb ever higher will tell us to where we shall climb, or to “which port we shall sail.”

Human aspirations

Consider what you strive for in life. Any individual person may have a different set of goals, but most people are driven by aspirations of some sort.

By this we mean that everyone wants something. Usually if one is considered ambitious it is because one’s goals are difficult or unlikely to attain: a person who aspires to be an athlete, a politician, a popular musician, a famous actor, etc. is commonly considered ambitious. However, every person has ambitions, even if they are not particularly lofty. The ambitions of any given person are influenced by two potential factors.

The first major factor that affects one’s aspirations is one’s belief system, or one’s answer to Seneca’s Question, if they have one.

For those who do have convictions about the meaning of life, these tend to be the dominant force in determining the aspirations of such people (disregarding, however, the actual level of effort people invest in their aspirations, which is an entirely different matter influenced by a different set of variables. This subject will be addressed in future discussions about discipline and self-control.) It is important to note that while such convictions might not directly dictate how a person forms their life goals, a person’s belief system exerts influence by defining how a person views the worth, or lack of worth, of any given pursuit.

In our last post, we discussed why existing answers to Seneca’s Question  must necessarily be incomplete, and why the pursuit of a solution to this question therefore remains important. As a consequence, we would assert that any present aspirations based on such convictions are based on a tenuous foundation. We plan in future discussions of Ethics to address the formation of aspirations based on sound principles.

The second major factor that influences the development of an individual’s goals is his or her emotional, impulsive dispositions. For those with convictions about the purpose of life, this factor is less influential in determining aspirations.

However, there is a large and growing number of people who neither claim to have a solution to Seneca’s Question, nor care even to seek one out.

The Absurdity of Apathy

We assert that even for such people, the importance of pursuing an answer to Seneca’s Question remains undiminished.

Of the people who have no interest in Seneca’s Question, there are two possible categories. Either a person cares equally little about everything, including Seneca’s Question, or a person cares mostly about other things.

Of these two possible categories, consider the first. Let us imagine a person who cares equally little about anything, who has no goals; consider a person who wants nothing. If such a person should come to exist, he or she would lack the will to do anything. Presumably, the pursuit of basic necessities such as food, water, or even air would be abandoned out of sheer inertia.  Consequently, we must conclude that any person who is perfectly apathetic either does not exist or will soon cease to.

Let us then turn to the second possible category, a person who cares mostly about things other than the meaning of life. The absurdity of this position is clear.

For example, suppose that a person exists who does not care about anything at all except the pursuit of physical pleasure, and let’s suppose that his name is Puer Stultus.  If you were to meet Puer and attempt to engage in a philosophical discussion, he might declare:

“I don’t care about all that. I only want to feel as good as possible for as long as possible. Nothing else really matters to me.”

“Yes, but why is that so important?” you might ask. “What’s the point? Why is feeling good worthwhile?”

At that point, Puer Stultus could respond in two possible ways.  Firstly, he might say “Just because”, and, like the pillar-builders, the discussion would turn to the subject of whether or not something is worth pursuing because of its emotional value. In our next few posts, we will discuss why irrational motivations cannot be self-justified, and seek to explain how the claim “I will do what makes me happy, without considering Seneca’s Question” is self-contradictory.

However, if Puer Stultus does not respond in this way, then he will attempt to further justify his aspirations. Perhaps he might say that “I want to feel good because I believe that if everyone just tries to feel as good as possible then the world will be a better place.”

If the world is a better place because people try to feel as good as they can, you would first have to explain what “better” is and how feeling good would be a sufficient means of arriving at this state.”

To this you might ask “But why will it be a better place? How can you tell if the world is better or worse off without first having an ethical system?”In order to respond, Puer would be required to come up with some sort of justification for his ethical beliefs, bringing him back to Seneca’s Question. This is one instance of how caring about something without first attempting to understand why it is worth caring about is unreasonable.

The absurdity of apathy is therefore apparent. One cannot be completely apathetic and still exist, and those that care about other things to the exclusion of Seneca’s Question must determine their aspirations through emotion, because they cannot be logically justified.

