On September 1st, I had my second academic paper published — Rebuilding the Harm Principle: Using an Evolutionary Perspective to Provide a New Foundation for Justice. I co-wrote this one with my wife, Tanya Wyatt, a professor of criminology at Northumbria University, and it was published in the top-ranked law journal of Australia, the International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy. Fortunately, this is an open-access journal so you can read the article for free if you like. We’ve been getting some nice feedback on it so far, and I would love to hear more, but I had one extended back and forth about it that I’d particularly like to share.
Larry Rifkin is a fellow evolutionist who has become a friend over the years of sharing our work with one another. He’s a physician, writer, and humanist who shares his articles and (very well made) videos on his website lawrencerifkin.com. In particular, check these out:
Is the Meaning of Life to Make Babies? (Scientific American Guest Blog)
The Survival of Humanity (Scientific American Guest Blog)
Meaning of Life, in 3 Minutes (YouTube Video)
Evolution Will Change How You See the World (YouTube Video)
The Paragraph I Wish Sam Harris Would Write (Free Inquiry)
Last week, Larry generously shared some kind words about my article, and we got into an extensive back and forth over one sticking point that I think is important to talk about. I need to get better at clearing up what I see as a common misconception about my philosophy and I think Larry has really helped me figure out a way to do that. He and I are overwhelmingly on the same page, so I won’t bore you with of all the details of what we agree about, but here is an edited version of our conversation to focus on how we cleared something up. So, thanks to Larry, and I hope you find this illuminating as well.
LR: Hi Ed. That article was great! Thank you and your wife for all the thought, research, and motivation that went into it. For my own understanding, perhaps you can help me work through some clarifications. In arguing for the central organizing moral principle of maximizing the long-term survival of life, do you take into account a valuation of the nature of the beings such a world may maximize? Does a human-level conscious experience grant us any greater value? If not, is there a risk perhaps of a type of new repugnant conclusion? A hypothetical universe absolutely teeming with endless insects and plants but with no chance for evolving greater capacity for conscious experience would be considered as a great moral good as long as it survives, whereas the existence of a small number of beings who can create art, imagine futures, understand science, and perform philanthropy adds marginally if at all to such a universe, given the central priority value of life’s continuity and survival.
Also, if the goal of the survival of life is the flourishing of life and continuing its long-term future potential, then it sounds like survival in-and-of-itself is the goal and moral metric. But is that right? Does the formulation need to focus more on what it is about life that makes survival so important? Isn’t the survival of life a means to the values such as flourishing, experience, and leaving open the possibility of life’s potential and evolution for new and continuing modes of experience without end? If so, then is it perhaps okay to think of your contribution as a form of long-term utilitarianism? Survival of life is a means to maximizing pleasure, minimizing harm, etc. in a way that values and prioritizes the long term ongoing future prospects for life. It’s a consequentialism with future life being given full moral consideration. Can one interpret your contribution as adding a long-term perspective and valuation to utilitarianism, rather than offering something different than utilitarianism?
EG: Hi Larry — thanks for the compliments and for taking the time to read the article and pose your questions. We were really up against a world limit here, so I wasn’t able to expand on our ideas much, but your questions are common ones that I’m happy to address. (I have an FAQ page on my website for my earlier paper on bridging the is-ought divide. I probably need to do the same for this one eventually as questions like yours roll in.)
Since you asked several pointed questions, I’ll answer them directly one by one.
—> In arguing for the central organizing moral principle of maximizing the long-term survival of life, do you take into account a valuation of the nature of the beings such a world may maximize?
Yes, of course. Some ways of living do more to maximize the robustness of all life than other ways of living. For example, I’ve no trouble fighting parasitic viruses (considered among the simplest forms of life by some measures) and even wiping them out entirely where necessary.
—> Does a human-level conscious experience grant us any greater value?
This raises a question about what consciousness is, but I’ll leave that for another time. (I’m writing a monster blog series on it at the moment as you may know.) I also think looking for “greater value” is the wrong question here. (What is the “value” of anything in a godless universe? It’s all either zero in the grand scheme of things or infinite to the individual in question.) But apart from “the hard question” of conscious experience and its value, the ability of human minds to sense, understand, and respond to more existential threats to all life on Earth means that human actions are particularly important. No one else could stop another asteroid from causing a mass extinction. (No other species is causing the Anthropocene’s 6th mass extinction though either.) Humans do have abilities to provide more important actions towards the survival of life and thus it could be better to take steps towards those abilities rather than not to. (This is in line with my definition of consciousness to if you want to get into that.)
