Why Do We Care About Doomsday?

In his book Death and the Afterlife (Oxford 2013), Samuel Scheffler speculates that the prospect of humanity’s imminent extinction shortly after our own death (“doomsday”) would affect us more than the knowledge of our own mortality currently does. If we knew that all human life would disappear from the face of the earth 30 days after we die, then this would render much of what we do today meaningless. We would react with ennui and despair, which, Scheffler believes, shows “the limits of egoism” or in other words that we not only care for things that do not directly affect us (we won’t, after all, be there to experience the end of humanity), but also that we actually care more for what happens to humanity than for what happens to ourselves as individuals (in the sense that we find the idea of all human life coming to an end in the foreseeable future more disturbing and more destructive of life’s meaning than the idea of our own certain death).

I don’t want to go into the details of the argument (which relies rather heavily on the plausibility of Scheffler’s prediction of certain reactions to hypothetical situations such as the doomsday scenario), nor the problems that it faces. John Danaher has already, as usual, done an excellent job at analysing the logical structure of the argument and also discussing some of the objections raised: http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/meaning-value-and-collective-afterlife.html Suffice it to say that what I take to be the core of Scheffler’s “afterlife conjecture”, namely that we do care about the ongoing existence of humanity (what Scheffler calls the “collective afterlife”), rather persuasive. It may of course be difficult to predict how exactly we would react if we knew that the human world would definitely come to an end very soon after our death. Some people might despair, some might rediscover the value of human solidarity, some might feel licensed to live even more ruthlessly (freed of any concern for the well-being of future generations), some might remain largely unaffected and continue to enjoy their life, ignoring what they cannot change and what doesn’t directly affect them, and some might even positively welcome the eradication of human life as an opportunity for Mother Earth to heal her wounds or something to that effect. But I think whatever our reactions may be, it is pretty clear that few of us are entirely indifferent to the fate of humanity. We do care about the collective afterlife. The question is why.

Now it may be the case that when contemplating the doomsday scenario and feeling disturbed by it, we are actually suffering from a delusion that is similar to the one that Epicurus thought was responsible for our fear of death. Just as we may fear death mostly because we imagine ourselves being dead and somehow experiencing our own state of being dead (lying in our coffins, in the dark and cold, for all eternity), which of course we won’t, we may also fear doomsday because we imagine ourselves still being there when it occurs, and either being destroyed in the process or, perhaps even more disturbingly, being the sole survivor, the one who witnesses it all and is left all alone in an empty world. However, even though such a confusion may play a role here, I don’t think that is all there is to it. It seems to me that by emphasising the “limits of egoism” in the context of his afterlife conjecture, Scheffler really is on to something. We not only care for ourselves, for our loved ones, and perhaps for particular people that we happen to know. We also care for people in general. To a certain degree we tend to identify with humanity as a whole, tend to see ourselves in others. We tend to perceive humanity as a project that we all take part in. 

At least that is how I feel, and since I have no reason to think that I’m unique in this respect, I am assuming that many others share those feelings. When I look at my seven-year old son, I see myself in him, as I was when I was a boy, and it gives me comfort to think that he still has his whole life ahead of him, with all its opportunities, its rich fabric of experience, its joys and wonders. And although I’m aware that there will also be suffering, that there will be real losses and frustrations and disappointments, I cannot help feeling that on balance life is well worth living, an adventure well worth having, and that it is imperative that it continue (as Hans Jonas has argued in his 1979 book The Imperative of Responsibility). And it seems to me, when I look at my son, that in him I’m getting another opportunity at life, that he will be living life for me, that in him I will have a part in the future of the world. Now this feeling is not restricted to my son or my children in general. I also have it, though perhaps less poignantly, when I see other children at play, or lovers embracing, people chatting and laughing, students engaging with new ideas, and old couple walking along the street hand in hand, my dog chasing a ball, fully immersed in the sheer joy of running, of being alive. I identify with all of them, in the sense that I feel my own life extended in and through them. I feel that, in some way that I cannot fully understand, they are me. Even my dog. Or any other dog. Or other animal. So perhaps it is not humanity alone that we feel connected with and in whose survival we take an interest. Perhaps the project of humanity is itself part of an even larger project, the project of life. And if we imagine another doomsday scenario, one in which not only humanity vanished from the face of the earth, but all living creatures, so that not only the history of humanity came to an end, but the history of life itself, then we may find this even more disconcerting, even more destructive of meaning than if it were only humanity that came to an end. 

So why do we care about doomsday? I think it may be because we realize that with the extinction of humanity (or even more so life itself), we would die all over again, and this time for good.

Thomas Nagel on Mind and Cosmos

I recently wrote an introductory article on the philosophy of Hans Jonas for a collection focussing on new continental perspectives on bioethics. The editor, Darian Meacham, suggested that I read Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos. Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False (Oxford University Press 2012), because some of the ideas in it seemed to correspond with those of Jonas. So that is what I did, and I wasn’t disappointed. Just like Jonas, Nagel (cautiously) argues for a teleological understanding of nature, even though he doesn’t seem to be aware of Jonas’s work.