Suppose that, one day, on a random grain of sand in the Sahara desert, an unimaginably small microbe somehow evolves a sentient consciousness. Despite its size, it possesses a great deal of intelligence. This microbe eventually spawns an entire little microbe civilization that spreads slowly all across the speck of dust. Very early on in the development of microbe civilization, a creative and passionate young microbe writes a book entitled The Great Microbe Book of Everything. The Great Microbe Book of Everything claims that the microbes are the only intelligent species on the speck of dust, and that the speck of dust and every other thing that exists in the universe must exist expressly for the use of the microbes, so that microbes can live, grow, and be happy. Because of this, says The Great Microbe Book, it is clear that the proper role of microbes, the purpose of their existence, is for them to use the universe as it was meant to be used by whatever forces were responsible for its creation.

Hundreds of generations after the Great Microbe Book of Everything is written, microbe society discovers that their little speck of dust isn’t alone in the universe; far away, on the other side of the speck of dust they call home, is another speck of dust. Soon, they come to realize that their speck of dust is just one of many countless specks of dust in the Sahara Desert. Regardless of this, the majority of the microbes continue to believe the claims of the Great Microbe Book of Everything, and retain their convictions about the purpose of microbe existence.

It would be easy from our vantage point as human beings to see the absurdity and arrogance of the microbe civilization’s collective delusion, if we were to encounter it. “How,” we might ask them, “can you make such grand and sweeping claims about the universe and your role within it when you are so tiny and know so little about it?” To this they might reply “It is written in the Great Microbe Book of Everything. Surely, therefore, our conviction is justified.” To this we might likely protest “But when the Book was written you didn’t even know that there was anything in the universe other than your speck of dust! Surely placing your trust in it is no longer sensible, now that you have learned otherwise?”

It is perhaps likely should this transpire that the microbes would not be persuaded by our argument, but we could certainly come away from the experience a little wiser. It would be obvious to us after our discussion with the microbes that their knowledge of the universe and any claims they might make based on that knowledge would be incomplete. Because we know so much more about the universe than the microbes would and have come to an entirely different conclusion based on that knowledge, we could not possibly accept the idea that the entire universe exists for the consumption of microbes in their mission to live, grow and be happy.

Among human beings there are many different beliefs about the purpose of life. However, like the Great Microbe Book of Everything, these beliefs are founded on an incomplete – seemingly vastly incomplete – knowledge of the universe. This becomes more evident considering the sheer size of the observable universe (a term which refers to the small part of the universe it is physically possible for us to see). If one were to travel at the speed of light (3 x 108 meters per second), the maximum possible speed anything in the universe can possibly travel according to contemporary physics, it would take 46.5 billion years to approach the edge of the observable universe.

If one were to imagine traveling for such an incredibly long period of time at such an extremely high velocity (one that the speediest rockets today can’t even begin to approach), one would begin to comprehend the truly colossal dimensions of the cosmos. The Earth, when compared to this vastness, becomes analogous to a grain of sand in the Sahara Desert. Given this, it is apparent that the microbes are about as well placed to make grand, sweeping claims about the universe and their purpose in it as we are. (In an earlier post, “The Role of Philosophy”, we discussed the fact that the sum of human knowledge in our times has become vast, relative to its level of organization or digestion. It is important to note, however, that given the unfathomably huge size and complexity of the universe, there is still far more to learn).

This is not to say that Rational Imperative is denying the possibility that some current conviction about the purpose of life could conceivably be correct. Whether it is based on a religious tradition, a spiritual organization, or school of philosophy, any given answer to the question of life’s meaning could either be correct or incorrect – we cannot know for certain and Rational Imperative does not claim to. What we can reasonably claim is that the justification for any such answer must as yet be incomplete.

What this means is that even for those who believe they know the purpose of life, Seneca’s Question is still a matter of pressing importance. This is precisely because the exploration of such an important matter should not end the moment a conclusion has been reached; new information and developments must be considered constantly and diligently so that existing conclusions might be either verified or modified. The significance of the subject in question merits nothing less.