—> If not, is there a risk perhaps of a type of new repugnant conclusion?
So no, the universe with “endless insects and plants” is actually a very fragile existence on Earth. The cosmos is a dangerous place (as seen in the previous extinction events) and the survival of life can be made more robust by the actions of species like ours. If art, futures, science, and philanthropy are not used towards this purpose (ultimately not proximately), then they are not helpful. By this I mean that all of those things COULD actually contribute to the extinction of life if they are not well thought out, and in that case they would be wrong. Whose conscious pleasure could ever be worth extinguishing life?
—>Isn’t the survival of life a means to the values such as flourishing, experience, and leaving open the possibility of life’s potential and evolution for new and continuing modes of experience without end?
I think this common way of putting things is backwards. It’s making the same mistake about the goal of life that pre-Darwin thinkers made about the design of life. Before Darwin, we thought design came from on high, from either a God or a Platonic ideal. Darwin showed us that life was built from the bottom up starting with the very simplest life forms. Well, the purpose of life goes in the same direction. There is not some perfect ideal of flourishing that survival strives towards. Quite simply, more and more robust survival IS what flourishing is. Again, if flourishing doesn’t lead towards the more robust survival of life, then it isn’t flourishing! I mean, it may be flourishing for one selfish person, group, or species, but it isn’t objectively flourishing in the long term that you and I are both concerned with. Nor is it flourishing for the completely interrelated web of life that we humans are enmeshed within.
—> If so, then is it perhaps okay to think of your contribution as a form of long-term utilitarianism?
That’s part of it. But as the paper says, I’m reforming all three moral camps and uniting them into one comprehensive view. I do reform consequentialism somewhat in the way you are describing. (Although I want to make sure you are defining pleasure and harm in the right way according to the definitions of good and harm that I give in the paper.) But I’m also reforming virtue ethics, and then the deontological rules that all flow from trying to achieve these consequences in the most virtuous way possible.
LR: Thank you for the full and interesting response. Here’s one small point—in my hypothetical thought experiment of a “universe teeming with insects and plants,” I meant to convey in the question the idea of endless planets throughout the universe teeming with such life (so as to take away the proximate survival component), without any ability to evolve to human-level experience. I was trying to find a way to get you to weigh the relative value of the survival of life itself relative to “types of life/experience”. Sorry if the idea of life on many planets across the universe did not come across clearly in my question.
EG: Sorry, yes, I didn’t get that point about the “lower” forms of life being everywhere as a seemingly robust alternative to “higher” forms of life. This is really getting theoretical now, of course, and only of concern once we get off this planet or know that life is everywhere else too, but one of the ways I’d think about this is by examining the possible ends of the universe which seemingly render the meaning of life as utterly pointless. This is something the philosopher John Messerly talks about in his book The Meaning of Life, much of which you can find on his excellent website Reason and Meaning.
Basically, the two most likely outcomes right now are a Big Crunch of fiery heat death when the universe collapses back on itself, or a Big Freeze of a universe that continues to expand until nothing can hold together anymore. Pretty grim in either case. One thing to hold out hope for, however, is that future beings much smarter than us can figure out a way to stop these endpoints from happening (maybe mastering dark matter or energy? who knows!) and thus allow life and meaning-making to continue. In that case, the insects and plants would still have to give up a bit for those higher kinds of beings to be able to build more flourishing for all. On the other hand, if that’s not possible, maybe highly-conscious life would actually prefer going extinct eventually rather than being tortured by the meaninglessness of their impending doom. Like I said, though, that’s a theoretically long way off so I think it’s safe for us to struggle on in the meantime.
LR: I've connected with John Messerly and really like him and his work. I too think his website and blog are outstanding. One discussion I've had with him is whether an end to the universe would really make existence meaningless. I don't believe so, John leans in the other direction. To me, meaning is additive and cumulative, not judged by a final score.
