Making sense of the world

On Tues, Apr 12, 2011 at 13:25:43
Aurora asked this question:

Why is there a need for man to make sense of the world?

Aurora's question is about a topic that will be familiar to many. What is the meaning of life? What sense can be made of the world? Well, it's good that she didn't ask that question, because if she had I wouldn't have chosen it. We get that question frequently. Why should we know? Do people asking what the meaning of life is seriously expect an answer? Luckily that's not Aurora's question. What Aurora wants to know is why do human beings feel motivated, or impelled to ask that question? Why is there a need to 'make sense of the world'? That's not a question many ask. A philosopher's question.

I would like to know the answer to that too. More to the point, I would like to know what on earth the question is about. (I won't make anything of the fact that Aurora asked why man needs to make sense of the world — and woman doesn't?)

There's no puzzle about why we need to make sense of things. I mean, things in the world, situations or events or objects that we encounter. There are different kinds of 'making sense'. The detective tries to make sense of the scattered clues left at the scene of a crime, say, a murder, by reconstructing the sequence of events, analysing cause and effect. There's also the question of motivation: was the motivation revenge, or theft, or was it just a random senseless killing? Then there's the hastily scribbled note left on the table. What does it say? what do the words mean?

I've just given three contrasting examples of 'making sense', which we apply every day. We ask about causes and effects; we ask about intentions, motivations, purposes; and we ask about the sense of words. There's no puzzle about why we do this. Try getting getting through the day without once doing one of these things. It's a matter of sheer survival. This can be an everyday event: like reading the words on the bottle to make sure you're taking the right medicine, or judging whether an approaching car is slowing down because the driver has seen you step into the road. And even when our survival isn't threatened, we ask these questions out of natural curiosity — which itself has survival value.

Aurora could have asked why human beings are so curious about the world, curious beyond any reasonable need if survival were the only thing we cared about. Other species exhibit curiosity too, of course, but at least in their case evolution supplies a sufficient explanation. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it's not difficult to see why on the whole this trait is beneficial rather than harmful to kitty.

It was in this spirit that Plato and Aristotle both remarked that 'Philosophy begins with wonder.' Human beings are creatures that wonder, that ask questions which go beyond any obvious utility or purpose. We ask for the sake of asking. We just want to know. That's one of the wonderful things about being human.

But that's not Aurora's question. Her question isn't about why, out of insatiable curiosity, we try to make sense of everything we come across. It's about why we ask the familiar question, 'what does this mean?' about the world. The world as such. The whole thing. All that is (or 'all that is the case'). Being qua being. Life, the universe and everything.

I've remarked before that it would be intolerable if the world had a sense — in the sense of a meaning or purpose — and we finally got to know what it was; and it would be equally intolerable if we finally got to know, absolutely and for certain, that the world does not have any meaning or purpose. What I'm now saying is that neither alternative — that the world has a sense, or that that world does not have a sense — makes any sense to me at all.

I am talking about the absurd. A world where everything added up, and you could see exactly the point of everything would be an absurd world; equally absurd would be a world where you knew there was no prospect of adding things up. A world which made sense, or didn't make sense, would be absurd. But it's absurd even to ask this question. And that's the point. Yet we do, anyway!

Physics, or rather cosmology, makes a pretty brave attempt at making sense of the universe in the first of the three senses which I outlined above: figuring out the sequence of causes and effects. But of course that's only on the assumption that by 'the world' one means 'this universe', that is to say, the world as governed by the laws of physics. Cosmologists sometimes forget (one can hardly blame them) that these laws are, ultimately, contingent not necessary (an observation I made in my previous post). There could have been different universes, governed by different laws than the laws which govern this universe.

A case could therefore be made for saying that the world, the world as such, is bigger than the physical universe or cosmos, because maybe there are potentially lots of universes, just as there are lots of suns with orbiting planets in this universe. But I don't want my argument to turn on that debatable claim. Let's just talk about the universe.

The universe or cosmos is that which is, existence, which of course includes ourselves. Whenever we try to 'make sense' of something, in any of the three senses which I distinguished (cause and effect, intention/ purpose, semantic meaning) it is always in relation to a framework. You can ask whether the universe as a whole 'has a purpose', say, if you are prepared to hypothesize something outside the universe, such as God is conceived to be. But then the same question arises again. You can only put God or a creator outside the universe by, in effect, hypothesizing a larger universe which contains both the creator and 'his' creation. (This is a familiar point from debates over the various arguments for the existence of God, so I won't labour it.)

The idea of a framework, the distinction between questions within a framework and questions about a framework, is one which Rudolf Carnap discussed in his seminal article, 'Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology'. After Quine's attack on the analytic/ synthetic distinction less attention has been paid to Carnap's foundational work on this topic, but the fundamental point is still valid as a diagnosis of the error which we easily fall into, of confusing questions about a framework with questions within a framework.

When the framework is the universe or cosmos, and the question is about meaning, then the correct and proper conclusion to draw from Carnap's theory is that we imagine a question where there is no question. We to ask questions about the framework which can only be asked within the framework, such as the question, or questions, about the 'sense of the world'.

Why do we do this? Why are we impelled to commit this error, over and over again? That's a question which Kant asked. The whole of the Critique of Pure Reason is devoted to exploring, in different ways, the limits to questioning and how we are impelled to transgress those limits. So I guess it would be appropriate to let Kant have the last word:

Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.

The perplexity into which it thus falls is not due to any fault of its own. It begins with principles which it has no option save to employ in the course of experience, and which this experience at the same time abundantly justifies it in using. Rising with their aid (since it is determined to this also by its own nature) to ever higher, ever more remote, conditions, it soon becomes aware that in this way — the questions never ceasing — its work must always remain incomplete... by this procedure human reason precipitates itself into darkness and contradictions; and while it may indeed conjecture that these must be in some way due to concealed errors, it is not in a position to be able to detect them.

Immanuel Kant Critique of Pure Reason Preface to the First Edition (N.K. Smith tr.)

Kant's great book was one of the first volumes I picked up when I discovered my interest in philosophy — even though I knew I wouldn't understand most of it. You could do worse, Aurora, than read Kant's Introduction and Prefaces (to the 1st and 2nd editions). It will inspire you.