Nagel’s argument is highly speculative, of course, but not entirely implausible, and I found it interesting to learn that he was harshly criticised for it, notably by Simon Blackburn who declared it “profoundly wrong-headed” and claimed that despite his professed atheism, Nagel was playing into the hands of both religious creationists and tough-minded scientists who will see Nagel’s book as yet another confirmation of how useless and out of touch philosophers actually are: Blackburn on Nagel

Nagel’s heresy is to question the reductionist and mechanistic neo-Darwinian account of the origin and evolution of life and to shed doubt on the widely held assumption that the appearance of life, consciousness, and reason can, in principle, adequately be explained by it. Questioning common assumptions, however, can hardly be said to be unphilosophical. And in this particular case I find doubt quite understandable. That inanimate matter should have given rise to life at some stage in the history of the universe is indeed astonishing enough and has so far not been sufficiently explained. Subjectivity is even harder to account for. That there are now beings in the world that can actually experience it, that are conscious of that world and of themselves, and that can even reflect on the nature of that world and aspire to understand it in its entirety, all that we haven’t understood at all. And neither scientific materialism nor standard evolutionary theory really allow for such an understanding. They rather circumvent the problem by either denying the existence of consciousness (as something distinct from, and not reducible to, matter), or its relevance, or by taking it as a brute fact that requires no further explanation.

Nagel suggests that, in order to make its appearance comprehensible, we need to think of mind as being (and having always been) part of matter, not only in such a way that it allowed for its emergence, but that it positively advanced it as an “unsurprising if not inevitable consequence of the order that governs the natural world from within.” (32) The mere possibility is not enough. We also need to understand how and why it became actual.

In a certain way, of course, all scientists who believe that the world can actually be (fully) understood by our intellects, tacitly assume already that there is a natural correspondence between our minds and nature: that its order is such that it can be understood by minds like ours. But why should that be? Where does that confidence come from? Why should we be able to form true judgments about the world in the first place if all our capacities are owed to random mutations and the selective pressures of the environment, especially given the scope of those judgements? “Is it credible that selection for fitness in the prehistoric past should have fixed capacities that are effective in theoretical pursuits that were unimaginable at the time?” (74) Nagel thinks not.

One reason is this: If it is to be expected that we will believe whatever is most conducive to our survival, then we will have this belief also if it is most conducive to our survival, independent of whether it is true or not. And if the reason why we have our beliefs is not that they are true, but that they are conducive to our survival, then believing (and having convinced ourselves through the application of our ability to reason) that this is true in no way shows that it is true, but just that believing it to be true is conducive to our survival. Evolutionary naturalism thus “provides an account of our capacities that undermines their reliability, and in doing so undermines itself.” (27) To escape this circle we would need “not to discover a foundation that makes our knowledge unassailably secure but to find a way of understanding ourselves that is not radically self-undermining.” (25)

However, the argument seems to rely heavily on the assumption that we are capable of forming a true picture of the world. Nagel finds it undeniable “that our clearest moral and logical reasonings are objectively valid” (31), and thinks that we should too. And it is of course difficult not to trust them, especially our logical reasonings. We cannot even justify our doubt without relying on reason. But is the unavoidability of that trust really sufficient to demand that an acceptable account of the world explain the existence of our capacity to reason in a way that is consistent with its objective validity? I’m not sure. Reason, Nagel maintains, “connects us with the truth directly.” (82) But does it really? I’m a bit hesitant to agree, especially since Nagel seems to believe the same about practical reason. In other words, he is a moral (or more precisely metaethical) realist who thinks that our moral judgements can be objectively valid just as much as our theoretical judgements. “If I oppose the abolition of the inheritance tax, it is because I recognize that the design of property rights should be sensitive not only to autonomy but also to fairness.” (84) Should they really? Is that a fact? Is it true that property rights should be sensitive to fairness? I don’t think morality has got much to do with truth, even though we often talk as if it had. But that is hardly conclusive. When Nagel shows himself “convinced that pain is really bad, and not just something we hate” (110), I even have trouble to understand what this means. It seems to me that if it weren’t something we hated, then it couldn’t be really bad, and that we don’t really hate it because it is “really bad”, but rather because it is painful. I don’t quite understand how, or what exactly, its alleged badness adds to its painfulness.

I do think, though, that Nagel is right to insist that the emergence of life and consciousness is an astonishing fact that has not been adequately explained yet and is not likely to ever be so within the established scientific framework. “Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.” (85) Should this be purely accidental? Nagel finds that hard to believe, and I do too. And he is also right to suggest that “an explanation of the appearance and development of life must at the same time be an explanation of the appearance and development of value” (121), because every living thing asserts its own existence as valuable, and consequently there are things that are good and things that are bad for it. In this sense I agree that there is objective value. There may also be in the sense that the emergence and development of life and consciousness indicates that it is in some way better for there to be life and consciousness rather than not. But if it is, in what way exactly? Better for whom, or for what?

