Purpose in the Universe : The Moral and Metaphysical Case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism

Two familiar worldviews dominate Western philosophy: materialist atheism and the benevolent God of the Abrahamic faiths. Tim Mulgan explores a third way. Ananthropocentric Purposivism claims that there is a cosmic purpose, but human beings are irrelevant to it.__Purpose in the Universe__ develops a philosophical case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism that it is at least as strong as the case for either theism or atheism. The book borrows traditional theist arguments to defend a cosmic purpose. These include cosmological, teleological, ontological, meta-ethical, and mystical arguments. It then borrows traditional atheist arguments to reject a human-centred purpose. These include arguments based on evil, diversity, and the scale of the universe. Mulgan also highlights connections between morality and metaphysics, arguing that evaluative premises play a crucial and underappreciated role in metaphysical debates about the existence of God, and Ananthropocentric Purposivism mutually supports an austere consequentialist morality based on objective values. He concludes that, by drawing on a range of secular and religious ethical traditions, a non-human-centred cosmic purpose can ground a distinctive human morality. Our moral practices, our view of the moral universe, and our moral theory are all transformed if we shift from the familiar choice between a universe without meaning and a universe where humans matter to the less self-aggrandising thought that, while it is about __something__, the universe is not about __us__. Cover 1 Purpose in the Universe: The moral and metaphysical case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Acknowledgements 8 1: Introduction 10 1.1 What is AP? 10 1.2 Ambiguity: Religious and Philosophical 17 1.3 Morality and Metaphysics 22 1.4 My Moral Commitments 24 1.4.1 Utilitarianism and suffering 24 1.4.2 A utilitarian ethic of belief 25 1.4.3 Two pictures of morality 29 1.4.4 Lessons from the future 30 1.4.5 Utilitarian meta-ethics 34 1.4.6 An objective austere morality 35 1.5 The Moral Implications of AP 36 1.6 Plan of the Book 37 2: Meta-ethics 42 2.1 Two Approaches to Meta-ethics 43 2.2 Against Non-cognitivism 44 2.3 Against Moral Naturalism 47 2.3.1 Definitional moral naturalism 47 2.3.2 Non-definitional moral naturalism 49 2.4 Against Moral Nihilism 53 2.5 Non-naturalism 56 2.6 Benevolent Theist Non-naturalism 61 2.7 Moral Supernaturalism 63 2.8 A Moral Argument for Benevolent Theism 68 2.9 Can AP Borrow the Argument for Theism? 69 PART I: The Case against Atheism 72 3: Cosmological Arguments 74 3.1 The Ultimate Question 74 3.2 Does the Ultimate Question Make Sense? 76 3.3 Three Non-purposive Answers 78 3.3.1 The instability of nothing 78 3.3.2 Is S necessary? 79 3.3.3 The Hume–Edwards principle 80 3.3.4 Modal realism 83 3.4 Is S a Brute Fact? 84 3.4.1 The Principle of Sufficient Reason 84 3.4.2 Is nothing the default? 86 3.4.3 Objective values 88 3.5 Explaining S 89 3.6 Evaluating Axiarchism 92 3.6.1 Is axiarchism a good explanation? 92 3.6.2 Is this the best possible world? 96 3.6.3 Is something better than nothing? 97 3.6.4 Axiarchism and cosmic purpose 99 3.7 Evaluating Benevolent Theism 100 3.7.1 The BT explanation 100 3.7.2 Can AP borrow BT’s cosmological argument? 104 3.8 Conclusion 106 4: Teleological Arguments 108 4.1 Varieties of Teleological Argument 108 4.2 The Human Features Argument 110 4.3 Cosmic Features Arguments 114 4.4 The Fine-tuning Argument for BT 118 4.5 Evaluating the Fine-tuning Argument 121 4.6 A Theory of Everything 122 4.7 Rehabilitating Brute Fact 124 4.7.1 Is FL significant? 