Clearly, then, Seneca’s Question should remain important even to those who feel they have arrived at a conclusion. There are many, however, who neither claim to have any answer to Seneca’s Question nor recognize its importance. Our next post will be a discussion of this position, and we will seek to show the absurdity of being apathetic toward this subject.

One of the main purposes of Rational Imperative is to create a system of philosophy that is both complete and practical. Because of philosophy’s importance to our efforts, an early discussion of the role philosophy ought to play seems necessary.

To discuss the role of philosophy, it must first be made clear what we mean by “philosophy”. Philosophy is the application of logical reasoning to certain sets of information, or evidence, in order to further our progress in the quest to understand our destination, to answer Seneca’s question: “what direction should we take? What is our purpose?” Philosophy, then, is a digestive mechanism that is used in order to deduce patterns. Crucially, it is not the province of philosophy to gather new empirical evidence, but rather to organize and apply that evidence.

To put it in simpler terms, philosophy is the process of connecting the dots. The sum of human knowledge in the 21st century is relatively large and growing faster than ever, and this vast body of information is becoming increasingly available to anyone with a computer; a fact that lead some to refer to our era as “the Information Age”. It is clear that there is no drastic shortage in scientists and other researchers who are responsible for adding to the growing mass of information available to humanity. However, there is a vast shortage in the amount of people responsible for the organization of this information into a coherent system capable of addressing Seneca’s question.

In the interest of organization, we shall break down philosophy into three basic fields, all of which logically follow from Seneca’s first question. The first question that we must address is “how do I gain knowledge, about anything at all, in the first place?” Epistemology is the part of philosophy that deals with this and related questions about the nature of knowledge. The next derivative question is, “If I know how to gain knowledge, how do I learn more about the nature of the universe I inhabit, so that I can further understand my place within it as a human being?” Metaphysics is the component of philosophy which deals with this and related questions. The last branch, Ethics, deals with the question “If I understand the part I am to play in the universe, how can I most effectively fulfill my role?” Our system map will be organized under these three basic categories.

In contemporary times, academic philosophers have largely rejected philosophy’s role in addressing the last two of these three subjects. Incredibly, the idea that philosophy should not attempt to develop ethical systems has become prominent. Instead, modern philosophy has largely focused on problems of epistemology and the philosophy of language. The withdrawal of modern academic philosophy from metaphysical and ethical questions means that Western Philosophy has essentially become exclusively academic and has little practical application, resulting in the lack of any popular philosophical system and a decline in the interest in philosophy generally. Philosophy is no longer a major source people draw from to form their beliefs or values. This retreat of philosophers in the 20th century from ethical philosophy, and from broad philosophical systems in general, has lead people to search elsewhere in the attempt to construct their personal morality.

Until the end of the Cold War, the 20th century was dominated by value systems predicated not on philosophical reasoning, but rather on political and economic sentiments. With all the zeal that man had historically dedicated himself to philosophical and religious convictions, for the majority of the 20th he proclaimed his fervent loyalty to one of the competing political or economic systems. Around his system of choice he would build his sense of right and wrong, and from it he would derive his purpose.

The end of the Cold War changed all of this. Liberal Democracy triumphed as a political system, and Capitalism became the dominant economic model. Suddenly, man had no political or economic cause to devote himself to, as the issue was now largely resolved, and therefore nothing to derive purpose from. And so the question of right and wrong fell back to the old authorities: philosophy and religion. Only, one authority had become mute.

It is not likely a coincidence that the ’90s saw a resurgence of ethnic strife and nationalist movements, just as it is no coincidence that religious observance and religious fundamentalism increased so greatly in the wake of the Cold War. Mankind at this time began to tackle with renewed vigor the questions of morality that had been left aside for so long during the great political and economic struggles of the 20th century. For the answers they turned to religion, and to their historical cultural conventions; the few that rejected these moral authorities for the most part turned to moral relativism or abandoned the question of ethics and philosophy altogether.

It is the aim of the Rational Imperative to introduce a new, comprehensive, coherent, and most importantly, practical system of philosophy to restore its rightful role as a shaper of culture and an influence in the day to day life of mankind. If this can be achieved, then religion and custom can reassume their correct roles in popularizing the discoveries of philosophy and giving them emotional significance, instead of attempting themselves to be originators of philosophical truths.