EG: I had a talk with a Wittgensteinian philosopher in the pub once who tried to convince me to drop my concern with consequences. I just can’t get there. The final score matters. It won’t feel like anything to me here and now if in 200 years the universe was torn up because we’re in a multiverse and another Big Bang was nearby and Bigger, so I take your point about meaning being additive within a life, but I think we operate under an assumption of continuance that is very important. Perhaps you saw my article reviewing Martin Hägglund’s book This Life: Mortality Makes us Free. My review was called “Mortality Doesn’t Make Us Free Either” and talks about how this indefiniteness in life is what gives us purpose. No one has to look for any purpose to live their life, of course. And they can choose a purpose that leads towards extinction. But I contend that is wrong once we open our eyes to things.
LR: “Mortality Doesn't Make Us Free Either” was also excellent, Ed! Where I think I part with you and John is the idea that meaning now is lessened by whether or not it will come to an end ultimately. Which is different than saying preserving life (I'd add particularly life that is or can possible evolve into greater awareness, creativity, and fulfilment) should not be our main value.
EG: Can I turn it around and ask you a question? If you don’t think creating more robust survival is what underlies our values (consciously or unconsciously), then what do you think should be our main value? I’m going to guess that anything you offer has a proximate value of feeling fulfilling for us smart humans, but ultimately leads towards more survival and that is why it feels fulfilling. I don’t see where else value can come from in a godless universe. If you tell me these things are independent, I’m going to point out that survival prospects aren’t something that stand still in an always-evolving universe where entropy increases without localized effort. So, every action leads towards or away from survival. If some other main value leads away from survival, I’m going to argue that we wouldn’t value it once we discovered that fact about it. No? This is how I’ve developed my thinking here, but perhaps you have another way of conceiving some value as main.
LR: Thank you for asking. My own views are close to yours. Survival is foundational and essential. There is nothing more important, and it is a moral imperative that we think existentially long-term about survival on the planet and the universe, and judge actions accordingly. Non-human life has intrinsic value and all life on Earth is fundamentally connected (I don’t think it all about “us smart humans”).
I think where I’m differing may be a formulation issue. Survival is ultimate and foundational, yes. But I am not yet fully convinced that thinking of it as the main value is how I’d frame it. We cannot have life without breathing, but I would not call breathing the main value, I’d call it a means to an end, and essential in that fundamental sense. I think this example can be thought of analogously with survival or “robust survival” for me. Why is survival important? Because without it we could not have conscious creatures, experience of beauty, culture, meaning, love, or an unfathomable quantity and diversity of life in future. It is values like these that make survival essential. Survival is necessary and essential, but a means, not the value itself.
Values come from conscious creatures, not from the universe. Yes, we are part of and from nature. So, we can align our values to what in nature allows for existence and flourishing—survival. I’m with you there! Completely. But we also can create values and meanings—we are, as far as we know, the only creatures in the universe that can do so—and in this sense survival is a means. What if our created meanings lead away from survival? I would say this is a fundamental moral wrong, as I think you might. We are aligned there! But I would not, at this point, formulate survival or robust survival as the main value in the universe, for the above reasons. The universe doesn’t have values, we do.
EG: Thanks for continuing to push on this Larry. It’s helpful for people “on the same team” to try to hash out what really, really unites them passionately. When you said this...
"What if our created meanings lead away from survival? I would say this is a fundamental moral wrong, as I think you might. We are aligned there!”
…I could probably bear down on that and philosophically insist that you begrudgingly accept that survival is therefore the main value since it is what adjudicates between any attempts at higher meanings. But I don’t want begrudging acceptance. We evolutionists want people to sing with our vision! So, let me keep working on that.
I’d start with your point about breathing being a means to an end. I’d turn that around and say yes, but they're all means to the end of developing more survival. Breathing was an early step in this, so that’s why it’s at the base of Maslow’s pyramid. (Have you read Scott Barry Kauffman’s Transcend yet, by the way? He’s produced an excellent new metaphor of a sailboat for our hierarchy of human needs.) But as we’ve evolved both our genes and our culture, we’ve discovered more and more ways of living better and better. Maybe someday we’ll discover things far above and beyond art, philosophy, and music. We didn’t always have those. That’s what I mean by the Darwinian inversion of meaning. We’re still building and evolving it.