124 4.7.2 Is FL unlikely? 126 4.7.3 Combining special features and fine-tuning 129 4.8 The Multi-verse 132 4.8.1 The multi-verse explanation of FL 132 4.8.2 Against the atheist multi-verse 134 4.8.3 From value-based multi-verse to cosmic purpose 135 4.8.4 Does MVH help purposivism? 137 4.9 Can AP Borrow the Fine-tuning Argument? 137 4.10 What Have We Learnt about Cosmic Purpose? 138 5: Mysticism 139 5.1 The Phenomena: From Isolated Experience to Contemplative Tradition 141 5.2 Alston on Christian Mystical Doxastic Practice 144 5.3 From First-person to Third-person 147 5.4 Common Objections to CMP 149 5.4.1 Lack of empirical verification 150 5.4.2 The Great Pumpkin Objection 151 5.4.3 CMP is not as reliable as SP 152 5.4.4 Must a reliable DP be universal? 154 5.4.5 Does SP undermine CMP? 155 5.4.6 A deflationary explanation 156 5.4.7 CMP is dispensable 157 5.4.8 Religious diversity 159 5.5 The Moral Test: How Morality Mutually Supports CMP 160 5.6 What Can AP Borrow from CMP? 166 5.7 How Does CMP Shape AP Morality? 168 6: Ontological Arguments 170 6.1 Anselm 173 6.1.1 Anselm’s goals in Proslogion 173 6.1.2 Anselm’s basic argument 175 6.1.3 Anselm on thinking, understanding, and an incomprehensible God 177 6.1.4 Anselm as rational mystic 179 6.1.5 How our project supports Anselm 183 6.2 The Modal Ontological Argument 184 6.2.1 Analysing the modal ontological argument 185 6.2.2 Are there modal facts? 187 6.2.3 Proving the antecedent premise 189 6.2.4 Pruss and the presumption of possibility 190 6.2.5 Leftow’s argument 193 6.2.6 Experience 195 6.2.7 Conclusions re MOA 196 6.3 Can AP Borrow the Ontological Argument? 196 PART II: The Case against Benevolent Theism 200 7: Arguments from Scale 202 7.1 What Does the Argument Show? 203 7.2 What Exactly is Wrong with This Universe? 206 7.3 Would God Create the Best Possible World? 210 7.3.1 God is not a consequentialist 210 7.3.2 There is no best possible world 215 7.4 BT vs AP If We Are Alone 219 7.4.1 Can BT explain why we are alone? 219 7.4.2 Can AP explain why we are alone? 222 7.5 What If We Are Not Alone? 223 7.5.1 BT and ET 223 7.5.2 Between BT and AP 225 7.6 Are We Alone? 226 8: Arguments from Evil 229 8.1 AP and the Argument from Evil 229 8.2 Animal Suffering 234 8.2.1 Creature-affecting benevolence 235 8.2.2 Impersonal consequentialism 238 8.3 Free Will Theodicy 242 8.4 What is CDF? 245 8.5 Is W2 Actual? 251 8.5.1 Do we have incompatibilist freedom? 252 8.5.2 Do we have CDF? 254 8.5.3 Are we free to inflict horrendous evil? 255 8.6 Varieties of W3 256 8.7 Compatibilist-w3 256 8.7.1 The value of freedom 257 8.7.2 Responses to horrendous evil 260 8.7.3 Transcendent goods 260 8.8 Incompatibilist-w3 261 8.9 Liberal-w3 263 8.9.1 Is liberal-w3 possible? 263 8.9.2 The value of freedom in liberal-w3 264 8.9.3 Transcendent goods in liberal-w3 267 8.10 Conclusion 269 9: Religious Diversity 270 9.1 What RD Adds to the Argument from Evil 271 9.2 Can Atheism Explain RD? 272 9.3 How AP Explains Diversity 273 9.4 AP and Buddhist Atheism 276 9.5 Can BT Explain RD? 277 9.6 Pluralism 281 9.7 Does Religious Diversity Undermine Mystical Doxastic Practices? 286 10: Immortality 289 10.1 What Afterlife Does BT Need? 290 10.1.1 Does BT require personal survival? 291 10.1.2 Does BT require immortality? 291 10.1.3 Does BT need an animal afterlife? 292 10.1.4 Does BT need pre-existence? 292 10.2 Do We Survive or Pre-exist? 299 10.2.1 Evidence for immortality 299 10.2.2 Personal identity and post-mortem survival 302 10.2.3 Settling the dispute over personal identity 312 10.2.4 AP and the metaphysics of immortality 314 10.3 Moral Arguments for Immortality 316 10.3.1 A catalogue of moral arguments 316 10.3.2 Does morality require a just world? 