Do Angels Have Genitals? A Curious Proof of God’s Existence

The odd question whether angels have genitals, which already occupied the minds of countless scholastic theologians, was raised again by the great Jewish-German philosopher Hans Jonas in an article that was published in 1990 in the journal Scheidewege (which, I’m proud to say, I have been co-editing for more than a decade now). The article is called “Vergangenheit und Wahrheit” (Past and Truth) and has, as far as I know, yet to be translated into English. I’ve stumbled across this article because I have been asked to write a paper on Hans Jonas for a collection on “New Contintental Perspectives on Medicine and Society”, edited by Darian Meacham, and although that particular article is perhaps not very relevant in this context, I couldn’t help being fascinated by the argument that Jonas presents here: a new and actually quite original and convincing proof (as far as such proofs go) of the existence of God.

When Jonas asks whether angels have genitals he is of course not looking for an answer. Rather, he uses the question to make a point, namely that it doesn’t make any sense to argue about the properties of something that doesn’t exist. It is neither true to say that angels have genitals, nor is it false. Nor would it be quite correct to say that neither do angels have genitals nor do they not have them. They do not belong to a class of things to which the laws of logic do not apply. Instead, they are not things at all; they are literally nothing, so that it doesn’t even make sense to ask the question whether or not they have genitals.

However, among the things that do not exist, are also all past events. What is past, no longer exists. It may have existed once, but now it does not exist. Yet we tend to assume that statements about past events are true or false, even though we may never be able to ascertain which statements are true and which false. Did Napoleon blow his nose on that fateful day when he lost the battle of Waterloo? Did he think of his former wife Josephine who had died the year before? Did he try to figure out whether angels have genitals? Even though nothing has been recorded that would answer those questions, it nonetheless seems that there must be an answer, that either he did those things, or he did not do them. But if the past does not exist, if it, or at least that particular part of the past, is completely and utterly gone, unrecorded and not remembered by anyone, then do we not have to conclude that the question whether or not Napoleon thought of Josephine during the battle of Waterloo is just as meaningless as the question whether angels have genitals? And meaningless not because we could never know whether the answer someone gave was true or false, but rather because there is no fact in relation to which an answer could be true or false. Napoleon, being past and gone and hence a non-existent entity, did not think about Josephine, nor did he not think about her. Napoleon does not exist, and non-existent entities do not think.

Too weird a thought? Try to look at it from this angle: we are used to say that past events cannot change. They are fixed, always stay what they were. Either Napoleon did think about Josephine or he did not, and if he did, he will always have thought about her on that particular day, and if he did not, he will never have thought about her that day. But if the past does not exist, how can it be fixed? How can it be unchangeable? In order to be unchangeable, it seems, the past must in some way still exist. It must be there to have properties. But where, or how exactly, is it? Let us imagine an Orwellian government that is powerful and determined enough to destroy all the traces of the real past, that changed all the history books, all documents that tell us about what really happened, and thus invented a new past, which would then, for us and for everyone and for all practical purposes and for all that anyone will ever know, be the past. Or would it? Yet if there is no trace of the real past left, in what way is it the real past?

Jonas suggests that in order to make sense of our belief that past events are real, so that statements about the past have a truth value (i.e., are either true or false), we must assume that there is something that preserves the past in the present, and that means the whole past, every single detail of it. So what we need is a kind of cosmic memory in which nothing ever gets forgotten. But a memory cannot exist on its own, but only as part or aspect of a subject who remembers. And that subject is God.

Jonas is of course quite aware that these reflections do not amount to a full-blown proof. It’s just an idea, a probably feeble attempt to make sense of it all, but I personally find it strangely persuasive. Let us again use our imagination. This time let’s imagine the world in a few billion years, shortly after the earth has been absorbed by the sun. Nothing is left of life on earth. Nobody that remembers any of it. No traces of anything that happened before this event anywhere. The situation is exactly like it would be if there never had been any life on earth, no humanity, no you or me. Nothing any of us has ever done or is ever going to do will have made a difference. Yet if at some stage in the future the world is exactly like it would be if we had never existed, so that there is no difference between a world in which we existed and a world in which we didn’t, then in what way have we existed at that time? If there is no difference between those two worlds, then there is no difference between our having existed and our not having existed.

It seems to me that this conundrum also has ethical implications. If it is all going to be the same in the end, then in the long run it doesn’t make any difference what we do. So why bother? Why try to do the right thing? Do we not, in order to think that what we do matters, have to believe that somehow, in some form, what we do lives on, not just for a while, but forever? That there is some kind of cosmic memory that remembers, and will always remember, what we did, and for which it does make a difference?