Here’s how I might express that even more inspirationally. All those things that you say are the ends that survival enables are actually things that make us want to survive….even more! They make our lives more and more precious, which continues to drive us to act for more and more survival. That's how they are related to survival as well. The survival instinct is traditionally expressed as some kind of base, animal level, brute force, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a growing sense that has become bigger and more refined through countless evolutionary steps. That’s my re-conception of survival that I think isn’t quite being picked up. You started off by saying you agree that survival is foundational and essential, but the things that make us want to survive are just more of the same. And we are capable of so much more discovery along that path too! Whenever I think about technological developments towards life without ageing and space exploration of other possible worlds (I’ve been on a Star Wars binge lately, so I think of this a lot), that is what makes me want so badly to live well and live more! More thriving IS more surviving.
What do you think? Is that getting closer to getting an amen? : ) You are right that it may be a formulation and framing matter that is keeping this from taking hold in people and I’m always searching for the right key to unlock that.
LR: I'm on board. This sounds like we are arguing but we are not. I think it may be a semantic rather than substantive or conceptual discussion at this point, around the word “survival”. It seems your survival encompasses flourishing and thriving within the term and concept, beyond just the narrow minimal “base, animal level” needed to stay alive. I've been separating those two ideas. I think you see the two concepts more as seamless, not distinguishable.
EG: Excellent. Yes, I agree it is a semantic difficulty around what all is contained in “survival”. I’m going to work much harder at being clear about that.
As a quick start, I just Googled “etymology survive” and found an interesting root that I can use. It says that survive comes from combining the Latin “super” (meaning “in addition”) with the Latin “vivere” (meaning “live”) to form “supervivere” in Latin and then “sourvivre” in Old French, which morphed into survive in late Middle English. So, “survive” literally comes from something like “in addition to life” which I’m going to highlight from now on as an addition that we can continue to grow and grow. Cool!
You are not alone in separating these ideas. Pursuits of definitions for eudaimonia and flourishing have been around for millennia, and since they were initially pre-Darwinian, they were of course independent of any type of survival-of-life-thinking. I’m unusual in working to overturn that so I need to recognise that and be clearer about it. Thanks for helping me work through this! I’ll turn it into a blog post for sure and see if I get any more feedback on this.
Larry Rifkin is a fellow evolutionist who has become a friend over the years of sharing our work with one another. He’s a physician, writer, and humanist who shares his articles and (very well made) videos on his website lawrencerifkin.com. In particular, check these out:
Is the Meaning of Life to Make Babies? (Scientific American Guest Blog)
The Survival of Humanity (Scientific American Guest Blog)
Meaning of Life, in 3 Minutes (YouTube Video)
Evolution Will Change How You See the World (YouTube Video)
The Paragraph I Wish Sam Harris Would Write (Free Inquiry)
Last week, Larry generously shared some kind words about my article, and we got into an extensive back and forth over one sticking point that I think is important to talk about. I need to get better at clearing up what I see as a common misconception about my philosophy and I think Larry has really helped me figure out a way to do that. He and I are overwhelmingly on the same page, so I won’t bore you with of all the details of what we agree about, but here is an edited version of our conversation to focus on how we cleared something up. So, thanks to Larry, and I hope you find this illuminating as well.
LR: Hi Ed. That article was great! Thank you and your wife for all the thought, research, and motivation that went into it. For my own understanding, perhaps you can help me work through some clarifications. In arguing for the central organizing moral principle of maximizing the long-term survival of life, do you take into account a valuation of the nature of the beings such a world may maximize? Does a human-level conscious experience grant us any greater value? If not, is there a risk perhaps of a type of new repugnant conclusion? A hypothetical universe absolutely teeming with endless insects and plants but with no chance for evolving greater capacity for conscious experience would be considered as a great moral good as long as it survives, whereas the existence of a small number of beings who can create art, imagine futures, understand science, and perform philanthropy adds marginally if at all to such a universe, given the central priority value of life’s continuity and survival.
