James Holt has a new book called Why Does the World Exist? This is culled from Dyson's review of it in the NYT.
Materialists imagine a world built out of atoms. Platonists imagine a world built out of ideas. This division into two categories is a gross simplification, lumping together people with a great variety of opinions. Like taxonomists who name species of plants and animals, observers of the philosophical scene may be splitters or lumpers. Splitters like to name many species; lumpers like to name few.
Holt is a splitter and I am a lumper. Philosophers are mostly splitters, dividing their ways of thinking into narrow specialties such as theism or deism or humanism or panpsychism or axiarchism. Examples of each of these isms are to be seen in Holt’s collection. I find it more convenient to lump them into two big groups, one obsessed with matter and the other obsessed with mind. Holt asks them to explain why the world exists. For the materialists, the question concerns the origin of space and time and particles and fields, and the relevant branch of science is physics. For the Platonists, the question concerns the origin of meaning and purpose and consciousness, and the relevant science is psychology.
...The word “axiarchism” is Greek for “value rules,” meaning that the world is built out of ideas, and the Platonic idea of the Good gives value to everything that exists. John Leslie takes seriously Plato’s image of the cave as a metaphor of human life. We live in a cave, seeing only shadows cast on the wall by light streaming in from the entrance. The real objects outside the cave are ideas, and all the things that we perceive inside are imperfect images of ideas. Evil exists because our images are distorted. The ultimate reality hidden from our view is Goodness. Goodness is a strong enough force to pull the universe into existence. Leslie understands that this explanation of existence is a poetic fantasy rather than a logical argument. Fantasy comes to the rescue when logic fails. The whole range of Plato’s thinking is embodied in his dialogues, which are dramatic reconstructions of the conversations of his master Socrates. They are based on imagination, not on logic.
...
In 1996 Leslie published a book, The End of the World, taking a gloomy view of the human situation. He was calculating the probable future duration of the human species, basing his argument on the Copernican principle, which says that the situation of the human observer in the cosmos should be in no way exceptional. Copernicus gave his name to this principle when he moved the earth from its position at the center of the Aristotelian universe and put it into a more modest position as one of the planets orbiting around the sun.
Leslie argued that the Copernican principle should apply to our position in time as well as to our position in space. As observers of the passage of time, we should not put ourselves into a privileged position at the beginning of the history of our species. As Copernican observers, we should expect to be in an average position in our history, rather than close to the beginning. Therefore, we should expect the future duration of our species to be not much longer than its past. Since we know that our species originated about a hundred thousand years ago, we should expect it to become extinct about a hundred thousand years from now.
Materialists imagine a world built out of atoms. Platonists imagine a world built out of ideas. This division into two categories is a gross simplification, lumping together people with a great variety of opinions. Like taxonomists who name species of plants and animals, observers of the philosophical scene may be splitters or lumpers. Splitters like to name many species; lumpers like to name few.
Holt is a splitter and I am a lumper. Philosophers are mostly splitters, dividing their ways of thinking into narrow specialties such as theism or deism or humanism or panpsychism or axiarchism. Examples of each of these isms are to be seen in Holt’s collection. I find it more convenient to lump them into two big groups, one obsessed with matter and the other obsessed with mind. Holt asks them to explain why the world exists. For the materialists, the question concerns the origin of space and time and particles and fields, and the relevant branch of science is physics. For the Platonists, the question concerns the origin of meaning and purpose and consciousness, and the relevant science is psychology.
...The word “axiarchism” is Greek for “value rules,” meaning that the world is built out of ideas, and the Platonic idea of the Good gives value to everything that exists. John Leslie takes seriously Plato’s image of the cave as a metaphor of human life. We live in a cave, seeing only shadows cast on the wall by light streaming in from the entrance. The real objects outside the cave are ideas, and all the things that we perceive inside are imperfect images of ideas. Evil exists because our images are distorted. The ultimate reality hidden from our view is Goodness. Goodness is a strong enough force to pull the universe into existence. Leslie understands that this explanation of existence is a poetic fantasy rather than a logical argument. Fantasy comes to the rescue when logic fails. The whole range of Plato’s thinking is embodied in his dialogues, which are dramatic reconstructions of the conversations of his master Socrates. They are based on imagination, not on logic.
...
In 1996 Leslie published a book, The End of the World, taking a gloomy view of the human situation. He was calculating the probable future duration of the human species, basing his argument on the Copernican principle, which says that the situation of the human observer in the cosmos should be in no way exceptional. Copernicus gave his name to this principle when he moved the earth from its position at the center of the Aristotelian universe and put it into a more modest position as one of the planets orbiting around the sun.
Leslie argued that the Copernican principle should apply to our position in time as well as to our position in space. As observers of the passage of time, we should not put ourselves into a privileged position at the beginning of the history of our species. As Copernican observers, we should expect to be in an average position in our history, rather than close to the beginning. Therefore, we should expect the future duration of our species to be not much longer than its past. Since we know that our species originated about a hundred thousand years ago, we should expect it to become extinct about a hundred thousand years from now.
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