Most importantly, we seek to reinvigorate philosophical discussions of ethics. If the unexamined life is truly not worth living, then the examination of one’s life direction and ethical code on a daily basis is just as necessary as drinking water or sleeping. It is the tragedy of contemporary society that this principle has been rejected, and that reflection has become an academic pursuit. Philosophy should, at its best, not only help humanity more deeply understand its meaning, but also enhance the structure of a human life and imbue it with a sense of dignity and tranquility.

Imagine that, at some point in the future, humanity somehow develops the ability to travel faster than light. Now, imagine that you are one of the first people to utilize this technology in the attempt to explore other planets that seem capable of sustaining life. On your first mission, you land on a big blue planet with lots of water and a temperate climate, and begin to explore. Soon you come across a massive stone pillar which is so unbelievably tall that you can only see the top when you fly up a full mile. Excited at having found such clear evidence of a sentient species on the planet, you seek them out. When at last you find them, you quickly learn their method of communication and begin to study their way of life.

As you speak with the creatures and learn more about their society, you find that they spend an inordinate amount of time and resources building pillars. In fact, there are stone pillar “forests” that are so large that they now cover a significant percentage of the planet’s land area.

Needless to say, you are absolutely astounded. When you voice your confusion to the creatures, they themselves express utter bafflement. “Why do we build the pillars?” they reply, astonished. “What sort of question is that? The more pillars we have, the better off we are.” “But, what purpose do they serve? How are you better off?” you ask, perplexed. “Why do you put all of your efforts into creating pillars? What will it matter when the entire planet is covered in pillars and you are all dead?” Astonished that you do not understand, they reply “our people derive pleasure from pillars. The more we build, the better we feel.”

Human civilization, as it turns out, may not be so different from the civilization of the pillar-builders. Over the course of the last century humanity has, generally speaking, experienced an unprecedented spurt of economic development and technological progress. Our ability to do things has grown and continues to grow exponentially, but a consensus about how to excercise that ability has failed to develop with equal speed. What things we are to do with our accelerating ability to do them is far from certain. Seneca once said that “Ignoranti quem portum petat nullus suus ventus est“, which translates roughly as “If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable”. Seneca was saying, in other words, that nothing can be advantageous to someone without direction. This maxim is certainly applicable to the fictional society of the pillar-buildars, who for all the pleasure they may derive today from their pillars have no ultimate purpose for their endless building. Similarly, the economic growth and technological progress of our world, while certainly giving us the ability to extend our lives and live them more pleasantly, are of no ultimate advantage in themselves.

This truth is the impetus for the creation of Rational Imperative. We reject the notion that humanity exists for nothing more than the pursuit of longer and more pleasurable lives. It is our belief that it is our duty as human beings to pursue to the greatest extent of our ability the answer to the question “to what port should we sail?”, or, as it is more commonly put, “what is our purpose?”. We hope to show conclusively why this question is so important, why the prevailing answers provided by modern religion and philosophy remain incomplete, and how the pursuit of the answer might most effectively proceed. And, in doing so, we hope to justify and give meaning to the efforts of the builders, whose pillars might well serve one day as a staircase for humanity to climb as it searches the heavens, seeking truth.

The term “Rational Imperative”, which we have chosen as our title, has two meanings. Firstly it refers to a fundamental premise of our philosophical system (which we hope to chart and explain in scientific detail in the “system map” section), which holds that in searching for life’s meaning it is imperative that we employ reason as a method of comprehending the universe. It also refers to the derivative idea that in order to enhance our abilities to comprehend the universe through reason, we must also make use of the imperatives of rationality to enhance the structure of human civilization itself. This aspect of the rational imperative, having to do with the improvement of self and society, will form the basis of our ethical system. In other words, we will show that reason is our surest guide both in the quest to further our understanding of the universe, and also in the effort to live more ethically.

Through fostering a culture of philosophical vigor, rational action, and devotion to ethical principles, we hope to be at the forefront of the rise of reason in the 21st century. Welcome to Rational Imperative.