Also, if the goal of the survival of life is the flourishing of life and continuing its long-term future potential, then it sounds like survival in-and-of-itself is the goal and moral metric. But is that right? Does the formulation need to focus more on what it is about life that makes survival so important? Isn’t the survival of life a means to the values such as flourishing, experience, and leaving open the possibility of life’s potential and evolution for new and continuing modes of experience without end? If so, then is it perhaps okay to think of your contribution as a form of long-term utilitarianism? Survival of life is a means to maximizing pleasure, minimizing harm, etc. in a way that values and prioritizes the long term ongoing future prospects for life. It’s a consequentialism with future life being given full moral consideration. Can one interpret your contribution as adding a long-term perspective and valuation to utilitarianism, rather than offering something different than utilitarianism?
EG: Hi Larry — thanks for the compliments and for taking the time to read the article and pose your questions. We were really up against a world limit here, so I wasn’t able to expand on our ideas much, but your questions are common ones that I’m happy to address. (I have an FAQ page on my website for my earlier paper on bridging the is-ought divide. I probably need to do the same for this one eventually as questions like yours roll in.)
Since you asked several pointed questions, I’ll answer them directly one by one.
—> In arguing for the central organizing moral principle of maximizing the long-term survival of life, do you take into account a valuation of the nature of the beings such a world may maximize?
Yes, of course. Some ways of living do more to maximize the robustness of all life than other ways of living. For example, I’ve no trouble fighting parasitic viruses (considered among the simplest forms of life by some measures) and even wiping them out entirely where necessary.
—> Does a human-level conscious experience grant us any greater value?
This raises a question about what consciousness is, but I’ll leave that for another time. (I’m writing a monster blog series on it at the moment as you may know.) I also think looking for “greater value” is the wrong question here. (What is the “value” of anything in a godless universe? It’s all either zero in the grand scheme of things or infinite to the individual in question.) But apart from “the hard question” of conscious experience and its value, the ability of human minds to sense, understand, and respond to more existential threats to all life on Earth means that human actions are particularly important. No one else could stop another asteroid from causing a mass extinction. (No other species is causing the Anthropocene’s 6th mass extinction though either.) Humans do have abilities to provide more important actions towards the survival of life and thus it could be better to take steps towards those abilities rather than not to. (This is in line with my definition of consciousness to if you want to get into that.)
—> If not, is there a risk perhaps of a type of new repugnant conclusion?
So no, the universe with “endless insects and plants” is actually a very fragile existence on Earth. The cosmos is a dangerous place (as seen in the previous extinction events) and the survival of life can be made more robust by the actions of species like ours. If art, futures, science, and philanthropy are not used towards this purpose (ultimately not proximately), then they are not helpful. By this I mean that all of those things COULD actually contribute to the extinction of life if they are not well thought out, and in that case they would be wrong. Whose conscious pleasure could ever be worth extinguishing life?
—>Isn’t the survival of life a means to the values such as flourishing, experience, and leaving open the possibility of life’s potential and evolution for new and continuing modes of experience without end?
I think this common way of putting things is backwards. It’s making the same mistake about the goal of life that pre-Darwin thinkers made about the design of life. Before Darwin, we thought design came from on high, from either a God or a Platonic ideal. Darwin showed us that life was built from the bottom up starting with the very simplest life forms. Well, the purpose of life goes in the same direction. There is not some perfect ideal of flourishing that survival strives towards. Quite simply, more and more robust survival IS what flourishing is. Again, if flourishing doesn’t lead towards the more robust survival of life, then it isn’t flourishing! I mean, it may be flourishing for one selfish person, group, or species, but it isn’t objectively flourishing in the long term that you and I are both concerned with. Nor is it flourishing for the completely interrelated web of life that we humans are enmeshed within.
—> If so, then is it perhaps okay to think of your contribution as a form of long-term utilitarianism?
That’s part of it. But as the paper says, I’m reforming all three moral camps and uniting them into one comprehensive view. I do reform consequentialism somewhat in the way you are describing. (Although I want to make sure you are defining pleasure and harm in the right way according to the definitions of good and harm that I give in the paper.) But I’m also reforming virtue ethics, and then the deontological rules that all flow from trying to achieve these consequences in the most virtuous way possible.