319 10.3.3 From common consent to meaning 320 10.3.4 A moral argument for pre-existence and animals 321 10.3.5 The meaning argument 322 10.3.6 Who is worried about meaning? 323 10.3.7 AP and the meaning of life 326 10.3.8 Alternative connections to infinite value 327 10.3.9 Can I make a difference in an infinite world? 328 10.3.10 Larger agency 330 10.4 Conclusion 331 PART III: Ananthropocentric Purposivist Morality 332 11: A Dialogue 334 12: Human Well-being 352 12.1 From Cosmic Purpose to Cosmic Value 353 12.1.1 Direct routes to cosmic value 355 12.1.2 An independent route to cosmic value 356 12.1.3 An alternative independent principle 360 12.1.4 A leap of faith 360 12.1.5 Fictionalism 362 12.2 What Do We Know about Cosmic Value? 363 12.3 From Cosmic Value to Human Value 365 12.3.1 Cosmic value as the ground of human value 365 12.3.2 Cosmic purpose is not the only source of value 377 12.3.3 Human value without cosmic values 378 12.3.4 Cosmic realist nihilism 380 13: Ananthropocentric PurposivistMoral Theory 382 13.1 AP and Atheist Consequentialism 383 13.2 AP and Value 387 13.3 AP’s Austere Morality 389 13.4 AP Act Consequentialism 392 13.4.1 The epistemic inadequacy of APAC 392 13.4.2 Is APAC impotent? 394 13.4.3 Is APAC too demanding? 396 13.5 Rule Consequentialism 399 13.5.1 Why should we follow rule consequentialism? 399 13.5.2 Human well-being within APRC 401 13.5.3 The scope of rule consequentialism 403 13.5.4 The content of the ideal code 405 13.5.5 Beyond promotion 408 13.5.6 Consequentialist liberalism 409 13.6 Hybrid Consequentialism 411 13.7 BT Consequentialism 413 13.8 Divine Command Ethics 414 13.9 Divine Motivation Theory 419 13.9.1 What is divine motivation theory? 419 13.9.2 Can AP borrow divine motivation theory? 421 13.10 An Ethic of Pure Contemplation 424 Bibliography 426 Index 438 Two familiar worldviews dominate Western philosophy: materialist atheism and the benevolent God of the Abrahamic faiths. Tim Mulgan explores a third way. Ananthropocentric Purposivism claims that there is a cosmic purpose, but human beings are irrelevant to it. Purpose in the Universe develops a philosophical case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism that it is at least as strong as the case for either theism or atheism. The book borrows traditional theist arguments to defend a cosmic purpose. These include cosmological, teleological, ontological, meta-ethical, and mystical arguments. It then borrows traditional atheist arguments to reject a human-centred purpose. These include arguments based on evil, diversity, and the scale of the universe. Mulgan also highlights connections between morality and metaphysics, arguing that evaluative premises play a crucial and underappreciated role in metaphysical debates about the existence of God, and Ananthropocentric Purposivism mutually supports an austere consequentialist morality based on objective values. He concludes that, by drawing on a range of secular and religious ethical traditions, a non-human-centred cosmic purpose can ground a distinctive human morality. Our moral practices, our view of the moral universe, and our moral theory are all transformed if we shift from the familiar choice between a universe without meaning and a universe where humans matter to the less self-aggrandising thought that, while it is about something , the universe is not about us . Two familiar worldviews dominate Western philosophy: materialist atheism and the benevolent God of the Abrahamic faiths. Tim Mulgan defends a third way. Ananthropocentric purposivism claims that there is a cosmic purpose, but human beings are irrelevant to it. He argues that non-human-centred cosmic purpose can ground a distinctive human morality