LR: Thank you for the full and interesting response. Here’s one small point—in my hypothetical thought experiment of a “universe teeming with insects and plants,” I meant to convey in the question the idea of endless planets throughout the universe teeming with such life (so as to take away the proximate survival component), without any ability to evolve to human-level experience. I was trying to find a way to get you to weigh the relative value of the survival of life itself relative to “types of life/experience”. Sorry if the idea of life on many planets across the universe did not come across clearly in my question.
EG: Sorry, yes, I didn’t get that point about the “lower” forms of life being everywhere as a seemingly robust alternative to “higher” forms of life. This is really getting theoretical now, of course, and only of concern once we get off this planet or know that life is everywhere else too, but one of the ways I’d think about this is by examining the possible ends of the universe which seemingly render the meaning of life as utterly pointless. This is something the philosopher John Messerly talks about in his book The Meaning of Life, much of which you can find on his excellent website Reason and Meaning.
Basically, the two most likely outcomes right now are a Big Crunch of fiery heat death when the universe collapses back on itself, or a Big Freeze of a universe that continues to expand until nothing can hold together anymore. Pretty grim in either case. One thing to hold out hope for, however, is that future beings much smarter than us can figure out a way to stop these endpoints from happening (maybe mastering dark matter or energy? who knows!) and thus allow life and meaning-making to continue. In that case, the insects and plants would still have to give up a bit for those higher kinds of beings to be able to build more flourishing for all. On the other hand, if that’s not possible, maybe highly-conscious life would actually prefer going extinct eventually rather than being tortured by the meaninglessness of their impending doom. Like I said, though, that’s a theoretically long way off so I think it’s safe for us to struggle on in the meantime.
LR: I've connected with John Messerly and really like him and his work. I too think his website and blog are outstanding. One discussion I've had with him is whether an end to the universe would really make existence meaningless. I don't believe so, John leans in the other direction. To me, meaning is additive and cumulative, not judged by a final score.
EG: I had a talk with a Wittgensteinian philosopher in the pub once who tried to convince me to drop my concern with consequences. I just can’t get there. The final score matters. It won’t feel like anything to me here and now if in 200 years the universe was torn up because we’re in a multiverse and another Big Bang was nearby and Bigger, so I take your point about meaning being additive within a life, but I think we operate under an assumption of continuance that is very important. Perhaps you saw my article reviewing Martin Hägglund’s book This Life: Mortality Makes us Free. My review was called “Mortality Doesn’t Make Us Free Either” and talks about how this indefiniteness in life is what gives us purpose. No one has to look for any purpose to live their life, of course. And they can choose a purpose that leads towards extinction. But I contend that is wrong once we open our eyes to things.
LR: “Mortality Doesn't Make Us Free Either” was also excellent, Ed! Where I think I part with you and John is the idea that meaning now is lessened by whether or not it will come to an end ultimately. Which is different than saying preserving life (I'd add particularly life that is or can possible evolve into greater awareness, creativity, and fulfilment) should not be our main value.
EG: Can I turn it around and ask you a question? If you don’t think creating more robust survival is what underlies our values (consciously or unconsciously), then what do you think should be our main value? I’m going to guess that anything you offer has a proximate value of feeling fulfilling for us smart humans, but ultimately leads towards more survival and that is why it feels fulfilling. I don’t see where else value can come from in a godless universe. If you tell me these things are independent, I’m going to point out that survival prospects aren’t something that stand still in an always-evolving universe where entropy increases without localized effort. So, every action leads towards or away from survival. If some other main value leads away from survival, I’m going to argue that we wouldn’t value it once we discovered that fact about it. No? This is how I’ve developed my thinking here, but perhaps you have another way of conceiving some value as main.
LR: Thank you for asking. My own views are close to yours. Survival is foundational and essential. There is nothing more important, and it is a moral imperative that we think existentially long-term about survival on the planet and the universe, and judge actions accordingly. Non-human life has intrinsic value and all life on Earth is fundamentally connected (I don’t think it all about “us smart humans”).
I think where I’m differing may be a formulation issue. Survival is ultimate and foundational, yes. But I am not yet fully convinced that thinking of it as the main value is how I’d frame it. We cannot have life without breathing, but I would not call breathing the main value, I’d call it a means to an end, and essential in that fundamental sense. I think this example can be thought of analogously with survival or “robust survival” for me. Why is survival important? Because without it we could not have conscious creatures, experience of beauty, culture, meaning, love, or an unfathomable quantity and diversity of life in future. It is values like these that make survival essential. Survival is necessary and essential, but a means, not the value itself.
Values come from conscious creatures, not from the universe. Yes, we are part of and from nature. So, we can align our values to what in nature allows for existence and flourishing—survival. I’m with you there! Completely. But we also can create values and meanings—we are, as far as we know, the only creatures in the universe that can do so—and in this sense survival is a means. What if our created meanings lead away from survival? I would say this is a fundamental moral wrong, as I think you might. We are aligned there! But I would not, at this point, formulate survival or robust survival as the main value in the universe, for the above reasons. The universe doesn’t have values, we do.
EG: Thanks for continuing to push on this Larry. It’s helpful for people “on the same team” to try to hash out what really, really unites them passionately. When you said this...
"What if our created meanings lead away from survival? I would say this is a fundamental moral wrong, as I think you might. We are aligned there!”
…I could probably bear down on that and philosophically insist that you begrudgingly accept that survival is therefore the main value since it is what adjudicates between any attempts at higher meanings. But I don’t want begrudging acceptance. We evolutionists want people to sing with our vision! So, let me keep working on that.
I’d start with your point about breathing being a means to an end. I’d turn that around and say yes, but they're all means to the end of developing more survival. Breathing was an early step in this, so that’s why it’s at the base of Maslow’s pyramid. (Have you read Scott Barry Kauffman’s Transcend yet, by the way? He’s produced an excellent new metaphor of a sailboat for our hierarchy of human needs.) But as we’ve evolved both our genes and our culture, we’ve discovered more and more ways of living better and better. Maybe someday we’ll discover things far above and beyond art, philosophy, and music. We didn’t always have those. That’s what I mean by the Darwinian inversion of meaning. We’re still building and evolving it.
Here’s how I might express that even more inspirationally. All those things that you say are the ends that survival enables are actually things that make us want to survive….even more! They make our lives more and more precious, which continues to drive us to act for more and more survival. That's how they are related to survival as well. The survival instinct is traditionally expressed as some kind of base, animal level, brute force, but it’s so much more than that. It’s a growing sense that has become bigger and more refined through countless evolutionary steps. That’s my re-conception of survival that I think isn’t quite being picked up. You started off by saying you agree that survival is foundational and essential, but the things that make us want to survive are just more of the same. And we are capable of so much more discovery along that path too! Whenever I think about technological developments towards life without ageing and space exploration of other possible worlds (I’ve been on a Star Wars binge lately, so I think of this a lot), that is what makes me want so badly to live well and live more! More thriving IS more surviving.
What do you think? Is that getting closer to getting an amen? : ) You are right that it may be a formulation and framing matter that is keeping this from taking hold in people and I’m always searching for the right key to unlock that.
LR: I'm on board. This sounds like we are arguing but we are not. I think it may be a semantic rather than substantive or conceptual discussion at this point, around the word “survival”. It seems your survival encompasses flourishing and thriving within the term and concept, beyond just the narrow minimal “base, animal level” needed to stay alive. I've been separating those two ideas. I think you see the two concepts more as seamless, not distinguishable.
EG: Excellent. Yes, I agree it is a semantic difficulty around what all is contained in “survival”. I’m going to work much harder at being clear about that.
As a quick start, I just Googled “etymology survive” and found an interesting root that I can use. It says that survive comes from combining the Latin “super” (meaning “in addition”) with the Latin “vivere” (meaning “live”) to form “supervivere” in Latin and then “sourvivre” in Old French, which morphed into survive in late Middle English. So, “survive” literally comes from something like “in addition to life” which I’m going to highlight from now on as an addition that we can continue to grow and grow. Cool!
You are not alone in separating these ideas. Pursuits of definitions for eudaimonia and flourishing have been around for millennia, and since they were initially pre-Darwinian, they were of course independent of any type of survival-of-life-thinking. I’m unusual in working to overturn that so I need to recognise that and be clearer about it. Thanks for helping me work through this! I’ll turn it into a blog post for sure and see if I get any more feedback on this.
